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Critical Relationship Cio Cmo Digitial Marketing Strategy

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Read Time:4 Minute, 36 Second

The leveraging of technology by savvy marketing departments has been one of the key corporate story lines of the last few years. All of the major technology trends (mobile, social, cloud, big data) are enablers and drivers of marketing strategies. Whether it’s advertising, brand management, ecommerce, customer service or market intelligence, the role of the CMO is heavily intertwined with these new technologies. With all of this convergence of marketing and technology, a tight relationship between CMO and CIO seems like a natural outcome. However, a trip back in time provides some perspective on why this relationship can often be strained and under-leveraged.

Many large corporate information technology (IT) departments have their roots in a much different era. Many of these organizations got their start in the 1960’s at a time when most systems were IBM mainframes doing batch processing. Initially, most applications focused on operational or administrative functions. Classic early examples are payroll, general ledger and accounts payable. It’s important to note that most early IT departments had only internal customers. In fact, a common name for these departments was Management Information Systems (MIS). Eventually, external customers were “touched” by corporate technology through printed bills and statements, a one-way interaction.

The 1980’s saw the emergence of two technologies that allowed external customers to directly interface with corporate systems. The first, ATM’s, in addition to cash withdrawal, allowed customers to do some rudimentary account inquiries. Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems offered a variety of customer service, account management and transaction capabilities via a touch-tone phone. They were a crude forerunner of the web and smart phone based apps available today. Yet despite these new technologies, the major mission of IT groups remained internally focused systems.

The emergence of the Internet in the 1990’s started to shake up the established order. In the past, IT had looked at the Marketing department as an outlier and bit player in technology. They were those quirky folks who annoyingly demanded Apple products to handle their specialized graphics requirements. Suddenly, Marketing departments were playing a strong role in “corporate computing”, looking to set the agenda around web site development, software tools and the selection of hosting providers.

In many firms, this led to a turf battle and classic culture war. Marketing departments looked at IT groups as slow, plodding and uncreative. They saw the IT technology toolset as outdated and inflexible. They saw IT’s processes as cumbersome, bureaucratic and restrictive. IT, in turn, saw Marketing teams as inexperienced, reckless “cowboys”. They believed that their tools and providers were unproven. They saw Marketing moving down a path towards compliance, security and availability issues.

In many firms an uneasy truce developed. In some cases, Marketing and IT resolved their differences and moved forward in partnership on web initiatives. In other cases, Marketing took control of these initiatives, bringing on new external partners, and jettisoning their relationship with corporate IT.

Initially, with many systems have limited customer interactivity and minimal transactional capability, hooks into back end legacy systems were unnecessary. Eventually though, the need to have access to back end systems such as order tracking and inventory management, affirmed the need for better cooperation between IT and Marketing. The explosive ascendancy of smart phone apps and social media created further requirements for cooperation, and more flash points for tension. This new world further highlighted the cultural differences between the groups, with new tools, even faster development cycles, and even greater threats. And the threats were double-edged: Threats of missed competitive opportunities and threats of brand damage from security breeches or service disruptions.

Which brings us to the present. How should forward thinking CIO’s and CMO’s align their organizations and their priorities? What are the benefits of better alignment? What’s the downside to a minimized partnership?

Unsurprisingly, I’m going to suggest that the partnership needs to be strong and supportive. In fact, in many organizations, I believe the CMO will be the most important customer for the technology organization. Many of the classic internal applications such as operational systems are mature and unlikely to provide high ROI from further investments. Customer facing systems utilizing mobile and social media represent fresh ways to build your brand, service your clients and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

So why should CMO’s care about the technology organization and their relationship with the CIO? With SaaS becoming ever more popular and mature, there is a temptation for CMO’s to “go it alone”. This represents short sighted thinking that will ultimately backfire. The sophistication of apps demanded by today’s customer typically requires even greater reliance on the data and transactional capabilities traditionally supported by corporate IT. The need to provide reliable, high-performance access to these capabilities necessitates a strong CIO-CMO partnership. Separately, there is much that IT organizations can offer to Marketing teams in the way of process maturity. They can provide guidance and support in such domains as Quality Assurance, Testing, Vendor Management, Security and Business Continuity.

Here’s the catch. Both organizations will need to recognize each other’s value and also compromise on some historical cultural tendencies. In general, IT organizations will need to speed up their cycle time and reduce their level of bureaucracy. Marketing teams will need to apply more structure and add greater process maturity to their technology related functions. The end result can be an enterprise that moves forward briskly with innovative technology that doesn’t create reputation destroying events.

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Its Time You Paid Attention To Your Worst Customers

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Read Time:3 Minute, 4 Second

Like the good marketer you are, you’ve started to pore over all of that “Big Data” you have on your customers. Not surprisingly, 20% of your customers generate 80% of your revenue. Around 80% of your customer issues are coming from 20% of your customers. In social media, 80% of mentions are positive.

The 80/20 Rule is in effect everywhere.

So, you set a strategy. Your first inclination is to pay great attention to your great customers—to keep them, nourish them, and encourage them to keep being great.

Great.

