Search engine marketing company Performics recently released results of its “2009 Online Buyer Economic Trend Study.” The report tracks online buying behavior of consumers over three months (April, May, June). Results from June are interesting — consumers not only appear to be spending more, but seem to have altered their mindsets in terms of the economy’s impact on their lifestyles. The changes might be slight, but they are consistent.

Here are some of the stats:

• Only 42 percent of respondents say their household economic situation is worse than it was at this time last year, whereas 53 percent and 51 percent said it was worse in April and May. Forty-one percent say it is the same while 16 percent say it is better – that’s up from 9 percent in May.

• Once again, the majority of respondents (51%) say they have postponed at least one major purchase in the past three months because of the economy.

• On average, seven out of ten respondents somewhat/strongly agree that they search online more often to find better deals.

• Cutting back spending on non-essentials and falling income are the primary reasons why respondents expect to spend less this year for  three months of fielding. However, lack of confidence in the economy as a reason for spending less drops from 17 percent in April to only 9 percent in June.

• In general, consumers are cutting back most on dining out and apparel, shoes & accessories. Consumers are most likely to eliminate spending on concerts, theatre and sporting events.

• Twenty-five percent somewhat/strongly agree that they are thinking about making a career change or are actively looking for a new job. Meanwhile, 33 percent are hesitant to seek out new job opportunities. And 42 percent somewhat/strongly agree that they are happy with their current job situation.

• As in April and May, two-thirds of respondents say the recession has fundamentally changed the way they think about saving and spending money. Respondents say the recession will have a lasting impact on saving and spending habits, with 8 in 10 saying somewhat/strongly agree in each of the three months of fielding.

This week, ABC News reports that consumer confidence rose by one point to negative 51.

However, back-to-school spending this fall is expected to fall by nearly 8 percent.

There are several bright spots in various retail segments. According to IDC, the PC market is fairing better than expected with global PC shipments again coming in slightly ahead of expectations. A late-June Washington Post article suggests that consumer spending could be up slightly as more Americans get their savings cemented.

By Ryan Zuk, senior media and analyst relations manager, Sage CRM Solutions

CRM magazine, June 2009, cover

[EDITORS' NOTE: This is part of a series of posts that began here, dissecting a two-page chart that appeared in CRM magazine's June 2009 issue on social media. The digital edition of that issue can be found here, and a standalone image of the chart itself can be seen here. (Click on the “View Full Size” button at the top right of that page.) To view all posts in the series, please add this RSS feed to your RSS reader.]

JUNE 6, 2009 — Christopher Carfi of Cerado nailed a big point with his video blog contribution to this social experiment:

Customers belong at the center of CRM magazine’s thought-provoking Social Media Maturity Model, since the model itself focuses on communicating, collaborating, and doing business with them.

Perhaps this is a natural assumption for many people viewing the model, although I think most would also agree it’s important to define your audience, prospects, partners, and customers — your people — and to stay focused on serving them.

Consider the buyer-persona concept that David Meerman Scott encourages in his writing and presentations. [Editors' Note: David Meerman Scott will be participating in this series later this month.] Businesses can benefit by putting a name and a face to all types of members within their addressable markets, keeping current profiles of each, and solving their problems.

Now more than ever, whether considering the struggling economy or the Long Tail nature of commerce, we need to get to know our people better, learn what motivates them, and use this information to create connections that sustain and grow successful businesses.

Social Media Maturity Model, detail (upper right), CRM magazine, June 2009

Genuine conversations remain the best way to do this, despite all the fancy Web and social networking tools now available to us. (And we do so love the tools! As Esteban Kolsky notes in his comment on Mike Fauscette’s June 2nd post, they’re really a new set of enablers.)

[Editors' Note: CRM guru Paul Greenberg also examined these tools in the November 2008 issue of CRM.]

To successfully relate to customers in our right-now, no-waiting economy, indirect communication needs to give way to direct communication, and, as the Social Media Maturity Model indicates in its upper-right quadrant, dictating needs to evolve into collaborating. (See image, left.)

Social media provides public relations an opportunity to assist this transition while impacting all corners of the social media maturity model. Perhaps the model needs to be expressed in a more circular ecosystem fashion — again, positioning customers in the middle.

