For Membership Marketeers

Sales joining marketing? Report which has stimulated quite a lot of debate

2012-02-03T01:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.modernselling.com/Associates/CIM-SLA-Sales-Leadership-Alliance-Marketing-Sales-Fusion.pdf

Digital Survey promises to help the Rugby Football Union and other membership organisations

2012-02-01T10:51:00.000-08:00

Precedent’s next sector report which will identify and offer solutions to some of the challenges that professional and trade membership organisations currently face in the contemporary digital environment. Its working title is ‘Membership Organisations – Big Questions – Digital Answers?’

Adrian Porter, Head of Strategic Research at Precedent said in his blog --Professional organisations are struggling to attract younger members. Sure they have the full attention of the youngsters when they are training, or they are aiming for some letters after their names, but after this engagement levels drop off considerably, if not entirely.

There are a number of reasons for this, some of which I will feature here in the run up to the release of our report (eta February). However, I was reminded of one of the reasons on my commute home earlier this week. I was reading the Evening Standard, and my eye was taken by Sir Clive Woodward describing the RFU as ‘a laughing stock around the world’. Woodward was criticising the RFU’s structure and decision making processes, particularly with respect to the appointment of Martin Johnson as England team coach by Rob Andrew. Despite the resignation of Johnson following the world cup debacle, Andrew has taken no responsibility for England’s failure in the tournament and is likely to be in charge of appointing the next England coach too!

Woodward’s analysis of the situation was summed up by the journalist Jason Cowley thus: “The laughter and derision will continue until a new chief executive and distinguished coach are appointed and the RFU demonstrate they are a fit and proper institution rather than an old boys’ club of incompetents and can create a system and development programme that begins to reverse such alarming decline.”

Harsh words! But what do they have to do with membership organisations?

Well, firstly the RFU is in effect a membership organisation owned by its member clubs that is beginning to lose the respect of its membership due, it seems, to partisan decision making. Whether true or not the image of a self-serving ‘old boys club’ is one that is hard to shake, and is similar to the way many communication experts have heard other organisations described in young membership workshops.

Secondly, maybe describing the hierarchy at the RFU as ‘incompetents’ might be a little strong, but certainly there would appear to be a reluctance to embrace change and explore new ways of doing things across the boards of many establishments, not just the RFU.

And finally, if organisations cannot make themselves more relevant to their younger potential membership by understanding what they need, when they need it as well as how and where to engage with them, they may well be heading for an ‘alarming decline’, just like the RFU.

This and other themes will be the focus of our report into membership organisations. We intend to explore them further via an online survey and interviews with senior stakeholders across a variety of organisations in the UK and Australia. If you would like to contribute to the research please register your interest here, and please feel free to contact me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or leave a comment below.

Highlights of this report will be presented at MemCom on May 17th

Social campaigns give long-term lift to brands

2012-01-19T03:26:00.000-08:00

eMarketer published a great article this week looking at some research conducted by BzzAgent, the social media marketing arm ofdunnhumby, who began studying the immediate and longer term results of social media marketing campaigns involving CPG brands and brand advocates.

OK so as the article states and I think you would expect, there was an immediate boost in the likelihood of brand advocates to recommend a product after being exposed to a campaign, with rates rising from 39% before the campaign to 61% directly after. That is interesting research which backs up the need to implement social campaigns, but I think where the research goes next is more interesting.

As you would expect the effect of the campaign diminished somewhat over time, but the statistics that we should really be blown away by is that 55% of brand advocates studied were still significantly more likely to recommend a product one year after their initial exposure. A year is a long time and only a 6% drop off rate…..

http://www.linkedin.com/news?viewArticle=&articleID=1025801496&gid=2282612&type=member&item=88565835&articleURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eengagesciences%2Ecom%2Fblog%2F2012%2F01%2F05%2Fsocial-campaigns-give-long-term-lift-to-brands%2F%3Futm_source%3Dfeedburner%26utm_medium%3Dfeed%26utm_campaign%3DFeed%253A%2BEngageSciences%2B%2528EngageSciences%2Ecom%2529&urlhash=nX_m&trk=group_items_see_more-0-b-shrttl

2012 Technology Predictions

2012-01-10T01:49:00.000-08:00

Real Story Group analysts reveal their 2012 predictions, where they try to predict what the future holds in the technology world.

1. Big data meets web marketing

Digital marketing systems -- from analytics, to adaptive personalization, to social media monitoring platforms -- generate huge amounts of data. The ability to extract and leverage meaningful nuggets from these vast stores of information represents a persistent but increasingly important challenge for marketing specialists. 2012 will see specialist (typically SaaS...see below) vendors pull away from the pack of integrated WCM suites and other adjacent technologies that implement e-marketing functionality as a simple, add-on service.  

2. Enterprise search marketplace opens up...again
The major vendors in this space are undergoing substantial transformation: FAST is getting sucked into the SharePoint vortex; Autonomy is facing an unclear future under HP; and Endeca remains fitful and distracted. Look for upstart vendors to fill the void as they did earlier this decade when the market was more open. In particular, look for specific applications based on the open source platform, Lucene.  

3. Social services get called on the carpet in SharePoint
SharePoint has seen stratospheric, often viral growth in enterprises around the world. Licensees are beginning to discover, however, that its lack of contemporary social networking services and polished collaboration applications are limiting its effectiveness and driving business units to self-provision other tools. 2012 will see the rise of a variety of SharePoint-specific, supplementary offerings, from new and existing vendors alike.  

4. CRM and CMS on a collision course
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Content Management Systems (CMS) have long been central pieces in the digital marketing toolkit; however the lines between these two systems will continue to blur in 2012. More and more, marketers want to set content and interaction experiences based on customer interaction, so CMS vendors continue to add CRM features, while CRM systems add more web publishing features. In the long run, we think integration is more promising than convergence; in the meantime, expect some messy collisions.

