Compact

Impact SDL WCM Solutions Division Annual Magazine

2010

Making an impression in an online world

• Online targeting • Brand value • Customer engagement

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Contents

Capture, engage, convince

Impact is the annual news and features magazine for SDL Web Content Management Solutions suppliers, clients, partners and other interested parties.

Lead writer and editor Ingrid Froelich Copy editors Gavino Gonzalez

N ote s f ro m t h e C EO

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M o b ile to web to li fe

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Thirsty

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Maria McCann Mathijs Panhuijsen Design, Layout and DTP Kees Klaver, Klaverontwerp www.klaverontwerp.nl Design concept Compasso MundoCom, Amsterdam

M u l ti-c ha n n el p e r su asio n

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http://www.sitecm.nl/

B ra n d va lu e t h ro u g h cu sto m e r intimacy

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Printing

L iste n i n g in

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S h a ll we m e et ?

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E m a il mat te r s

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W h at t h ey a re s ay i n g r ig ht n ow

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Yo u n e e d to b e se e n to b e h e a rd

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E m oti n g o nlin e

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GraficiĂŤnt Printmedia

Case st u dies M a n da r in O r ie nt a l

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Te le n o r

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B BVA

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S a p i e ntN i t ro

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C o mp assio n I nte r natio na l

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Q u e st 3 0

info@graficient.nl

Copyright Š 2010 SDL PLC. All Rights Reserved.

All company product or service names referenced herein are properties of their respective owners.

For more information or copies of this magazine, please contact info@sdltridion.com www.sdltridion.com

10 Page

Top 10 trends

16 Page Impact

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Impact 2010 Welco me to the 2010 editio n of I mpact, the S D L WCM Solu tio ns a n nual maga zine! L ast yea r we talke d ab ou t the tra nsfo r matio n f ro m WCM as a sta nd-alo ne p ro duct to a u nif ied ma r keting suite, w ith multi-cha nnel, multiling ual a n d multi-b ra nd supp o r t. T his yea r we have se en WCM tra nsfo r m f u r ther in o rder to me et the end-to-end re quirements of a complete custo mer engag ement plat fo r m

Notes from the CEO “Make no mistake, this is not the end of the WCM journey,” says Jan Jaap Kolleman, CEO of SDL WCM Solutions. “Our vision is to fulfill more than just marketing requirements. We need to provide a solution for the complete customer engagement cycle, including marketing, sales, distribution and support. At each stage, online visitors have specific expectations, which grow and change with online innovations. We need to address what online visitors already do when they look for a product or service online, and surpass these expectations by anticipating future trends.”

“Customer engagement is critical. This means seeing things from your customers‘ point of view, knowing who your customer is and really identifying what they want when they go to your website,” says Kolleman. “For the SDL Tridion product, we as an organization also need to stay attuned to the changes in how online visitors want to be approached by, and interact with, brands, products and services online.”

The SDL Global Information Management mandate supports this vision. It acknowledges that the internet is now more than just a standard for global communication used for marketing commu-

nication. It is now a sales tool, a customer support tool and a tool for global interaction.

“Creating long-term customer relationships leads to higher sustainable conversion rates. We need to allow organizations to transform customer engagement strategy into reality,” Kolleman states.

“Even in the turbulent economy of the past couple of years, the SDL WCM Solution division has doubled its investments in R&D. We know that we need to continue to adapt, to identify and to meet the growing needs of organizations that use our products.

WCM now goes beyond multi-channel, multi-site, multilingual website management. It involves collecting visitor intelligence, creating profiles for target groups, and establishing real interaction - real relationships.”

This edition of the annual SDL WCM Solutions magazine provides articles and insight to help you to break new ground in creating and sustaining lasting customer relationships. We are proud of our customer base, and even prouder of their continued journey in partnership with SDL.

Impact

Segmentatio n a nd ta rg ete d adver tising have been a round for a long time, a nd w ith good reaso n. T hey enable ma r keter s to create focused a nd releva nt messag es that b r ing customer s to your door.

Creating customer connection with a personal touch Optimizing your marketing dollar really means you need to bring the right message –at the right time– for the customer journey from anonymous visitor to loyal customer. The combination of audience profiling, real-time targeting and online personalization create a smooth path from their wishes to your success.

Ca p t u r e In a real store, imagine that a shop manager could change the location of items each single customer sees, the moment they entered the store, based on who they are. It would have an incredible impact on what and how much they buy.

Initially, you could only place these items based on where they came from, what they looked like and how they looked at objects in your display.

As impossible as this would be in the real world, this is best practice online. You create dynamic relevance based on their preferences, the placement of objects and the products you want to promote. You may be second-guessing their eventual choices, but you can base some choices on known factors like time of day, referring sites and their geographic location.

We call this “first-click targeting”.

Impact

All of these things let you create a relevant experience for each individual shopper.

Take Jim for example. Jim wants to buy a car. He goes to the showroom of his local dealership and sees a big space with lots of cars in different colors, shapes and sizes. There are information brochures and some general indications about pricing. At this point, he’s pretty intoxicated with the “new car smell”. You’ve seen Jim come in and out of the dealership a few times.

At this point, Jim is a lot like the anonymous browser who checks out a website.

He knows generally why he is there, but you really haven’t met him yet. You still don’t know exactly why he’s there. You can see that Jim is looking at a lot of fourdoor sedans, and that he has picked up a couple of brochures, but that is all you know.

This is a lot like the type of information that web analytics provide about new site visitors. You can get a general idea of what they are looking at, but as of yet, you have not yet acted on it. But, like the car showroom, you want more than just visitors—you want to find out more by interacting with them, so that you can find out what they really need and act accordingly.

Eng ag e Any good salesperson would approach Jim and engage him in a casual conversation to find out more. What is important to him? You need this information to increase your chances of making the sale.

Online, this type of conversation can take place by creating an “interest path” and by watching the visitor’s reaction to links, navigation, images and interactive content. Visitor location data can be used to present offers that are geographically specific and applicable to the location and language preference of the visitor.

By doing first-click targeting, marketers can instantly reduce bounce rates. This increases the chance that visitors will stay.

Now you have to enrich your customer profile to grab their interest.

In the car showroom scenario, the salesperson has just found out quite a bit about Jim by noticing his behavior so when they approach Jim they are able to engage him in a meaningful way. Through the remainder of Jim’s interaction with the salesperson, they establish a little more about what he is looking for.

Jim reveals, “We were thinking of upgrading to slightly bigger car. The thing is, fuel

Capture, engage, convince efficiency is really important to us too.”

This short interaction provides a myriad of information including the general size of car and a specific feature (fuel efficiency) that is a real priority for this particular customer. It also reveals he is making a decision based on the term “we”—perhaps he is buying a family car. Digging a little deeper, you might also uncover preferences for factors such as price range, color options, fuel efficiency as well as extras such as a ski rack for weekends away.

Online, this type of interactivity takes the form of clicking behavior and search terms.

It gives online marketers the opportunity to automatically and dynamically present content that matches visitor interaction.

In the car dealership scenario, the salesperson has really made progress when Jim decides on a test drive, since this is concrete action that shows his intent to buy.

