Social Media Study: E-Mail 40 times more Effective than Facebook and Twitter

So, after all the excitement about Facebook and Twitter as communities and marketing panaceas, a recent study by McKinsey & Company reports something counter-intuitive: good, “old fashioned” e-mails prove to be 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.

That is, if your goal is to acquire customers, and not just share the latest family news or travel experience.

I don't really understand why they say this is "counter-intuitive".  I have believed for a long time that social media was not a good channel for businesses.  It costs a lot of money to be in those channels because of the immediacy that customers expect, but more importantly these channels are not targeted whatsoever.  When posting on Twitter or Facebook, everyone gets to see what is being posted.  Whether those are the customers you are trying to target or not.  It is an even worse channel when it comes to current customers.

It’s a lot of work, but the the research sighted Williams-Sonoma which reported a 10% improvement in response rates by personalizing their e-mails, based on the customer’s on-site and catalog shopping preferences.

Another interesting comment.  Of course there is better response when the emails are targeted to customer behavior.  When customers get offers that are tailored to their behavior they spend more, it is just a simple fact.  When email is used as a simple newsletter channel, they will get lost.  Don't over communicate and keep the offers tailored.  Those are the keys to effective email marketing.

Why Netflix walked away from personalization | ThoughtGadgets

n 2006 Netflix offered a $1 million prize for anyone who could improve its movie preference recommendations by 10%. Netflix, at the time, made most of its money sending DVDs in the mail to users’ homes

Mathematicians went wild. The competition was lauded by business pundits as an example of crowdsourcing genius. Because this was damned hard math, the project took years. And then in 2009, a team of mathematicians called “BellKor’s Pragmatic Chaos” actually cracked the code, achieved a 10% lift, and Netflix gave them the $1 million.

And then … Netflix never implemented the winning algorithm. Because personalization at that point no longer mattered.

Personalization has been such a buzzword for so many years.  Netflix was one of the poster children for this.  It's interesting to look at articles like this and understand they really don't utilize it like say an Amazon does.

In fact, this article is very critical of Amazon and I'd have to agree.  Amazon has decent recommendations, but it seems to be a fairly basic market basket model that shows what others who bought similar items.  That may be the best way to offer items to customers.  Amazon has all the money in the world for R&D, in fact they flaunt how much money they put back into their business and if they are using this model, it must mean the personalization models of predicting other types of product must not bring in as much as the market basket.

Big Data Demands Big Context

When we entered the age of big data, many of us assumed we had left the age of big risk. We didn’t have to guess anymore. We didn’t have to go out on a limb. We’d follow the numbers, the “truths.”

But time and time again we’re finding that it’s not that simple. No matter how good the research is, big data is nothing without big context.

The promise of big data is a complicated one.  When I hear most non-statistical people talk about big data, they believe it will answer all the questions they have about their business.  Big data is just making sense out of larger data sets that may not be historically the data everyone has focused on in the past.  

Once you break down what big data is and what it isn't, the question then becomes how to use it.  Context is extremely important.  Not just in the form of survey or research, but in the form of humans that have been working in the business.  The human intuition and psychology of consumers is just as important as ever.  Just as before there was big data, organizations combined data with business acumen to make the best decisions.  Nothing has changed with big data.  There has to be business acumen to combine with the big data finding to build the best product and have the best marketing strategies.

This article looks at Microsoft and Windows 8 to put this into context.  

Microsoft’s engineers discovered that people were doing less of the time-consuming writing and creating that had once been the norm. Increasingly, users were socializing for short bursts.

The research also showed that people loved having “touch” functionality and were avidly consuming small pieces of live information.

Consequently, Microsoft decided that Windows 8 should feature navigation that enabled multitasking and quick interactions, and that it should also have touch and live tiles.

People love touch.  I love to touch on my iPad and iPhone all the time.  However, those devices are more intimate than a computer.  They don't have the bulk of a computer and they can sit on my lap or I can hold them up.  

It turns out touching a screen on a computer is very hard over time.  While little touches here and there will work, overall it is literally a pain to touch on a computer.  After time your arm will become tired and a trackpad can solve many of the problems.  While I believe at some point there will be a touch interface that makes sense in a computer, to have the whole interface built around touch does not make too much sense.  

But what people say and what they do are two very different animals.

This is so important to understand when doing any research.  It goes back to the famous Henry Ford quote of "If I would have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse."  

Context is important, but so is psychology.  Customers don't think beyond using the devises or tools they have when answering questions.  They want a computer to solve a problem that another device should solve, but thats just because they don't know about the other device.

