If The Big Switch can be said to represent the centralization of computing resources, then Microsoft's Live Mesh may signal the path towards the big switch back to a decentralized model (albeit with some centrally hosted Microsoft infrastructure).

Some ideas for using Mesh with our CEM platform and Salesforce:

• Real-time notifications when Leads/Contacts enter your website
• Sync and offline access to CRM data and documents across several devices
• Rich development of email campaigns and web page content
• Social networking with employees, partners, and customers

Keeping Real Estate websites up to date with the latest property listing information is a challenging task. IDX implementations vary across the industry and provide little support for structured CRM integration. Fortunately, several Multiple Listing Service (MLS) vendors in the US have standardized on a transaction standard called RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard) for describing real estate properties and listings.

Cubic Compass is excited to announce a RETS/Salesforce integration solution that synchronizes MLS listings with Salesforce in near real-time (AppExchange package). RETS Import Fieldmaps (documentation here) are used to map MLS fields to Salesforce custom objects

The combination of RETS/MLS data and the Force.com platform gives real estate development and sales professionals a single environment to manage the entire real estate sales process, from listing to website publishing, demand generation, scheduled showings, email marketing, contract management, and close.

Lookup relationships to Properties and Listings give Realtors one-click capability to manage a detailed database of Leads/Contacts and their specific interests. Web-to-Lead forms automatically relate Leads to their primary property Listing of interest.

Web Event activity tracking displays which properties and listings customers are viewing on the website. Page views are rolled up on the Listing records for visibility on most viewed listings.

Property history tracking gives Realtors a detailed database of prior listing transactions, long after the MLS hosted listings are gone.

Contact info@cubiccompass.com for more details and a demonstration.

• Product catalog management
• Shopping Cart
• Globalization / Multi-currency
• Localized Taxes
• Discounting
• Membership management
• Secure online payment
• PCI compliance
• Product / service fullfillment
• Financial accounting / Back office integration
• Recurring payments

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.

Our new Director of Sales and Marketing, Jennifer Clark, has really hit the ground running and deployed a fantastic new website for www.CubicCompass.com.

Brian Rhinehart (of www.KineticShadows.com, a local parther) and Joe Garber, our resident Interactive Web Designer/Developer, played key roles in the transformation of our new image.

Some changes in our web site and overall strategy:

* RSS Feed Subscribers should update their feed to this URL. The old Blog RSS feed will continue to redirect for a few more weeks.

* www.i-dialogue.com now redirects to our main corporate website at www.cubiccompass.com. i-Dialogue continues to be the brand of our hosted suite eMarketing and Customer Experience Management solutions.

* i-Dialogue is now available in 4 editions to serve a variety of CEM needs.

Traditional web design and development are rooted in the concept of a Multi-Page Layout, or MPL. Contemporary web design and content management systems have transitioned towards a Single Page Layout, or SPL.

MPL web sites store their content in individual web pages. Adding more content requires adding additional pages. SPL web sites use a single web page template that derive their content from a database. Salesforce.com makes a great database for managing both content and Leads/site members.

Many organizations gradually wade into developing unique landing pages for Google AdWords or publishing products and services. At first, the MPL approach provides the path to least resistance since initial development and deployment costs are fairly low. The cost of change remains fairly linear at first as each new page is cloned from an existing page and modified to suit the campaigns needs. But over time the cost of change begins to increase. It takes longer to provision new pages and development becomes much slower.

A form of "technical debt" is accrued whereby a developer must eventually externalize common UI elements to server side include (SSI) files, such as headers, logos, navigation, and footers. Even with SSI best practices in place, a developer/programmer still remains in the critical path for each new campaign and the skills required for ongoing maintenance remain high.

SPL templates may take 3-5 times longer to initially implement, but successive pages may be easily provisioned by business users, such as Marketing and Support admins. The time to provision a new page remains linear over time as each new page is defined in a database and immediately available for use in PPC campaigns.