Online, the equivalent of driving the car can take place through product demos, 3D walk throughs and a variety of other available presentation options that give visitors the dynamic product-lifestyle experience.

purchase is made a simple as possible, with relevant information provided about delivery times, options and payment plans.

Online, this translates into clear, call to action options and purchase paths that make the decision to buy as simple as possible and leaves fewer abandoned shopping carts. In addition, the information gathered about Jim can reveal a lot about other people who fit his profile. This allows for you to create relevant offers for people with similar needs, just as the salesperson did. In the online world, this is called predictive targeting.

As in the real world, online customers appreciate relevant after-care, in which the site goes beyond being just an information or transaction tool. When customers receive email offers, training, or additional benefits for being a loyal customer, they recognize the value added of being recognized as not only customers, but as individuals.

A website that captures, engages and convinces is more than just web content management—it is engagement management that provides a key differentiator, a virtual business unit, and value-added.

Convince At this point, the salesperson is equipped with the information needed to present Jim with a personal, relevant offer. In the magic showroom, the cars would reorder, and Jim would see the absolutely best fit for his needs.

The salesperson automatically maps everything learned about Jim to experience, much of which is based on previous sales talks with customers similar to Jim. Building on this experience, Jim is presented with relevant, appropriate and compelling offers as well as the add-ons that meet Jim’s specific needs. For Jim, it is easy to make a choice since the offer so closely matches what he had hoped to find all along.

Following the interaction with the salesperson and the experience of driving the car, Jim decides to purchase. The point of

Checklist Does your website have a personal touch?

• Do you gather information about customers by tracking their choices?

• Do you give them targeted choices?

• Do you use different approaches for their stage in the buying cycle?

• Are call-to-actions clear and visible?

• Do you provide cross-channel flow from email to web to mobile?

Impact

Mobile to web to life Like all cross-channel strategies, mobile-to-webto-life interaction is still finding its place. Today’s innovation will become tomorrow’s expectation.

There can be no doubt about it: mobile is everywhere. A long awaited hype has become reality. More and more savvy smartphones are being sold every day and new, faster communication standards have made mobile internet a commodity. Marketers who ease the daily lives of mobile users through creative approaches will be the ones who see return-on-investment.

Some things to look out for:

Dedicated mobile sites. Mobile devices have special needs and marketers have to match them. Mobile users have more specific, action-oriented goals than the average desktop surfer.

Serving these goals in a fast and simple manner is key to mobile success.

Performance. Nothing is more annoying than having to wait for a mobile site to load. Focus on the essentials, shorten texts and compress images to a feasible minimum.

Layout. Every smartphone is different and a mobile site that looks bling on an iPhone can be a nightmare on a Blackberry. Make sure device detection is in place to cater for standard devices. Scrap pretty flash animations – most smartphones do not even render these. Simple and clear designs lead to success.

Usability. Often mobile site navigation is a bigger challenge than a round of minesweeper. Navigation has to cater for touchscreen users with adult-sized fingers. Think of what visitors really want to do and let this dictate design.

Content. Adjust content to reflect the mobile usage. Reuse assets from websites – but keep the content to the point. Visitors are looking for quick information or a fast transaction, not lengthy essays.

Anticipated behavior. The best mobile site is the one that anticipates the visitors’ needs. Monitor mobile site statistics to learn what visitors are looking for and add shortcuts to these top pages on the homepage.

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Case study

Mandarin Oriental

best value for their dollar, they may visit travel aggregator sites, consider credit card affinity programs, and even contact individual hotels directly, recognizing that hoteliers may be willing to ‘sweeten the pot’ with upgrades and additional amenities to fill excess-room capacity.”

To respond to the changes in travelers’ shopping behaviors, Mandarin Oriental decided to extend their current use of SDL Tridion to deliver a user-friendly, interactive mobile website. The new mobile site was designed to provide a mobile browser experience that could approximate an experience of a native mobile application. It is available through a wide variety of touch screen and keypad handheld phones. Although the new mobile site is rich in graphics, the performance is fast and the controls are intuitive and extremely user-friendly.

“We saw an opportunity to cost-effectively deliver an effortless mobile browsing experience, while at the same time ensuring the level of elegance and specialized service that Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group’s guests have come to expect,” says Oberli. As an added benefit, Mandarin Oriental’s content owners can now enter content once, and easily re-use it on the feature-rich mobile site, significantly reducing operational costs and speeding content changes.

Oberli continues, “We see the increased use of mobile as the way the world will continue to function in the foreseeable future and are delighted with the results we’ve achieved within just a few months of our mobile site launch.”

Super io r guest ser vice at a competitive p r ice Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is an award-winning, international hotel investment and management group with an ambitious mission: to be recognized as the premier global luxury hotel brand, providing 21st century luxury with oriental charm in each of its hotels, resorts and residences. The Group is currently experiencing significant growth, with 26 hotels in operation in 21 countries and another 15 under development.

In 2006, the Group initiated a significant overhaul of its web presence leveraging the SDL Tridion Web Content Management (WCM) solution, supported by interactive agency Siteworx, a U.S.-based SDL Tridion partner.

Today, Mandarin Oriental centrally manages websites for each of its 26 hotels in English and six additional languages—Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, Spanish and German, with hosting provided by Siteworx.

Cha nging travel-shopper behavio r “With the economic downturn, and the explosive growth in online adoption, we’ve seen a fundamental shift in the way consumers interact with travel brands,” says Oberli. “Even among affluent travelers who are traditionally less price-sensitive, guests are engaging with us through multiple touch points. To find the

“Our new mobile website has proven successful on several levels,” Oberli continued. “We’ve extended our reach and offered our guests yet another convenient, easy-to-use method to interact with us. Secondly, we have already received compliments from our guests about how smoothly the mobile site works and how quickly it performs. Thirdly, the number of bookings we received through the mobile site surpassed our expectations. The investment we made was returned within two months.”

“World-wide brands such as Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, have shown an overwhelming demand for flexibility in communicating with customers across all channels—including web and mobile,” says Tim McLaughlin, president of Siteworx, Inc. “We are thrilled to have helped Mandarin Oriental expand its market reach by extending the SDL WCM system to meet its mobile publishing needs.”

Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group is renowned for providing guestcentric technology to all of their customers worldwide. According to Oberli, the Group will continue to evaluate opportunities, such as device-optimized mobile applications, with a focus on meeting and exceeding their guests’ expectations for superior customer service across all channels—whether on-site, online or wherever their guests prefer to interact.

Impact

Today’s marketers are faced with an embarrassment of riches. Business data about customers and prospects has never been so abundant. Web analytics, customer profiles, and audience tracking can all provide information about resell and up-sell opportunities as well as data about prospects.

The transformation from raw data into meaningful customer profiles and interactive web applications can help organizations to retain customers, increase campaign response rates and cross-selling opportunities, and, of course, maximize their return on investment. This stream of information needs to be distilled into something usable; bottled in a way that allows marketers to quench the thirst of their marketing objectives.

B est p ractices: k now ing the destinatio n Before marketers take their first steps into channeling and utilizing the stream of information at their disposal, they must be clear on what they want to achieve. In understanding what they want, they are better able to determine what they need to do and what information will support

Tra nsfor ming raw customer infor mation into a vital resource.

them in channeling the stream of information to make sense of it.