Regardless, it will be an interesting journey to the era of social commerce. Here are some thoughts on how PR can help organizations and customers get there:

• Moving the Needle – Organizations need to move from “Why social media?” to “How do we implement social media?” They need someone to demonstrate the benefits of monitoring and participating on the social Web. This is a perfect role for PR, although PR doesn’t have to have sole ownership of it.
• Connecting the Dots – Customers don’t want a megaphone communications approach — they want information that’s tailored to their needs. Social networking gives us an authentic means of discovery. PR can encourage and facilitate customer conversations that help marketing, sales, and service further understand buyer motivations so products and services can address the needs of real people.
• Keeping It Real – As organizations venture into social media conversations, they’ll need to consider bridging virtual with reality. Not every interaction should be online; in-person engagement with customers still matters. PR is in a unique position to help create these opportunities and “events.” As such, PR must also be comfortable providing accurate information not only to traditional media, analysts, bloggers, and market influencers, but also to customers directly. Doing so is the catalyst for authentic collaboration with customers to create products and services that are truly desired, and to shape the branding and messages that support them.

These aren’t flip-the-switch processes. They require learning and maturing, and are well worth the effort of connecting directly with the customers we’re trying to reach in the first place.

My thanks to Josh and the CRM magazine staff for inviting me to participate, to all the contributors of this blog series, and to everyone reading and commenting. Let’s see where this goes.

Ryan Zuk, APR, is senior media and analyst relations manager for Sage CRM Solutions, part of The Sage Group plc, supplier of business management software and services to more than 5.8 million small and midsize business customers worldwide. He also writes the monthly “Digital Dialogue” column for the Public Relations Society of America’s PR Tactics journal — a recent example of his work can be seen here — and blogs at criticalmasspr.com. He can be reached via email at ryanzuk@gmail.com and on Twitter as @ryanzuk.

Let’s face it — the financial services industry is taking a beating right now. The hope is that it will continue to move forward, despite the Rocky Balboa-esque multiple blows to the head it has taken lately.

That’s why it’s no surprise that this vertical, arguably as much — if not more — than any other is furiously trying to find ways to hold onto existing customers.

Customers are scared out of their minds — and justifiably so — about what they can expect moving forward. They also want to know the relationship they have with an existing financial institution is personal, one that can offer numerous benefits. Deluxe mattresses for plummeting Roth IRAs are not included.

During a time in which customers are likely extremely hesitant to bank-hop, the onus is still on the institutions themselves to continue to innovate and offer packages that will keep their respective consumers coming back. Looking to help banks in this aim, Norcross, Ga.–based S1 Enterprise, a global provider of flexible, bank-centric solutions and payment services, unveiled what it hopes to be a Balboa-esque knockout blow to the recession: S1 Online Banking 3.7.

According to Mark Moore, S1 Enterprise’s vice president of marketing, customer intimacy is its key differentiation in the market. “This is definitely resonating with our customer base,” he insists.

At its core, this latest solution combines an enhanced, flexible user interface (UI) with a single platform for personal banking and business banking, along with an entitlements engine. This way, financial institutions can have the wherewithal to tailor services — and enhance the user experience — to individual customer segments without having to deal with silos.

What’s important here is that the tailoring can be in the hands of the line of business users, and not professional services. “From a technical perspective, in the past, to have tailored service capabilities it took a very large professional services engagement,” recalls Jennie Palocsik, senior product marketing manager, retail online, at S1 Enterprise.

Other new features and functionality include:

• cascading style sheets, giving financial institutions the opportunity to add its branding to the Web site to enhance the look-and-feel;
• “My Bank” landing page, displaying most commonly accessed information immediately after logging in, beyond simply account balances;
• class of service entitlements, allowing banks to tailor the accounts viewed by each user in real-time as well as the ability to mix and match business and consumer banking, payments services, reporting capabilities, authority levels, and limits;
• electronic vault, allowing end-users to store critical documents online that can be accessed at any time, not just when the brick-and-mortar institution is open for business; and
• S1 Mobile, an integrated solution allowing end-users to access their banking on their phone.

“The real opportunity here is that the entitlement engine we’re bringing to market … its literally checking a box to turn on different packages for customers,” Moore says. “We’re focused on customer intimacy, and so are our customers.”

For financial institutions out there, is this a la carte approach to banking something you are interested in utilizing for your own customer base? What are your most pressing worries right now — is it keeping customers loyal to your bank? Or, are more macro-level worries about the economy taking precedence right now?

There’s a cafe in Kettering, Ohio where the owner is, “allow[ing] the patrons to decide how much to pay for their meal.”

In this economy, consumers are told not to be so frivolous with their money, and yet, it’s precisely their spending that will bring us out of the recession — so why not have them pay at least something rather than nothing?

Sam Lippert, owner of Java Street Cafe, withdrew from his 401K to open this cafe in April 2008 and just when the economic tornado was about to take down his shop, he managed to hold on.

CNN Correspondent John Roberts interviewed Lippert on “American Morning,” yesterday morning and asked the obvious question that would deter many skeptics from ever implementing this tactic:

Roberts: Yes, so, does anybody try to game the system? You know, they’ll get a big meal that would be worth $10, $12 and then give you 50 cents for it?