SPL page templates are actually very simple to develop. They may look slightly cryptic when opened in a common web page designer because they contain "merge tags" to be replaced by the database when the page is displayed. The URL typically contains some kind of unique ID to give the page context as to which content to display.

i-Dialogue 8 now supports a new scripting language called Dialogue Script that removes the need for a physical page template. The SPL template can be created directly in a web browser and the merge tags can define any Salesforce object or field.

The Professional Services group at Cubic Compass Software has extensive experience with SPL design and hosting. Contact me for more information. I'd be happy to help.

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?

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.

Dialogue Script (or DScript for short) provides a simple scripting language for developing interactive web pages, forms, and applications integrated with Salesforce.com. In this series of articles, I'll cover some basic scripting concepts to address the most common use cases.

Dialogue Script Articles:

1. Master Views and Lists
2. Details View
3. Web Form

What is a Master View?
"Recent News" is an example of a Master View. It is simply a list of items that are dynamically queried from Salesforce.

Here's an example Dialogue script that displays a top 5 list of the most recent press releases:

<dlog:repeater id="LatestNewsRepeater"
SOQL="SELECT TOP 5 * FROM Content__c WHERE Type__c='Press Release' ORDER BY CreatedDate DESC" runat="server">
<ItemTemplate>
<dlog:HyperLink ID="HeadlineLink" TextFieldName="Headline__c" NavigateURL="~/News.aspx={oid}" runat="Server" /><br/>
</ItemTemplate>
</dlog:repeater>

Example Output: (example links only)
ACME Corp Announces Q1 Financials
Jane Smith Joins ACME as VP of Operations
ABC Sees Record Growth After Using ACME Solution
ACME Announces 2008 Product Roadmap
Wall Street Journal: Inside Look at ACME

This example uses a Repeater control and SOQL Plus to query Salesforce and format the repeating layout of each item in the query result. Dialogue Script supports Salesforce Object Query Language (SOQL) plus adds support for tokens like "TOP", "ORDER BY", and "IN".

You can query any object in Salesforce. Master Views and Lists are a great way to provide customers with high level information and get them started in a general direction. Adding an ORDER BY CreatedDate DESC clause ensures the web page always stays up to date and displays the latest press releases, meaning you never need to update your web site when a new press release is launched. Query results can be cached to improve performance by adding a CachedDurationMinutes attribute to the Repeater.

In the next article, I'll demonstrate how to use Dialogue Script to format the actual Press release page using Salesforce data, plus some bonus script on creating a dynamic Google AdWords landing page.

Happy scripting!!!

I'm still waiting for the big one. That well coordinated campaign that starts with a 30 second commercial during the super bowl that inspires consumers to continue an online dialogue. A campaign that demonstrates true ROI and actually measures the value of a $3M investment.

Last years super bowl left me wanting, but there were some success stories. Some might say GoDaddy owes it's market position exclusively to Super Bowl advertising with a call to action that brings people online (eventually) to have some presence on the Internet super highway.

SalesGenie.com, voted worst ad of last years Super Bowl, drove 25,000 visitors to their site. They'll be back again this year with 3 more ads. Did anyone else notice the timing of Mark Israelsen's departure from Salesforce.com to head up SalesGenie starting February 1st? Looks like he'll hit the ground running.

Here are some dialogue tactics/strategies I'm hoping to see this year that convert a one-way broadcast into a two-way dialogue:

• Easy to remember domain name. Here's the pitch.... go here to learn more. That's the 30 second objective. www.GetItNow.com wants "mid 6 figures" to purchase this domain (Let me know if I can help negotiate this ). What is the value of a short, easy to remember domain if your current URL will result in higher abandonment?
• Relevant Landing Page. You just paid $3M for a 30 second ad. Please make the next step in the dialogue relevant to the upstream message. Don't just drop me on your home page.
• Immediate Gratification. The super bowl is all about entertainment. Keep the online dialogue rolling. Keep it entertaining. An interactive Flash game or video perhaps.
• Keep the First Date Simple. Need to know something about me before fulfilling an offer (such as free 30 day demo)? That's fine. But keep it simple. Why do you need more than an email address and name on our "first date"? I'm not applying for a home loan. Keep the conversion forms short and incrementally ask for more information over time.
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? Keep me engaged. Continue and evolve the story. The Super Bowl ad is only the beginning. I need to go online to learn the middle..... keep the dialogue going and engage me in the ending.
• Cross Channel Boundaries. I have a mobile phone. Let me subscribe to SMS alerts as part of the dialogue. Coordinate Television, Internet, and Mobile to facilitate a dialogue.