For example, an organization trying to increase awareness of its newest product must set goals that focus their campaign efforts on specific segments of the audience available and, where possible, on specific reactions of this audience. A goal such as increasing the online awareness of the new product, and more specifically increasing the number of return visits by the target audience over a period of time, is clearly stating the intention and needs of the organization to recruit and maintain interest.

Being able to create clear goals also allows the marketer to have clear criteria for understanding when goals have been met completely, partially or not at all. The marketer can use this knowledge to refine and adjust actions and increase understanding of the target audience. This further distills the flood of information, making it manageable and relevant.

B est p ractices: p rof iling a nd ta rgeting Audience profile information provided directly by site visitors, real-time behavioral data such as click-throughs, and existing information held within CRM systems all allow marketers to profile and segment their audiences. When combined with integrated web content management and email marketing capabilities, marketers can create targeted content and campaigns to reach these segments through both channels.

Thirsty?

10 Impact

Quenching the thirst For example, an organization may have gathered some profile information when an existing customer or a prospect signed up for a newsletter. By tracking email recipient preferences, marketers can ensure that they segment and send communication to the most receptive audience. They can further enhance customer data using any number of categories provided either by the customer or by tracking their online behavior.

B est p ractice: testing, testing, 1-2-3

For instance, they may have clicked through from an email on a specific topic or campaign offer. This simple act allows marketers to segment their audience further and refine targeted campaign messages. If the web content then reflects customers’ interests, customers will automatically feel that the organization reflects their wishes and desires.

What was effective yesterday may not be effective today. Viewing communication statistics and identifying audience preferences can allow marketers to respond to trends and test content.

A lack of integration between business objectives, online campaigns and audience data can dilute the effectiveness of the best-intentioned strategies. This is partly because continually changing audiences and shifting market demands require ongoing monitoring and refinement of campaign tactics.

Campaign control through an integrated solution

B est p ractice: per so nalizing Even more specific than identifying target audience characteristics and sending targeting messages to those customer segments, is the ability to personalize information per customer. Many corporate websites now strive to offer customers with added value.

By linking content with visitor profiles and behavior, and presenting dynamic up-todate offers, organizations can markedly improve customer retention.

Managing this value across multiple customer touch points through a single interface, including email, web and customer service, can substantially reduce campaign management costs by enabling marketers to automate and integrate segmented campaigns.

A single integrated marketing solution can transform data into solid campaign-management capabilities: • Multi-channel, synchronized publication and delivery for web, email, mobile and print • Target group management capabilities • Measured campaign results and ROI • Integrated profiling, personalization and targeting tools • Efficient responsiveness to audience behavior and profiles • Project management and quality control functionality through integrated workflow processes Organizations can see results in their bottom line if they can transform data to effective strategies and tactics that really capture their target audiences’ imaginations, and in doing so, deliver that long, tall, clear glass of water that they are thirsty for.

Impact 11

to work. They go briefly to the mobile site, but don’t really have time to consider it further. Later during a break after multiple calls and meetings, they go to the online travel agency website to find out more about that dream in the sun. They look at photos of the hotels and the excursions offered.

They also check out a few review websites for the hotel and ‘tweet’ to their friends to see what other people think of the location and the travel agency. If they then see an ad for the vacation on another site, their interest is heightened. All of these moments accumulate to build their perception of the travel agency’s brand and their desire to act. They can already pictures themselves lying on that beach.

Cu r rent trends: The tools themselves are becoming less important. Instead, the combination of different channels ensures that messages are brought to more targeted audiences. This period of “channel of choice” essentially allows customers to interact and engage with a brand using their own timetable and preference.

Multichannel persuasion Using a multi-cha nnel model to p rovide custo mer s w ith the best of all wo r lds.

At your fingertips. The emergence of smartphones and other portable devices means that customers can interact with brands while commuting, travelling, relaxing on the couch or during a working day.

Increasing importance of smartphones. In Q3 of 2009, Nielsen ratings saw that users accessed the internet more on smartphones than on other feature phones. They anticipate that eventually more than 80 percent of devices accessing the internet will be these types of advanced phones.

Integration reinforces brand. Integrated marketing approaches that reuse content consistently across channels give customers greater choice and align sales and marketing efforts with customers’ real purchasing processes.

More cross-channel research. According to eMarketer, almost half of respondents to a cross-channel commerce study said they used two channels to research and purchase products and services, and 30 percent used three or more.

O ptimizing you r cha nnel impact Consumers are bombarded with an overwhelming amount of messages every day. For maximum brand impact, customers must be able to choose their own path. Whether it is online advertising, video, custom content, point-of-sale transactions, email, print or website content: consistent messages are essential and the flow between mediums creates impact.

For example, during a rainy commute a potential client may get a special offer from their travel agent for a vacation somewhere sunny while checking their email on their smartphone on the way

12 Impact

At the end of the day an integrated marketing approach needs tools that facilitate a bird’s-eye view of marketing campaigns for different target audiences. This includes local offers, language choice, product choice, channel integration and consistency.

Inconsistent branding and messaging, complicated transaction models and patchy approaches reduce the impact of even the most creative marketing campaign.

In response, web content management systems are becoming online marketing platforms that support multi-channel marketing. These platforms integrate brand, interaction and email tools within the online platform to simplify the multi-channel world.

Case study The Telenor Group provides voice, data, content and other communication services to 14 countries across Europe and Asia.

Telenor has grown from a national telephone company in Norway, to become one of the world’s largest mobile providers in less than two decades, with a subscriber base of 172 million mobile subscribers.

With a broad variety of services and products, they now use their website to better communicate with clients and retailers. In 2008,

Telenor Sverige AB (Sweden) decided to take full control of their online presence.

Purchasing SDL Tridion was part of their plan to reduce their timeto-market and provide a fresh online presence. Their plans for the new site included a technical update, a look-and-feel redesign as well as a complete rewrite of all site content to ensure that the organization improved their customer interaction.

Ta k ing co ntrol Prior to purchasing the SDL WCM Solution, an external agency managed and updated the website. As a result, they rarely updated the site since they constantly had to contact the agency for any changes. This resulted in a delayed time-to-market and fairly static and outdated web content.

Robert Forss, Telenor’s Solution Architect Web Portals, says, “Before SDL Tridion, changes in our site took much longer to implement, and always required the skills of the external agency.

Today, the website content is incredibly dynamic and responsive since web editors can make changes to the website themselves.

Editors can now update content so easily; web content is now updated daily, providing our customers with continually fresh, relevant content.”

Telenor customer service also uses the website to provide customers with a clear and accessible interface to customer support.

Reaching ou t to retailer s The next stage of the project was to create a retailer portal for Telenor products. Previously, updating information and tailoring special offers to different retailers was largely a manual process.

Using the retailer portal, individual retailers can log into the system and they automatically see specific content based on their profile.

This setup allowed Telenor, for the first time, to really reach out to retailers providing them with the ability to easily market the Telenor products they want to sell. All of the content in the portal is secure and is based on predefined settings for the different types of retailers. The retailer administrators can manage their own content within the portal, but this content is all based on reusable content from the SDL Tridion system.

Telenor

Continually improving customer and reseller interaction

Fu tu re steps In the future, Telenor will extend these capabilities to provide personalized content to users using SDL Tridion’s personalization module. Telenor hopes to begin this phase of the project end of 2010.

