Pardon the deconstruction here, but I've had several people ask me "What is Twitter?" and "Why should I care?" (thanks Oprah).

Without getting into the myriad details involved with how an organization can engage in personalized, one-to-one, real-time dialogues in the public domain, I simply tell people to think of Twitter as a stream of news headlines, except everyone in the world is qualified to submit any headline they wish.

Marketers should continue to develop and publish Marketing materials, but should consider including the following steps in their publication process:

• Create an account for your brand on Twitter. Keep the name short (reasoning below)
• When publishing, add an additional step for writing a 100 character headline
• Use a URL shortener, such as tinyurl.com or bit.ly, to create a short link to your marketing material
• Post your headline and URL link to Twitter
  

If further discussion ensues on Twitter, great. If not, well it's another opportunity for people to find your message if they happen to search for keywords used in your headline.

Twitter has a 140 character limit per message. If you want your message to "go viral" or enable others to share your message, then your headlines will need to be less than 140 characters to accommodate some additional information.

There's no hard rule, but people commonly "re-tweet" messages on Twitter by simply adding RT and your account name before the original message.

Here's an example character count breakdown of a re-tweeted message (including spaces):

RT @dlog [headline here] http://tinyurl.com/ajskeu

3  +     6     +          107            +              24            =          140 characters

You can see that the URL and retweet information consume 33 characters on their own, leaving only 107 characters to write a strong and compelling headline. The longer your account name, the less room for headline characters.

There is much more to Twitter than simply writing headlines, but this is a good fundamental skill to practice and master for starters.

Happy Tweeting!

Web development is at an interesting inflection point. Hosting applications in "the cloud" is gaining momentum, but the tools used to develop and customize these applications are still dependent on traditional Integrated Development Environments (IDE), like Visual Studio .NET, Eclipse, Adobe CS4, and Dreamweaver.

So what is cloud development? First, it's important to distinguish between developing "for" the cloud and developing "in" the cloud. When developing "for" the cloud, you are creating easily accessible applications with the intent of letting end users customize the "last mile". When developing "in" the cloud, you have the agility and mobility to modify an application from anywhere in the world, at anytime, using (almost) any device.

There is a "roaming" quality to cloud development. Cloud development tools become just another application, like Google mail/calendar, that are accessible from anywhere.

There is also a disruptive quality to cloud development. Everyone is now a "programmer" in the 21st century. Whether it's programming a DVR, iPhone, or building a MySpace page; everyone has a new found creative capacity and means to develop in the cloud. This is the natural progression of technology (it's important to note that Developers in the 90's opposed "Visual" development tools because they put distance between the programmer and the actual low-level code.)

Cloud programming languages must carry forward traditional traits; such as function, target, construction, and expressive power; but also be accessible by the masses.

Some common characteristics of cloud development include:

• Emphasis on declarative configuration over customization
• Inline browser editing
• Dynamically typed
• Interpretive
• Custom event declarations
• Stream management
• Mobile accessibility
  

April 1, 2009

Cubic Compass today announced today the release of a new ground breaking technology for creating and managing interactive websites. Dubbed "Neural-Interactive Content Creation", or NIC², this patent-pending technology allows content creators to interact with an i-Dialogue Content Management System (CMS) via a neurological interface that instantly converts thought patterns into web content, dialogue script, and workflow rules.

"The pace of change in today's environment is just too fast for simple tactile interaction with a web CMS", said Cubic Compass Founder Mike Leach. "Today's websites and portals must respond at the speed of thought".

Beta test user Samuel Anders (pictured below) successfully utilized NIC² technology to provision, develop, and launch a fully functional website and customer portal in 17 seconds. "I consider myself a 'power user' of technology, so I was eager to plug-in to NIC² and translate my ideas into a working solution. The results were simply amazing."

The following tasks are just a small example of what can be accomplished in milliseconds using NIC²:

• Provision new landing pages
• Change passwords
• Grant permissions to portal users
• Publish a press release
• Add/modify workflow rules
• Update style sheet
  

NIC² is licensed per user and requires a lengthy pre-qualification questionnaire and note from a Doctor before use.

(Actual results may not be identical to those experienced by Mr Anders. NIC² is not FDA approved and is currently not legal in many countries. Please contact sales for more information)

Publishing web forms to your portal or website using Salesforce Page Layouts is definitely in my Top 10 i-Dialogue features list.

And now with the new Page Layout designer made available in Salesforce Winter '09, I find myself regularly encouraging customers to design and manage their i-Dialogue web forms in Salesforce.