From Entrepreneur.com "The Hottest Marketing Trends for 2008".

1. Engage the customer. The move toward alternative advertising versus some of the more traditional methods coincides with the emergence of technologies that enable a one-on-one dialogue with customers. For example, follow the trend of social media by posting your products on sites that encourage customer or peer reviews. Social media add an element of impartiality and are increasingly looked to as reliable sources of information.

Read the entire article online.

On-Demand software has revolutionized how enterprise software is deployed. Declarative customization provides line of business managers with an unprecedented number of options from which to "declare" how a CRM record is defined or presented in a page layout. But let's face it... at some point, all enterprise software solutions require some level of programmatic customization. Enterprise software vendors simply cannot anticipate each and every business requirement.

Salesforce customers, having reached the limits of declarative customization, now have domain specific programming languages such as Visual Force and Apex to programmatically customize their CRM system.

Content Management Systems (CMS) and Enterprise Portals already have a strong legacy of supporting programmatic customization, but achieved this flexibility through integration with existing development environments and the modification of physical files and templates.

Many CMS's have attempted to offer purely browser-based declarative customization environments, such as Wiki's and Blogs, but failed to meet the demands of creative and marketing professionals, which require detailed control over the presentation and branding of web pages and emails.

It's time for a new scripting language that meets the unique demands of Customer Experience Management (CEM). It's time to offer an optimal balance between declarative and programmatic configuration options. It's time to recognize that there is a new generation of workers entering the workforce that embrace Domain Specific Languages (see Fowler: DSL) and expect programming the web to be as easy as programming their iPod, Tivo, or DVR. It's time for a language like "Dialogue".

"Dialogue" is a new scripting language designed specifically for helping organizations to interact with their customers and partners online using concepts familiar to both the web (HTML, CSS, Javascript) and CRM (Lead, Contact, Opportunity, Case records).

The key tenants of Dialogue include:

Creativity / User Interface: Dialogue is primarily a presentation language that resembles HTML and is used in the creation of dynamic web pages, landing pages, and emails. Graphic designers and web developers have control over each pixel in the presentation of Dialogue scripts.

Business User Support: Business users can easily modify Dialogue scripts to present information most relevant to customers and partners. Changes can be made to Dialogue scripts without the assistance of a web programmer.

Multiple Development Environment Support: Dialogue scripts can be managed using either a web browser or rich client. Todays content management professionals are accustomed to working with tools such as Dreamweaver and Expression. Dialogue plug-Ins for web development environments (starting with Expression) will be developed to enable the remote persistence and management of Dialogue scripts using a locally installed rich client. But the flexibility of storing and managing content entirely on the web will remain the primary focus.

CRM-Driven: Dialogue scripts provide direct access to CRM records and data for maximum personalization.

Agile: Dialogue scripts support an agile methodology that allows organizations to go from concept to deployment within a matter of hours or days. Campaigns can be modified on the fly and no longer suffer from the constraints of "waterfall" project management methodologies where considerable upfront planning is required to reduce the anticipated cost of change.

The Dialogue scripting language will help organizations transition from static, brochureware web designs common in the 90's, to highly interactive and personalized online experiences. It is our goal that all Salesforce customers will unlock the capabilities of their CRM system to delivering these rich online experiences. Dialogue is the final link in enabling this level of interaction.