For the Telenor website, they have found that customers are now finding the information they need faster, resulting in much more refined measurement of customer behavior and site statistics.

Telenor considers the SDL WCM solution to be a huge asset in managing not only their current website but also for their future rollouts to meet future business objectives.

Impact 13

Creating brand value through customer intimacy

A sou n d v isito r intellig ence p rog ra m is the fou n datio n of increasing b ra n d value

Leading companies deliver value. This value can be delivered based on operational excellence, customer intimacy and product leadership.

Customer intimacy means that organizations care about their customers. For many companies, this involves a significant paradigm shift from the old inside-out way of thinking. However, a successfully executed customer-intimacy strategy builds long-term relationships with customers, creating trust, loyalty and long-term commitment.

W hat is b ra n d value?

Brand value is one of the most valuable assets organizations have.

In a competitive market, it can mean the difference between the rise or fall of a product or service and it is a key differentiator above and beyond mere features and functions.

14 Impact

Customers no longer want marketers to tell them what to think.

Instead, they want to express their own thoughts about brands.

As a result, brands need to demonstrate that they are actively listening, honestly responding and truly personalizing their services to customer wishes.

Put customers at ease. Customers should look forward to interacting with the brand. If they know that every time they go to a site, something will interest, surprise and delight them, they will want to visit. If it is easy for them to accomplish their goals on your site, they will respond to calls to action.

The tone and voice of online content should reflect the customer relationship. Their expectations of the brand set the tone for copy, visual images and interaction.

Can they do it with their eyes shut? Not literally, of course, but customer experiences with a brand should be like following their instinct. This involves providing a website experience for that first-time visitor. Where are they most likely to look? And what are they most likely to do? Websites that provide a positive first impression will provide instant gratification.

Build expectation. The consistency of this experience, even if it is the consistency of surprise and innovation, reinforces the relationship.

There’s nothing worse than having had a great first experience, raised expectations and then being disappointed.

Consistency involves brand standards and maintaining experience quality across all channels. If the entire digital experience is coherent, the reliability and loyalty to brand value is reinforced.

Customer intelligence. Customer data and analytics can provide the best possible recommendations. Targeted product and service offerings that relate directly to customer interests help to build a relationship and strengthen brand reputation.

Belief is endorsement. Nurturing brand evangelists is a function of trust and belief. When visitors submit personal information, they do so because they know this information will not be abused or misused. Visitors can feel valued if they see results from their input.

If their trust is used to build customer value and is translated into relevant content and offers, companies manage to establish this trust. While the bottom line of any company is ultimately to make a profit, the reality is that they can’t do this without their customers and the ways in which customers think and talk about a company or product and how this corresponds with their attitudes, beliefs, needs and desires.

In the know

“A brand is the personification of a product, service, or even entire company.” people and not others, so also do you like to be with certain brands and not others.

Also, like a person, a brand must mature and change its product over time. But its character, and core beliefs shouldn’t change. Neither should its fundamental personality and outlook on life.

People have character…so do brands. A person’s character flows from his/her integrity: the ability to deliver under pressure, the willingness to do what is right rather than what is expedient. You Like any person, a brand has a physical ‘body’ . . . Also, like a per-

judge a person’s character by his/her past performance and the way

son, a brand has a name, a personality, character and a reputation.

he/she thinks and acts in both good times, and especially bad.

Like a person, you can respect, like and even love a brand. You can

The same are true of brands.”

think of it as a deep personal friend, or merely an acquaintance. You can view it as dependable or undependable; principled or opportunistic; caring or capricious. Just as you like to be around certain

Robert T. Blanchard in his “Parting Essay,” July 1999

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Top 10 trends and wh

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I n novatio n in te chnolog y, customer respo nses to these innovatio ns a nd cha nges in the ways that businesses interact with their customer s all have a huge impact o n how ma r keter s do their jobs. H ere a re 10 trends that a re cha nging the ma r keting la ndscap e.

T R EN D 1: O nline everyw h er e

With the rise of smartphones and netbooks as commodity items, and increasingly competitive rates for mobile internet access, more and more people are online everywhere. Some people can’t bear to go anywhere that they can’t check their email, surf the web or instant message, and now, they don’t have to. Impossible even a few years ago, many people are online all the time.

Word to the wise: Make sure that websites have a mobile-phone-friendly version. Everyone is online all the time including during their commute home from work. Being online everywhere means that visitors have more time to visit websites as well as extended capabilities to talk about companies and products anywhere, at any time.

T R EN D 2: I N FO R M AT I O N OV ER LOA D

Swamped by content, people are increasingly looking for ways to filter it. Between news feeds, multiple email addresses, even more social network memberships, blogs and special interest sites, corporate marketing and communication efforts seem to be ignored.

From Google Buzz to feed readers, from social applications to aggregation websites, people are looking for a way to filter the flood of information that threatens to drown them. More specifically, they want to make sense of the information so that they can easily identify what is relevant and what is not.

Word to the wise: Publish your content wisely. Stay relevant. Avoid the blah-blah-yadayada, because no one is listening to it.

16 Impact

T R EN D 3: CH A N N EL CH O I CES

Audiences can approach content from more channels than ever. They decide what their preferred channel is. Whatever channels marketers use, including web, email, mobile or social sites, a coordinated offering is required that is tailored for different audiences.

Word to the wise: Find out which channels different audiences use and what they use them for. This will help marketers to deliver the right content to the right channel.

T R EN D 4: V I DEO VO LU M E

A study by comScore indicated that online video viewing reached record levels with more than 28 billion videos viewed in one month alone. 84.4% of the total U.S. internet audience viewed online video. Video has been shown to enhance customer contact, create viral marketing trends, and reinforce brand awareness in a way that text rarely does. In-video advertising can be very lucrative for high-traffic video.

Word to the wise: Know your target audience and create the video content and visual presentation that will draw them in.

No one wants to watch a PowerPoint presentation in a video. Make it matter and choose wisely, taking into consideration video length and the controls provided to visitors.

7 5 9 8 6 10 Trends

hat they mean for you T R EN D 5: PRO L I FI C PRO FI L ES

How many usernames and passwords can one person have? A lot. More than they can remember, actually. Many online visitors are simply unwilling to create yet another set, let alone complete all of the profile information requested. This can prevent potential customers from interacting with websites.

Word to the wise: Integrate open-source login capabilities such as OpenID, which allows visitors to sign in using a single username and password on multiple sites.

Single-click logins lower the threshold.

These types of options save basic profile information and pre-populate frequently used form fields for them, alleviating the burden of remembering yet another password. Visitors can manage their profiles centrally, providing them with greater control.

T R EN D 7: H I R E YOUR CUSTO M ERS

Hiring your customers could be your best move so far (and your cheapest). Often spoken of, but still true, your best advocate is a happy existing customer. People still tend to trust their peers much more than a corporate voice.

Word to the wise: Harness your customers’ creativity and increase online engagement by creating contests, using user-generated content and integrating customer endorsement into marketing strategy. This tactic still requires care and planning, but can be cost-effective and convincing. Customers who have special preview or beta privileges can be great ambassadors and set the agenda by creating pre-sale buzz.

