Cool vs. ROI (RyanAir)

Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve last updated my blog. There’s really no excuse even though I did spent the last 2 months working, finishing my digital marketing studies, graduating, moving back to Finland and looking for jobs.

It’s been hectic. As an apology, please enjoy this snippet from the Ryan Air calendar :) 

Lot has happened since my last post but I’m still not going talk about Google+  vs. Facebook, Google Wallet or any of the dozens of innovative and creative campaigns that have been launched during the last month or so.

I’m starting again with a soft post about something dear to my heart. ROI in digital marketing.

With all the advice given on how to be the most innovative, creative and extraordinary digital marketer out there, we tend to forget that optimizing everything to perfection might be nice, but not make any difference to your bank account. Well, actually it can but it will be a negative one.

A great example of this in my mind is RyanAir. Their site is probably one of the ugliest out there, with a very low usability. I could hire a 15 year old to do a better job. But that’s not what the site is about. It’s not intended to be a cool visual explosion. It’s meant to convey the exact same thing that RyanAir is all about. RyanAir is CHEAP.

The thing evident for anyone who has ever flown on their flights is that there is a reason why the tickets are the cheapest around. Everything costs extra and the plane is packed with small seats and large people.

The image you get of RyanAir and of the service you get at the airport and in the plane is the same online. You get exactly what you pay for. The site is cheap but an airline competing almost solely on price can’t afford, and shouldn’t put too much money into the site when they can get the same results with the simpler one.  

RyanAir has pretty much perfected their website’s purchase funnel with cross-selling items and services. After choosing the your flight dates you get to the passenger details page which offers a myriad of additional things the passenger can purchase. Passengers have to pay extra for pretty much everything that is normally included in the price of a ticket by other airlines.

These include priority boarding, travel insurance, SMS confirmation, RyanAir approved cabin bag, special equipment, special assistance and method of payment. After booking the flight, the customer is bombarded with hotel and car rental options. These advertisements are specific to the location and date you’re flying so they’re highly relevant. The pricing of the different items and services is also quite low so the hurdle to add them to your purchase isn’t too high.

With ever increasing profits RyanAir is doing something right (besides buy oil with a good price)  and in my mind their approach towards online sales is really helping with that. The whole company’s brand and messages support the image of cheap and that's exactly what they should be doing. 

First Direct's eCRM strategy setting the industry standards high

The former telephone only banking giant has taken the online banking with a storm, focusing on market leading eCRM that has won it various awards for many years running. A quick glance at the website reveals just why this is. 

First Direct offers several different types of channels that enable customers to access their account. These channels include:

            - Internet Banking

            - Mobile Banking and a Mobile app

            - Telephone Banking

            - Internet Baking Plus (compiles all finances under one service)

All the services provide users with an overview and in detailed information as well as demos and video tutorials of the different features. The site in general provides extensive amount of esthetically formatted information on different topics related to banking, investing, insurances and loans. Use of social media is limited to recently launched Facebook page and Twitter account. Lack of physical branches means that the information customers need, has to be clearly written and easily found, which First Direct does well. The over all feeling of the site and it’s extensive amount of different types of content creates a comforting feeling of the reliability of the bank and ease of service. 

Six suggested initiatives for First Direct

Even though the bank is kicking ass at award shows, there are few things it could improve upon.  

1. Social Media

         - Increase the amount of content posted /published through social media

- Seasonal tips (student loan information before semester, travel insurance reminders before winter holidays)

2. “Human” Face to the site

- Take the First Direct style / approach and apply it to a virtual assistant or “Live Help” feature that would enable chatting with a service representative.

3. Extended security education

- Expand the Online Security section to cover sections that are especially meant for the “elder generations” with video tutorials.

- Have an online “Security training course” that will cover the things people should watch out for and cover in detail how people can keep their account safe. (Videos and pictures of different situations with multiple-choice questions)

4. Instructions on how to manage situations in life

- Expand the information sections to cover more detailed information about the different situations in life when people are in need of a bank. Provide customers with more than just content directly related to its services (example Kiboo)

5. Using your phone as a debit card / mobile wallet

- Enable payments using mobile by using NFC. This would enable customers to make shopping more convenient and First Direct to be on the forefront of modern banking as mobile payments become mainstream (source The Guardian)

6. Proper budget analysis software

- Provide customers with a proper financial tool with budgeted expenses weeks, months and years (example Mint). The tool could work as an app that is can be synced with customers’ bank account. Expenses could be categorized (food, gas, entertainment) and customers could make yearly profit estimation.