Yet another great customer experience (CE) faux pas from WorseThanFailure.com. Doubtful many customers would be patient enough to wait until the year 3000 (below) to receive their discount

I can empathize with the Developers of this site. We learned the hard to always check Salesforce managed date/times when using them in CE applications and campaigns after discovering that the absence of a date actually resulted in displaying a default date (something like January 1, 1900).

Steve Andersen has developed a really interesting metric in Salesforce based on actions taken by Activists/Donors in response to nonprofit campaigns. His solution exercises some new features in Winter '08, such as hierarchical campaigns and Apex scripts.

Anyone following my "tweets" on Twitter during the Salesforce.com Dreamforce '07 conference probably saw my references to lead scoring. The presentations and discussions inspired me to revisit this topic and explore how to implement lead scoring in Salesforce using an existing i-Dialogue web event data mart.

My past experiences with lead scoring were based on assigning "A", "B", "C", or "D" scores to leads derived from their online interactions. This prioritization gave sales reps some insight into which leads were supposedly more qualified than others.

A much simpler approach to lead scoring is to simply assign a score to each interaction and let the cumulative score provide a relative indicator. For example, in the illustration below, 2 leads enter a web site and initially appear to be equally qualified. But over time, and with enough data collection, we see that one lead was actually more interested in seeking employment with the organization rather than becoming a customer.

Defining lead score rules in Salesforce is possible through the use of a "Web Event Scoring Rule" custom object (see below), which is a prototypical definition of an existing Web Event object (already included with i-Dialogue).

A periodic evaluation by the i-Dialogue-to-Salesforce integration process evaluates each interaction and checks to see if it matches a lead score rule prototype. A match results in a Lead's score being increased or decreased by a defined amount. Rule prototypes may have any number of evaluation parameters, allowing for simple or complex rule definitions. If it can be captured in i-Dialogue, it can be evaluated.

A custom field on the Lead record named "Lead Score" is updated by the scoring process. Scores in Salesforce are updated in near real-time and are accurate to within 30 minutes.

This score then becomes the basis for Salesforce Reports and Dashboards. Once the technology is in place, an iterative/incremental relationship marketing process is implemented to routinely review and adjust scores and online event collectors. Lead scores will never be perfect, but the balance of online interactions and evaluation rules can achieve an 80% "good enough" state to be widely trusted by Sales Representatives and Marketing Managers.

Nearly one-third of CRM projects fail because of non-adoption, according to AMR Research.

I'm guilty of this problem myself. I get off the phone with someone, look at my scribbled notes on some paper and think "I really should enter this call into Salesforce for future reference." But do I do it? Maybe 50% of the time I do.

Many more people visit Facebook than their CRM system. Why? Because your relationship with people on Facebook is dynamic, just like in real life. If a Facebook friend does something online, you know it. And their action, such as joining a group, may inspire you to pursue joining that same group.

Now imagine opening up a Lead or Contact record in your CRM system and seeing the following information:

• Bob downloaded the case study "ACME in Manufacturing".
• Bob opened his email from campaign "Product Announcement"
• Bob forwarded an email to a friend 'Nancy'.

The list could go on, but you get the idea. It's much easier to adopt CRM when the process of collecting information about customers is less manual or more automated.

That's the premise behind i-Dialogue and Customer Experience Management (CEM). Extending CRM with online interactions so that Sales and Marketing reps will regularly use and adopt CRM to learn about and interact with customers.

Hey... if a survey has only 3-5 questions and can be taken quickly, I'm more than happy to provide feedback. These surveys, however, may make customers think twice.

... as if there is such a thing.  Humorous video from Microsoft digital advertising group.

I started reading Edward Tufte's 'Beautiful Evidence' (BE) over the weekend. This is the 4th book in a series (he says a quintet is to be expected) dedicated to the craft of information design.

Tufte's books have withstood the test of time with a high level of integrity. His work quite simply reveals "The Truth" of information design as he identifies great works from centuries past (and modern era) that have fought to change mankinds beliefs through the power of the pen and paper on thinking such as "the world is flat" and "the earth is the center of the galaxy".