Here's a short video (duration 3:50 ) that provides an update on some new features in the Dialogue Script PageLayout control that make Salesforce and i-Dialogue a fantastic combination for managing web applications.

It's ironic how customer portals are deployed on the premise of providing "self-service" and "call deflection", but when poorly implemented, portals actually result in a net increase in administrative responsibility.

Portal administration time wasters:

• Granting access to portal
• Resetting passwords
  

Here are some general rules that ensure customers really are getting self-service to the information they need and reducing the time you spend managing the online relationship.

Rule of Least Privilege
All Leads and Contacts should automatically be members of the portal without any manual intervention. They are granted minimal privileges on the website by default. Granting access to more features requires changing a "role" or "rule" on the profile or account record.



Consistent Online Account
A customers online identity should remain consistent throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Once a lead self-identifies on a website and creates an account, that account/password must never change as a result of some front or back-office change, such a CRM Lead-to-Contact conversion or ERP account creation.

Single Sign On
Similar to being consistent with a single account, single-sign-on (or "SSO") ensures customers have access to "all" online applications and features using a single account.

Password Recovery Options
Most portal related support calls are related to password recovery, or inability to access the portal.

Anytime a password is being requested to access a portal, customers must have immediate access to their password recovery options. The password recovery process should *immediately* send an email to the requested account with instructions on how to reset or recover their password.

A link to online help on the signon page is also a great preventative measure.


As a fallback, a password reset button should be made available in the CRM system. The "reset and email" workflow should be contained in a single dialog box for the portal admin or CSR.

Portal Activation Invitations
When rule of least privilege is automatically granted to all Leads and Contacts in a CRM system, it becomes necessary to allow customers to activate their account and establish their password online.

A "welcome" page template is made available that allows customers to enter their email address and progress through a simple 2 step process to set their password before accessing the portal.

The welcome page should prevent subsequent activation attempts by already activated users.

Implementing the measures above has proven to dramatically reduce the administrative overhead of managing a portal and increasing customer satisfaction when using online portal services.

Let's face it. Every website could use a facelift or some aesthetic diversity every once in awhile.

i-Dialogue Themes allow you to pick a pre-built theme or create your own. If your organization's style guide has very specific RGB color value or font requirements, you'll appreciate i-Dialogue's support for JQuery ThemeRoller created themes.

Our best portal solutions emerge when our interests align with our customers. Such is the case with our Quote to Cash (Q2C) process, which we not only use for our own business, but plan to offer as an AppExchange application. After all, what better demonstration can any company give than how they use their software to run their own business?

At it's most simplest, the Q2C process is as follows:

1. Lead is generated and entered into Salesforce
2. Lead is converted to Opportunity
3. Product Line items are added to Opportunity in response to customer needs
4. A link to an online quote/service order is sent to the customer for review
5. The customer provides feedback on quote
6. Finally, the customer purchases online. Opportunity is updated as Closed-Won


You'll notice that step 4 provides a link to quote "slash" order form. Traditionally, "quotes" and "orders" are two separate entities. For an optimized online Q2C process, these are one and the same (just be sure to add some standard expiration verbiage to the quote template).

So, there are clearly some significant benefits to this process. But what are some drawbacks?

1) Change history. By default, if your Sales rep goes through 2-3 iterations with a customer and generates several quotes, you'll lose the change history. The workaround is to enable history tracking in Salesforce on the Opportunity record. An audit trail will exist, but you'll need to reconcile change events with dates to determine exactly what the customer saw on a particular date. Because this need to audit quote history only happens 1% of the time in our process, this trade-off is acceptable. Sales reps optionally have the ability to PDF print a quote at any time.

2) Contract signature. There is an implicit step 5.5 in the process above for getting the customers signature for certain types of agreements. We use our own i-Dialogue HTML to PDF converter for taking a snapshot of the online quote then send it out for signature via EchoSign. But some opportunities where an agreement is already in place, such as site upgrades, it is sufficient to include legal verbiage in step 6 that says "you agree to the terms and conditions available here". The onus is then on the customer to print the agreement for future reference.

3) Online payment processing. We're happy using our own Pay Pal cloud connector in step 6 for accepting online payments and automatically updating the corresponding Opportunity, but we work with several clients that must use particular payment gateways for compliance reasons. It's not difficult to plug this process into any payment gateway, but extra effort is required.

This process is kept simple by design in order to enable re-purposing the solution as an AppExchange application. We could, for example, use a custom Quote object to address the change history issue, or correlate Quotes with Campaigns for influence reports; but this can quickly lead to dual maintenance of records, plus we can't assume all Salesforce customers will have access to these features.

