Soffront’s blog is one of the more interesting ones available, frequently touching on areas not of direct profit to the company, which makes it more worthwhile than most kept blogs.
One of its latest entries of interest is five of the best books for marketers. In addition to these, this reporter heartily recommends the 1995 book Where The Suckers Moon: The Life And Death Of An Advertising Campaign, by a New York Times advertising columnist, Randall Rothenberg. It details, step by painful step, the marriage of an old and decrepit automaker, Subaru, and a (then-) young, hip ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy.
Wieden & Kennedy won one of the most hotly-contested contracts of the year, despite the fact that their creative director hated car companies. The subsequent ad campaign was not successful -- it was one of those intensely despised ad campaigns that won fawning admiration in the advertising community but failed to actually sell cars.
A most instructive case study, the book is as good an introduction to the street-level nitty-gritty of real-life advertising and marketing as we’re aware of.
Right, on to Soffront’s list:
Winning the Zero Moment of Truth, by Jim Lecinski. Explains the Zero Moment of Truth and how it has become an essential, if not THE essential element in successful marketing: “The first moment of truth is when a consumer is presented with a selection on the store shelf and must make a choice. The second moment of truth is the experience the consumer has after the purchase.”
Read more here.
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Tired of abandoned online transactions? Want to improve your percentages there? According to officials of Lionbridge, research shows that customers are twice as likely to complete online transactions if they can access information in their preferred language.
Note those last four words -- “in their preferred language.”
GeoFluent is a product to enable real-time multilingual chat translation, where English speaking agents can engage customers in multiple languages. This enables on-demand translation of marketing content, knowledge bases and user forums. Imagine how many more transactions you could complete with that kind of support available for customers.
The way company officials explain it, GeoFluent is a translation platform that instantly translates communications such as online chat sessions and web pages into multiple languages, turning English speaking agents into “global communicators,” allowing organizations to engage and support customers in global markets, “while reducing dependence on in-country support staff.”
Read more here.
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With some telecommunications environments, the dialing process to reach a desired destination can be complex.
According to Parlance Corp., a company specializing in fully-managed auto attendants, there is one frustration common to many businesses: “Extension numbers, departmental directories, and sub-menus can all present unique challenges to a speech-enabled call routing” product.
With Parlance’s nameConnector tool, the Routing Table (also known as the “Phone Number Translation Table”) provides all the information and dialing directions needed to enable a desired connection, and it has flexibility and an array of capabilities for an enterprise’s IT/telephony infrastructure.
The Routing Table works by telling nameConnector which numbers to dial (and in what sequence) while making sure that the timing works for a successful transfer. It also directs nameConnector to the “least-cost-routing” dialing pattern for each destination, a nice cost-saving feature.
Read more here.
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Mformation recently put together a good white paper, titled “Enterprise Mobility Management Solutions From the Cloud,” noting that there is a growing momentum for enterprises to run an increasing number of computing elements in the IT domain from the cloud.
This includes software and platforms as well as infrastructure elements, but of course software takes the largest bite of the market share in the cloud. And as the report finds, cloud-based software will gain increasing traction, and mobility management will be an important area for such cloud-based offerings.How big will enterprise cloud-based services be?
The paper cites one estimate of $35.6 billion by 2015, and another estimate that by 2014, cloud-based deployments will increase by 100 percent, to about $25 billion. That’s the size of the market we’re talking about here.
As the paper says, there are a number of areas which will “increasingly be supported by cloud-based deployments,” with enterprise mobility a particularly well-suited area, specifically mobile device management. This deals with mobile devices and how they’re used by employees, and includes such considerations as security, capability, and wireless usage and cost.
Read more here.