Lippert: Well, you know, they have to look me in the eye and say that that’s what they think is fair. And, you know, that’s a big incentive. When someone’s at the counter and you say, you get to pay what you think is fair, very few people are going to take advantage of that situation.

On a broader level, it’s this mentality–”people are generally good”–that promotes trust and mutual respect. While there are always some bad apples, the shame of walking away knowing you cheated someone is enough to deter most people. Even when a restaurant prices something really cheap, we may find ourselves “compensating” in the form of exorbitant tipping. In that way, even though the tips go to the wait staff instead of the restaurant itself, we’re indicating how much we thought the food and the experience was worth (ironically, we may be paying to express our gratitude at how inexpensive the meal was).

In early February, Howard Kurtz, a staff writer for the Washington Post, published a piece entitled, “What’s It Worth To Ya?” — which discussed the challenges journalists and newspapers are facing in an world where news is–or at least, is thought to be–free. While I appreciate quality journalism, I also appreciate having unobstructed access–spoiled by this “democratization of information.”

We’re willing to pay for something we can’t get otherwise, for convenience, or for access. The Office’s Dwight Schrute makes a good point though–he never tips for anything he can do himself:

“Why tip someone for a job I’m capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can, and do, cut my own hair. I did however, tip my urologist, because I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones.”

So I can’t be everywhere at once and if it came down to paying for the news, I’d probably do it. If Java Street Cafe served me something I could never make on my own, I’d probably pay more than if I could.

Value, as you will read in the market focus on Retail in the upcoming May issue of CRM magazine, is  all we as customers are looking for. We want to know that what we’re paying for is worth the money we’re forking over. For food, it’s easier to gauge, especially if you pay after you’ve consumed. For other products or services, particularly if they’re being purchased online, value becomes a bit more difficult to discern. Therefore, it’s the responsibilty of the company and its employees to help the customer is making the right decision (e.g., customer reviews, product specs). Give them transparency, authenticity, and of course, a fair price.

Two weeks ago, I blogged about Infusionsoft’s (the marketing automation software provider for small businesses) announcement to double the sales within a 3-month time span for any new customers that sign on.

I linked to a the trial run of Infusionsoft’s “Double Your Sales” guarantee in which the vendor more than doubled the sales for the company All About Spelling within 72 days. It’s an inspiring case study that I encourage you to read. All About Spelling Saw a 149 percent increase in sales at the end of three months and its purchases jumped from 599 to 1,232 purchases. The ROI stats are staggering.

After the success of All About Spelling, Infusionsoft decided to roll out the guarantee to a few more all of its new customers.  The Wall Street Journal included Infusionsoft in a story today about companies granting freebies for new customers. The article reports that in the promotion’s first month (December), Infusionsoft signed up 223 new customers.

I reached out to Dave Lee, vice president of marketing for Infusionsoft, to see how the 223 number stacked up to months prior to the promotion. According to Lee, the company’s record month was in October with 186 new customers. Not only has the promotion proved record breaking for Infusionsoft, but it has boosted its total subscriber count to more than 12,000.

“We anticipated it would do good things for sales… but didn’t expect to end up with a record month (especially in December) because of it,” Lee says.

This goes to show that in these times, customers are not only looking for deals and promotions, but they are looking for results and guarantees. To clarify, if customers aren’t able their sales within three months of using Infusionsoft, they can request a refund for upfront costs, which can run up to $4,000 (per the WSJ).

So I’ve been out of the office a lot in the past three weeks, as you may have noticed. While this means I haven’t been able to interact much with CRM’s readers or staff, it does mean that I’ve had more time to notice trends in my personal inbox. The major one I’ve seen is overcommunication to the consumer.

I was noticing this instance of S.A.D. (seasonal avarice disorder) even before I was stricken with the painful malady that kept me away from you fine people, but I didn’t realize the magnitude until afterward. Each of three major brands (Macy’s, 1-800-Flowers, and Godiva) have sent me an average of one SPECIAL OFFER!!!!!! email per weekday for the past three weeks, and I’m annoyed. Anybody who knows me realizes this reaction is no big surprise, but a man’s gotta vent.

Each view of my inbox is like the opening scenes of a Charles Dickens story, with Victorian-era beggars putting out a hand for a few pence so they don’t starve. It really feels like these businesses are begging for my patronage. To be fair, all three are in their busiest season — if I’d done business recently with Hickory Farms or Toys ‘R Us they’d be crowding my email as well — but the constant e-bombardment seems too hungry to be normal.

I hope these businesses are not in financial peril. Not only because it would be a shame, but because what they’re doing is probably not going to have the desired effect. Their marketing messages have long since fallen below my acceptable signal-to-noise ratio, and are getting close to my opt-out threshold. Seriously. I wouldn’t stop doing business with any of them, but I am sorely tempted to cut off their ability to bother me — even if it means I will miss some or other great limited-time-only deal.

