Tangyslice

How do you track the success of customer or account management programs?  Here are some examples I’ve seen:

Customer retention rate = The percentage of customers who stay with you over the total number of customers.  The downside is that this number ignores the fact that some customers are more important/valuable than others.
Revenue retention rate = [...]

One of my lasting recollections from yesterday’s elections was how effectively the Obama campaign used its database.  I never made a donation.  I never attended an event. I never even talked with a chugger.  All I did was forward a laugh-out-loud viral video to my wife and I was hooked.
Early yesterday morning I received an [...]

It is always difficult to be in three places at one time so I had to make a difficult decision about what where to go last night.  I had three options: MIT Entrepreneurship Center Reception, WBUR Tweetup or the Mass High Tech All Stars.  In the end I chose the E-center reception and the tweet-up.  [...]

A couple of weeks ago I poked fun at the array of numbers that frequently masquerade as metrics.  As a follow-up to that post, here are some additional thoughts about the attributes of meaningful marketing measures:

Connected - The best metrics are related to your overall business goals. This means things like program revenue or cost [...]

Now that Washington has bailed out the financial services, insurance and auto industries, isn’t time to rescue the investors in Web 2.0 companies?  Sure they funded businesses with limited (or even no business models) but here is my logic:

These companies just need time to be merged with others with more traffic and/or advertising revenue
The damage [...]

Those of you who followed my inane social media journey will recall my predictions about the fate of many of the Web 2.0 bubble companies.  Well, it seems that day of reckoning may be nearing.  You don’t have to look far to find articles about venture capitalists reducing investments or layoffs in the start-up world.  [...]

Here are a couple of things that stuck in my head a day after the event.

It seems like mainstream corporate types (ie enterprise customers like EMC) are taking it slow with social media.  Like other new technologies, they are carefully evaluating it (in this case inside the firewall first) as another tool to help them [...]

My desire to treat all things in an agile way is creating internal discomfort.  Over the weekend I was reflecting on how to develop a new or refreshed brand using an agile approach.  Given the need for consistency and repetition in building a brand, it seems that this may be one part of the marketing [...]

The issue of trust seems to be everywhere today.

Can we trust our politicians when they say we need a massive bank bailout?
Can I trust that this charity will spend my money wisely?
Can I trust this online business is not some elaborate phishing scheme to clean out my bank account?

Over the years, some of the brightest [...]

1. I found this interesting post last week by Peter Kim about a framework to measure social media.  It is a step in the right direction but it still makes we wonder about when we will see industry standard metrics emerge for social media (ie cost per action, cost per click, etc).
2. I’ve seen a [...]