Also, doing research on what a customer would do if they were given a choice of the following is very deceptive.  I never believe what a customer says they will do, I always rely on what they do in combination of what they say.  When you combine the two, you get the truth which is always somewhere in the middle.  Remember to never change an entire strategy based on customer surveys of "what they will do if" questions.

The Revolutionary Way Marketers Read Your Financial Footprints

Laube, 43, Cardlytics’ president and COO, and Grimes, 51, its CEO, have since helped pioneer a data-driven advertising niche called merchant-funded rewards. It targets people based on what they buy, not who they are. “If you know where and how someone is spending money, you know lots of things about them without having to know their personally identifying information,” Laube says.

I have found that the transactions of customers is the most important predictor of future behavior in all data I have studied.  While the demo, geo and psychographics of customers is very interesting data, to maximize the revenue from known customers is to really get to know their transactions.

While I don't know how good these algorithms are, the theory is solid.  I happen to be a Bank Of America customer and the deals I receive don't seem to be any better than say my Rapid Rewards dining offers which don't seem to know my eating habits whatsoever.  If these can be perfected, I think it's something that would get me to use my card more often instead of using my AMEX.  I'll be watching because this is very intriguing.  

Getting a bit creepy

It’s hard to describe what’s the tipping point, the point where things turn from useful/entertaining to creepy. To me those two examples did cross the line. And I wish I could put my finger on exactly what makes it creepy, but it’s hard.

Perhaps it’s when the application or service makes it blatantly clear that they can read your messages, that they actually have unlimited access to all the names and numbers in your address book. That they do track where you access the site from regularly. And not only do they have this information and access, they feel that it’s ok for them to use it rather openly. And they do make it personal. It’s not some trending data aggregated over millions of customers. It’s my data, extracted and pinpointed to be used on (or as it feels, against) me.

I’m trusting you with my data. I realise there are risks involved, but please treat my data with respect. Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should. And don’t be a creep.

How Apple iBeacon Will Transform Local Commerce

Overall, one thing is clear: mobile platforms are set to change the way we buy, transact and consume in our local environment.  Local commerce is a massive carrot for growth, a $1 trillion opportunity in the US alone. And somewhat ironically, it may end up being Apple’s “closed platform” which helps unify how online to offline commerce evolves, while fragmentation within Android actually slows adoption of these technologies down.

I am fascinated by this technology.  I never liked NFC.  I used it in the gaming industry to track bets on table games.  The chips were imbedded in the table chip and the antennas were placed under the layout.  It was so fickle.  Granted, it was new technology, but there were so many little nuances.  For instance, you couldn't have any metal anywhere around, or it could ruin the results.  The antenna had to be placed "just right" under the felt.

That's what I felt when NFC was touted as the payment mechanism of the future.  Anything you have to be so close to and there are many ways to interfere, that is not the future.  I can send a picture to my friend across the table, why do I need to touch my phone to theirs?  Same with payments.  If I have to take something out of my pocket or purse, how is that better than what we have today?  

Pricing and Apple

A lot has been made about pricing after this weeks event.  I saw three different groups of controversies this week, two involving Apple and one involving Tweetbot.  I think all three are interesting case studies in pricing in the hardware and software section.   

The iPad pricing was the most controversial thing coming out of the event.  Again it stems from every industry pundit wanting Apple to price their products to maximize market share.  Apple isn't in the business of maximizing market share, they are in the business of creating the best products and having quality over quantity.  As John Gruber stated this week:

As for pricing overall, I think concerns that iPads are “too expensive” are overblown. The same was said last year, and the year before that. The tech and business press frequently compare iPads’ prices and specs to those of high-end Android-based competitors — from Samsung, Google, and Amazon — and find the iPads lacking. How many pieces were written last year arguing that the iPad Mini, with its non-retina display and $329 starting price, was incongruously overpriced compared to Nexus and Kindle Fire devices with retina-caliber pixel densities and prices under (sometimes well under) $300?

But where these comparisons go awry is when they are conflated with tablet market share numbers showing Android devices, as a whole, making significant gains. As Benedict Evans argued this week, the rise in Android tablet sales has not been driven by the high-end would-be-iPad-competitors from Amazon, Google, and Samsung, but by profoundly cheap “$75-$150 black generic Chinese Android tablets” that are seemingly used primarily for video consumption. Evans calls them “the featurephones of tablets”, and argues they compete with televisions just as much, if not more, as they do with iPads.

