Metrics and end-states

Jim Berkowitz posted a reaction to my earlier post about managing customer hand-offs within a CRM project.

As I prepare to launch our CRM project, he helps keep me focused on goal setting. My goals are simple. Execution is another case altogether.

(Next week: stories from the trade show I am at this week.)

About Industrial Quick Search

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking directly or indirectly about Industrial Quick Search. For those of you who don't really know what I am talking about, here is a good article by the InfoCommerce Group. This group is for the database marketing industry.

About IQS

Fraud alert

Watch for an unsolicited invoice from "Premium Data Marketing" for a tradeshow directory, etc. We get these types sometimes, but usually somewhere in fine print it says that it is a solicitation, not an invoice. This one doesn't do that, plus it lists 'authorized by' and lists a name of an employee.

The offer is $685 and lists the services being sold www.tradeshowbiz.com. I did find a sister website for Canada at www.businesseventsguide.com. The Premium Data Marketing is no-where to be found. The address listed I googled and found an answering service. I assume they are only indirectly related to the website/service.

The new Yahoo

I held off posting about Yahoo using Inktomi for search results, figuring there would be a lot of buzz. Serge let me know first. A quick look told me I had good positions.

Today I ran Webposition Gold and confirmed it. Only one keyword-phrase I checked didn't show up on the first page! I should consider myself privileged, since I didn't see a lot of direct competition there. Quite a mish-mash, really. One of my competitors is actually being beat-out by two of their regional reps.

I'll wait till the end of the month to see what my stats look like, but I've seen one report of drastic changes in referrers.

Can CRM survive the hand-off?

I daily fantasize about how a new CRM package can make our sales team more effective. We would know about each other's contacts with the customer and be prompted to fulfill our promises via 'to-do' lists. The gurus like to call it a 360-degree view of the customer, I think.

I read a story yesterday about a airline traveller's broken bag. Was it a bad bag or bad handling? Who cares? He just paid $7,000 for a ticket. Would it hurt to accept fault and pay him, say $200. The CRM guru would say that if the luggage handler had CRM and knew he paid that much for a ticket, he might have gotten compensated.

But what pained him the most was the pass-the-buck mentality. He thought that it should have been the responsibility of the person first helping him to aid him thru the trouble as much as possible. Does CRM make that easier or harder?

When the client contacts one of your staff, looking for help, how easy is it for them to pass-the-buck? Or put the responsibility back on the customer? Or do they just not know how to help? I bet that part of the issue with the airline is that if the person said 'yes, looks like it got man-handled', he wouldn't know to arrange compensation for the customer.

Given a CRM package with multiple tools to see the 360-degree view, I'm afraid that it just makes it easier to hand-off the client to someone else, since the other team-member should know the situation by looking at the client's record. But can it really be a relationship if you don't offer to help yourself. And if you do make a hand-off, shouldn't you make sure that the client got what they were looking for?

(UPDATE: I stewed about this post after I wrote it. I felt I had to explain why I wrote this.: I was just writing to myself, after having to do a hand-off where I was concerned about the final result. I hope you find this a significant issue, too.)

Google dances again...and so does TR

Google: I usually like to take the long-view when it comes to rankings at Google. But today I got an email from Serge alerting me to another major Google dance. I've run 'Free Monitor for Google' a few times, and have seen different scores every time. Overall, the numbers look encouraging. I guess it is like watching a stock on the day the company makes a big announcement.

Thomas Register: They continue to create new websites to repurpose their content. They seem to have become very adept at creating websites, but to what end? The new one is ThomasNet, which combines the Register with the Regional directories. It also includes a 'web search' that I'm not sure I understand.

How many times have I said it?

The details will kill you.

Registering a website domain name is cheap and easy. Managing it isn't.

Mean Dean puts a good spin on the
WashingtonPost's recent foible in not renewing the domain name it uses for email. His suggestion: "It is this 'domain monitors' responsibility to NOT sit around and wait for email, but to actively check the registration information periodically to make sure the domain is still theirs and up-to-date."

At work, this is one thing that is NOT my job. Our IT consultants are in charge of the domains and hosting. So, much to my surprise, I find that they failed to renew the domain for a 'mini-site' I created last year. Whether they failed to do the job Mean Dean identifies, or simply failed to communicate with me, I was down one website for probably a month. The details will kill you!

Sending out an image file

Being a 'one man marketing department' is fun, but not without its drawbacks.

Often I need some simple art to send out; today it is for a trade-show booth banner. I know what I want and I've already laid it out in Fireworks. I'm not an artist, but for some things I'm good enough to get by. Its not worth calling out the 'big guns' at the ad agency to do it for me.

But the printer needs it in a certain format. While Fireworks' PNG format is supposed to be widely available, most people are unaware of it, or unsure if it will upload correctly. And I don't blame them. I can 'save as' other file formats. But its hard to be sure that what I send out is what the recipient can use.

For today's graphic, a 'vector' type file is preferrable, so that it can scale to a large banner. But there is color bit-map associated with it. And I'm supposed to identify the PMS colors in the graphic...apparently no one trusts what is embedded in the file regarding color anyway.

In the past I was once called to meetings with five people to primarily settle on file-format issues, and three of those people were pros. Is it always this hard for electronic art? Is there an easier way to ensure graphic files can be handed off with confidence?

Getting control of the calendar

As a guy who's head fits well inside a computer monitor shell, I've been helping lead the way for a new website for my church. One of the 'killer apps' we've come up with would be an online-calendar. After researching this earlier this week, I've become facinated with the potential of a standard called 'iCal'.

What's facinating is that you can run several calendars on your PC, and subscribe to others from the internet. I could have one integrated calendar that shows me my wife's schedule, my personal one, my church's, and my co-workers'. You can update and syncronize from any location, if it's posted to the web. There is even a great open source tool that displays the calendar on a website.

The challenge has been in learning how to use it and what the best choices are. While standard with new Apples, there is no driving force for Windows machines. Studying how to use it has been interesting and frustrating.

For right now I've gone the easy route:

• Install Mozilla browser with Calendar plug-in. The calendar plug-in isn't particularly stable, but if I want to run this from multiple locations, I don't want to pay $20 per machine.


• Find a person nice enough to host '.ics' files and run the iCalendar webtool, like www.icalx.com.

As I use it more, I'd like to share my experience here, to help save others the trouble. For now, take a look at the Mets Spring Training Schedule that I copied elsewhere and posted.

Who's on top?

When I look at my website's stats at the end of the month, I start wondering how all this traffic gets to my company's site. Google is high on the mind, of course. I've survived the latest Austin algorithm change, but still hurting on some key words. But, overall, hits from Google are back where they used to be.

My one spamming competitor retains #1 position for just about any term I can think of. But now, one of my major competitors is showing up very high in the exact words I am not being ranked by Google for. Ouch!

So I turned to Serge Thibodeau for the latest on update Austin. Google’s Hilltop Algorithm has a tendency to detect sites that are authoritative in their field and will usually rank them higher, along with a higher PR value.

So maybe my competitor is getting proper ranking because they are a top company. So why is the spammer ranking still so high? And why is the Industrial Quick Seach site nowhere to be seen?

From Mailbox to Trashcan

I'm a firm believer that success on the web is difficult because of the many details that need to be handled correctly. After reading this article by Dean Rieck, I see that direct mail is the same way. It's a good refresher course in any kind of marketing:

"It's okay to cry. Let it out. But after you dry your eyes, think about what you've learned from this depressing spectacle. When people sort your mail, they're quick. They're brutal. And if you don't instantly capture their attention, you're dead."