T R EN D 8: VA LU E IS E V ERY T H I NG

T R EN D 6: GR A PH I C G LO RY

This trend is related to information overload. In order to help audiences deal with the over-abundance of information that they need to process, more and more companies are providing condensed information in increasingly creative and beautiful ways.

Word to the wise: Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words. Sometimes it says less and does it more effectively. If you really want to convey the heart of the matter, consider a well-crafted image rather than another paragraph.

Visual information and infographics can make information immediately accessible and soothe the information overload headache. .

In the face of lightning-fast reviews and public responses to products and services, businesses are under more pressure to really deliver value. Companies no longer have the luxury of delivering faulty products or poor service, as a whole community of people will share this experience faster than you can say “Tweet�.

Word to the wise: Companies need to create value at every opportunity. Customer loyalty and endorsements are their bread and butter, but this customer fidelity needs to be earned. If you provide quality, they will talk about you, buy from you, stay with you and hopefully, say nice things about you.

T R EN D 9: YOU WA N T I T, YOU GOT I T

We are in the era of immediate gratification. Everything seems to be just a mouseclick away. This trend has a big impact on expectations of usability and the ability of customers to not only identify offers quickly but to react to them just as quickly. This also applies to the ways in which customers can share information about offers with their friends. The share button on your offer is the difference between an offer to one and an offer to many.

Word to the wise: Make it easy for customers to find what they want through message, visual design and functionality.

This trend blurs the lines between marketing, sales and service since the process should be easy and intuitive to any visitor.

Less effort equals more satisfaction.

T R EN D 10: SOCI A L M ED I A M A R K E T I NG M AT T ERS

Companies are no longer just talking about social media marketing; they are doing it and spending more on it than ever before.

As companies discover what works for their different target segments they are finding their way through the Facebook-TwitterYouTube-LinkedIn -Digg-Flickr jungle. Even if the choice is against using these media, marketers are under increasing pressure to justify their choices in the boardroom.

Word to the wise: Understand how these different media can affect your customer communication, brand exposure, site traffic and search engine optimization so that you can make wise, strategic choices.

Where applicable, use subject matter experts to interact with the community. It will build your street cred.

Impact 17

In the know “What the Web, blogs, Twitter and social media reflect is a customer revolt. The Web is a more rational space. The Web thrives in open, questioning cultures. The Web is not about technology, but psychology. A new psychological make-up.

A new type of customer is emerging. This customer is less emotional and more rational. This customer does not believe in blind faith. They are on the Web to research, compare, to find out for themselves. They wish to search out the views of others like them who have also bought the product rather than obediently accepting the organization’s message.

If you want to be successful in engaging with this sort of customer then you need to think of them as an intelligent stranger. Relentlessly focus on helping them save time, because for many people on the Web, time is more important than money. Time is the currency of the Web. (This is also true for intranets.) The customer who spends the least time spends the most money.”

Gerry McGovern, Founder and CEO of Customer Carewords “Customers: irrational sheep or intelligent strangers?”

Posted to http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/ on April 5, 2010

What you can Social media are a bit like the new gadget you bought–it’s cool, but you still haven’t figured out exactly what all the buttons do or how to use it. We’ve just scratched the surface in terms of understanding both the pitfalls and the benefits of engaging in social media.

Rather than focusing on the gadget, marketers need to remember their initial objectives: whether this is creating awareness, interacting, supporting, creating loyalty or creating energy in the marketplace.

Like any seemingly insurmountable challenge, this requires a social media strategy rather than ad-hoc blundering and point solutions, which often lead to conclusions based on less than rational thinking. Some best practices are emerging in harnessing social media to meet business goals.

Social media behavior can tell you a lot about the success of your campaigns. In previous times, if a campaign fell short of its goals or, conversely, was wildly successful, marketers had to take additional research steps to find out what the keys to success were. Today, marketers can get their initial debrief directly from online community feedback. When integrated with ROI figures, this information provides both the quantitative and qualitative picture that can inform future decision-making.

18 Impact

User reach

how far and wide your messages spread

User impact

how can your efforts change consumers’ opinions or behaviors

Volume of participation

how many consumers interact with your social initiatives

Quality of participation

how strong and/or deep customer interaction is with your social initiatives

Volume of energy

how many consumers talk about your company and products

Quality of energy

what opinions are expressed by those who talk about you and what the influence of those consumers is

© Forrester Research, Inc.

Understand what different types of social media can reveal. Nate Elliott from Forrester Research suggested that marketers can begin measuring the impact of social media such as social networks, blogs, video, podcasts, comments and reviews using six metrics:

Talk amongst yourselves

learn from listening in Depending on business objectives and media employed, concepts like subscribers, unique visitors, views, and reviews can all gain relevance and can signal success or failure.

Use your fans. By finding out who is cheering for you, and better yet, who is influencing your crowd, you gain valuable information about how to maintain engagement and reinforce customer retention.

Again, this power of word-of-mouth endorsement from trusted peers provides you with clues as to what the best vehicles are for future campaign activities.

What customers say behind your back in peer communities can provide you with invaluable feedback for determining the future direction of your products or services and the way in which you build your brand, image and identity. Marketing professionals have greater access than ever to what customers say when they think you aren’t listening.

Time for innovation.

Our experience with and extensive knowledge of online innovation and social media combined with a strong performance track record make us the partner of choice.

Our commitment to your success and satisfaction are recognized globally. We have demonstrated the ability to align your online strategy to match your business goals and deliver the resulting projects on time and within budget.

Contact Laurens van Wonderen, lvanwonderen@deloitte.nl

Š 2010 Deloitte, Member of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

Shall we meet?

Joining the o nline a nd of f line wo r ld to ad va ntage

Imagine if you could hold an event where all the key characteristics of your target audience were known. Picture individuals meeting one another who are excited at the prospect of interacting with your new product and being part of the launch.

Envision that you know where they are in the buying cycle.

What if I were to tell you that the opportunity for experiential marketing has opened its doors wide?

Innumerable online communities have emerged based on special interests. Everything from food to famine, health to hobbies, fashion to farming, and celebrity to crocheting –individuals have connected with one another and have taken advantage of online anonymity or infamy.

In recent years, these online relationships have moved into the real world with increasing frequency. No longer simply satisfied with status updates, blog posts and forum contributions,

20 Impact

online networks are taking to the street or conference halls to ‘meet and greet’ in real life.

Online and offline channels continue to strengthen one another. Promoting an event through a social networking site gives organizations a tailor-made targeted marketing platform, as people have willingly chosen to participate in that brand’s site. Bringing fans together for an event, promotion or tangible real-world activity reinforces the relationship between members and their association with the promoting organization.

Interaction between the online and offline worlds provides pre-made segmentation and targeting opportunities – the target community has essentially identified itself, its preferences and its interests, providing the perfect opportunity to reinforce experiential marketing offline.

Case study

BBVA

A new integrated customer experience With its leading position in the Spanish market and over 47 million customers in more than 30 countries, BBVA continues to focus on creating customer value through both its online and offline channels. BBVA has been a valued SDL WCM Solutions customer since 2002. Through the years, we have admired their commitment to create and increase customer value through an ever-innovative online channel.

