CRM Update – Feb 23 : 3:34 am

When you’re told you’re a winner, it’s fun to believe it. But in the case of a number of Tco Bell customers who thought they’d scored a free PlayStation Vita, the company is dashing a lot of dreams. Turns out someone gamed the system, apparently tinkering with the site to tell people they’d won when they really hadn’t. This, according to Taco Bell.

As CBS 13 in Sacramento reports, customers have been complaining about Taco Bell’s current Unlock the Box promotion and the lack of prizes being sent out…

Often one of the biggest challenges to testing and optimizing your website is making that initial leap and convincing senior management that you need budget and buy-in to do it effectively. Unfortunately, quite often though your plans won’t be met with open arms from your senior executives.  And even if you have already begun testing, you will quickly realize that you need additional budget and buy-in so you can obtain better testing tools and more internal resources.
To help you overcome challenges from senior executives and obtain more budget for your testing efforts, here are five great ways you can consider trying:

1: Use 10% of your SEO/SEM budget for a short period
Unfortunately there is still way too much focus on driving visitors to websites, and too little focus on engaging and converting visitors once they get to websites…

Content Marketing’s 4 Stumbling Blocks
Content marketing – a pull strategy that draws customers in – is growing up as marketers move from short advertising messages to longer narratives.
As content usage within an organization matures, the creation process extends beyond the marketing department to the entire organization. Today’s 24/7 real-time environment requires responding and engaging.
In Altimeter’s latest research report by  Rebecca Lieb, author of Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher – How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media (affiliate link), content marketing is defined as “a term that refers to the creation and sharing of content for marketing purposes…

Like a little lemming
There may be more than meets the eye when it comes to those ‘on site’ daily dealing counters. A recent study hosted by researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management has come up with some very compelling data. It appears that potential purchasers are influenced by those that have previously purchased the voucher.
The researchers also wanted to understand why daily dealers that have launched recently have been more successful than those that launched five to ten years ago…

New Channels ‘listening’ tool includes risk management features such as auditing to SocialVolt social media management system.

ABC’s Nightline offered viewers a rare glimpse inside the Foxconn plants that produce Apple products Tuesday night.
Apple has faced increased criticism concerning the working conditions within its factories. Fair-labor and human-rights groups have petitioned Apple to change its policies. And much of the credit for that goes to monologuist Mike Daisey.
In early January, the radio program This American Life aired an episode titled “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.” The episode took a closer look at the issue, based on an excerpt from Daisey’s one-man show, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs…

What is it about video game worlds that etch themselves so vividly in our mind’s eye? A fun new user-generated blog aims to unearth the latent digital cartographer in you.
Mapstalgia is the brainchild of Josh Millard, a self-described “nerd-type” from Portland, OR. It’s a Tumblr where readers submit video game maps they’ve drawn from memory. The idea for the site came out of idle discussion on the message board Metafliter, where Millard works as a moderator.
“It occurred to me that there’s millions of people walking around with potent memories of common fictional game worlds,” Millard tells Mashable…

Guest Blogging is becoming more and more popular for good reason. Posting guest blog posts on popular blogs is one of the fastest and least expensive ways to get highly targeted visitors to your website. With paid traffic sources drying up, for average marketers, guest blogging is an even more attractive and cost effective alternative for the little guy to get his message in front of a big audience. Here are some reasons you should consider starting to add guest blogging into your website
promotion arsenal now…

If you’ve ever tried to furnish a home or apartment without breaking the bank, you’ve probably come face to face with one or more of IKEA’s essentially wordless, diagrammatic assembly instruction booklets. And if you’ve tried to assemble something more complicated than an ottoman, you might have wished you could just watch someone else do it so you don’t screw it up any further.