The profit estimation would calculate customer’s net income and deduct weekly average expenses. An unexpected expense deduction would be made based on customer’s hobbies, interests ect. (skydiving car enthusiasts).

How to measure success in Digital Publishing?

Let’s start by debunking any notions that same metrics can be applied to different companies or even different campaigns and goals in one company. As Kristina Halvorson points out in her book Content Strategy for the Web, the first thing that should be assessed is what constitutes success?

Depending on the company’s goals, it can mean anything for generating sales, driving advocacy or improving lifetime value of existing customers. Once the general goal of the project or strategy is established we can get down to more specific figures. But even with the more specific numbers it’s hard to clearly measure what constitutes success. Benchmarking against previous campaigns run by the company is a good start; also comparing against what your competitors and the industry leaders are doing can help you estimate how successful you really are.

Conversion is of course the ultimate way to measure success but that can mean so many different things. Conversion of what? To start with, measure at least the ultimate goals set for the campaign or strategy. These can anything from making sales, getting people to sign up for a website / fan page or their lifetime value. When taken to the next step, publishers should measure how often newly acquired customers return to the site and how effective the company is in retaining them.

Measuring success is tricky and blindly staring at different KPIs isn’t going to make much difference if you don’t know what a chance something means. When in doubt whether you should spend time analyzing a certain KPI, try asking yourself “SO WHAT?” three times. If you can answer 3 times and see a benefit, you have something worth looking into in more detail. You can use this “analysis” to determine whether a KPI is actually worth measuring or if the change in a KPI is worth thinking about. Trust me, it works!

Cohesive content strategy

Digital agencies have long had content strategists on staff, but a variety of organizations are seeing the need to add someone to their team to be in charge of “the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content,” as Kristina Halvorson defines the job in Content Strategy for the Web,

In her book, Halvorson identifies multiple steps in the content strategy process; first audit the existing content, then analyze, strategize, categorize, structure, create, revise, approve, tag, format, publish, update, and archive.

Key concepts

Audit
A review of existing content, how much there is, how well it’s organized, and how accurate and how well it is produced?

Content 
Content is much more than text. Multimedia elements such as pictures, graphic elements, video and audio can help tell the story.

Content lifecycle
Content needs to be regularly evaluated. What needs to be refreshed, updated and taken out? A website is in a constant beta stage.

Message architecture
A hierarchy of the core messages that define an organization or brand, which helps content strategists figure out the story they are trying to tell and what content is not related to the brand and is unnecessary.

“Don’t outsource your voice?”

Halvorson has a love hate relationship with content strategies and explains that the decision whether to outsource it or not isn’t that simple.

“On the one hand, that’s a really great quotable line. On the other hand, refusing on principle to outsource content is just impossible for most organizations. If you can’t hire anyone internally to do the editorial stuff, you’re going to have to outsource because you can’t just publish Web content and leave it there. You have to take care of it over time”.

Social Commerce

Social commerce is definitely one of the buzzwords of 2011. Several fully functioning Facebook Stores and storefronts that link to an external site have been founded this year, and even predictions of Facebook surpassing Google in terms of advertising revenue have surfaced. With all this hype and new terms like f-commerce, m-commerce and the good old e-commerce popping up, one might think that social commerce is something completely new and revolutionizing.

The fact is however, that even though the technology and software are new, the social aspect of shopping isn’t. What is emerging as the new trend in online retailing has already been done for over 50 years. Only the medium of the social aspect is changing.

Facebook and social commerce

As an example where this is most evident, lets examine Facebook. Using it as medium for engaging, creating relationships with customers and building a better brand image, has become self-evident for most companies. So it makes only sense that the gradual adaptation of shopping online should be taken to the next level, by adding the social aspect.

In his article about the viability of Facebook as a commerce channel, Stefan Schmidt raises some valid points about the payment system, limitations in having a separated silo platform and moral questions about accessing consumer’s information. While I agree that these issues need to be addressed, I still see them as only temporary hiccups that are overcome by a growing consumer demand.

Social shopping

The reason why I believe this is because it simply makes commercial sense for a retailer to sell, where customers spend their time. Despite requiring time, effort and money to function properly, social media platforms offer a cost-effective way for any B2C retailer to reach a large audience. The added benefit to this is that it enables something called “thin-slicing” (Source 1). This concept from social psychology argues that people tend to ignore most “traditional ”information available when making a purchase decision and instead base their decision on “salient information cues” (Source 2). In layman’s terms this translates into behavior based on person’s social peers, which has been used in marketing for decades.

