The most used triggered email message stream generally surrounds abandoned shopping carts or website signups where you give your email but do not complete a profile. If you are not using triggered messages around abandoned shopping carts and signups, you should begin to do so (see a good article on how to get going form MarketingSherpa), the emails are effective and can help you address a customer’s (or potential customer) real issue in abandoning their purchase. The problem in my mind is that the very nature of these being triggered messages pulls the real personalization and chance to connect with the consumer out of the equation. These messages generally consist of a generic message indicating that you are receiving the message because you did not complete an action on the site sending you the email. If that action was a purchase, the site might use some dynamic information about what was in your shopping cart and if above a certain dollar threshold trigger a message that offers free shipping if you complete the purchase. Sites often will offer you other ways to get in touch with them including their social media profiles and will wrap with some generic information about how you are a valued customer (maybe even telling you when you first became a customer). For sites that need to scale to large volumes of abandoned carts or signups there is perhaps no other way, however for the businesses where each purchase still matters tremendously and where you are just building your customer base I think you can do better.

If someone takes the time to come to your website and is on the verge of purchase (or sign-up) only to abandon that action you need to do two things. First you should have software that helps you evaluate when people abandon, on what step, on what page etc. Second, you should try to lend a helping hand and get them to complete their purchase. It is this second piece that I think small businesses can do better and create both a triggered email stream but also a social media reach out campaign. There is ample evidence that you want to get the email about the abandoned purchase/signup and offering to help to the customer immediately after they leave your site with the purchase unmade, and then again within 24 hours, beyond that is up to you. It is the time in-between the initial email you send and the one 23 hours later that I think as a small company you can and should be nimble enough to out maneuver your competitors by using social media to not only reach out directly to these customers but to do so in a much more personal way than the mail merge personalized triggered emails. So what can you do in those hours?

First build a list of all the consumers who abandoned during the last 24 hours (if you need to, prioritize by potential purchase size) and determine who you and your team will reach out to. The number of people will depend on the value of the purchase they abandoned and your own cost/benefit of time spent on the next steps, but if you want to grow your business as one that thinks customer service first and is socially adept then I recommend this for at least a few of the top abandoned purchases.

If you are not already using a CRM system and specifically one that allows you to import social media profiles that’s your first stop but for the sake of this article let’s assume you are using CRM and can integrate data from social networks on your customers and prospects.

My first piece of advice is to begin asking your customers for their social media profiles as part of the checkout process, if they are willing to give you their email addresses the probably will not hesitate to save you the trouble of finding them on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Just make the appropriate choice for your business – I recommend LinkedIn & Twitter for B2B and Twitter for B2C, they’ll find you on Facebook, it’s creepy to ask for friendship as a company. This one little change will save you having to take the next step of finding the consumer on the social network appropriate for you.

When a potential customer or site user abandons their cart/signup but gives you their email address (and any other details that are relevant) you have enough to use a service like Rapportive, Xobni, Gist to try to connect that email address and data to social media profiles across a variety of networks. None of these services gets it perfect, but if the email address you have (for the customer) is the one they use on social sites your chance of a match is high.

Once you have the potential consumer’s social media profile it is time to mine it for any information that you can find about the particular purchase they were about to make with you. Did they ask about your product on Twitter? Have they written on the wall on your Facebook page? Asked for recommendations on your products via LinkedIn? Depending on your market you might find exactly how they researched the product and may be able to leverage that information to supply them with anything you think is missing that would make their decision easier. Even more telling, you might just find out exactly why they abandoned their purchase at your site. Did they Tweet about your exhorbinant shipping costs? Great! A perfect opportunity to connect with them in a transparent way and either explain the need for the cost or find a way to lower the cost (be wary about what you make policy in an open forum) and help them become a customer.

You would be shocked at the number of reasons people abandon purchases. Last night I did so because the hockey game went into overtime and you know who could have known that? Anyone company who was looking for why I abandoned my purchase in the late evening because I Tweeted I had to sign off the computer because hockey was getting too intense. Now if the company I was purchasing from wanted to really let me know they cared about winning my business and that I was not just an order number they could easily have keyed off my Tweet and sent me something cleaver and invited me back to the site post game. So what that I was only buying $75 worth golf balls (don’t ask about my short game)? I am obviously a customer who purchases online regularly and as the purchase was my first with the site I could easily have been swayed to complete it by a coupon or really even a personal touch. If the company wanted to blow my mind they would include something related to hockey (even a Go Canucks Go on the invoice would suffice) when they shipped to me.