5. Death of the intranet as we know it
Intranet managers still have a key role to play in enterprise collaboration and information management, but employee expectations and the role of the intranet have changed dramatically over the past few years. Savvy companies will focus on the broader employee experience in a mobile, "digital workplace." 2012 will see a significant reallocation of resources from corporate communications to more business-oriented functionality.

6. BPM springs back to life
Process still matters, and workflow applications continue to dominate enterprise document and records management efforts. 2012 will see a renewed interest in good, old-fashioned BPM, as enterprises seek to orchestrate activities across organizational boundaries, including partner and supplier systems.

7. Rich media goes mainstream in the enterprise
Video is no longer an emerging technology for the enterprise. New social initiatives in particular will bring more media into internal systems. To be sure, a gulf remains in production quality (between professional and amateur), and employees will continue to look for increasingly sophisticated capabilities as both media producers and consumers. In 2012, enterprises will respond with specific, rich-media initiatives.

8. Big data blows into the cloud
More and more information management systems are generating or leveraging "big data." Yet, many enterprises don't have the resources, capacity, or expertise to properly store and mine this data. Fortunately, "big data" characteristics (such as unpredictable data inflow rates and the need for elastic processing capacity) make it a natural fit for the cloud. As a result, data-rich applications -- such as social media monitoring -- will increasingly go to market with SaaS-only delivery models.

9. Pervasive mobile-only apps
2011's mantra could have been "mobile first." 2012 will see "mobile first and last," as enterprises develop mobile-only interfaces to certain internal applications without focusing any effort on traditional, web-based (desktop/laptop) UIs. Many of these mobile apps will consist of specialized mashups among existing systems. A key driver here is the inexorable rise of tablets. We'll also see interesting examples where enterprises will tweak business processes to leverage tablets (e.g., in-store tablet catalogs).

10. New job titles emerge
Major technical and operational changes are driving new roles -- often informal, hybrid roles -- within the enterprise. 2012 will see the formalization of some of these roles into broadly recognized job titles. Samples include:

Marketing Technologist - to master the increasingly complex services around e-marketing at scale
Social Media Monitor - to interpret, understand, learn from, and respond to the fire hose of relevant activity on public social networks
Enterprise Community Facilitator - to support localized community managers and foster productive cross-silo interaction
Enterprise Media Producer - to produce or edit high volumes of video for internal and external consumption
Director or VP of Digital Assets / Digital Media Manager - formal DAM roles emerge to establish ownership -- not just of assets, but of the systems and metadata -- of DAM and MAM

11. Security fears rise: phones, tablets, portable drives, the cloud -- where is our content?
Nearly everyone is a mobile worker. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets means that employees are walking around with disk drives containing company information. A lost or stolen phone or tablet containing sensitive information will likely cause a backlash in enterprise security departments. We've already heard of some highly regulated enterprises banning enterprise access from employee phones. For many employees, 2012 will bring even more rules and regulations around how they can use their mobile devices and renewed enterprise interest in digital rights management applications.

12. Lines blur between commercial and open source technologies
In the WCM and portal marketplaces, major open source projects are "commercializing" fairly rapidly, while many (though certainly not all) commercial vendors are adopting more open development and support models. This means that in 2012, customers will see increasingly less distinction between commercial vendors and "commercial open source" suppliers. The bigger gulf -- though it remains largely one of licensing -- is emerging between commercially-oriented open source projects and community-oriented projects across the WCM and portal landscapes.

The 2011 Econsultancy top posts ranked (roughly) by number of page views.

2011-12-30T08:54:00.000-08:00

Here MemCom selects the ones you might be most interested in:

Glen Allsopp presents some excellent tips. The affiliate's guide to dominating big niches with SEO.

User experience tips from Paul Rouke: Booking.com: improving conversion with best practice persuasive design.

Paul Rouke takes inspiration from ASOS: Persuasive checkout best practice from ASOS

Matt Clarke with some great analysis of e-commerce best practice: 25 e-commerce mega menus dissected

Paul Cook reveals some interesting conversion stats: Social media and SEO massively undervalued: study

Matt Clarke presents a useful walkthrough: How to use Google Analytics to find the best time to send emails

Matthew Curry presents The five suppliers you should avoid like the plague

Paul Rouke discusses his findings from a user testing session with 9 women: 9 women x 9 hours = 9 usability insights

According to Chris O'Hara, changes to the media business are threatening the current business model for digital media agencies: The death of the digital media agency?

Kevin Gibbons presents 25 reasons why you should be blogging

Douglas Orr gives us Eight reasons why 2011 is the year of mobile commerce

Another great GA walkthrough from Matt Clarke: Tracking on-site tweets and follows with Google Analytics

Ben Gott talks us through new GA features: Introducing Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels

An early look at Google+ and SEO from Kelvin Newman: Why Google + is already giving better social ranking signals than Twitter

Socialbakers CEO Jan Rezab asks: Which Facebook marketing metrics matter the most?

Shane Quigley lists The seven deadly sins of PPC

By Tamara Littleon: What attracts consumers to take part in social media campaigns?

Microsoft CRM video

2011-12-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2dfaZU8tDQ&feature=related

This is offered in the UK by various organisations including MemCom sponsor Excitations - http://www.excitation.co.uk/industries/membership.html#tab-3

Google's view on mobile

2011-12-30T07:44:00.000-08:00

Google's mobile year in review

The prediction that "mobile is going to be huge!" has been over-egged for nearly a decade, but the past several years have erased all doubt that may have existed about the truth of this statement.

2011-12-30T07:33:00.001-08:00

Facebook engagement case study: Heineken vs Carlsberg

2011-12-30T07:32:00.001-08:00