We recently spoke with Ignacio Ortega, Director of Internet and Mobile Channels, to find out more about their latest activities and vision for BBVA’s online channel. One of BBVA’s core corporate principles is placing their customers at the center of their business. BBVA wanted to make sure it followed through on this commitment to customers by giving them control over their online experience.

T he ma n date: a g reat customer ex p er ience “Our main objective is to provide a great customer experience, and the easiest possible path to the information they are looking for and to the tasks they want to perform. Today, we speak our customers’ language,” says Ignacio Ortega. “We recognize that the world is changing and that the banking industry needs to change with it.”

He continues, “We knew that we needed a new focus. We wanted to personalize the display of content on our site and to base this content on customer choice. Previously our website was divided between the public website and the customer´s website.

We wanted to integrate our customers’ experience in a single, highly attractive interface. We believe in the customers’ right to choose, and that they will make the right choice.”

BBVA wanted to ensure that every single channel recognizes their client and anticipate their needs by providing relevant services.

For example, if a customer went to a grocery store and found that their account was short of funds, BBVA sent them an SMS with an offer so they could complete their purchase, based on the fact that food is an essential item.

Per so nal, releva nt, integ rated Early in 2010, BBVA rolled out its new website. BBVA now provides an integrated visitor experience for the corporate public site

and the secure private banking site, enriched with personalized content based on real customer data.

In addition, BBVA has added new personalization capabilities for Personal Finance Management. The personal banking site offers customers a choice of widgets to customize their online banking experience. The widgets displayed are based on target group data, but all customers have access to the full range of options at any time.

“We looked for a way to develop a value-chain so that we can provide real value based on customer intelligence,” says Ortega.

BBVA customers can now benchmark themselves against their peers and view an integrated dashboard that shows the real-time value of all of their assets including third-party assets.

“Following the launch of the new site, we listened to the social buzz around our innovative approach on Twitter and Facebook and, so far, all of the feedback has been very positive. We are very excited about this response to innovation,” says Ortega.

I n the f u tu re…

Moving forward, BBVA has big plans to improve the customer experience even more. The next phase will concentrate on combining the online experience with the physical experience. “Customers want a seamless experience, where they can perform some transactions online, but make other decisions with direct contact in the bank itself. “ He continues, “In the future, we will allow our customers to choose the model that fits their requirements, whether doing their day-to-day banking online, or, meeting with advisors in the bank, but they will then see direct confirmation of their branch visit reflected in their online environment. Transactions that are important such as mortgages and insurance often require faceto-face content, we’ll close the loop by providing additional information or confirmation of their choices online, allowing customers the luxury of choosing what they need through the channel they want to use.”

Email marketing Despite predictions to the contrary, email marketing is not dead. Instead, email marketing is still one of the easiest, cheapest and most effective ways to get marketing messages to many.

What has changed, however, is the call for email campaigns to be relevant and engaging.

In an effort to avoid the spam folder or the delete button, email marketers are still very much in the game, but they are developing best practices to use email as a way of creating relationships with prospects and customers.

Content matters. The last decade has featured a lot of discussion about choosing the right channel for your content and on deciding which channel should go with which message. This conversation has changed since audiences have become increasingly channel-agnostic. High-impact content is more important than channel.

Email can create flow through all of your channels.

Your corporate website, print campaign and even social media presence should reinforce one another and provide email recipients with a unified experience. This means that email marketers need to take an integrated approach and align with the strategies of other departments too.

Recipients are less patient, so delivering relevant, targeted content based on customer information is even more important. It is not about delivery rate, but about click-throughs and conversion rates. One message can’t possibly fit all. A free scarf won’t raise a lot of excitement in Melbourne in December, but it just might be the perfect offer in Seattle.

You can send targeted email even if you don’t have enough data.

For example, an email may contain three distinct offers for three different target groups. By tracking click-through rates, you get to know something new about these unknown audiences. These emails also give marketers the opportunity to create distinct landing pages that match the targets for whom the content was written.

Mobile phones challenge your email real estate. Accessing email using mobile phones has changed the face of email marketing. Messages need to be shorter and more to-the-point.

Complicated, graphics-driven emails are often unsuitable for mobile displays. Make every pixel matter.

Your reputation precedes you. For better or for worse, a positive audience perception is based on multiple interactions with brand and product in multiple channels—not just email.

Creating engagement depends on everything your organization does, so it needs to be integrated and strategic.

Email matters

Adding value through best practices in email marketing 22 Impact

You can recapture the attention of subscribers who habitually click “Delete”. Try different things in the subject line and different offers in the body to reestablish your value.

Test your assumptions and measure response. Calls to action can take any number of forms—from links to microsites to special offers to buttons. By testing these approaches, you can find out what works best.

Nurture the relationship. Continue to stay in touch with your audience, trends in the marketplace and future opportunities. Never let your email marketing become “more of the same” since this is the quickest way to lose customer intimacy and miss future opportunities. Your value to the customer is based on a relationship, which requires care and attention.

What they are saying right now Real-time rev iews cha nge you r time to ma r ket

have a voice. This increases pressure on businesses to provide complete customer satisfaction, as “no bad deed will go unpublished”.

Consequentially, marketing activities that create buzz within social media can also have a greater impact than ever. That cool and quirky promotional video or giveaway can potentially have more impact than ever – a message on a social networking site is often not far away. Marketers that were once reticent to take part in the social media movement now need to consider its impact on their best-laid plans.

Social listening platforms are emerging as a way to identify online interactions that present sales opportunities. This type of technology can help marketers monitor mentions on media sources such as news sites, blogs, social media sites, review sites and communities.

With more and more real-time updates on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, people write about both tiny details and important events that relate to their lives.

Product press releases, events, TV-shows, brands, videos or even their latest haircut are discussed faster than you can say, “What’s happening?” These different social media have evolved into a form of cross-channel, word-of-mouth marketing through a myriad of “publish once to multiple locations” tools. Each customer can affect your business within seconds, since now all customers

Ultimately, the impact of real-time reviews and what customers are saying about brands and products right now has never been so important. Business is now a two-way street. Some businesses have embraced social media and benefit from listening and responding to customer comments.

Brands that provide good customer engagement online can create online social conversations that strengthen their brand and presence in the marketplace.

You need to be seen to W here a re you w hen people sea rch fo r you o nline? B eing se en in sea rch engines a mou nts to showing up o n the f ir st pag e of results based o n a multitu de of sea rch ter ms.

T he qu estio n then becomes, “ W hat wo rds do they use w hen they think o r talk abou t you r p roduct o r ser vice?”

Customers enter a store based on its product display, convenience and appearance. Not surprisingly, shopping mall real estate prices are based on areas that generate the most traffic. The ‘internet mall’ is enormous and if you are not found, you are, essentially, not there. The old adage, “Location, location, location” applies to search engines as much as it does to physical location, with over 70% of online users starting their surfing sessions with search.

Every marketer knows that search rankings have a big impact on the sites that visitors go to. At the end of the day, it’s about maximizing your exposure to the marketplace by appearing at the top of that coveted first page of search results.

Sea rch ter ms tell us so mething A customer looking for a new camera might, at the beginning of their buying cycle, not yet search for a specific brand, model or type. At this early stage, their keywords could be as simple as ‘camera’, or ‘digital SLR’ or even ‘digital SLR reviews’.

