April 28th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
I am really excited about the potential of our partnerships with Coremetrics, Omniture, WebSideStory, and WebTrends. Marrying word-of-mouth and clickstream data will enable us to pioneer analyses that have never before been possible. Ultimately, it will increase our clients' customer IQ.
Ever since I took my first marketing class at the University of Texas at Austin, I have been fascinated by customer behavior. It has been the driving theme of my career. What has been most exciting to me is being there when a company finds out how their customers really behave and the lightbulb goes on. When their customer IQ is increased.
At Coremetrics, I had the good fortune of seeing this transition many times. It was the biggest part of what drew me to start the business in the first place and, especially, with a services model at its core. It is hard for me to believe now, but back in 1999 the acronym "ASP" ("Application Service Provider") didn't exist. I knew from my background in consulting that an outsourced model for Web analytics would ultimately be the best way to deliver real analysis to clients. Because of my background, this was intuitive to me; it just made sense. It was later, in 2000, when someone told me, "you guys are an ASP". The label had been born, although I'm not sure who gave birth. Label or not, the business model works. The ideal ASP is a marriage of services and software to create an ever-evolving solution.
(more…)
April 18th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
News from Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)…
DUPONT ENDORSES WOMMA ETHICS CODE: DuPont became the first Fortune 100 company to endorse the WOMMA Code of Ethics, making it applicable to all their employees and vendors worldwide. DuPont gave their "full endorsement" and announced they will only engage WOM services firms if they adhere to the Code.
This is huge. It's a concrete step toward putting deceptive stealth marketers out of business.
Interested in learning more? WOM ETHICS TELECONFERENCE TOMORROW: A free teleconference on WOM Ethics ("A Practical Guide to Doing it Right") is scheduled for tomorrow (Wednesday, April 19) at noon ET. You and your readers are invited to participate. Call 512-225-3050 and enter passcode 772541#. Full details at: http://womma.org/telecon.htm
April 16th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
"And in their darkest hour, General Motors tuned into the most powerful force of all – their customers. From consumer-generated ads to Bob Lutz's FastLane Blog, General Motors did what Japanese car makers had been doing for years. They really listened. And it was the start of their ultimate turnaround…"
- from "The History of Great American Turnarounds", 2929 Entertainment, aired on Jan. 5, 2025
This is probably old news to some of you, but I find it fascinating that Chevrolet is allowing consumers to create their own ads for the new Tahoe. As you can imagine, some consumers have created some very critical ads. However, I applaud General Motors for finally taking some risk. I'm sure the authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" would also applaud this bold move.
There is no doubt in my mind that we will see more of this. This is the start of an open and honest dialogue between General Motors and their customers. Is the dialogue always going to positive? Of course not. It isn't always positive offline, but it is too easy for General Motors to ignore private customer-to-customer conversations. It is a bit different when the conversations are out in the open, staring them in the face.
Sam Decker calls this "customer oxygen". No matter what you call it, it is healthy. I have long believed that a company should design its products with customers. That may sound obvious, but it's not. I created Coremetrics, a successful Web analytics business, based on the premise that companies like Accrue and NetGenesis had failed to do this. And their customers defected quickly.
(more…)
April 10th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
eVOC Insights recently announced results of a syndicated study comparing Amazon and Circuit City to Walmart and BestBuy. One of the primary findings was purchase preference was much higher at Amazon and Circuit City.
One of the primary reasons:
Circuit City and Amazon have product ratings and reviews. Walmart and Best Buy do not.
From the study:
In general, 63% of users indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has ratings and reviews. If executed properly, ratings and reviews can boost the confidence in making purchases as well as foster a trusted relationship with site visitors.
————————–
Competitive Online Report Reveals Amazon And Circuitcity Preferred Over Bestbuy And Walmart
eVOC Insights & RelevantView
4/5/2006 11:42:52 AM
SAN FRANCISCO, CA and WESTPORT, CT —April 5, 2006— eVOC Insights, a customer experience consulting firm and, RelevantView, a leading technology provider of Web-based research solutions, announce the release of a new syndicated retail report Ratings, Reviews and the Customer Decision Process: Amazon vs. BestBuy vs. CircuitCity vs. Walmart. This report takes a closer look at how consumers interact with four leading online retail Websites and provides insights into what drives purchase preference.
(more…)
April 10th, 2006 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
Here's a snapshot from USA Today citing a study on influences of what we buy…
Three in 10 consumers say word of mouth most influences what they purchase.
That's pretty good, although in certain categories and certain demographics I bet it's higher, especially since this study is citing 20% of influence comes from newspaper inserts!
