It totally depends on budget. There are some free tools you can use, many for a few thousand pounds and a few for hundreds of thousands. Once you have a budget, I would need to know what you are looking to do with it to be able to recommend one in particular, as each has its strengths and weaknesses. There are over 168 different Social Media monitoring tools out there (at last count!).

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss. cgeddes@caci.co.uk. I will help if i can.

Chris

It is feasible to automate the ETL process and integrate it with SQL server databases by developing custom solutions in Java or PHP, or even Pentaho! Alternatively, there are also many affordable off the shelf solutions available.

Once you have integrated the clickstream data with SQL Server databases, you can apply the data mining structures available through SQL Analysis Services as an added bonus!

It is still unclear how these regulations will be implemented. But given the likely impact on EU’s e-commerce revenue and competitiveness, the solution may simply require the browser’s cookie settings to be more obvious and easier to understand rather than getting the user to ‘opt-in’ through a pop-up box.

Whatever the solution, the specific impact on GA will be the same as any other cookie based solution provider and GA serves only first party cookies. It’s also worth noting that GA serves only first party cookies, and cookie based tracking is more established than other forms such as web logs (inability to crunch data) and packet sniffers (privacy issues).

http://www.silicon.com/technology/security/2011/03/09/uk-delays-enforcing-new-eu-privacy-law-on-cookies-39747111/

On a more simple note – the main point being raised in the article is that simply understanding how people are most often interacting when online can help provide insight into other areas of your UX e.g. your path to purchase experiences. Having said this, even for relatively simple interactions a level of personalisation is probably still needed.

Chris Geddes is working on a paper around Critical Mass in Social Networks, which tries to define the formula for this type of activity. All has a major impact on UX.

Perhaps socially driven UX is about tracking the behaviour of various user segments (which raises the question of how you ID the user segments,) as well as looking at the functional aspects like co-browsing & social commerce.

The importance of multi-channel (or cross-channel, whichever you like best), influence of (or in) social networks, customer experience and new technology is obvious. They should, though, not be regarded as – the – four forces driving a change in marketing.

Preparing your organization for multi-channel interaction with your Customers is just deferred maintenance and should be something you’d like to continuously improve (or better even: innovate). And yes, social media should be added to the mix too.

Furthermore, Influence in social networks has been around for ever. What has changed is that peer trust has increased in importance for Customers and more “first hand stories of experience” are accessible for them. Better accessibility and creation of knowledge, in the broadest sense, through (online) social networks is the true shift.

The importance of (good enough) Customer experiences is not new either, nor has it’s importance increased. Like it has been for ages, we just need to getter better at it every day, to keep up with the increasingly rapid pace of change in the market place. In my opinion this change is much less driven by changing Customer needs as it is by changing rates of new products and services coming to the market that satisfy Customer needs better, as well as new markets catching up with western developped economies, but who have some very different problems (because of their different context) to be solved at this point in time, than we are used to solve.

What did change over the past years is that leading Companies have adopted a way of thinking and acting that has provided them with access to new insights, new technologies, new market segments, more new and loyal Customers and evidently a better position in the market place to continue to grow sustainably.

These Companies have embraced:

- the notion that (1 on 1) push-marketing strategies and transaction-based Customer analytics are strategies with diminishing returns;

- the notion that Customers are not means to extract value from, but can be, want to be and are, active participators in the process of mutual value co-creation;

- the notion that this implies a shift in focus from marketing for value exchange to marketing for value in use;

- the notion that opening up their knowledge stocks and continuously tapping into the flows of knowledge both inside and outside their companies provides them with competitive advantage;

- the notion that empowering people (and with people I mean Customers, employees and partners all alike) in communities of likeminded and/or shared interests to solve their problems or do their “Customer jobs” better than anyone else, trumps influencing people to sell to their community for you.

There are many great examples out there, which have been described by leaders like John Hagel et all, Steve Vargo et all, Irene Ng, Frank Piller, Umair Haque, J.K. Prahalad, Venkat Ramaswamy etc etc.. And you’ll recognize other examples intuitively around you when you encounter them..

I know the above is not Social CRM. I (naively) want(ed) it to be, but the market decided otherwise. No hard feelings by the way, it’s not the acronym that’s important, the great people, ideas and innovative practices within the space are.

It may be named “conversational” or “dialog” marketing. Steve Vargo has announced “it” as the arrival of “the age of co-creation and service-dominant marketing”.

The problem may not be so much with what we put in front of it, but how we perceive, interpret or give meaning to words like “marketing” or “customer relationship management” through our designs and actions.

Hence, my question would be: what methods, approaches and/or changes in (service system) design and (marketing and/or crm) actions would be required for a company to be able to say: “we master the capability of co-creative, conversational, service-dominant, pull-empowered marketing”?

I will post this comment on my blog later, to include appropriate links to people and resources. I don’t have time now to do that properly.

Thx for the post, the invitation to comment and the platform to do so. Highly appreciated

Wim Rampen
@wimrampen

A number of clients are persuing similar agendas. However it feels like a mixed approach is necessary at the moment.