After they’ve done some further research, the terms become more specific and reflect what they have discovered. At this point, they may well search for a specific model of camera from a specific brand. To get the most out of your SEO efforts, it is therefore essential that you start by identifying customer care words—the very lingo that your potential customers are using.

24 Impact

SEO marketing

be heard: targeted SEO

Outside of the desire to purchase, factors such as location, seasonality, demographics and cultural background all have an impact on the way online users “talk” through search queries. “To really optimize SEO, marketers need to know their audiences, how they think and even how they approach the problem,” says Bob Price, Sales Director at SDL eCommerce Technologies.

“If you put 10 people in one room and ask them to search for the same item,” he continues, “they will all use different search terms. The terms that they use, and the complexity of terms that they use reflects not only their personal profiles, but also their desire to purchase.”

He continues, “The more attributes someone uses to search for a product or service typically reflects their stage in the buying cycle. 75 percent of conversions are the result of searches based on three attributes or more such as color, brand and product.”

Ref ining you r ter ms The biggest challenge marketers face is narrowing down the terminology so that it is effective and manageable in producing results. Every new product can easily turn into hundreds of search terms. As a result, focusing on key target audiences and their characteristics becomes crucial.

Terms change with passing fads, user-generated content, changes in the market and new products, so it pays to stay on top of

the terminology used. The ability to apply translated and localized terms to content reinforced the global impact of the SEO effort.

Copywriters, editors and functionality experts need to be aware of terminology, usability and strategy. Structured WCM content can help these contributors to add the right terminology easily by providing the means to continuously analyze and optimize the content.

C o ntent plus. . .

In addition to the content itself, factors such as friendly URLs, navigation, accessibility, and language all have an effect on whether a link falls on the first or third page of search results.

Simple, clear and relevant URLs, breadcrumbs, and sitemaps make it easy for search engines to enter the navigation structure. Content authors should not be burdened with these technicalities. The CMS must make it simple to manage, modify and translate the site structure and URL as needed.

Effective SEO has a snowball effect for site popularity and ultimately the ability of visitors to decide to purchase.

It changes a game of hide and seek into, “I found you!”

Impact 25

SapientNitro Engaging travelers on the go

Denver International Airport (DIA) is consistently recognized as a leader internationally when it comes to world-class customer service, airport amenities and traveler-friendly features. The airport leadership is always looking for ways to improve the traveler experience and continues to invest to make that experience better for travelers who call Denver home and for travelers that connect through or travel to the Mile High City.

For Kim Day, Manager of Aviation at DIA, providing excellent customer service has always been and continues to be a priority.

JD Powers recently recognized DIA’s continued commitment, naming the airport third for customer service in the U.S. large hub category.

To support this ongoing vision, DIA approached airport consultancy SH&E, an ICF International company, and SDL WCM Solution partner SapientNitro to update their existing website and develop a mobile application to further enhance DIA’s customer service offerings.

Air travel is a stressful proposition. As departure time looms or is delayed, even the seasoned traveler experiences tunnel vision: rushing from home, to parking, to check-in, to security, to boarding gate, with barely a pause to see what the airport has to offer them before departure or on arrival.

SapientNitro, worked with SH&E and DIA to identify ways to engage the traveler before and during their journey through a combination of mobile and web-based capabilities. The combined team envisioned a solution that would not only provide travelers with that much-needed sense of control, but would also give marketers a communication platform ideally suited to an airport environment.

26 Impact

Ever y thing traveler s need to k now in real time Individual travelers receive all the information they need to create a seamless and pleasurable airport experience: • airport parking information • flight and gate information • security wait times • maps of terminals • dining, shopping and entertainment options • weather information for their departure and destination cities • targeted promotions based on gate location and time of day • real-time user generated ratings and reviews of the airport concessionaires and facilities Equipped with all of this information at their fingertips, travelers are now in full control of their time at the airport.

Customer ser vice f ir st Denver International Airport (DIA) launched the multi-channel airport platform IONOS™ in April 2010 with a “customer service first” approach. The launch includes the airport’s website www. flydenver.com and a mobile app, called goHow Airport.

At the State of DIA 2010, Kim Day, airport Manager of Aviation clearly stated her commitment to customer service, “The travel experience can be burdensome and irritating, or it can be pleasurable and stimulating. We can provide what passengers

Case study want and need, or we can be complacent and uninspired. By offering the best customer service and by building loyalty among passengers I believe we can stand out among our competitors.”

T he ma r keting oppo r tu nit y “For marketers,” says Ryan Scott, Director at SapientNitro, “the airport is a unique advertising and promotional environment.

We know when a traveler should arrive, where they will go and when they are going to leave. This provides marketers with the opportunity to precisely target individual travelers while delivering a range of valuable information, ranging from real time flight info to the location of concessions and airport services.”

He continues, “We can begin to market specific concessions or services to the traveler that they can take advantage of based on where they are in the airport and the amount of time to departure. This ability to identify and message to such a highly convertible consumer in real-time is new to the industry and creates a significant advantage for savvy marketers.”

I O N OS a n d S D L Tr idio n As the heart of the SapientNitro solution, SDL Tridion manages content for both web and mobile applications from a single content source. This allows airports to fully manage and approve content while allowing concessionaires, advertisers and others to provide travelers with relevant content.

On choosing the SDL Tridion content management system Scott says, “We looked at a number of content management systems. We felt that SDL Tridion provided the solid platform, sound security model, architecture and hosting capabilities, we needed for the IONOS solution. In addition, its multi-language and multi-site management capabilities meet the real needs of both travelers and airports.”

For additional information please visit www.ionosplatform.com

Global brands are local brands International brand management must make room for local expression. SDL Tridion’s BluePrinting model makes this possible.

Amaze’s expertise makes it happen.

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21/4/10 14:26:20

Case study Cha nging the wo r ld o ne child at a time Compassion is a non-profit organization that focuses on meeting the needs of children in the developing world. Its mission is to alleviate child poverty by providing a combination of programs that help Compassion-sponsored children to thrive, not just survive.

At the heart of the program is the child sponsorship program whereby they create a relationship between a donor with a specific child. Today, Compassion provides child development aid to more than one million children in 26 countries.

We talked with Taylor Holmes, Senior Web Product Manager at Compassion, to find out more about his vision for their upcoming website project.

“The relationship between sponsors and children is very important at Compassion. For sponsors, it puts a specific name and face to their donation. In addition, sponsors and children are able to write one another to enable this relationship to grow. Currently, we allow our sponsors to write children through our website to help encourage and support these relationships,” says Holmes.

Sponsorship, Leadership Development and Complimentary Interventions. All of these programs follow the development and growth of children from infancy right through to adulthood. In addition to these programs, Compassion also raises money as a response to crises, such as the earthquake in Haiti for which Compassion raised $23 million US. Both their web and email efforts played a significant role in this initiative.

“Any time our organization is mentioned in the press or media, or a topic related to child poverty becomes prominent, our website can be inundated with visits. We need to make sure that we can respond as quickly as possible, so that we can channel resources to the right area and provide the information visitors are looking for.”