This Q2C process is nearly identical to the online donation process for non-profits, which I'll describe in upcoming weeks. Stay tuned and "happy quoting"!

... is to invent it (to borrow from an Alan Kay quote)

Given that my 2007 and 2008 predictions were too dependent on other people or organizations (don't follow those links. It was painful enough for me to re-read them ), I'm taking a different approach this year and simply "predicting" what's going to happen in 2009 based on variables within our control.

"Year of the Cloud"
I like to think small businesses are a leading indicator of the broader economy, and if that's the case, then 2009 will be a strong year for cloud computing as small businesses move to both produce and consume cloud based services. Future Fortune 500 companies will start in 2009 with SaaS and cloud computing baked into their DNA.

"CRM 2.0 = Community Relationship Management"
"Web 2.0" features, such as democratization, user-generated content, tagging, and rating will find their way into B2B portals and websites. "Social networking" will be a feature of web content management systems, instead of a silo application.

Customers will increasingly want go online and manage the relationship with their suppliers/vendors through their portals.

The job title of "Community Manager" will become common. They'll need tools like the Community Graph to gauge customer demands and needs.

"Browser Is the New IDE"
Web development will increasingly be done with lighter weight tools, such as Firefox and FireBug, allowing for a completely browser-based integrated development environment. Developers will have the agility to access and modify their applications from anywhere in the world using netbooks.

Websites will no longer be seen as being discrete deliverable projects. Instead, websites will become fluid entities that morph and adapt to the clients and organization's needs. The browser IDE will enable this agility.

Visual Studio .NET and Eclipse will remain powerful, essential, yet "old school" tools. The inherent conflict of interest between SaaS and traditional IDE's will result in more browser IDE adoption.

"Useful Metrics"
Online solutions will break away from the legacy of "Business Intelligence" and "Marketing Analytics" and provide real-time metrics that are pragmatic, useful, and actionable.

"Gaming As A Metaphor"
CRM and call center workers will adopt line of business applications much more readily if the user experience is aligned with video game design elements. Responsive, real-time, and graphical UI's will be favored over forms-based applications.

Employees will prefer to "interact" with their customers online in much the same way they interact online in PVP games. Learning curves will be reduced and adoption will increase.

Company goals and missions can be more easily visualized and real-time feedback provided through rich game-like interfaces.

"Collaborative Development"
An extension of the IDE will give web developers direct access to an online repository of pre-built scripts and cloud connectors, from Google Charts and Maps, to Salesforce web to lead forms, and StrikeIron tax services.

Principles of open source and Creative Commons will encourage this "remix" and mash-up of web services to produce new and unique solutions.

"Dynamic Languages"
More than half of all new web development projects will choose to use a dynamic languages, such as Python, Ruby, PHP, or Perl. Browser-based IDEs will accelerate this adoption. Javascript and JQuery will become essential tools for building responsive and interactive web applications.

"Domain Specific Languages (DSL)"
New languages will continue to emerge that are suited for specific tasks and domains. Our own language, Dialogue, will enable web developers and business users to think abstractly about their website/portal/community and easily interact with their online constituents.

"Amazon EC2 Will Rock"
The ease of provisioning an operating system and storage through Amazon and paying for resources based on usage will make EC2 the status quo platform for cloud developers.

"3rd Party Google Apps Get Serious"
Google Apps are at the threshold of being adopted by several organizations, large and small. The only obstacle being industry specific configuration, monitoring, and auditing. 3rd party partner apps will start to move in to help verticalize Google Apps and replace existing email/calendar productivity applications.

Congratulations to this years Navigator Award winners! There were so many to choose from and we ended up adding a couple extra categories to showcase some truly magnificant i-Dialogue solutions.

PORTLAND, OR (October 27, 2008)   

Cubic Compass Announces 2008 Navigator Awards

Cubic Compass, a provider of on-demand web content management solutions, today announced the recipients of the 2008 Navigator Awards. Navigator Awards recognize organizations who have made significant contributions to enabling one-to-one online "dialogues" with their customers, partners, or employees through the use of CRM and the i-Dialogue Web Suite.

Best Overall Solution
www.LeftHandNetworks.com

LeftHand Networks (LHN) utilizes the i-Dialogue Web Suite for their main website, partner portal, customer portal, and product discussion forums. The portal staging and high-availability capabilities of i-Dialogue Unlimited Edition are employed to apply a disciplined multi-stage content publishing process that ensures the right information is available to the right person at the right time.

