CRM 2.0, Web 2.0 or the latest trends in eCommerce

The market has been progressively picking up over the last 18 months as more and more businesses - both bricks & mortar and online - have been realising there is a new momentum related to eCommerce. Many are re-engineering their home grown systems. Many more are replacing their in-house systems or their existing applications with more industrial strength solutions, such as those from ATG. Our CEO, Bob Burke, recently said he had not seen the market this active in 4 years. There are projects happening all over the US and all over Europe. No longer is Europe lagging behind the US curve. ATG has clients who have increased their catalogue sales by over 150%, clients who are acquiring new subscribers by over 100%, clients who have increased the revenue per user by over 600%! And all in Europe.

The catalyst for much of this appears to be that many businesses have realised the Web is not a "black art" requiring some geek or guru to define how their systems should work. More, they've realised the online presence requires the same advertising, marketing and promotions as their physical presence. Their CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) have also realised they need to maintain brand consistency across multiple channels. More, they've realised they need to have a much greater understanding of their customers. The realisation that "profiling" and cookies can accomplish this in part, has been a wake-up call to the opportunity and potential of enabling them engage with their customers in a more substantial manner.

Whether it be Web 2.0 or CRM 2.0, I believe it to be the convergence of these two market forces which is creating a whole new market focus towards "customer experience". During dot.com, the majority of the web users were on dial-up connections. Now, the majority are on broadband connections. As such, the technology being used and the manner in which its being deployed makes for a much richer customer experience. Sites such as NikeID.com where the customer can design their own trainers - using any number of colour combinations, using the intuitive UI to see the end product and then ordering it. Or Orange Poland enabling their customers to select a variety/combination of services to specifically address their needs – even to the point of selecting their own telephone number online. Again, incorporating an intuitive and easy-to-use interface which has made the entire experience as straightforward and as pleasurable as possible.

In markets which might be considered saturated, be the website commerce-enabled or not, many Marketing Directors have realised that to be able to achieve this "single view of the customer" across multiple channels, to market to them, up-sell to them, cross-sell to them, all encourages a loyalty to the brand and to the quality of service being offered. But they're also realising that targeting the promotions and offers to them based on the customers profile and area of interest is more likely to achieve a click through, and then to convert a browser to a buyer because the content is targeted to the customers specific area of interest. There's little point in sending a 16 year old details of pensions or life insurance, in the same way as a 60 year old is unlikely to be in to "house music" and extreme sports!.

The acquisition of DoubleClick by Google is an interesting development. Bringing the search engine giant together with the business which is involved in media placement and serving up advertisements. I believe the future will be increasingly influenced by personalisation. Having marketers seek the means to serve us very specific promotions and offers on the basis it will create higher click through, higher conversions rates, and therefore hold up the value of the advertising rates. Internet advertising has already overtaken terrestrial television advertising in the UK. This trend is set to continue and gather momentum. I see a major market opportunity for those already established in this area such as LBI, the full service interactive agency that was born out of Framfab, Satama Interactive headquartered in Helsinki, etc.

But there is also a growing momentum with conventional retailers, consumer goods businesses and those in the Telco market, who are making their plans as to how to move in to the Next Generation of eCommerce. And for those who haven't started this planning process, I would urge them to reconsider or commission a feasibility study to develop these plans over the coming 2 years. From what I've see, we're back to having "internet years" of 90 days - which means whatever solution is put in place needs to enable the business to be sufficiently agile and adaptable to rapidly changing market trends or specific promotions being run by your competitors.

Peter Ford

2007-06-27