This article is a summary of Ed Thompson's presentation during the Omniture Summit in London on April 21st 2009. Ed is VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Group.
Key messages:
- 3 types of behaviors with this crisis: panickers, worriers and attackers.
- Cliché of our times: "A downturn is a terrible thing to waste" Frank Blake, Home Depot, 2009
- Business leader priorities are very clear : cutting operations costs (68 %), increasing revenue (53 %)
- Deeper sales and marketing strategies sort winners from losers in downturns.
- CEOs see value in sales, marketing technology and data-driven analytics.
- Focus is less on customer satisfaction but on enhancing cross-sell and up sell opportunities.
- Digital marketing is getting to start more funding than traditional marketing.
- Top 4 processes for improving operational efficiency: brand management, budgeting and financial management, marketing operations management and strategic planning and marketing performance management. Web analytics has a key role to play with all these areas.
- Organizations are now trying to move faster in the web analytics process maturity model from Bill Glassman (Gartner).
- Challenges for Web analytics leaders: competitive, attitudinal, behavioral, skills and operational.
- Predictions: by 2011 the online community will directly influence 33 % of all B2C online and offline purchases instead of 8 % in 2008.
- Social applications are relevant to each stage of the customer's buying process. Example: Wells Fargo connects with difficult-to reach demographics on Second Life. Newegg.com aids community feedback on every page.
- Customers expect more, will switch more and tell more.
- Is your company still thinking in terms of products or in terms of customer experience?
- Executives understand customer experience but organizations struggle to respond. Executives seek differentiation through customer experience, but complications arise (employee motivation, IT issues, etc.).
- How to measure customer experience? Different ways within the same organization: customer satisfaction (Customer service), loyalty (churn, retention), advocacy (referrals, customer refs), brand/reputation (marketing communications), etc.
- Your challenge is to drive emotional loyalty to your brand.
- The more business you move business online, you can drive the customer experience up (when funded properly).
- Avoid the middle ground. Customer intimacy, operational efficiency and product leadership are key types of customer experience. Choose the type of customer experience that better fits your industry instead of trying (and failing) to be the best in all 3 types.
- Recommandations:
1. Digital: is replacing traditional, accelerate the transition,
2. Social: look beyond Facebook and implement what's already proven
3. Customer experience: if Amazon can reach number one in customer satisfaction in the US, then any pure digital business can.
Note: this post has been written live. Please excuse any typos and brievety.