The iPad does not have competition in the way that the iPhone does. Tens of millions of people use high-end Android phones — largely Samsung’s — in much the same way iPhone users use theirs. There just aren’t that many people — yet? — using Kindle Fires, Galaxy Tabs, Nexuses, or Surfaces as alternatives to the iPad. Thus the massive discrepancies between the iPad’smarket share and usage share numbers.

As John argues, even the market share argument is not a fair one compared to phones or PC's.  The Android tablets eating the market share of the iPad are not customers that Apple is interested in serving.  Apple is interested in customers that interact with their devices in meaningful ways; browsing the internet, purchasing legal content, listening to music, playing games.  Apple is not interested in customers that only browse YouTube or watch bootlegged movies.  These are not customers who will continually buy high-end Apple products, purchase apps to stay in the ecosystem.  These customers will also cost much more to service.  The hidden secret behind Apple's success is their service through the Apple stores.  Imagine even more customers coming through that channel.  Apple is building a high-end experience from purchase to consumption to service.   

The iPad also hasn't shown that it needs to come down in price.  Would I like an iPad mini retina for $329?  Yes I would, more than $399.  Is that $70 going to change my buying decision?  Nope.  What I am debating is the same thing John Gruber is debating in his article, which one to buy?  Or maybe both with T-Mobiles new pricing plan for cellular versions of these iPads.  

The second big pricing move from Apple is software pricing.  Where as the hardware pricing is being criticized, the software pricing is being applauded.  Everyone is saying it's an attack on Microsoft.  Look out Google.  

I look at it as a couple of different strategies at play.  First and foremost I believe it is a retention play on the part of Apple.  So much is made of their ecosystem in iOS and now I believe it just adds to that arsenal onto the Mac as well.  If all the software is free in the Mac ecosystem, then it makes the purchase price of a Mac more palatable.  It also prevents customers from jumping ship onto the PC.  The iPad also becomes a creation device on par with a PC.  And for free!  

The second part of this strategy is innovation.  When the customer base is moving ahead with Apple, the newest innovations in software are propagated throughout the ecosystem and everyone is using and showing it off.  This also makes for a compelling reason to choose Apple first for developers.  If the Mac can have the upgrade cycle that is seen in iOS, developers will be able to move their software forward without worrying about backward compatibility.  

The last big pricing controversy is Tweetbot.  They released their popular twitter client for the iPhone this week and they created a whole new app and charged for it.  Of course the world is a worse place because of this.  Someone had to forego their coffee at that price.  

Why has the world forgot the software model just a few short years ago.  You bought a piece of software, the next year a new version would come out, you would go to the store and buy a whole new version of the software.  Oh ya, this cost $50 every year.  If you didn't perceive the version was worth the new price, you forego the years version and kept using the old version.  This is what the market should be. 

So much is made of free software these days.  The problem is this ruins the business for many independent developers because they are playing a different game than the people offering free software.  The free software providers are either trying to be purchased by Google or Facebook, or they are the Apples and Googles of the world and these companies are using the software as a "loss leader" or a strategy to sell more hardware or advertising.  

I believe more developers should take the Tweetbot approach in the App stores.  Charge for new software every year, it's only a few dollars now.  This approach is much better than the freemium model pervasive now.  It also makes developers make the product they have a passion for much better.  If Tweetbot and others continue to give out free upgrades, these products become worse over time.  Why?  There are a set number of hours in a day.  Those hours have to be spent on something that will return on the time investment.  If Tweetbot never brings in more revenue, it doesn't make sense to spend time working on it, so it becomes stagnant.  Under the Tweetbot model, it makes sense to work on Tweetbot because that innovation can produce revenue in the future, which is why they are in business.  Hopefully more software developers start charging more often for their software and we see even more innovation in return.

Why Apple is Growing Its Bank Account

Samsung has a nearly limitless bank account. Samsung, like LG, is backed by their nation state of South Korea. After I made this point, Benedict added that so is Huawei, and of course several other Chinese ODMs, who are also backed by their nation state. When there is a guarantee of a cash trove behind you, it is possible to make business decisions that perhaps other companies without such a wealthy backer would make. In essence the rules for spending may simply be different for a company like Samsung and other Asian OEMs / ODMs who have nation state backing.1

This is an interesting take.  I'm sure this is not the sole reason for the large treasure trove, however US companies are at a disadvantage in the marketplace if the competitors have a limitless budget.  I was wondering how Samsung could afford all that advertising.  When there is no downside, why not spend it? 

