Gamification is changing loyalty marketing and social engagement

Source: BizReport article by Kirstina Knight

Gamification is helping to rebuild the loyalty space. Gamification makes it simpler for brands to engage and for consumers to earn rewards. This, of course, keeps the consumer coming back.

Here are some of the highlights from the article:

1. Gamification is another form of loyalty … identity is now available on the web because of sites like Facebook and Twitter. 
2. The social graph is a major accelerant to the value of social rewards and behaviour. 
3. Gamification can be about loyalty or engagement. 
4. Finding ways to make social experiences meaningful and exciting is a major trend and it's falling under the umbrella of gamification. 
5. Expect to see even deeper social capabilities. 
6. Right now, Gamification 1.0 is about status, reputation, points, level, achievements--powerful motivating sources of behaviour. The next phase is making those much more social, akin to how social gaming elevated gaming and transformed the industry.

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce launch touch.salesforce.com

The touch.salesforce.com is yet another big announcement.

Basically this capability drives HTML5. In other words, you can design experiences across all mobile, tablet and PC devices.

This enables HTML5 to be used to develop apps that run natively but within the Cloud.

So touch.salesforce.com (needs a better name) is a platform for front-ends.

So you can design a front-end that orchestrates data from different force.com orgs, database.com, data.com and Heroku.  If this is confusing then read my earlier blogs.

All you need now are good designers that can simulate the different experiences, which are underpinned by the same data and functionality.

Dreamforce 2011 Salesforce launches data.com

Autumn Release

Data.com is a new capability which is an aggregation of Jigsaw data (crowd-sourcing with gamification to drive data quality for customer data) and Dun & Bradstreet data.

Data.com uses external data to provide updates to your customer data for marketing and sales.

Link data.com with the Social CRM announcement of automatically getting customer social data and the combination is awesome.

All we need now is better visualisation of this data ..... big hint for Fractal Maps ....

Link the above to the next generation of loyalty scheme with gamification!!

Dreamforce 2011 Chatter Everywhere

Autumn Release

• Chatter contains the Now presence. This means you know if some is available. You can then use Chatter Chat which is instant messaging. 
• Chatter Connect makes it easier to extend Chatter into other systems so for example there is an API for SharePoint.
• Chatter Groups means you can collaborate around documents and cases. A big feature is that you can have a Chatter Group include customers, in the comfort that they cannot go outside the group's walled garden. One idea is to use customers in a group for peer-to-peer problem solving and ideas generation.
• Chatter will include Face Time for video conferencing and collaboration. Big implications for customer support, problem solving and co-innovation with the customer for new product design.
• Chatter Inline that has a taxonomy filter for rapid drill down.
• Chatter Approvals which supports work flows using smarter collaboration and decisioning.
• Can also have in-line videos with chatter interactions. 
• Extend Chatter to mobile apps for employees and customers alike.
• Collaborate around documents and files. 
• Chatter for collaborative revenue forecasting 
• The above supports crowd-sourcing.
• The above supports sales teams.

Dreamforce 2011 CRM to enrich the customer data with their social data

New Winter Release

The standard CRM customer data will be updated in real time with their social data from targeted social networks including:

• Facebook
• Twitter 
• LinkedIn 

These updates are based on real time streaming and includes pictures. 

The implications are huge ..... 

Dreamforce 2011: some sound bytes for building customer relationships

Source: Brent Leary

Brent did quite a good presentation about CRM. There were some sound bytes worth noting:

1. Find, Catch and Keep Customers
2. Trust is highly influenced by social networking
3. 93% of customers expect brands to communicate through social media
4. Customer behaviour is being driven by mobile devices bypassing the desktop PC
5. Deal with customers in the palm of their hands
6. Interact within the social arena
7. Focus upon improving the life of the customer and not just constrain the experience around product
8. Use mobile to enrich the product experience
9. Use knowledge for self-service and first contact points
10. Transform companies to engage in customer dialogue
11. Many companies are out of sync with the need to engage in customer dialogue - they still use controlled communications
12. Good customer dialogue increases customer attention span
13. Smart social networking design drives down email traffic
14. Its about listening, understanding and responding to customer needs
15. Social media is the voice of the customer
16. Social dialogue increases customer advocacy and retention
17. Social strategies transform employee engagement
18. To measure is to know
19. Best performing companies measure twice as much and twice more frequently
20. New measures are a must
21. Handling social insights well drives prioritisation
22. The focus is now on the 'share of the dialogue'
23. Customer communities is now the frontier for 1st level problem resolution
24. Lifetime customer VALUE + INFLUENCE + ACTIVITY = Social CRM ROI
25. Experience is everything
26. Value customers beyond transactions
27. Insights + intent + empathy + action
28. Integrate social into traditional to create new processes