As an early adopter of Salesforce, LHN defined all facets of their business using custom objects in Salesforce and needed a highly customizable CMS to leverage their existing CRM investment. LHN's internal staff used the i-Dialogue API to develop a variety of online web applications, such as event management, license management, product pricelists and quoting, and a site-wide search engine.

LeftHand Networks was acquired by Hewlett Packard in October 2008 for $360M and continues to be recognized as an industry leading provider of iSCSI SAN solutions. 

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Best Web Design
www.ConfigureSoft.com

ConfigureSoft makes use of rich multimedia and informational collateral to provide an interactive and personalized experience for their Customers and Partners.

Other online features deployed by ConfigureSoft include webinar event registration, discussion forums, partner portal, and customer portal.

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Best B2B Portal
portal.iGrafx.com

iGrafx manages the entire customer life-cycle using i-Dialogue; from demand generation and lead cultivation to providing an online eStore and customer support forums.

iGrafx automates the lead cultivation process by providing self-service to case studies, user guides, and product downloads then follows up with automated emails using i-Dialogue drip email marketing. All online interactions and downloads are captured in Salesforce and used by Marketing and Sales to gauge customers interest in online resources.

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Best Partner Portal
Planar

Planar has grown in recent years through the acquisition of new businesses. Planar deployed a partner portal for their digital signage business unit in 2007 and continues to expand their channel marketing efforts in 2008 by deploying partner portals for their home theater and control room business units.

i-Dialogue Premier Edition allows Planar to deploy multiple, uniquely branded partner portals that provide channel partners with 24/7 access to product marketing materials, news, events, software updates, and training resources.

Planar IT staff were early adopters of Dialogue Script and leveraged their in-house web development skills to create a dynamic and well organized online experience.

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Best Non-Profit Portal
www.RISENetwork.org

RISE - Resources for Indispensable Schools and Educators

RISE is a national nonprofit organization that helps K-12 public schools in low-income communities attract and retain experienced, talented teachers so all students can achieve at high levels.  www.RISENetwork.org facilitates online dialogues between Teachers and Schools using i-Dialogue and Salesforce to manage contact identities, applications, and workflow processes.

Online features include application management and screening, Job Search, Application Search, Google maps, Survey response metrics, teacher-school communications, and Job/Teacher interest level tagging.

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Best Consumer Web Solution
my.ColoradoPlasticSurgery.com

Like most small business and practice managers, Dr. Nick Slenkovich of the Colorado Plastic Surgery Center, was inundated with solicitations from pay per click and referral networks promising new Leads. Most referral partners provided information on how many leads were referred, but Dr Slenkovich required more insight into what kinds of Leads and Opportunities were produced from each referral source.
 
By using Salesforce Pro Edition with Campaigns integrated with i-Dialogue, Dr. Slenkovich deployed an intelligent landing page management solution and created unique tracking codes for all referral partners that resulted in detailed campaign influence reports in Salesforce. Google AdWords, banner ads, and referral partner marketing expenses are all now evaluated by the quality of opportunities they produce instead of the quantity of Leads.

Luke Wroblewski has a thoughtful article on why Sign Up Forms Must Die.

His examples of "gradual engagement" are pragmatic, applied customer experiences that reflect concepts outlined by Rogers and Peppers and many others.

We all deal with Salesforce Web-to-Lead forms on a daily basis, but it's not often that we think of breaking a Lead form down into several smaller forms and seek to gradually learn more about prospects over time.

Granted, most of the examples in Luke's article are in a B2C context, but B2B sites with more than one case study or several pieces of collateral can apply the same concept.

Which Super Bowl ads made an honest attempt at initiating a two-way dialogue? Here's my scorecard.

The Scorecard

Compelling Call To Action: Did the ad provide a memorable URL and call to action?
Continuity: When I go the URL, is the message in the context of the TV ad?
Fulfillment: Does the website answer my questions or deliver on any promises made?

