Thursday, February 25, 2010

Measure Up Speaker Spotlight: Aneta Hall, Pitney Bowes

Over the next few weeks, in preparation for the Measure Up Marketing conference we'll be highlighting conversations focusing on marketing measurement best practices. Our first speaker is Aneta Hall, Pitney Bowes.


Read Aneta's Podcast Transcript here.


This blog post is co-posted with StevenGroves.com.
Social media in the enterprise is creating a huge shift in many companies, but what happens when a 90 year old company decides to invest in a process of listening to their customers and actually letting them talk to one another?

As part of the series around the ROI of Social Media, and leading up to the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago next month, we interview Aneta Hall, the Emerging Media Manager at Pitney Bowes. She is a presenter at the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago, where her topic is “From Fear to Trust – Employee Engagement in Social Media”.

Aneta introduces us to the processes Pitney Bowes (PB), as a 90 year old company, has adopted using social media to connect with prospects, customers, employees and stakeholders around their mail and information needs. The changes have driven real change in the various business units, particularly as in the last 10 years they have acquired a variety of businesses. PB now provides a broad range of solutions to the market, not only in mail instruments and document management, but also location intelligence, traffic pattern analysis, predictive intelligence, and relationship marketing. Aneta shares how sees social media technology supporting the ability to tell the PB story to the market.

The role of the Emerging Media Manger at Pitney Bowes is to help the organization understand and constantly analyze the evolving landscape of social media. In her role, Aneta teaches other how to use the technology and she often presents the model outlined in Chris Brogans’ awesome book, ‘Trust Agents’. She also maintains the strategic roadmap for PB and is often glued to the PB Radian6 console, because of the value she places on listening to the conversation in social media versus trying to use social media as just another channel to broadcast the same messages used in traditional media.

Pitney Bowes is using the information Aneta manages for several of their business units. As you might expect, some are more advanced than others in their use, but most are looking to up their social media investment in 2010 and take advantage of what social media can provide.

The major topic she finds herself discussing with business unit leaders is in the sustainability of the social media effort. Aneta sees covering this issue as a key component of her work and that means the units find they need to invest in training, guidelines, tools and tactics that support users, and providing a ‘loose governance’ structure that does not stifle the conversation between PB and it’s audience.

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to StevenGroves.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group. Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!





Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Shopper Insights in Action 2010 Full Program is Now Available


Download the Brochure Now to preview the 70+ speakers and over 50 sessions that make this the most comprehensive agenda on why we buy and how to take action.

The top rated shopper-focused event in the world is back with ALL NEW CONTENT and KEYNOTES to help the retail and CPG industry advance and ultimately sell more.

Collaborate with the best in your industry as BRANDS, RETAILERS and their PARTNERS come together to analyze the changing shopper mindset, translate insights into opportunities and explore emerging trends influencing the retail world.

The focus for 2010:
Historically, it was the SHOPPER in the RETAIL environment. Today, it's the RETAILER in the SHOPPER'S environment. Join your industry this July to make sense of the new shopping economy.

ALL NEW KEYNOTES
OFFER A COMPREHENSIVE EXPLORATION INTO THE SHOPPER PYSCHE

• DAN ARIELY, Behavioral Economist & Best-selling Author of Predictably Irrational & Living Irrationally
• LEE EISENBERG, Author of Shoptimism
• KIT YARROW, PH.D., Consumer Psychologist, Author, Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail
• DAVID BELL, Professor of Marketing, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• MARK CHANGIZI, Professor of Cognitive Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Author, The Vision Revolution

Register by March 12th to lock in our $500 early bird discount!


Sponsorship & Exhibition Opportunities Available
Please contact Jon Saxe at jsaxe@iirusa.com or call 646.895.7467





Friday, February 19, 2010

Measure Up 2010: Being an Innovator in Social Media; 1800Flowers.com Experiences – an Interview with Lewis Goldman / 1800Flowers.com Episode 2/2

This post is co-posted with the StevenGroves.com website. Visit Steven Grove's website here.

ROI of Social  media logo at StevenGroves.com In this episode Lewis Goldman of 1800Flowers.com shares some of the successes 1800Flowers.com has had along with some of the lessons learned.