Quality trumps quantity in smart email marketing, and this was true even before we began passing laws against spam. Rather than ringing my virtual doorbell every day with yet another reminder, send me one offer a week with an offer I may refuse but can’t ignore.

So then, the questions of the week:

• Are you getting a much higher volume of marketing emails from the same number of sources?
• Have you been tempted recently to opt out of messages from businesses you have an established relationship with?
• Is this merely a holiday season thing, or is it an economy thing—and if both, then how much of each?

This week, Santa Clara, Calif.-based virtual contact center platform company LiveOps announced several new additions to its executive team in its quest to become the leader in the on-demand customer service space.

Notably, industry veteran Wes Hayden, who served as president and chief executive officer at Genesys Telecommunications Labs before most recently acting as president for the enterprise division at Nuance Communications, has joined LiveOps team as its new president.

I had the opportunity to speak with Hayden — approximately two weeks into his new role at the company — about why he came to LiveOps, his thoughts on today’s industry trends, and what we can expect from the company in the next year.

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In a time when many are focused on the perils of the economic downturn and what it can mean for their bottom line, we forget about those who are less fortunate.

Yesterday, 200 FeedingNYC volunteers congregated at Chelsea Piers to package and transport more than 2,000 Thanksgiving dinners for underprivileged families throughout New York City.

Founded in 2001 by Robert LoCascio (second from left in the photo), chief executive officer of LivePerson — a company to watch in the Web Interaction Management category of CRM’s 2008 Service Leaders — it is a nice change of pace to the doom-and-gloom news we’ve all been bombarded with recently.

In preparation for the upcoming holiday season, what are your organizations doing to give back to your respective communities? I’d love to hear your stories.

(Photo Credit: Jonathan Ziegler/Patrick McMullen Company)

Let’s face it — the economy is a mess. Cost of living is up, stock shares go on hourly roller coaster rides you normally have to wait in line for hours to ride at Six Flags, and now people are trying to figure out how to buy gifts this holiday season while still being able to keep the lights on. In sum, consumers are impatient, perturbed, and trying to find exactly what they need when they need it.

For companies, this means personalization — and St. Louis-based customer experience systems provider Amdocs is looking to meet this growing need, particularly in the mobile phone world with its acquisition of Dublin, Ireland-based ChangingWorlds for $60 million, which is expected to close during Amdocs’ fiscal quarter ending December 31.

ChangingWorlds’ mission, according to its Web site, is to “pave the way for all types of personalized information services over mobile, from personalized portal navigation to smarter search and highly targeted mobile advertising to ensure that mobile subscribers enjoy content and services that are relevant to their true needs.”

Judging by the fact that the term “mobile” is mentioned three times in a single-sentence statement, ChangingWorlds is focused on that customer touchpoint. However, James Patmore, vice president of EMEA and Asia Pacific for Amdocs stresses that this move is not solely for the sake of mobile content. “This is about adding relevancy and personalization for all of the touchpoints a user might have with a service provider,” he says. “One is mobile, but others can be with a customer management team in the call center or the experience they might have purchasing [or updating] a service plan by using the online portal. ChangingWorlds’ business is really an expansion on what we bring to personalization technology.”

Elisabeth Rainge, director of next generation networks operations at Framingham, Mass.-based global market intelligence firm IDC, believes this is a smart move for Amdocs. “It’s about expanding the reach of the [the customer experience systems provider's] platform and providing more value to the consumer by being responsive in the way the subscriber prefers to interact,” she says. “It’s a bigger competitive footprint for Amdocs … but one with more values for [its clientele].” Rainge sees this as a largely technological acquisition, and as a result expects ChangingWorlds’ capabilities to be integrated into Amdocs’ core assets.

Consequently, Patmore does not foresee any massive layoffs and believes this is a way to also expand ChangingWorlds’ — there are no plans to change the company name at this point according to Patmore — competitive footprint. “This is an accretive acquisition,” he stresses. “The people are the key assets and we expect to assimilate all the employees into our organization.”

Rainge believes this move is well-timed and will force Amdocs’ competitors to rethink how they are providing personalization. “This shows [the company] is paying attention to the subscriber which is so important because sometimes the discussion becomes one of efficiency,” she says. “The kind of challenge operators face today in this economic climate is that they need to touch their customer as best they can with as rich an experience and reliable system possible.”

Back in October, I wrote about Denny’s latest promotion, the $4 Weekday Express Slam, designed to lure customers into the restaurant with a “slamming” deal.

I had the opportunity to speak with Denny’s CEO Nelson Marchioli last Friday about the campaign and how he sees the restaurant industry faring in this economy. The interview after the jump.

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