Just one example of this is the concept of “liking”. People tend to follow people they like and when applied commercially, it means that people are more likely to buy something if an influential person endorses it. Yesterday’s Tupperware parties are today’s “Like-button”.  Even though this is already done outside of Facebook, it can be taken further and have a greater impact if the purchase is made possible within Facebook. Allowing influential and liked people to influence purchase decisions can take different forms in social networks. News feeds of your friends’ latest purchases and group purchases are just some applications of how this could be done.

What are the company’s goals?

Different ways companies can approach Facebook will depend on their goals. The store can only consist of a fan store that is meant to drive advocacy instead of actually making commercially vital sales. Another way to go, is to set up a full equivalent of the company’s website to drive sales, much like ASOS and French Connection did earlier this year. The third way to approach the Facebook store is to set up a similar site like Starbucks and O2 have done.

These Facebook stores allow customers to top-up on the Facebook page and even though they generate sales for the companies, their main purpose is to improve customer service by providing a loyalty platform. This kind of approach might prove most successful for companies, especially if they decide to gradually rollout more features and items over time. It allows the customers to get used to the idea of shopping in Facebook while increasing their lifetime value. 

Fear not the change

Even though entering the social commerce era will present new challenges for retailers, the same time-tested concepts from past decades still apply. Separating commercial activities into different trendy silos will not be commercially viable for long. A more unified commercial approach will be the way to go, whatever tools and channels retailers decide to use. And like it or not, as a social media platform, Facebook is the trendsetter for practicing social commerce. As another generation of digital natives graduates this summer and moves out to the real world, this trend is only going to get stronger.

Voice of the customer (my ecommerce analysis continues)

Continuing on my analysis a few weeks ago where I analysed the multichannel experience with Argos, I've now set my sights on M&S's customer service. This time I examined the ease and effectiveness of their review mechanism and the customer service via different channels. 

M&S lets their customers’ voices be heard by making the writing of reviews for products easy and by filtering out offensive and discriminative reviews. By doing so, M&S is able to maintain a high level of quality within their reviews, provide actually useful reviews for customers in order to maximize sales and finally improve their SEO with extended product description pages.

M&S’s customer service is a mixed bag of traditional, mediocre customer service, and ninja-level interaction through social media. The overall quality of service is up to a level, which will increase M&S’s brand image, increase the lifetime value of their customers and improve their long-term profitability.

Review mechanism

The ease of using the M&S review function is made slightly inconvenient with a compulsory registration to the site. However, the process is compensated with cookie tracking, which takes the customer automatically back to the product page after the registration is complete.

Leaving reviews on the M&S site is made relatively simple with their 5-star overall rating and with four, more detailed, 5-dash ratings. The more detailed ratings change according to the type of product being reviewed, providing relevant review criteria.

The level of liquidity in the M&S review system is high. Most of the products have been reviewed, some over 20 times. There also doesn’t seem to be many products with only very old reviews, but all have recent reviews as well.

Quick calculation shows that the 1/9/90-rule applies to M&S reviews and this has not gone unnoticed by the company The most active contributors get a “Top 25 Contributor” statement under their username, which is a way of rewarding the contributors and at the same time giving others something to strive for.

Getting a review on to the site can take up to 48 hours, while it is being checked by M&S, but as far as can be told, they are not censoring out bad reviews. Maintaining a certain level of quality and keeping spamming away from the reviews increases their reliability, which means better customer satisfaction. Also, the high number of reviews improves their SEO, as users provide more keywords with their reviews and make the product pages’ details sections longer.

Customer service 

The M&S main website is missing a “contact us” section, which makes sending them an email or filling out a contact form difficult. Reason for this could be because M&S is well prepared for customer questions with their extensive Help section and virtual assistant Hannah, and try to drive traffic towards these services, instead of burdening call centers.

The Contact Us page on the M&S Money-page is well divided between different topics. This lowers the length of call times and the number of personnel required to re-direct calls, resulting into greater customer satisfaction and lowered costs.

Customer service to my question was a mixed result of good and bad. Calling the call center took less than 5 minutes thanks to a direct phone number provided in an email, which was sent to me immediately after sending the question via contact form. The customer service representative was able to provide me with a very detailed answer. It took M&S 4 days to finally answer my question via email but on day 2 they did sent an email, notifying me of a delay in response time. The final response was adequate but lacked in personal touch and detail.