Long Term Strategies vs. Short Term Market Share

Android users are not as active and engaged with online activities as iOS users are. And when companies from start-ups to established players decide which platforms to target with their apps, their web services, and their marketing campaigns, they’re going to go where the eyeballs are. If you follow where the money should be going, it should be focused on Apple.

Which creates a virtuous circle of engagement. People develop their tools for iOS because iOS users are more engaged and easier to monetise.

There is definitely a difference between Android and iOS users.  This brings up interesting points when talking about different business strategies.  When having products, engagement and return loyalty are things that create a sustainable business.  Samsung is selling a plethora of products and in volume, however if the customers are not engaging in the platform and are purchasing items through the Google Play store, Samsung has nothing to hold onto customers when their contracts come up.

This is similar to what we saw with the PC industry.  Because the platform was owned by Microsoft and all the programs and files could easily be switched from machine to machine, the manufacturers had nothing to compete with.  So when there is no differentiation, businesses compete on price and volume.  When that happens everyone loses except the consumer.  However, the consumers gain is only short lived because the products they are buying are becoming cheaper and cheaper and over time they last a lot shorter than the products they purchased before.  

I believe this is what we will see pan out in the cell phone space outside of the US.  Also, you have already seen this in the tablet space.  Because no one can compete with the iPad on a product and experience level, the market has already taken a nose-dive in pricing to gain market share.  The problem with this is the experience delivered to the customer.  These companies are taking a short term gain and will be losing these customers when they are ready to buy again because their experience is subpar.  

This will be fun to watch.  Hopefully we will see much more innovation in the years to come, instead of just relying on Android as a competing platform and everyone racing to the bottom on price. 

Google Tabs happened, now marketers must step up their game

Marketing is always most effective when it is delivered with something else of value. If you open your postal mailbox and its nothing but ads, you tend to throw the whole bunch away. But, if one offer comes along with other interesting pieces of mail or if it includes something valuable like a gift card or a coupon, you tend to give it more attention.

Very profound statement.  It is not worth delivering a piece of mail or email without an offer.  The offer doesn't have to be something that cheapens your brand, but it has to deliver value to the customer receiving it, or else you will become junk mail or unsubscribed.

The new Gmail tabs obviously create an interesting challenge.  Even though they are being viewed less, it may provide customers a better way to interact with brands.  When all email is together, emails can get skipped or just ignored as they scan through.  However with the tabs, a customer has to be going and looking for a promotion.  Isn;t that what digital marketing is all about?  Engage with the customer when they want to be engaged, instead of the bombarding of their email feeds?

We asked nearly 5,000 consumers their attitudes toward the switch to Gmail Tabs inbox view. About 40 percent of respondents say they now spend less time with promotional messages from their favorite brand, while only 7 percent of users say they spend more time with promotions. This large percentage of respondents revealing they don’t spend as much time with their favorite brands shows that marketers must up their game.

Marketers should always be stepping up their game.  I get so many emails from companies on a daily basis, maybe this will make them stop and think about the "spam" strategy that seems to be the norm in this channel.  When emails are targeted and offers are valuable and thought out, customers will engage with your brand no matter what tab they are on.  Continue to over communicate and your brand will never make it out of the promotions tab.

Digital Marketing - The Benefits of Always-On versus Campaign

Within the digital space, campaign based marketing acts like the traditional “push” model. The goal is to communicate a key marketing message to as many people as possible in hopes that they will learn a specific message and/or perform a certain action. They are in the market until the objective is complete, then they go silent again. The always-on models acts like the “pull” model, focusing on finding the specific people who want to know more about what you offer and will thus participate with us in some way. The always-on model runs indefinitely, it is just optimized over time.

Hmmm.  Articles like this make me wonder what the future of marketing looks like.  So many so-called experts talk in circles and and paint a picture of this perfect world.  What David Alexander is describing is something that costs a fortune and takes many years to build.   

Eventually we may find all of this "free" and "cheap" marketing is so much more expensive than the traditional campaign based marketing we are all trying to get rid of. 

How A ZIP Code Can Tell A Marketer Exactly Who You Are

Yep. 

What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong in his Theory of Low-End Disruption

Cool article about Clayton Christensen and his Theory of Low-End Disruption.  I think there are some great points in this article that highlight Apple as the use case.   