	Time	Company / Product	URL	Compelling Call to Action	Continuity	Fulfillment	Notes and Comments
	4:33:00	Audi	http://www.truthinengineering.com	B+	A+	C	Talk about pressure. The first super bowl ad after kick-off, and this one delivered really well with a take-off on the Godfather. The web site picks up where the commercial leaves of and highlights what is, in my opinion, one slick looking car. Can't actually configure a new Audi online or order one, so not the highest marks on fulfillment.
	4:45:00	SalesGenie.com	http://www.salesgenie.com/tv	B-	B+	A	The first of a couple peculiar animated commercials from SalesGenie.com that appear to have a theme of "If ethnically diverse business owners in America can get free sales leads, so can you." How many people will ever type in "slash TV" after the domain name? I did, which is why they get above average continuity points for keeping the landing page message relevant to the SuperBowl ad. Very fulfilling. I was able to immediately start taking advantage of my 100 free leads and walked through a target demographic wizard that produced 26K prospects (I chose mid-market manufacturers of electronic equipment for the fun of it)
	4:48:00	Under Armour	http://www.underarmour.com/	C	B	C	The TV ad took too long to get the point, but was visually very stunning and entertaining. The Flash web site is actually very nice and loads extremely fast, but really just plays several ads in a loop.
	4:03:00	GoDaddy	http://www.godaddy.com/	C-	B+	B-	No real surprise here. GoDaddy goes straight for the 18-35 Male demographic and this year uses IndyCar racer Danica Patrick as the "bait". Nothing too revealing here. "Exposed" is more of an ironic description of what actually occurs in the video (the Super Bowl is, afterall, a form of family entertainment). GoDaddy uses a cleverly designed image map of Danica such that if you click on certain hot spots, it takes you to a web conversion form instead of directly to the video.
	5:07:00	Tide	http://www.mytalkingstain.com	A	A	A-	I probably spent more time on this site after the SuperBowl than any other. Humorous ad with a memorable domain name / call to action. You can hover over various shirt stains on the web site to hear them "talk". What is that? It's like a mix of Arabic, French, Italian, and.... well.... if you think you can create a better talking stain, Tide provides the platform ala YouTube to "Be the Stain" and upload a picture of yourself and create a voiceover. Crazy.... but if this takes off, it could be entertaining in an amateurish sort of way. For those inclined, Tide even invites you to film your own stain video and upload/share it.
	5:23:00	Sobe Life Water	http://www.thrillicious.com/	C	B	C-	Probably the most over thought TV ad and Flash based website of the whole lot. I seriously thought it was a Geico commercial for the first 26 seconds until the Sobe brand appeared. The domain name is not very memorable, especially for those that are grammatically challenged (I know it took me a couple attempts to enter the domain name). Once I hit the web site I'm faced with a strange "hide and seek" Flash navigation where I need to move the mouse around and "discover" the navigation links. I'm prompted to "disable my popup blocker" (no, are you kidding?) Sadly, the best material is buried in the site under an "Episodes" section that tells the back story behind the dancing lizards as they prepare their Super Bowl ad video shoot. Very clever elements. There clearly is some genius behind this campaign, but it became a horse designed by committee. No fulfillment here. What is life water? Can I read the label? Does it have any sugar (I don't like water drinks with fructose added)? Where can I try or buy it?..... nada.... no answers on the site.
	6:18:00	Chrysler	http://www.chryslerlistens.com	C	C-	C-	The www.chryslerlistens.com  domain looked like it had potential. A community site perhaps? A viral video site about cars? Unfortunately Chrysler is not actually listening. The domain simply redirects to http://www.chryslerllc.com/  which has links for "Community" and "Blog", but they're actually artificial links to contrived pages that give the illusion of an interactive Web 2.0 site, though the blog does appear to have an open comments section. Overall, disappointing.
	7:03:00	Jack In The Box	http://www.makeajacksandwich.com/	A-	A+	A	This microsite was obviously created specifically for the SuperBowl ad, which employed a tongue-in-cheek double entendre about making a Jack sandwich in a hot tub (of course Jack has his mind on literally making a sandwich). If you get tired of manipulating your uploaded picture with an array of Mr Potato Head accessories, you can click on the Location link to find a location near you. Yeah..... how simple is that? That's the way it's done.
	7:05:00	Sunsilk	http://www.lifecantwait.com/	B	A-	C	A nice attempt at associating a unique domain name with a brand. Both the TV and web ads put Marilyn, Madonna, and Shakira in a new light, but as I am not in the ads target demographic of Females 25-55 (it's a broad reaching ad??), I was compelled to follow up just out of curiosity since they setup a unique URL. I was a little puzzled by the "Feature Coming Soon" on the home page. Guess they didn't have the interactive components in place before the SuperBowl.

The Winners

Based on the scores, Tide and Jack in the Box come out on top. As far as most functional campaign, SalesGenie.com is the most likely to get visitors to self-identify and enable an ongoing dialogue.

Interesting that in such a consumer driven B2C Internet world that a B2B site would have such strong positioning in the Super Bowl.