Compassion International

Charity Navigator, an independent charity review group, has given Compassion its highest rating eight years in a row. That places Compassion among the top one percent of the thousands of non-profit charitable organizations it reviews. Compassion is also a good-standing member of the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

T he imp o r ta nce of the web “Our website is vital to our communication, both in terms of finding new sponsors and to continue the online sponsorship relationships. Our US website is responsible for approximately 45 percent of our revenue. Online, sponsors can donate, manage their account, change their details and find out how their child is doing,” continues Holmes.

Compassion’s four main programs are Child Survival, Child

28 Impact

Choosing S D L Tr idio n “We chose SDL Tridion as the solution that would best help us overcome some of the issues we were having with maintaining and managing our disparate web properties. We are building our new site from scratch and are very excited about the possibilities SDL Tridion brings to our future site.”

In selecting SDL Tridion, Compassion referred to analysts Forrester and Gartner. Holmes says, “It was not just the fact that SDL Tridion was rated so highly, it was also that fact that they were considered to be a growing leader, implying that they can meet our future needs as well.”

“On the technical side, we wanted be able to go to .NET, migrate our existing content and leverage workflow, approval processes and version control. We are looking forward to seeing how BluePrinting will help us manage not only our main site, but also the hundred or so microsites we use to highlight specific campaigns or issues,” he continues.

Holmes says, “From a value to cost ratio, SDL Tridion provides a really cost-effective model for handling websites for our headquarters and partners and as a way to support our partners around the world.”

Emoting online

But how do they really feel about you?

It ’s ab ou t creating a n emotio nal co nnectio n in a n o nline wo r ld.

While people generally like to believe that they are rational thinkers when making decisions, research shows that decisions are also influenced by emotion. In real life, emotional connection takes place through a smile, a frown, a nod—body language.

What do you do when you can’t convey this emotion physically?

When engaging customers online, marketers realize that emo-

tions influence how customers act, and the final decision to be loyal to a company is, in fact, the combination of thought, reason and emotion.

Customers’ needs and wants hinge on emotional factors and poor web experiences can leave them cold. Issues such as inferior usability, disjointed design, inconsistent branding and lack of relevant content can push customers away.

Top tips for creating an emotional connection: 1. Give your brand and products personality. A consistent tone and experience give customers the feeling of familiarity and reinforce trust and recognition. Due to the proliferation of social networks, customers are less and less responsive to “corporate speak”. Tone, messaging and the level of formality used all need to create connection. People would rather buy from people than from companies.

2. Connect to their senses and tell a story they know. Providing a variety of sensorial options including what they see and hear can evoke powerful emotions, as can images and words that evoke memories of scents, flavors and touch.

3. Know what customers want and give it to them. Help customer reach their specific goals. By knowing your customers’ goals and objectives, you can create an online experience that fulfils their primary wants. By allowing customers to give feedbackthrough tools such as comments, rating and surveys, marketers can keep a direct line of communication open.

In the know

“Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the marketer.”

“Marketing is what happens in between the overt acts of the

It’s not marketing when I use your product as intended. It’s mar-

marketer. Yes you made a package and yes you designed a uniform

keting when my friend and I are talking about how the thing we

and yes you ran an ad... but the consumer’s take on what you did is

bought from you changed us.

driven by what happened out of the corner of her eye, in the dead spaces, in the moments when you let your guard down.

It’s not marketing when the smiling waitress appears with the soup.

It’s marketing when we hear two waiters

Marketing is what happens when you’re not trying, when you’re

muttering to each other behind the serving

being transparent and when there’s no script in place.

station.”

It’s not marketing when everything goes right on the flight to Chicago. It’s marketing when your people don’t respond after losing the guitar that got checked.

Seth Godin From “In between frames.” posted on http://sethgodin.typepad.com on January 20, 2010.

Impact 29

Quest

Software, Inc. Enabling a global self-service platform

“It was very refreshing to meet the honest and well-prepared SDL sales team. Unlike other vendors who would just say yes to any requirement, SDL was very clear about what the system does and does not do. We felt good about choosing SDL WCMS as our partner from the first engagement and have been proven right throughout the proof of concept phase against numerous vendors.”

Lea r ning f rom ex per ience “We learned a lot from our previous experience so we had quite a specific list of requirements, one of the most important being system performance,” says Kinnison. “We are a large global organization, so performance is key. We can’t have delays in getting information out to our own internal team or our external customers.”

“Our support website also integrates with our CRM system to allow customers to easily find information based on their relationship with Quest. Another priority was an easy-to-use workflow.

We had a difficult experience with our previous site, so this time we wanted to make sure that this kind of functionality was outof-the-box.”

Quest Software creates and supports systems management products that are designed to help their customers solve every day IT challenges faster and easier by improving their core IT performance.

Its customer support website is used for a global customer base with cases from North and Latin America, EMEA and Asia Pacific. Kim Kinnison, VP of Support for Quest Software says, “We strongly embrace the knowledge centered support methodology, which means we share knowledge with our customers as soon as we have it. Our philosophy is to ensure that our customers can access the most up to date information as quickly as possible.”

M e eting hig h p er fo r ma nce requirements With this goal in mind, a few years ago, Quest deployed a new support website and made considerable investment into creating a knowledge base from which both the internal Quest team and its customers and prospects could easily find information. The initial system, however, did not meet expectations providing neither the stability nor performance required by its customer base.

Equipped with new knowledge of what they needed for their customer support website, they decided to look for a web content management system that would not only meet the requirements of that site, but could also be expanded to run their corporate website as well.

“We had a rocky start, but when SDL Professional Services joined, we really saw the project turn around. The consultants did an excellent job and the SDL senior management was phenomenal in getting the right people to us.” Quest launched their new customer support website in March 2010 and will launch their corporate site in May of 2010.

O u t of the box, stable a nd easy to use Quest was happy with the amount of functionality and customer support capabilities provided by SDL Tridion. “From our previous experience, too much custom coding was required to accomplish what we needed. SDL Tridion provided what we needed as part of the core product and allowed us to configure the system for our specific needs.”

Kinnison adds, “Now non-technical business owners can quickly add and change content. With the built in roles and workflow, our employees can make real-time changes to the website. Changing things on a daily basis is now easy. We move people through each phase so that anyone can become a content publisher.” She continues, “Based on what we are seeing, it is evident that the new site has made finding solutions easier and quicker for both our internal and external users.”

In the future, the corporate site and support site will provide a single sign-on and the experience between the corporate site and support site will be seamless, since both will run on SDL Tridion.

No matter what Quest’s customers look for and no matter where they look, they will get the same results.

Quest Software, Inc. can be found in offices around the globe and at www.quest.com.

Quest and Quest Software are registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

30 Impact

SDL Tridion

PIONEER in JAPAN

TaKT achievements and activities: • • • •

First partner in Japan (2008) SDL Tridion localization to Japanese (2008) SDL Tridion consulting (since 2009) Fax delivery system integration (2010)

TaKT provides Consulting Services, Enterprise Solutions, Web Development and Infrastructure Solutions.

URL http://www.takt.co.jp Email SDLTridion@takt.co.jp

タクトシステムズ株式会社 営業推進部 SDL事業室

1-10 Kuramae 3-chome Taito-ku, Tokyo, 111-0051 Japan +81 (0)3 5820 8150

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