Using Facebook and Twitter to contact M&S proved to be the best way to get their attention and a response. Within 12-hours after posting the question to the M&S Facebook page’s discussion forum, I had a complete answer and a phone number for more information. M&S also replied to my tweet, referring me to their answer on Facebook. This level of service was exceptionally good and seems to be the standard that M&S wants to maintain. Good service via email or on the phone should not be forgotten, but questions asked in “public” spaces like Facebook and Twitter will leave behind a digital footprint for everyone to see. The benefit of answering a single person in Facebook or Twitter isn’t limited down to just that one person, but it can spread beyond them and benefit the company much more.

Summa summarum

M&S review mechanism is well executed and this shows on their website. The number of reviewed products, the number of reviews per product and the activity of customers, are a testament to a mechanism, which really helps customers and is bound increase sales. The positive ripple effect created by the excellent service in Twitter and Facebook is and will be a competitive advantage for M&S. 

How news and information are accessed through digital channels?

Being able to be connected to everything you’re interested in, anytime you want has definitely changed the way we consume media and information. Because we’re not bound to wait for the morning paper or the hourly news update from TV, but have the option to access information anytime that suits us, has resulted in new ways of accessing information.

Apps, Search, RSS readers, social media, news aggregator sites and of course traditional news sites, all provide us with different ways to access and consume information. Let’s go over the four main ways.

1. Going directly to the news site of my choice

This is the classical model of consuming news and the philosophy behind any newspaper. I choose the media site I trust, click my way to the front page and study the content the editors have chosen for me.

This model depends on my trust in the brand and old media habits. But it also limits how many sources I can follow. In the past you had no choice. You subscribed to one or two newspapers and watched a couple of television channels. Editors may be dreaming that I am happy only with their site for all my needs, but it just isn’t so.

2. Aggregation of news from many sources

The web has given us practically unlimited number of choices. But there is no way I can visit every site I might be interested in every day. So I use aggregation sites, which automatically pick up news from numerous different sources, either selected by me or by the aggregator.

Aggregation offers users the choice to follow many more news sources than before, scanning through their headlines and quickly deciding whether they want to go to the actual source. This is a major benefit if you are following news from a particular niche. Yet the amount of stories quickly becomes too much. The biggest challenge is what to do with the stories you did not have the time to scan through.

3. Search

Search has become so convenient and normal these days that we don’t even think about it as “search”. Search is very good when you look for specific information – but does not work as well when you just want to follow the latest news. There are some great opportunities with tailored search alerts, for instance if you are following the news about one particular company.

4. Peer-edited news stream

Social communities like Twitter and Facebook as well as bookmark sites like Digg, Reddit and Delicious let users recommend news content to their peers. Instead of depending on the sources of the news, the users leave their trust with who is recommending the content. Basically this means that your peers take the role as editors.

Personally I have found myself increasingly depended on the people I follow on Twitter and Facebook. I have chosen these people either because I know them or because they have a professional position, which is interesting to me. These people provide an increasing number of the news stories I have the time to consume during the day, especially in the niche areas of my interest.

And guess what? They are so much quicker than the professional journalists! Breaking stories happens so much faster in Facebook and Twitter because the distribution is crowdsourced to the users and because people spend most of their time using them anyway. It only makes sense that they should be the main medium of accessing and consuming information in the upcoming years.

Media consumption diet

My media consumption diet 

Posting this just to make a little reference for future, to see how my media consumption will change.

Media that I Buy

• Music via iTunes downloads
• Random magazines for airline travel (Men’s Health, National Geographic, The Economist)

Media that I Consume

• Radio/Music- YouTube
• Newspapers (Helsingin Sanomat, Huffington Post, Google News, Google Reader
• Television shows
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Blogs
• RSS feeds (Indianapolis Colts, Carolina Panthers, DePauw University News, BusinessWeek)

Media Consumption Categorization:

B2C: Specialist and Generalist

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Magazines
• Movies
• Music

B2B

• RSS
• Mashable
• TechCrunch
• Engadget
• Digital Buzz blog
• Social Media Today

C2C

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Blogs

Even "boring" companies can do great things with social media!

When you hear the words social media, what companies come to mind? Coca cola? Skittles? Ben & Jerry's? If so, it's not a surprise. These companies have been well publicized for their use of Facebook and Twitter to create innovative campaigns. But other companies are using social medias too. Even "boring" companies! 

The following best practice analysis is of Intuit inc. (an American software company) that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals. The company is a great example of how any company (not just the obvious, fun ones, like Skittles or Ben & Jerry’s) can utilize social medias and communities in their business models.  

The online presence of the company is quite impressive, especially considering the field of work Intuit’s in. Their online activities cover everything form blogging, crowdsourcing, YouTube channels, social networks to aTaxAlmanac, which is a free tax research resource modeled after Wikipedia.