The first is the booming growth in the adoption of mobile, their application for placing orders on a variety of mobile platforms is growing rapidly. Today you can use your Blackberry, Android, or iPhone to place an order from the 1800Flowers.com Mobile Gift Center in several categories for personal or business.

1800Flowers_Logo[1] 1800Flowers.com has not been afraid to try out new ideas has often been a first mover in many areas to stay connected to their audience and they try a lot of things, sometime uncertain of the outcome; case in point was the effort in creating a 1800Flowers.com store in the 3D social platform of Second Life, which they discovered was not the right platform at the time to connect them to their audience.

A success is the development of the ideal customer model, which they have named ‘Tina’. Tina is the aggregate persona of the ideal 1800Flowers.com customer, which embodies the characteristics of the buying behavior they see in the market overall. Lewis shows us how they referenced Tina in the ‘Spot-a-Mom’ campaign leading up to Mothers Day in 2009.


Listen to the podcast here.
Download the podcast here.





Thursday, February 18, 2010

Measure Up 2010: Social Media and e-Commerce: Fad or Fundamental Change? An Interview with Lewis Goldman of 1800Flowers.com

This post is co-posted with the StevenGroves.com website. Visit Steven Grove's website here.

In this episode, we get to talk to Lewis Goldman of 1800Flowers.com. Lewis is a keynote speaker at the MeasureUp Conference (www.MeasureUpEvent.com) in March 2010 in Chicago. Guy and I were able to get a few minutes of his time before the event and find out how 1800Flowers.com is using and measuring their social media presence.

Lewis Goldman headshot 2 Lewis shares a little on the background of 1800Flowers.com founded in 1976 by Jim McCann (still Chairman and CEO), who started the venture when he was looking to extend his income. They have been an mover in the online commerce space, even in the early days by support their customers by helping them ‘express and connecting with the important people in their lives.’ They do that by providing a quick and easy way to let people easily give flowers, chocolates and small gifts to one another using the phone or on the web.

1800Flowers_LogoJims topic at the MeasureUp Conference is titled ‘Social Media and e-Commerce – Fad or Fundamental Change?’ and he shares some of the points he will present in his presentation, all based on his 14-year background in online, ecommerce initiatives.

He suggests that social media is not new and points out the community and ecommerce experience in the early days of the web ala Geocities and online networks.

The difference today, he points out, are 2 key component differences - the demographics have changed on the web, and people are a lot more comfortable using ecommerce and accepting the recommendations of ‘trusted authorities’ from social media communities.

He observes that the use of Facebook is the next step beyond the use of email, albeit with rich media components. He shares his own experiences in using Facebook to connect with friends and how he’s used the 1800Flowers.com product to extend a relationship and how the social media platform supports a more meaningful connection.

Listen to the first part of the podcast here.
Download the first part of the podcast here.





Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Check out what's new at PROOF: Market Research for Package Design

This year PROOF returns to its roots and focuses on the role of research as a driving force in the packaging process and how it can be applied to achieve results. Discover how your package must function, communicate and captivate your consumers to keep them coming back for more. From pre-testing, to design research to measuring effectiveness, PROOF will deliver everything you need to better leverage market research and consumer insights to create the perfect package.

Take a look at what is in store at PROOF 2010


• Keynote Jim Stengel, President/CEO, The Jim Stengel Company, LLC, Adjunct Professor, UCLA Anderson School of Management, Retired Global Marketing Officer, Procter & Gamble shares his experience with Applied Leadership, Amazing Results

• Featured session by Coca-Cola, "Busting the Burst" Optimizing On-Pack Promotional Messaging Brand"

• Industry leading corporate practitioners sharing case study presentations, including: Kimberly-Clark, Sherwin Williams, HP, DuPont and more.

• Presentation of the 1st Annual Packaging Awards brought to you by The Dieline and FUSE

• More interactive networking sessions enabling you to meet your fellow PROOF attendees. Plus shared cocktail receptions with FUSE allows you to network with hundreds of design and branding experts and visionaries.

• PLUS - PROOF 2010 is co-located with FUSE: Design & Culture // Brand Identity & Packaging. For special group pricing contact Terrence Johnson at tjohnson@iirusa.com or 646-895-7425 for details.

Interested in seeing the full speaking roster and session descriptions?

Download the complete brochure.

Register today to secure your spot and save.

Hope to see you in Chicago this April!