Gary Vanerchuck calls this the “Thank You Economy” and has his own amazing example of how he used social to reward a loyal wine buyer with Chicago Bears gear rather than a traditional thank you. While Gary did his giving post-purchase, there is no reason you cannot use the same strategy on a smaller scale pre-purchase for those who have recently abandoned a cart.

It may seem like what I am suggesting is daunting when you read it, but these are people who want to buy from you, they’ve already proven that. All you need to do is show them that you’re willing to go the extra mile to make them feel like they are purchasing from a friend and not just a company that seems to send them coupons each time leave a shopping cart mid -purchase.

I participated  in a roundtable discussion with some marketing executives recently and one of the items I suggested was that they start asking customers and prospects for their social networking usernames when gathering information online and in person. The concept is of course not earth shattering but I was surprised at how few companies who want to interact with customers and prospects on social networks do not use the opportunities that they have to ask the simple question of what social networks are being used and how find the customer or prospect on that network. 

The value of “friendship” on Facebook or having your company liked has been well documented, but what about trying to track down clients and prospects on Twitter or LinkedIn? If the customer uses a personal email address on the network then you probably won’t find them by simply searching your address book so again my advice is to ask them for their usernames. Do not stop at just asking, tell them the reason you are asking and let them know you want to connect on these networks. I think in the long run you will find that the majority of your customers and prospects do want you to engage with them via the social web and will appreciate that you invited them to tell you how to make that connection.

If you are in need of some easy online forms to ask these questions, I recommend you check out Wufoo.

Go forth and ask, you won’t regret it.

When Twitter decided to get serious about business they did what one would expect of a company that wanted to make it easy to do business with them, they published a guide to doing business on Twitter. To that point the most definitive publication was from Mashable. So you would think that with Facebook crossing 600 million users and already doing serious commerce (but looking to do more) would have published something quite similar. If it is there, I have yet to find it, so I ask…Where is the Facebook Guide for Business?I certainly can get a decent overview of how to use Facebook advertising if I start diving into actually buying some but what about the beginner’s guide for just how to set up your Facebook business page? How about the most efficient ways for gaining and keeping people who “like” your brand? When you do have people who “like” you, what do you do with them? As Jay Baer points out, most businesses have no clue what their doing with their fan pages.

If Facebook wants to help small businesses understand how to use it as more than a place to collect “fans” it would really help for Facebook to follow Twitter’s lead on this one and put together some sort of guide to doing business there. There are plenty of people who have published their own resources and some very good ones but really in the absence of anything official from Facebook itself.

For those who do want some direction in building a business page on Facebook and successfully marketing via the same channel I would recommend starting with this guide from Mashable and then checking out some of the resources available via Hubspot and MProfs.

If you have other resources I should know about or I am completely blind to something from Facebook please let me know.

Your comments and tweets are appreciated.

Given my propensity for nerdiness and specifically my passion for entrepreneurial businesses in the online world I often get asked by friends, family and tweeps about what company or service I would recommend for this or that related to the Internet or online marketing. I am happy to give one of advice but find myself recommending the same companies and services time and time again so I thought it would be worthwhile to break down months of recommendations into a usable list of technologies and/or services I use or recommend you use in your business. I’ve tried to include some brief information on why I use the company/service and what I find valuable about that particular company but there are two things that you can be sure are true of any company that makes my list. First the company must be hell-bent on customer service, if there is one thing that every company (online or offline) should be passionate about, it is customer service and creating customer evangelists (I think I qualify as example A with this list) so if a company has made my list you can expect that while they might not be Zappos, they’ll treat you with respect. Second, to make my list the company/service has to be one that does not require a second mortgage on your home to use, if it’s on this list then in my estimation the benefits of use far outweigh the cost.

I’ve tried to break these down into some sort of usable categories and would be happy to expand on my experiences with any of these companies so feel free to drop a comment or ask anything that’s on your mind.

So here is my inaugural list of companies that rock!

Collaboration/Communication

What good is working in a vacuum or not being able to effectively collaborate with team members regardless of whether they are in the next office or a different continent. As a company like WooThemes has shown, with some ability to be tech savvy and the occasional early morning (or late evening depending on time zones) video call you can create and run a successful (and profitable) company across geographic boundaries with people you may or may not ever meet in person. Most who read this post will not be in the boat of the WooThemes guys but they’ve proven that it can be done and done well. So here are my favorite companies and tools for collaboration.