The second thing you may look at are your “worst” customers—you know, the ones who don’t buy very much and tend to be “the complainers” who suck up a lot of Customer Service time, and your Social Media staff’s daily commitment.

On the surface, they look like they’re costing you a lot of money in manpower, and not generating a lot of revenue. So, you may want to ignore them by cutting down the amount of time and attention your service reps and community managers spend dealing with their whining and complaining.

I’ve heard this argument many times. “Ignore your worst customers! Why are you spending 80% of your customer service time on your worst 20%?”

Well, I say that would be a big mistake.

With today’s giant customer megaphone called the Internet, those complainers can create a negative networked effect that can be extremely harmful. Those 20% of bad mentions on the Internet could easily turn into 80% of what people are talking about you on the web, and translate into a 80% negative perception rate—making it difficult for even your best customers to ignore. And ultimately costing you more money than the cost of the manpower to deal with them.

Let’s face it, people who are ticked off at your brand turn to the Internet to vent, and they have a giant audience to hear them. They’re like a festering wound, the more you ignore it, the worse it gets. A friend of mine is a HUGE fan of Zappos. He bought into their brand of awesome customer service, which created a halo effect onto their products and pricing. He loved everything about them. Then, the other day his shoe order was stolen. UPS said they delivered it, but there was no sign of the package. As his neighbors shrugged their shoulders when asked if they had signed for it, he began to get angry. And worse yet, Zappos customer service was “slow” to respond. He began to boil over. So, my 20-something friend took to Facebook, and started venting. By the time Zappos had gotten back to him, the damage had been done. Right? Well, not so fast. Zappos expedited another package to him to be delivered the next day, and all is better. The hateful comments were retracted, and all is right with the positive perceptions of the Zappos brand.

You see, you’re far better off over-extending your generosity—through polite behavior and even gives of service and product, to at least defuse the negative language those complainers are spewing. Set a strategy—with boundaries that allows you to efficiently handle even the most pissed off customer. Treat them with respect, and they will deliver in kind (double entendre intended).

I say pay as much attention to the 20% of your best customers, as you do the 20% who do all of the complaining.

This may sound strange, but you may need to pay as much attention to your best customers, as you do your worst.

Be kind to the 20%. They’ll return the favor.

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Understand Why You Need A Life Insurance

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Read Time:48 Second

Although most of you will probably need life insurance at some point in your life, be sure not to buy a policy simply because someone told you it was a good idea. The idea behind life insurance is to offer families financial security in the event of the death of a spouse or a parent.

Life insurance protection is designed to help pay for mortgages, a college education, facilitate funding retirement, provide charitable bequests and is obviously playing an essential part in estate planning. To put it simply, if other people are supported by your income and depend on it, you should really think about purchasing a life insurance.

Even if these needs do not concern you at the moment, you may still want to consider buying a small “starter” policy, if you suspect you will have such needs in the future. The reason for this is simple: the younger you are, the less expensive your life insurance will be.

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Hotel Brokers Tips For Selecting A Suitable Broker

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Read Time:2 Minute, 17 Second

Whether it’s selling or buying out a hotel or any other hospitality establishment such as a pub for sale, it is essential to look for a suitable hotel broker with a broad knowledge of the industry to provide assistance. A professional agent’s purpose is mainly to expedite the buying or selling process by being as insightful as possible as well as making sure the process is incident free. Choosing a single hotel broker to provide tangible results can be a daunting task considering that there are many self-proclaimed professionals in the industry. Thus, below are a few tips that can assist an individual in selecting a good broker among many potential hires.

Tips

Experience

Irrespective of the nature of the transaction, it is essential to choose a professional hotel agent who has a broad knowledge of the hospitality industry. As a result, when vetting potential brokers, the amount of experience each has to pertain to the transaction should take preference. The hospitality industry is a complicated field, and thus the broker should be adequately versed will all the loopholes involved so as to avoid any regrets for the deal makers in the future.

Company profile

Experience alone doesn’t guarantee a suitable hotel broker. Therefore, it is also a good idea to look at the brokerage transactions that the firm has championed in the past successfully. Remember, numbers do not lie. Thus, if the company in question has a high number of successful brokerage deals under its belt; that signifies its competence in such matters. A good firm should not only have many brokerage deals for hotels, but it should also have dealt with a variety of other kinds of establishment such as pubs for sale both locally and international. With such elaborate deals, the company should have a good reputation for it capacity to handle different markets.

Customer feedback

A very effective way of determining the competence of a hotel brokerage firm is by going through its customer reviews and feedback. Go through every potential broker’s website and look for comments left by previous clients who had dealings with the brokerage in the past. Nonetheless, it is advisable not to take the comments for the truth. If possible, contact individual customers who have given reviews of the brokerage to confirm whether or not the transactions actually took place.

Cost

Considering that brokerage fees remain uncontrolled, it is up to the deal maker to compare the reasonability of the fee charged against the benefits they stand to gain from the transaction. It is advisable to opt for the most reasonable fee that won’t have a significant impact on the transaction amount. Always compare offers from different brokers while contrasting between what each firm has to offer.

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