Monday, February 8, 2010

Advice for Developing a Market Research Strategy for your Small Business

Ron Consolino is a management counselor for SCORE, Counselors to America's Small Business and he offers up a great strategy for developing a market research strategy for a small company.

He writes, "Your market research can be as informal as observing customers in the store or doing a survey, and as elaborate as conducting a full-scale research program with focus groups and computer- generated maps." Consolino also offers up the idea of using a market research firm if you have the budget for that service.

Learn more: Valuable research not costly





Friday, February 5, 2010

Why market researchers need to attend Measure UP 2010

For more than a decade, marketing mix modeling has been at the core of the marketing measurement process. However, new business issues and renewed attention on ROI, demands innovation in the world of analytics.

At the Measure UP Marketing Conference, March 10-12, 2010 in Chicago, senior marketing and market research executives will share their new models and assessment tools to ensure the most effective and efficient marketing mix. Below are some examples of sessions that are geared towards market research:

Empowering Sustainable Innovation: Ideas for Creating a Data-Driven Organization
Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist, GOOGLE, & Author, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day & Web Analytics 2.0 - How to create a data-driven organization through a mix of cultural approaches, destruction of some currently workshoped holy cows, tools, skills and mindsets.

Creating an Algorithm for Marketing Optimization
Scott Deaver, Executive Vice President, Strategy, AVIS BUDGET GROUP
- How marketing effectiveness has evolved and where he sees the greatest opportunity today from marketers to build a more sophisticated optimization system.

Modern Day Mix Modeling: Balancing Prior Information & Judgment with Statistics
Lisa Wellington, Marketing Sciences, THE COCA-COLA COMPANY
- How to employ Bayesian modeling to enable the integration of prior knowledge with sound statistics in order to product robust, comprehensive models.
Marketing Pricing and Spending Decisions Across Multiple Brands

Greg Michaels, Director, Analytics, Kraft International, KRAFT FOODS
- How optimization and risk analysis methods are applied to a representative portfolio of brands to make practical marketing decisions
Actionable Value-Based Customer Segmentation for Maximum ROI
Shannon A. Balliet, Analytics Consultant & Recent Director of Database Marketing & Customer Integration, CARNIVAL CRUISE LINES
- Actionable elements of a value-based segmentation strategy that will enable marketing organizations to realize measurable results, achieve strong ROI and fuel overall profitability.

Driving Improvements in Customer Value by the Fusion of Behavioral Data and Attitudinal Insight
Gary Class, Senior Vice President, WELLS FARGO
- How to integrate behavioral models with attitudinal data and how to leverage customer
insight to identify opportunities for improvement in service quality and breadth.

And that's just a sample of the insightful presentations Measure UP has to offer you. Join us and hear senior level marketing and market research executives reveal how they are successfully linking marketing to financial value creation. Through real stories and case studies, you peers will share the latest, most practical techniques and innovative advancements in modeling, metrics and measurement.

Download the brochure to see the full program.





Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Save $300 on PROOF This Week Only

The "first moment of truth" at point of purchase often begins with the package itself. The power to communicate brand value and connect with consumers is critical to brand success. Find out what really matters to your consumers and how to integrate package design into your overall brand strategy. This means truly understanding the behaviors, trends and insights that stand to impact your brand, category and overall line of business. Learn first hand from leading practitioners who've been there and done it as they uncover real life examples that illustrate the power of insights to drive good decisions at PROOF: Market Research for Package Design.

An interesting fact - purchasing environments have significantly changed in the past year - with 37% of shoppers saying they will stick with the private label brands they chose during the recession1. How well do you know your post-recession shoppers?

The Evolution of Packaging & Purchasing Environments
Craig M. Vogel
University of Cincinnati

Using Social Media to Gain Insights for Packaging Innovation
Randolf Kosloski
MeadWestVaco

...and so much more!

PROOF: Market Research for Package Design
Brochure Download
Register TODAY and SAVE!





Monday, February 1, 2010

Archived Web Seminar: The Search for Meaning in Fuzzy Data: Can Advanced Statistical Techniques Be Applied to Qualitative Research?

For those of you who missed BuzzBack's live web seminar last Thursday here's your chance to view it at your own leisure! Take some time out to view this informative hour long archive of the webinar. Enjoy!

View the archived webinar