Extreme Email

I ran across a very interesting article that speaks to the volume of email that companies are challenged to store and manage every day, most of which is low value or no value. Here is a company that has instituted a 'zero (internal) email' policy as a reaction to the contradiction of high email volume and poor internal communication. The French technology company, Atos, has calculated that of the typical 200 emails that employees receive per day, only a mere 10% are useful. It now has a policy that bans it 74,000 employees from sending internal email.

http://news.yahoo.com/tech-firm-implements-employee-zero-email-policy-165311050.html

This is an extreme position that the company has taken, although it certainly makes it's point. In my experience, few employees exercise professional work-place email etiquette. Information Technology departments are challenged to manage and store the digital landfill of millions of emails.

In my experience developing product strategy for records management software, it is very few companies that have internal policies for email protocol and secure archiving. They don't know what to keep and what to destroy. As Atos has acknowledged, instant messaging is a better technology for quick, brief employee communications, as the messages are typically not stored or forwarded.

Is this a trend that will gain momentum in 2012? It is hard to say.

Basic Lead Management for B2B Companies

All companies have varying levels of complexity when it comes to lead management, but the basics are universal. Leads come in. Marketing sorts through the leads, filtering out the duds and assigning the pre-qualified leads to Sales. So why is it that so few companies can get this process to work effectively?

Here is a basic process for lead management, including the lead types or dispositions that are necessary for tracking the process.

1. Lead Import. A campaign generates a volume of leads. The quality of the leads is directly proportional to how targeted your campaign was, or the audience you engaged.

Disposition: Suspect

Action: Ensure all leads are cleansed and complete before being imported into Salesforce or whichever database you use. When they are imported, the disposition is Suspect (SUS). This is a temporary state. Suspects need to be validated (Marketing Qualified), Disqualified, deleted or moved.

2. Marketing Pre-Qualification

Disposition: Marketing Qualified Lead

Action: In order to advance the lead disposition to Marketing Qualified (MQL), you need to validate the Suspect leads against your target market. This usually means looking up the company in Hoovers or even Google to validate company size, industry sector and country / region to ensure the company is in your available market. If it is, it is considered Marketing Qualified. If not, it is Disqualified (DIS). There will tend to be a large number of MQL leads in your database. If there is no immediate Sales Acceptance, these leads will be nurtured in an effort to develop top-of-mind awareness for when the lead is ready to buy.

3. Marketing Hand-Off to Sales

Disposition: Sales Accepted Lead

Action: This is the critical step where inside sales or telemarketing has its first post-campaign person-to-person contact with the Marketing Qualified Lead to determine whether there is an initiative to buy in the next 6 – 12 months … or whatever prescribed timeframe is typical for your sales cycle. Is there a deal to be had? Is there a legitimate expression of interest? These are the 2 most critical questions for Sales in order to accept the hand-off from Marketing. If so, it is now a Sales Accepted Lead (SAL). If not, it stays as an MQL to be nurtured.

4. Sales Qualification

Disposition: Sales Qualified Lead

Action: A Sales representative is assigned the Sales Accepted Lead and qualifies it further. This is when the real heavy lifting gets done. Is there really an initiative with a defined procurement process and budget? Do we have a reasonable chance of winning the deal? Do we know who we are up against and how we are aligned with the selection criteria? Do we know what our cost of pursuit will be, and the resources required over time to win the deal? As this process begins, the lead is promoted to the status of Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). If the responses are positive, the Sales Qualified Lead is eventually converted into an Opportunity. If not, it may return to MQL status, or possibly become Disqualified.

Deviations

Sometimes leads are tagged as Hot, Warm or Cold, based on the urgency of the buyer. Under this model, Hot and Warm leads are delivered as Sales Accepted Leads. Cold leads remain as Marketing Qualified Leads until the point in time when there is a declared buying initiative.

Measurement

When measuring the result of a marketing campaign, the number of Marketing Qualified Leads is the key metric. These are the leads in your sweet spot that responded to your call-to-action.

That said, Sales and your CEO will only be interested in the Sales Accepted Leads. These represent potential sales pipeline. Understanding the lead numbers in the value chain that drive a single closed sale is critical. 1 closed sale = 5 opportunities; 1 opportunity = 5 SALs; 1 SAL = 10 MQLs. I need 250 MQLs to drive a single closed sale. Armed with the Sales Forecast, I now know how many leads I need to generate in order to support sales.

There are many variations of this, as different sales models require different processes and dispositions. Channel Sales, for instance, requires a completely different process for lead management. This is simply a good basic process to get you thinking about ways to improve your sales & marketing alignment.

Is TripAdvisor Irrelevant?

Have sites that rate hotels and resorts become irrelevant? Sites like TripAdvisor (and its parent company, Expedia) and Hotels.com have come under scrutiny for having fake reviews planted by in an effort to boost their rating. These fake reviews get posted by employees of the hotel and by companies contracted by the hotel to improve their reputation.

TripAdvisor claims to take measures to weed out the bogus reviews, but the problem is obviously a difficult one to tackle. The credibility and objectivity of the reviewer is a difficult thing to determine in most cases. TripAdvisor reviews rate hotels for a number of different criteria, which provides a rounded assessment of the experience. It indicates how many posts the reviewer has contributed on TripAdvisor, and it ranks the hotel against other hotels in its city /location.

Its relevance is also undermined by reviewers with unrealistic expectations. Today, I looked at a review for the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort in Waikiki, Honolulu. Out of approximately 2000 reviews, 81% are positive. However, of the negative reviews, most cite complaints about "too many tourists" or the price markups in hotel restaurants and shops. The reviewers' expectations seem to be out of alignment with the reality of staying at a 5-star resort on Waikiki beach.