I don't subscribe to the theory of low-end disruption in the consumer space.  I think Ben Thompson is right on.  There are so many cases of companies that thrive without having to serve the low-end, even when the competition puts out a decent or "good enough" product at a much lower price point

• BMW, Mercedes and Audi in cars
• Apple in consumer electronics
• Rolex and Tag in watches
• Four Seasons in hotels

The list can go on and on.  Companies don't have to play the market share game to be successful.  It takes so much more effort to satisfy the masses, the support costs  and the scale the business has to grow are just two reasons why a business should think twice.

I prefer serving the fewest amount of customers to make the most profit.  In that model I can give better customer service and create a much more loyal base to maintain profit share.  

The Three Tribes of Social Shopping

Do people share what they plan to buy, or buy what they share?

That’s the question my colleagues and I had to ask after discovering that a significant number of Pinterest users go on to buy the items they have pinned.  As we reported in Harvard Business Review, 21% of Pinterest users say they have purchased an item in-store after pinning, re-pinning, or liking it on Twitter, and 36% of users under 35 said they had done so. Look beyond in-store purchases, and the numbers are even bigger:

29% of Pinterest users have purchased something (in-store or online) after sharing or favoriting it on Pinterest

22% of Twitter users have purchased something after tweeting, retweeting, or favoriting on on Twitter

38% of Facebook users have purchased something after liking, sharing, or commenting on it on Facebook

Very interesting article.  What they still didn't answer is the act of sharing a driver?  Does the customer share because it is available to share or does the share drive a purchase? And the outcome is to monitor and ask a lot of questions from people who share your products on social media channels.  Sounds pretty pricey.  

For marketers, the opportunity of social lies in the ability to reach and inspire the “thinkers” and “leapers” — to find and drive sales from people who might never otherwise move from interest to commitment.

First you have to identify these people.  The key is predicting who is not going to purchase and nudge those potential buyers, that will optimize revenue.  If you nudge everyone with discounts or more ads, you might have just spent money on people who were already going to purchase. 

How the U.S. Airline Industry Found Its Edge or Demise?

So what happened? The turnaround can’t be attributed to a bold, Da Vinci-esque initiative such as new carbon fiber aircraft, the pioneering of new markets or even low-cost innovation. Rather, it was the result of something far more modest: the slicing of airlines’ base offerings into customizable “options and extras.” The most famous of these options was checked-bag fees, but most of the recent innovations have focused on “upselling” passengers into an improved experience (e.g., selling fast-track boarding, lounge-access, extra leg room and others).  

This is one of the most interesting articles I have read from Harvard Business Review.  For one, I can't disagree more with the premise.  The premise of the article is that charging fees is a good thing for businesses.  Like many businesses in the "what have you done for me lately" quarterly earnings craze, the airlines have gone with the strategy of making bad profit.  

What's bad profit do you ask?  It's profit that erodes the long term profitability of the business.  Not all profit is created equal.  The airlines have sacrificed customer satisfaction and loyalty for short term profit.  The article argues it saved the industry and these are innovative.  I argue there is nothing innovative about this strategy.  It is lazy. 

As part of this shift, airlines realized that some people didn’t need everything that was included in the sale of a standard ticket; this opened the door to unbundling the “one size fits all” offer — and led to the introduction of fees for checked bags. Many business travelers never check a bag but historically subsidized the substantial cost for leisure travelers who did. Today, those who need the option pay for it. Many passengers grumbled, but the impact has been undeniably positive for the industry. Last year bag fees alone generated $3.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. Imagine where the industry would be without this?

What?  Unbundling?  They didn't unbundle, they added on fees.  If they were truly unbundling, that business traveler referenced above would start paying less for their ticket.  Instead, they kept prices the same or even raised them and tacked on these fees.  I can't comprehend this thought process. 

What really has saved the airline business?  From the outside looking in it seems they have become smarter about their routes.  They have cancelled many unnecessary flights, because most flights I go on are completely full.  That wasn't the case before, and it's not because the customers are excited about paying for baggage fees. 

The airlines seem to have become better at yielding their prices.  I don't know if it was a big practice in the past, but the airlines seem to be much more strategic about their pricing model.   

Articles like these make me wonder what we are learning about customer service.  These strategies allow for an upstart competitor to come in and take major share, think Southwest.  Southwest is growing faster than ever and that is because they don't nickel and dime their customers.  Maybe the other airlines should find their "true innovation". 

Marketing Automation with Neolane

Building a capture program is something that usually is untouchable with most marketing automation tools.  We built ours in 3 days with Neolane.  Very complex offers built dynamically based on previous behavior of redemption or no redemption.  Yet another tool I am becoming quite a big fan of.