I personally borrow heavily from Tufte's "let no pixel go to waste" philosophy. There's is most definitely an art to depicting thousands of data points within a single image.

My only complaints with this book are:
a) material from previous books is recycled, such as Joseph Minyard's March of 1812 (to Tufte's credit, he does spend considerably more time on this piece than in previous books)
and
b) the chapter dedicated to PowerPoint bashing takes away from the overall integrity of his work. It would have sufficed to say that PowerPoint templates and charts are the cause for much misinformation, and many people would tend to agree. But just about everyone uses PowerPoint occasionally, so this chapter does little more than to alienate everyone to a degree and denies PowerPoint it's key utility of being a framework for discussion rather than an actual informational artifact.

Those who work with massive datasets in Salesforce.com understand the "If we only knew what know" feeling. But it is the work of Tufte that helps us focus on mining these databases and unearthing hidden information through heat maps, graphs, and other types of multi-variate charts.

A few years ago, when this book was in pre-publication, I wrote a simple sparkline program based on Tufte's latest research, but alas it was abandoned as a solution looking for a problem. I'm inspired to start using VisualForce to implement some of these concepts again.

I recommend catching Edward on one of his many book tours. All of his books are typically included in the registration fee and he explains the concepts in a very entertaining manner. This is a must attend event for anyone in Graphic Design or BI Visualization.

Information Week has been running a series of articles on the changing, and perhaps disappearing, role of the CIO.

The most recent edition published a list of "Top 12 Reasons the CIO Role is Disappearing", and one item in particular caught my eye:

Reason #9: Never ending need to improve the customer experience.

Now, I can't say I follow the reasoning why this trend would contribute to a reduced need for a CIO. I do know that more line-of-business marketing and support managers are now more empowered than ever to procure, configure, and manage their on-demand CRM and CEM solutions with less dependence on IT.

I also know that there are "old ways" and "new ways" of doing things, and perhaps this trend could be attributed to CIO's hanging onto "old ways" and not embracing the "new ways".

What do you see in the "new way" column that indicates that the CIO's job is now any easier? I see nothing. If anything, the job is much more complicated and difficult than before.

Customer Experience Management (CEM) fundamentally is a Marketing activity, but CEM that provides a competitive advantage requires significant IT guidance and coordination. It's just that the day to day operations of specialized services are becoming increasingly easier to outsource.

I sometimes wonder if we've forgotten the original purpose for CAPTCHA images, which is to prevent the repeated, automated submission of web forms by non-humans.

This CAPTCHA engine (original here) has apparently become a little lazy. It simply displays the challenge code un-obfuscated and calls the end user a "twit". Wussup with that?!

Quick note to follow-up to my recent nonprofit related blog post... the Salesforce implementations for all our recent nonprofit web sites have been delivered by Exponent Partners (ExP), a Salesforce consulting partner committed to growing the capacity of Nonprofit organizations via effective use of technology (and pretty much spending 90%+ of their time on Salesforce like us).

Rem Hoffmann of ExP will be at Dreamforce in the Nonprofit pavilion. We're only about 20 yards away. Come talk to either one of us about implementing Salesforce in conjunction with a web content management system or portal. After jointly working together on a few projects, I think we have several great lessons learned about how to efficiently integrate the web with Salesforce.

CRM Chump has a great post on An Introduction to Customer Experience Management (See related blog post on Does CEM replace CRM?).

When you describe CEM as a customer-centric approach that focuses on the needs of the customer rather than the company, it's very easy to get onto the topic of Marketing in general. Is CEM really new, or is it what marketers have been doing along?

It's not enough for a marketing agency to broadcast one-way, outbound messages anymore. The Internet allows for much greater interaction than traditional TV, print, or radio and marketing agencies must think in terms of long running, interactive, online dialogues to generate leads, cultivate, and acquire customers.

Some other questions that arise when on the topic of CEM: Is i-Dialogue a software company? An interactive marketing agency? Our core competency i