The home furnishings retailer has finally gotten with this thing called “YouTube” and begun posting videos of actual human beings slapping together the many pieces of particle board, wood, plastic, metal and glass…

Are you addicted to the Internet?
If so, you’re not alone. Some 61% of people feel addicted to the Internet and are unable to quit browsing, according to an informal survey.
Opinion pollster SodaHead surveyed 602 visitors to its site Feb. 16. about whether they experience Internet addiction, and found that many people are self-diagnosed addicts.
Women experience addiction more than men, with 64% of women compared with 55% of men reporting the symptoms of addiction.
Interestingly, respondents addicted to other behaviors were less likely to be addicted to the Internet…

So, you’re smart. But stop it already with the inflated vocabulary. To make the biggest impact, take a cue from the simplicity of Apple’s branding and ditch the big words.”I’m Bill Gates. Takes a genius to understand me.” —Rapper Flo Rida in Good Feeling I hear that song on the radio and cringe. Flo Rida’s lyrics suggest it’s a good thing that it takes a genius to understand him—that complexity makes him, in fact, a genius. In reality, the opposite is true: It takes a genius to be able to communicate in a way that is understood by absolutely everyone and anyone…

Furniture, lighting and home accessories store Heal’s has introduced a mobile commerce-enabled site that lets consumers search, browse and buy from its inventory.
The company used Venda’s mobile platform and Digby LocalPoint Storefront to power the mobile site. Heal’s decided to launch the mobile commerce site to give consumers more options to shop its products no matter where they are.
“Heal’s’ key strategy is to provide their valuable customers with access to Heal’s’ products anytime, anywhere from the convenience of their smartphones,” said Dan Lowden, vice president of marketing at Digby, Austin, TX…

Netflix customers were cranky for much of the year, but online shoppers in general are a contented bunch, according to an annual customer satisfaction survey.

The customer satisfaction score of the embattled video rental company fell 14% in the last year, says the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s annual e-Commerce report released today. It’s one of the largest drops in the index’s history.

The index, founded at the University of Michigan but now run as a privately held company, measures customer evaluations of products and services for 225 companies in 47 industries in the U…

Across the retail landscape today, eCommerce is one of the fastest growing industries of the entire global economy. And while online retailers are striving to provide customers with the latest tools and innovations designed to give customers an optimal online shopping experience, retailers continue to lose substantial sums of money by failing to seal the deal at checkout.
And the problem is only getting worse.
With the stated goal to reverse the growing trend of abandoned online shopping carts, Dydacomp – a provider of business technology platforms for small and mid-sized eCommerce merchants – has published a new series of guidelines for retailers to follow in hopes of maximizing online sales and curbing lost conversions…

There is some truth to Microsoft’s “Googlighting” video — that somehow every Google product feels like a work unfinished. Good Example: Google Docs for Android, which today got some features that should have been there in the first place. Collaboration is one of Google Docs headline features. But that feature lacked for something on Android phones or tablets. Today’s update essentially brings more parity between the desktop and mobile clients.
“We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android”, Vadim Gerasimov, Google software engineer explains…

If you’re thinking about pursuing an entrepreneurial dream, do this mental exercise to make sure you’ve got the passion to make it work.A friend of mine bought a coffee shop. It was his dream. Now he owns a dream–but alas, a dream is not always a business. Nor is it even, for him, a passion.And as you might imagine, the dream of owning a coffee shop and the business of running one are very different.What’s the difference between a dream and a passion? A dream often is a snapshot moment of idyllic perfection…

Tweets, apps and status updates will join the usual barrage of dunks, three-pointers and no-look passes more than ever this weekend at the NBA’s annual All-Star event.
For the first time, fans will be the sole dunk contest judges via Twitter, SMS and website-based voting. The league is also partnering with the social app Shaker to create a one-stop forum for fans to interact, chat and watch exclusive content.
Updates to the NBA’s GameTime mobile app bring new channels for fans to stream the 90-plus hours of video content the league has planned for the weekend — ranging from on-court highlights to off-court fun in Orlando…

In the past few years, families and individuals across the country have had to cut back and save money due to (I almost hesitate to type it, because it’s such a buzzword now…) the economy. Online, and even newspaper coupons are making a resurgence, but not to the point they could be.
Coupons.org has shared this infographic with us and in its description, displays information about the percentage of savings offered to Americans every year versus savings redeemed.
“Last year, $470 billion was offered in coupons to U…

The results of a new study reveal that we’re all pretty happy when shopping at Amazon, Costco, Publix and Nordstrom — but that Walmart and Netflix have some serious work to do when it comes to pleasing customers.