Skype

Traditional communication through the telephone and ultimately the dreaded conference call can and should be replaced by a better and cheaper method, the combination of ubiqutous high speed internet access and voice over ip has made there many better ways to communicate and collaborate with your team than simply using the telephone but Skype is still the most user friendly.

I am quite sure I do not need to give you an overview of what Skype is especially considering Oprah seems to love it, but if you want to communicate with colleagues (or friends) in a free manner there is no reason to look beyond Skype. With the smooth video to video calling capability you can not only collaborate in real time from across the world but you can do it face-to-face. For people who feel that it is important to have that “face time” with clients or colleagues there really is nothing more practical than Skype.

Yammer and P2 Theme

There is no doubt that Twitter has exploded communication across the Internet and that if you could harnass just one small bit of that communication in your own business it would be a very powerful thing. With that in mind I have two recommendations.

Yammer is Twitter but behind the corporate firewall and P2 is a WordPress Theme that mimics some of the functionality of Twitter. I have included both Yammer and P2 in the same area because although I think P2 is an excellent (and free) alternative, it requires that you or a member of your team have much more technical knowledge (you need to at least know WordPress) and it certainly does not offer the applications (e.g. iPhone or BlackBerry client) nor support of a paid product like Yammer. Both offer your team increased ways to communicate and collaborate, it really just comes down to the functionality and support you require.

Yammer

I’ll start with Yammer which I have described as Twitter behind the corporate firewall. I am sure the company would list about a billion different ways to describe it’s features but at the end of the day that’s the difference maker that I see in it and the value of Yammer is really in that it is a private version of Twitter. In organizations where people are in at different times or where teams are trying to collaborate with people they don’t often get to see face-to-face, Yammer can be a good way to ensure that those teams are talking and sharing links, resources and ideas.

If however you (or a team member) has some technical knowledge and you don’t really need the full feature set of Yammer then I highly recommend you check out the WordPress theme known as P2.

P2

I was originally alerted to this WordPress theme through an article written by Matt Mullenweg (if you don’t know who Matt is, he is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web) entitled “How p2 Changed Automattic“. An article with that title from a person of that amount of knowledge and influence had it book marked in Instapaper (more on that below) for a long period of time before I got around to reading the article. With that said and if you’ve taken a moment to read Matt’s article you will immediately have a great use case for just what p2 is and why do I recommend it.

At the end of the day P2 is a free theme for WordPress that allows a traditional blog to to operate in a Twitter like fashion by supporting features like inline comments on the homepage, a posting form on the homepage, inline editing of posts and comments, real-time updates so new posts and comments come in without reloading, and more. I could do a more full job explaining the feature set, but there is a pretty slick video on the demo site that gives you all you need to know.

Go To Meeting

You really can’t talk about collaboration amongst team members without giving them a tool with which to collaborate or share documents in a conference or video call setting. With that in mind GoToMeeting is about as reliable and cost effective solution as can be recommended. The level of customer service and number of customers using the product (hence most problems are sorted out quite quickly) ensure that this is a service that will continue to advance. They’ll give you a 30 day trial and you can pay monthly so it’s a good service when you need it.

Rypple

Feedback is one of the most important things you can solicit from customers, colleagues and friends. The team at Rypple has made that pretty amazingly easy and slick. Using a customer acquisition model that seems to be based on employees at corporations falling in love with the service and then recommending it to their company – with the company paying to implement on a larger scale – Rypple is a company you should watch and get on board with.

Email Marketing

Mailchimp

For most small businesses email marketing or having a newsletter is one of those things they know they should do but don’t really know where to begin. I can tell you that email marketing works time and time again and getting started is not only easy, it’s also free. Sign up for an account at Mailchimp and you’ll be sending beautiful emails in no time. I can’t stress enough how much you should be working to get email addresses and beginning your email marketing. As you get more at ease read the Mailchimp blog and get some inspiration here.

Productivity

Perhaps my favorite items on this list can be found here, whether you’re a casual Internet user or hardcore these services will come in handy.

GetDropbox

Perhaps the most useful on the list, Get DropBox is a free service that will let you store files on the cloud and the retrieve them from any other computer or even your iPhone. It’s much better than emailing yourself and if you’ll have Internet it’s much better than any USB key. Go get yourself and account and you will not be sorry I promise.