IBM Watson, the Ultimate Marketeer?

When a computer can figure out whether a movie trailer is going to positively affect an audience or not – it makes you wonder how close we are to computer generated predictions on everything else in life.

Computers make our lives as marketeers so much easier in the past, however with social media and instant access to data, our jobs become much tougher to stay ahead of the curve.  IBM's Watson could be the way we all look at marketing in the future

Predict new trends and shifting tastes

Watson is a voracious consumer of data, and it doesn’t forget anything. You can feed it data from credit cards, sales databases, social networks, location data, web pages and it can compile and categorize that information to make high probability predictions.

IBM Watson is the ultimate in big data.  The ability to analyze sentiment and understand how tastes are changing in the marketplace is invaluable.  Most marketers don't know this until well after the shift takes place.   

Analyze social conversations – generate leads

Most social listening solutions on the market today do an adequate job of giving the marketer signals and reports about their industry, competitors, partners and current customers. But it’s up to the marketer to analyze the information and take action.

What if someone could tell you what to do, not just tell you something happened?  In this age of social media it takes teams of people to keep up on the never-ending conversations happening about the brand.  Taking complexity out of tasks is what technology should do and this sounds like the perfect use of Watson.

Computer calculated and automated growth hacking

If you’re a marketer and not familiar with growth hacking, please study up fast. Growth hackers focus on innovative A/B testing techniques to maximize conversions on emails, websites, social media, online content or just about any digital media available to them. It’s a low cost but more effective alternative to traditional media.

A/B testing is nothing compared to what Watson can do.  Imagine A/B testing on steroids, using predictive analytics and much more information than just clicks on a webpage.  The ultimate in design and the right offer/message to the right person at the right time. 

Bridge the Gap Between Marketing and IT

...IT organization has been transitioning from the traditional development approach of (1) define functional requirements, then (2) design, then (3) build (the "waterfall" approach) to making quick, small changes to systems ("Agile Scrum").

The waterfall approach kills companies that are not in the software business.  Since internal products are not sold, nor measured by sales, its easier for IT departments to hide behind process.  Process and requirements kill companies.  Companies in this current age need to be faster to market.  

Agile and Scrum have allowed ING to respond quickly to signals from customers. But moving to continuous delivery is a struggle. Some business people who are used to the traditional waterfall method can fall into an unfortunate cycle: taking months to develop requirements, then waiting for IT to respond, then telling IT that's not what they wanted. Now instead at ING they say, "Here's your team. You need to be in every daily or weekly Scrum cycle or sprint to decide if the work is meeting your needs." It demands more time from the business people, but they are engaged and own it.

The Agile method is so much more effective to engage the business.  The business moves at the speed of sound compared to IT and if the IT department gets buried into process, the business loses faith in IT and finds another way.  This doesn't make sense for the business, but it happens to get things done. 

While Scrum has been employed primarily in software development, ING shows that it has broader management applications. They have used Agile Scrum as a key tool for collaboration across functions in processes such as developing new products and in marketing campaigns. And the frequent (daily or weekly) meetings accelerate decision-making.

This is very interesting and I have never thought about all decision making changing to an Agile Scrum.  In my business, I deploy an "unofficial" Agile Scrum, just have never thought about it from that point of view.  I believe it works so much better, to be engaged daily in your business and with your team.   

 

How to Keep Your Customers by Thinking Ahead of Them

...more important to deepen your connection to your existing customers than to spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out why certain customers left.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t care about losing customers. Customer attrition and churn can kill your bottom line. But once customers are gone, they’re gone. The best way to hang on to them is with a process I call “closing the backdoor.”

Great points in this article.  So many people focus on bringing a customer back, instead of focusing on keeping the customers you have.  The most profits to be made is by increasing the frequency of your current customers.  By striving to satisfy and get out in front of your current customers needs, you will have more current customers (because new customers will outnumber your churned) and they will be more frequent purchasers.

​

There are many lifecycle charts, this one is more transactional with each purchase.  For instance, in selling hotel rooms we have a much better shot at getting a guest to return if they are ready to return.  Any communication preceding that will usually be met with indifference.  It won't hurt the cause, but you likely won't get a booking either.  If you can send, i know this is going to be cliche, the right offer at the right time, you will increase frequency and redemption percentages.  ​

How to Calculate the Value of a Like

I like this article.  It attempts to measure the value of a Like with hard analytics.  While not the only thing you should look at, it is something to add to the other measurements of Facebook and Twitter.  ​