This month’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (via Time.com) shows that shopping at retailers in 2011 was a bit more of satisfactory experience than the previous year, but that among those retailers, there were hits and misses.

Data from thousands of customers was analyzed in order to produce scores of 0 to 100 for each retailer…

Bruce Eckfeldt of Cyrus Innovation and David Harouche of Multimedia Plus share their internal strategyTwo Inc. 5000 CEOs, David Harouche of Multimedia Plus and Bruce Eckfeldt of Cyrus Innovation, shared their strategies for transforming their business models with an audience of Greater New York area business owners and executives. Held at Inc. Magazine’s headquarters in downtown Manhattan, David and Bruce both have a common goal: to improve their respective businesses through radical business model evolution…

Cable network Speed used SMS to let users place bids during a televised automobile auction.
Speed used a digital game during the recent televised Barrett-Jackson automobile auction to keep users engaged and saw that 45 percent of entries for the game were made via SMS. Speed worked with mobile marketing solution Vibes on this campaign.
“It is a game of speed and time, so dropping in a quick five to six-digit code is the fastest method of entry,” said Kevin Annison, vice president of digital and interactive media at Speed, Charlotte, NC…

Customers can now share photos and audio feedback with businesses over their mobile devices.

Luxury Daily today – Trump bolsters CRM through mobile presence; Neiman Marcus launches multichannel Louboutin anniversary campaign for social interaction.

How are you responding to upset customers?No matter what you sell or what industry you’re in, you’re going to experience negative word of mouth.You know, those customers who are expressing their complaints on social media.It just happens.Things break, problems come up and employees have bad days. But it’s how you handle it that separates you from everyone else.Remember: Negative word of mouth is an opportunity.A great response strategy can convert angry and upset customers into loyal, raving fans…

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said Wednesday that failing to meet the “challenges” of cybersecurity will mean the U.S. will “pay the price in the form of diminished safety, lost privacy, lost jobs and financial vulnerability — billions of dollars potentially lost to digital criminals.”
The FCC chair called on Internet users, providers and policymakers to address multiple “cyber threats,” including botnet attacks, domain name fraud and IP hijacking…

Nike+ is no longer for runners only.
At an event in New York City Wednesday, Nike unveiled a line of digitally connected footwear — some designed for basketball, others for more general workouts — that records data about the wearer and syncs it to accompanying Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and web.
The shoes are embedded with four pressure sensors and an accelerometer that can record distance, number of steps and jump height over time. The information used to help athletes better track their activity levels through the course of a workout or basketball game and, if they wish, compare it to others’ data…

Just a quick question – and you can email me direct, instead of posting to the Forum: Were you aware that the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit is coming

Kill the post-work social events — among other things — that might be rubbing your staff the wrong way.You’re the boss. You have the power.Awesome. Just don’t use your power to do things like this:Pressure employees to attend “social” events. Any time your employees are with people they work with, it’s like they’re at work. Worst case, whatever happens there doesn’t stay there; it comes back to work.Embarrassing behavior aside, some people just don’t want to socialize outside work…

Flash is dead. Well, maybe that wording is a bit strong, but Adobe’s roadmap for the platform released on Wednesday officially codifies the company’s plans to scale back development efforts as new web standards take Flash’s place, like HTML5.
As announced last year, development on mobile is officially over, as is direct development for Linux flavors of the Flash player. Adobe will focus its efforts on two key areas where Flash has a significant presence: video and gaming. The effort is aimed at making the technology viable “for the next decade”, the company says…

In some rare cases it may become necessary to fire a customer that disrespects your team. In those cases, show your team that you have their backs.I know some of you who just read this headline are clutching your proverbial pearls, especially if you’re in the business of serving customers. And really, we’re all in the business of serving our customers, so I don’t really believe this headline, either … for the most part. Let me explain.I love listening to everything our customers say about our self-service online marketing tools, including new features they want and changes they want to see…