Evernote

Whther you’re on a Mac or a PC, an iPhone or Blackberry, Evernote is another one that should be on both your desktop and your phone. We all have some method of keeping notes to ourselves, whether it is where you parked your car or your latest business idea, Evernote is the place to store them all. You can go so far as to take a photo with your camera and save it as a note with all the text shown in the photo searchable, it’s semi unbelievable. Notes sync with your desktop and phone and are basically available to you everywhere.

One non-business use for you is to save coupons as pdfs to Evernote and then have them available in store, the clerk can scan the upc from your phone.

Instapaper

This one is specifically for iPhone users but it’s an amazing and free little app that will allow you to access any web article from your phone while offline. You can all relate I’m sure, you’re working and come across an article you’d like to read but dint have the time. So you click read later and when you’re on the subway you’ve got a set of things to read. It’s a great app.

Twitter (Social Media) – Caveat, I do not know the customer service levels here

There are many who have covered the numerous Twitter clients and services better than I ever could (see this from Mashable, and this from Twitter) but I have a few services you should take a look at.

I’ll first say that my Twitter desktop client of choice is Tweetdeck and that on the iPhone I prefer Tweetie2 but here are some Twitter related sites and services.

Social Oomph

Previously known as Tweet Later, this company will allow you to schedule tweets days in advance and have them drop at a time of your choosing whether you are online or not. You can do some key word tracking using the site but that’s not its strong suit, it really is just a great service for pre-scheduling some tweets and then sitting back and watching them go.

Peashoot

There is no sense saying that you are going to use Twitter as a serious marketing vehicle if you’re not going to track your Twitter based campaigns and try to learn from them. Peashoot tracks your conversions and shows you how to improve your future campaigns. I’ve toyed with this but have not used it seriously yet but the company says it’s Audience Builder automatically follows people on Twitter who are relevant to you or your company. Over a matter of days Peashoot can increase your total audience size giving you more people to connect with and help spread the word about you or your company. More importantly the application lets you Measure ROI and respond to campaign activity. The company offers what it calls “Active Listening” technology whereby Twitter activity about your campaign is included in your campaign reports.

What The Trend

Trends on Twitter are a good way to keep yourself in the loop as to items which are topical and will hopefully draw visitors to your blog and comments if you hop on a trend and write something interesting. What the Trend is not one of those sites that you need to visit daily, but it’s a handy little place to get some topical blog post ideas.

As Oprah pulled up at the Twitter table last week it seemed like the party was over. There are no shortage of people who declared that the reason to use Twitter was dead now that it was being taken over by celebrities like Aston Kutcher (@aplusk) and the aforementioned Ms. Winfrey.

I guess that is one way you could view the happenings, yet I’m going to ask you take a look at a different group of people (all of whom are celebrities) and I think you will get the sense that while Oprah is undoubtedly like your parents (and why not follow my Dad – @actonroad) chaperoning and then deciding to dance at your prom, if you take the time to follow some of the great athletes that have embraced Twitter you’ll get a totally different view.

I am going to start by saying that I do not really think it’s fair to put Shaq or Lance Armstrong in the same column as Oprah when it comes to their “cool” factor, but I think it is essentially fair if we are just trying to compare celebr-twit to celebri-twit on my invented “this person is autograph worthy” scale.

Neither Shaq nor Oprah need any more people trying to cover their every move yet there both of them are on Twitter sharing with the world. The difference between Shaq and Oprah is that Shaq – like most athletes on Twitter – inherently seems to “get it”. I mean you really only need to look at Shaq’s tweet where he put Oprah in her place to see that he is actually protective of the Twitterverse.

Ok you say, so Shaq and Lance Armstrong seem to like Twittering and they aren’t so completely self-interested that every tweet is about themselves or their cafe macchiato – what’s the big deal?

It’s not just Shaq and Lance that get it is what is the big deal. There are a ton of athletes on Twitter who are actually using it in much the same way you or I do. They’re chatting with friends, throwing random questions at their followers and for the most part are some of the most “real” Twitter users you will find.

I could have listed numerous examples but will stick with just @jalenrose because after following him for a bit I actually think that for him Twitter is not about stroking ego.

So before you declare Twitter dead and the party over, remember that there are all types of people on Twitter – celebrity or not – and nobody’s forcing you to follow @oprah.

If you’re looking for a list of athletes to follow on Twitter there are no shortage of them out there but I found the majority of the ones I follow at Athletes That Tweet and would encourage you to check there first.