On the heels of my previous post, I forgot to mention the English/Spanish localization by i-Dialogue customer www.ArcoProperties.com. Perusing their site really makes me want to spend a couple weeks down in Panama

Who is this iPod person and why do so many Marketers continue to embark on a campaign to free him/her? OK, but seriously. How qualified is a Lead that responds to a "Free iPod" campaign anyway? From my personal experience, the answer is "zero". Aside from the person who actually wins the iPod, "no" leads are actually compelled to learn more about your product or service when giving away consumer goods in a B2B campaign (and good luck converting the winner... they'll kick the tires and take a test drive out of respect, but they won't be a real decision maker). The lesson learned? If you're going to give anything away, at least make sure it has your brand/logo on it so you can justify the giveaway as an advertising expense. But ideally, make the collateral relevant and related to cultivating the dialogue with a customer.

A few days ago I commented on how i-Dialogue form validation may help to prevent Web-to-Lead Spam. Well, that exercise led to experimenting with other validation rules that may be of interest to eMarketing power users.

Note: i-Dialogue forms use an age old syntax for validating form fields called Regular Expressions. It's alright if the following validation rules look cryptic or bizarre (they look that way to me too ). But these expressions pack a lot of punch and can be very powerful.

To use these expressions, simply enter Edit mode on any Text or TextArea type question and paste the expression into the Validation Expression textbox.

Basic Email Validation:
[\w\.-]+(\+[\w-]*)?@([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+
Ensures email address conforms to basic name@domain.com format.

Consumer Email Exclusion:
[\w\.-]+(\+[\w-]*)?@(?!gmail|yahoo|msn|hotmail|googlemail|freenet|rediffmail|aol)([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+
Ensures email addresses are not from any consumer (free) email ISPs. Great for B2B marketing campaigns.

Positive Decimal:
^[0-9][0-9]*(\.[0-9]*)?$
Ensures entered value is a positive decimal.

URL:
(?\w+):\/\/(?<Domain>[\w.]+\/?)\S*
Ensures web address is the proper format.

Date (DD/MM/YYYY):
((0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]))[/|-](0[1-9]|1[0-2])[/|-]((?:\d{4}|\d{2}))
Ensures date is in DD/MM/YYYY format.

Here were my Super Bowl favorites:

Nationwide: Life Comes at You Fast (Federline)
Bud Light: Hitchhiker
Sprint: Connectile Disfunction

TV and Radio marketing are traditionally all about one-way messaging, but there were some creative attempts to give the consumer a voice and interact via the Internet.

Several commercials had an internet URL in the closing of each ad, but failed to continue the dialogue and close the loop on the marketing message with a relevant follow-up message or call to action.

For example, www.afterthekiss.com, a tagline URL at the end of a Snickers commercial just redirected to www.snickers.com leaving a cryptic cookie on my desktop to (presumably) track my campaign source. But there was nothing relevant or interesting on the landing page, nor was there any call-to-action or offer, so I simply abandoned the session.

I guess a single page view was a sufficient response for Snickers B2C campaign. For a $2.6 Million 30 second ad, I would think there would be more aggressive attempts at 1:1 marketing and truly closing the loop.

If you've ever used a personalized B2C portal page, such as My Yahoo! or Google's Start Page, then you know that the terms "portal" and "customization" often go hand in hand.

But is this necessarily a convenient feature in B2B portals? Our experience has been "No". And even though i-Dialogue portals support customizable "My Pages", here's is why they are often not a good idea.

1) Yahoo and Google have disclosed that only 5% of their total customer base are even remotely familiar with the customizable page option. These people are called "Power Users".

2) 80% of site visitors that use customizable pages simply accept the default configuration assuming the page designer knows best.

3) The types of support call conversations that take place when customizable pages are enabled in B2B portals can be chaotic. For example:
Representative: OK. Login to the portal and click on your My Account page.
Customer: OK. I'm there.
Representative: Now on the left hand side of the screen you should see a list of "My Products".
Customer: I don't see "My Products" on my account page.
Representative: What do you see?
Customer: I have the NCAA Basketball scores widget installed and "My Cases" directly below that.
Representative: (Flustered) Alright. Click on the "Add Widgets" link and let's re-add your Products list to the page...

A consistent look-and-feel in customer portals gives CSRs the ability to quickly familiarize customers with the interface and resolve their issues.


When should you use customizable pages?

There are information design circumstances when a customizable page makes sense.
1) Rule of 3. The portal widget library must provide at least 3 widgets (aka portlets, web parts, components) that are of high informational or interactive value to the end user.

2) Productivity Gain. Saleforce users often spend several minutes and hours in the Salesforce user interface, therefore productivity gains can be achieved by customizing the UI per Profile or user. But customers are not using your web site as a productivity tool. It is purely informational. In fact, most B2B portal customers want to spend the least amount of time possible in your web site to resolve their issue and locate the information they need.