Intuit’s online presence covers the following:

Blogging

- TurboTax team blog (General topics about to taxation and accounting)

- Bob Meighan’s blog (Vice President of Intuit, company and industry topics)

Crowdsourcing

            - Intuit Labs (Site for product testing and customer feedback)

Twitter

            - @Intuitinc

            - @intuitcommunity

            - @IntuitUK

            - @IntuitPayroll

            - @turbotax

            - @IntuitHealth

            - @TeamTurboTax

            - @IntuitCareers

            - @IntuitAR

            - @Intuit

            - @Intuitlabs

            - @Quickbooks

            - @IntuitDeals

            - @IntuitTownHall

            - Numerous employee accounts to answer product questions

           

YouTube

            - Intuit QuickBooks – channel (Guides about the product)

            - TurboTax – channel (General news and help for individuals)

Ratings and Reviews

            - TurboTax reviews (reviews of their personal and business software’s)

Social Networks

            - Facebook

            - LinkedIn

            - TurboTax Support Community (targeted for individuals)

            - QuickBooks Community (targeted for businesses)

            - JumpUp Community (targeted for small businesses and start-ups)

Wiki

            - TaxAlmanac (“Wikipedia” of taxation and accounting)

SWOT analysis of Intuit’s use of social medias

Strengths

Intuit’s greatest strength is in its massive number of communities. Just one of their communities has more to offer than many other companies’ entire online presence.

Besides the official company blog (TurboTax team blog), which covers topics from industry specific topics to topics relevant to individuals, and the blog written by the Vice President Bob Meighan’s blog, each community has a blog of their own. Each community also has an expert locator map, calendar of upcoming Intuit and other relevant events, forums, podcasts, videocasts, webinars, whitepapers and user generated content. The communities are built around the different Intuit products, which have their own specific user segments. Having all this information and content made available for each product makes sense, since there is little risk of cannibalizing their own communities.

Example of just one of Intuit’s communities is JumpUp, which is a free social networking and resource site for small businesses and start-ups. The site offers numerous free tools and services, like an interactive business planner, different cost and profit calculators, free templates and sample business plans.

Intuit is also involving their customers into the development of new software and applications. On Intuit Labs.com Intuit’s development teams share their ideas and products with users to have them tested and to get feedback from them. All this is freely available for customers and the featured applications cover everything from small businesses apps, to apps related to personal finance and various mobile devices.

Finally, as a testament to their commitment to providing people with all the possible information they might need related to finance and taxation, in 2005 intuit launched the TaxAlmanac. The site is modeled after Wikipedia and is written by US tax professionals and combines legislative information with practical examples and case studies.

Weaknesses and threats

Intuit’s massive online presence can also be seen as a weakness. The massive amount of personnel and operating costs required to maintain this kind of system can easily cripple a company if circumstances were to change. Because Intuit has established itself as the number one software company for personal finance, accounting and tax return software in the US and has created these huge communities around each of its products, consumers will expect the same for every new product they will launch. Every product will have to have its own site, with its own designated experts and content, which means ever-higher operating expenses.

Even if Intuit eventually does discontinue old products, people will still be using them and will not take it lightly if Intuit will also close the communities of these products. So the choice is between saving operating costs or pissing of and possibly alienating their customers.

Intuit’s inability to expand to other geographical markets is also a weakness. In most of Europe and around the world, taxation is far more simple and automated than in the US. Average citizens in these countries don’t need the type of software Intuit offers and that means that the market the company is competing in is limited mostly to the US. Spending in online marketing is the highest in the US market and if Intuit wishes to stay as the market leader in their field, they need to invest significantly time, resources and money to marketing and research.

Opportunities

Even though the company is somewhat limited to the US market for now, they could still expand to other geographical markets with their small business and start-up software’s. Providing European markets for example with information on the international legislation related to finance and taxation, with software optimized for the European and UK accounting standards could be a way to enter the market.

Conclusion

Intuit’s online presence is a combination of high-level professionalism, mixed with a dash of fun and lightheartedness, which can be seen on their Facebook page and on their TurboTax – channel. Intuit has invested heavily on building communities around each of their products. Each of these niche communities has a very active level of engagement by the company’s specialists and the users. The company has understood that just by providing people and companies with software to help with their taxation and accounting problems isn’t enough, the support by Intuit has to be top quality and can’t be limited to just product support but has to encompass the entire process of accounting and taxation. By making all this information and content free, re-enforces the company’s image as a reliable source of information, and the customer engagement through the several communities, social networks and crowdsourcing guarantees high-level