I love the power of online communities when they highlight high-value companies, and hold low-value companies accountable. It appears to be more necessary than ever to incorporate a system for assessing the credibility or reputation of the reviewer so the followers of TripAdvisor get a better sense of which reviews to trust. Ebay has continued to refine its system for policing the buyers and sellers in its community. Help me cut through the noise and find the reviewers that are well travelled and can provide inbiased, insightful, articulate reviews ... so they can turn me on to hotels that are hidden gems and masters of customer service.

Google Combats Illegal Tree Cutters

Google Inadvertently Photographs Illegal Tree Removal

Google Street Views inadvertently provided evidence of a crime when a former homeowner and tree cutter were photographed illegally removing trees on an up-scale Vancouver property last May. Two trees were removed without permit or permission, which violated the city's tree bylaw. Several neighbors and a rival tree removal company complained to the city about the illegal tree removal.

The Province Newspaper reported that act was inadvertently caught on camera by Google’s specially equipped vehicle taking 360° pictures for Google Street Views, which links pictures of city streets to Google's mapping program. The photograph shows a truck on the site, along with a couple of workmen, tree debris, and a line of tree stumps along the length of a fence. The City of Vancouver is uncertain if or how the Google photograph will be used in the prosecution.

This is an interesting example of how GIS technology is helping provide photographic records of properties and associated city-regulated land usage information. As the resolution of the image improves, and the frequency of updates increases, I’ll be sure to keep my lawn mowed and cars washed.

This technology has changed the driving habits of the wired population. I can’t remember the last time I got lost while trying to find an address far afield from my neighborhood. The process of booking an appointment now includes getting the Google or Bing Map on your BlackBerry or iPhone for convenience. Cars manufacturers have finally replaced factory-installed cassette decks (finally phased out as standard equipment in 2008 models) with GPS navigation systems. It is a brave new world.

If GM Developed Cars Like Microsoft Develops Technology

The following is an humorous article that was originally published in 1999. I didn't write it. It is written by PR staff working for Jack Smith at General Motors. Enjoy ... and happy new year!

***

At a computer expo (COMDEX 1999), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors’ CEO Jack Smith stated the following:

If GM had developed cars like Microsoft develops technology, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left-turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, and you would have to reinstall the engine.

4. When your car died on the freeway for no reason, you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought 'Car95' or 'CarNT', and then added more seats.

6. Apple would make a car powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would run on only five percent of the roads.

7. Oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single 'general car default' warning light.

8. New seats would force every-one to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag would say 'Are you sure?' before going off.

10. Occasionally, for no reason, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of road maps from Rand-McNally (a subsidiary of GM), even though they neither need them nor want them. Trying to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Every time GM introduced a new model, car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You would press the 'start' button to shut off the engine.

CMOs ROI Challenged for Social Media

CMOs Can’t Measure ROI for Social Media Marketing

Over the last 12 – 18 months, CMOs have faced budget reductions, staff reductions and the emergence of social media as a new playing field on which to engage customers and potential customers. As marketers march into the brave new world of social media, ready for transparency and openness to dialogue with communities of people with shared interests, ROI for these efforts remains elusive.

A recent study by CMO Club and BaraarVoice polled CMOs from various industries and sizes of company. The sample group was small – only 133 CMOs. Of these, 42% focus on business-to-consumer marketing, 41% focus on business-to-business marketing, and 17% market to both consumers and businesses. Annual revenues ranged from $6 to $50 million (25%), $51 to $999 million (42%), and over $1 billion (23%).

The findings were very telling. Most CMOs are unable to measure ROI for their social media marketing efforts. This is not to say they measured and discovered lack of Return On Investment. This says that they simply didn’t or couldn’t measure it.

Top 5 Predictions for 2010

1. CMOs will crack the code on measuring ROI for social media marketing


2. Lead management automation software and inbound marketing automation software will go mainstream (software tools in these categories will be key to ROI measurement)


3. Social media monitoring (and reputation management) will become a core public relations agency service offering


4. As the availability of streaming video content becomes more pervasive, so will online video advertising.


5. The success of marketing campaigns will be less reliant on clever messaging and more reliant on provision of substantial, relevant and compelling content.

Happy New Year!

Audi Pushes Its Marketing Pedal to the Metal

The automotive industry is in turmoil. The largest, most formidable competitors are fighting for survival. Marketing budgets of the Detroit giants are slashed. The German luxury car manufacturers have also seen a downturn. Mercedes-Benz has seen sales slump by 17% from January to August. BMW sales are down 18%. So why has Audi sped past its rivals to see a year-over –year increase of 26% in unit sales, with only a 7.5% decline in revenue through August?

Audi increased its 2009 marketing budget by 20%. Reportedly it spent $6 million on its Super Bowl ad and an undisclosed amount on the television sponsorship of the Obama presidential inauguration. Audi may not sell more units globally than Mercedes or BMW, but this year its European sales eclipsed both competitors. Impressive. Audi definitely out-markets its competitors.

Audi’s competitive strategy includes selling stylish, fuel-efficient Diesel engine cars, which has been a tough sell in the US market. However, the Diesel option seems to be more accepted in 2009 than in previous years, with more than a third of US drivers polled being open to purchase. This is obviously been a successful strategy for the European market.

The luxury sports sedan market is extremely competitive, and Audi continues to produce great cars as it steps up its marketing leadership.