"Customization" is not the same as "Personalization"

Finally, "customization and personalization are not the same". Customization is the ability to add/remove/change content on a page. Personalization is delivering highly relevant content to end users, such as Amazon.com's "Others who have purchased X have also purchased Y" feature.

Interactive Marketing should emphasize personalization at all times and CRM driven portals are a great platform for delivering one-to-one relevant content.

There's an interesting phenomenon going on in Marketing these days. The accessibility of the Internet and the creativity of consumers have created an environment where customers are in control of several brands, and the smart marketers are just "rolling with it".

General Motors, Sony, MasterCard, and Home Depot have all empowered consumers to create their own commercials for re-broadcasting. Sometimes with unflattering results.

But GMs willingness to host these commercials and not delete them (at least the ones in good taste) actually is a net gain in terms of creating a dialogue with consumers. Afterall, these consumers were already venting their frustrations outside the realm of GMs control. At least GM is given a chance to show they acknowledge consumer concerns, even if they aren't addressing them.

I think it does disarm an activist consumers position considerably if their opinion can be freely expressed as a comment in a companies blog or discussion forum. Again, it's better to be the first to know instead of hearing through the grapevine on a consumers blog that they had a bad customer service experience and would not recommend the service to anyone else.

Dan Weiden touched on this topic briefly during a keynote he delivered recently here in Oregon. As the Architect behind the Nike brand, he's had an interesting evolutionary perspective on this topic. His reaction was more facially expressed than articulated.... but I could tell it was creating quite a creative challenge in the larger B2C space.

The principles behind i-Dialogue ("Internet Dialogues") embrace this trend, but it's interesting to see the relatively slower adoption of online customer empowerment in the B2B market. True, the customers tend to be a bit more professional, but still.... wouldn't you rather provide 4-6 dialogue options through your own web site and resolve customer issues one-on-one instead of waiting for consumers to communicate with you via their own public blogs and other discussion forums?

It's worth noting at least once in this blog the difference between a "360 view of the customer" and the "i-Dialogue 360" methodology.

I'll use both terms occasionally and they do share a common term.

A "360 view of the customer" refers to a holistic view of a singular customer, while "i-Dialogue 360" refers to a holistic view of all your customers within the context of your customer lifecyle.

A "360 view of the customer" typically implies integrating front and back office systems, whereas "i-Dialogue 360" is usually a front-office process for managing customer relationships.

The i-Dialogue 360° solution is premised on helping businesses manage the entire customer lifecycle. The 'cycle' term simply refers to a businesses objective to create repeat customers.

Effective relationship marketing views customers as progressing through various stages in a lifecycle. Below is the cycle we use in i-Dialogue 360°.

Prospective customers enter the cycle as they become aware of an organizations products or services. They may then subscribe to a newsletter, drip-campaign, or do some other research to educate themselves about your solution.

Many customers prefer to take a test drive and evaluate a product before purchase. Service oriented businesses might offer a free consultation visit.

A prospect becomes a customer once their business is acquired, and from there the customer immediately enters a service and support relationship.

Persuading customers to upgrade or try new products is common in growth or expansion campaigns, where you're simply trying to make customers aware of a new solution, educate them, and encourage the cycle to repeat.

I stumbled upon this great product configurator (PC) at http://vtx.honda.com, which helps prospective motorcycle buyers visualize the various models and configurations of the Honda VTX motorcycle.

This is a great example because it provides a self-service interface that helps consumers experiment with various configurations and immediately answers key questions, such as "How much will this cost if I add this feature?", "What does it look like in Blue?" and "Where can I get it?".

I'm still hoping for the day when these product configurators are tightly integrated with ERP Bill of Materials (BOM) systems so that Marketers and Engineers can collaborate and quickly make product configuration and part changes (price, source, look) and then immediately publish the changes live to their web site.

But the low-hanging fruit for most relationship marketers is simply to get some basic customization capabilities and images available on their web site.

I recall reading a case study where the conversion rate of customers who actually used the online PC and requested a quote was phenomenally high (> 30%). It may cost anywhere from $10K-$200K for a really good configurator (depending on product complexity) but with 30%+ conversion rates that can be easily be measured in closed-loop reporting environment, who can afford not to consider that investment?

Of course, an organization must be MTO capable (Made-To-Order) to truly recognize the benefits of a PC.

I mostly focus on B2B marketing, but the recent Origami campaign by Microsoft caught my eye as it was technology related.

