One of the best parts of marketing a professional sports franchise is that you undoubtedly have some die-hard fans and as such brand advocates. You also have an emotional connection between fan and brand which can easily be combined with the abundance of video, audio and digital content that is naturally produced through sports broadcasts and media.  However sports marketers like all others are looking for ways in to not only share that content with fans but to really engage those fans and create a dialogue where the most passionate fans help spur on other fans and at the same time feel that their voices/opinions are being heard and acted upon by the franchise. It would seem a perfect marriage for social media marketing.

There are however only a handful of sports teams that you can point to who are really taking advantage of the content, the advocates and the new channels available to them via social media and Social CRM. One team who seems to be getting it right is the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. The Warriors won a 2011 Gartner and 1t01 Media CRM Excellence Award for their work on the “2010 Warriors Draft Challenge.” Continue Reading…

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. Continue Reading…

Friend and mentor Paul Greenberg is fond of saying that we may be moving from a time of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to Customer Managed Relationships (CMR). It’s a statement that every company needs to take to heart. The number of channels with which customers engage with your company and each other obey no geographic boundaries and know no time zones. Where companies once had control of the channels and times with which they would engage customers the pendulum has decidedly swung the other way. While your office and customer support may be open 9-5 on the east coast of North America, your customers are talking to you and about you when they feel like it and on the channel of their choosing. Where companies used to have to facilitate the coming together of customers through user conferences, again at a time and place chosen by the company, today that same user base is spread across social channels, forums and connecting with one another without company involvement. How then should you react to this dramatic shift in consumer empowerment?  Continue Reading…

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.  Continue Reading…