There was a lot of hype and viral marketing leading up to the announcement, and even I got caught up in visiting the origami project web site in the weeks leading up to the products formal announcement.

My only bit of constructive criticism here is that these teaser microsites could really benefit from engaging the customer in more dialogue. How many consumers would have subscribed to a simple email alert like "Contact me when new Origami updates are available [email address here]". I know I would have.

Regardless of whether the final Origami announcement does or does not meet consumer expectations, at least Microsoft would (and should) have the opportunity to engage in follow-up dialogues with curious subscribers. It may take 5-7 intelligent follow-up 'drips' for the marketing message to really resonate.

Update: Dustin Hubbard, Group Manager for the Mobile PC team at Microsoft, gives some genuine follow-up and history on the Origami campaign.

 I was recently optimizing an email template that contained an "Email a Friend" link that was catching my eye as clutter. After removing the link and improving the layout I was then faced with the thought of "OK.... what have I really sacrificed here? Have I removed any possibility of viral marketing by removing the 'Email a Friend' link?"

The metrics clearly showed me that about 1 hundredth of 1 percent (0.01%) of all email recipients actually click through on "Refer a Friend, "Refer a Buddy", and "Email a Friend" links. But without the "Refer a Friend" link, wouldn't customers simply use the 'Forward' buttons in the email reader anyway? Afterall, that's how 99.99% of all Internet viral marketing happens anyway.

I believe that most marketers today have to assume that customers will hit their "Forward" button long before they'll utilize an inline forward feature. Forwarding email is a sub-conscious activity with reliable results that requires no learning curve for most consumers, whereas the "Refer a Friend" found inline behaves differently from one email marketing engine to another, and privacy conscious consumers will not be comfortable using your email marketing engine for exchanging messages between friends.

Maybe it's time to re-think this feature and propose some new and innovative approaches to viral marketing. In a B2C environment, maybe there would be more success by taking a Hallmark card approach where the sender gets to email a card to a recipient (birthday, anniversary, whatever) and incorporate the marketing message into the email?

In other words, "Refer a Friend" links are competing directly against email forwarding, and must therefore provide more utility and value to win.

Definition of acronyms and terms used on this blog:

B2B = Business to Business
B2C = Business to Consumer
CRM = Customer Relationship Management
iCRM = Internet CRM
RSS = Really Simple Syndication
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
PPC = Pay Per Click
SERP = Search Engine Results Page
CPM = Cost Per Thousand (from Roman numeral "M")
WSS = Web Self-Service

Several companies rely primarily on customers downloading a software product (or white paper), evaluating it, and then making a purchase decision.

Collecting an email address at the time of registration allows customers to recieve monthly newsletters, but what's really needed are precise, automated email follow-ups at specific milestones within the evaluation process.

The following image shows a basic 30 day evaluation process and some potential key milestones.



Notice that the customer does not have to wait until the next monthly or quarterly email newsletter to be exposed to your marketing message.

Product evaluation campaigns can be as simple or as sophisticated as needed. 3 general types of lifecyle campaigns include:

1) Immediate auto responder with timed follow-ups.
In this scenario, a prospect visits your site and completes a download request form (to reduce abandonment rates this should be kept to a minimum, such as email, first name, and last name).

They immediately receive download instructions via email and are free to install and evaluate the product.

Then, at defined intervals, the prospect automatically recieves follow-up emails with more information about the product and "call to action" link to purchase the product (note that these emails do not assume much of dialogue context, such as have already spoken with someone on a phone).

2) "Smart" Email Follow-Ups.
This type of campaign is the same as the above mentioned campaign, except that each email makes a "smart" determination as to what the customer needs based on what is known about the customer.

Examples include a role-based call to action (Economic vs. Technical justification for product) or a custom follow-up to an online KB article search.

3) Product Integration.
The holy grail of product evaluation automation is having the product actually tell i-Dialogue when certain evaluation miletones have been achieved and sending emails in response to these milestones. Emails can be sent to the prospect or inside/outside sales reps.

For example, if 20% of all prospects don't even install the product, the nature of the email messages should continually remind them that online installation and configuration support is available. Conversely, if a prospect *has* installed the product, then the tone of follow-up emails should provide some information that leads towards a purchasing decision.


Evaluation campaigns do not neccessarilly need to be driving towards a purchase milestone. They can be in response to white paper downloads that are cultivating a lead for a phone follow-up, test driving a car, or visiting a casino.

There are myriad options and opportunities here. The key is that these mini-campaigns are not synchronously tied to your larger campaigns. They are initiated and matured based on asynchronous factors and milestones.