Re: Building stronger online customer relationships

From: Rob Frankel <rob_at_robfrankel.com>
Date: Fri 23 Aug 2002 22:23:15 -0500

At 11:02 PM -0500 8/22/02, Dejan Bizinger wrote:

>Hello Stavros. Website personalization is very important in building
>stronger customer relationships. I think that it is most important for
>e-commerce sites. If you want to buy something you have to be
>convinced that they have the best offer and that they are
>professional. The most important marketing principle is that you have
>to meet your customer's needs and it is best done with website
>personalization.
>
>As the best example, I always use Amazon. It is an example how you can
>do the things right. Beside that your name is on the first page, they
>accomodate web site content so that it is related to your interest.
>Their web site automatization, is beside the fact that they started
>business in the early Internet days, is the most important thing why
>they have became so popular.

Well, that may have worked at one time. Not so much anymore. If
you're really concerned about involving your users to the point of
monetizing them, you have to go the extra step of building a Branded
Community (more on this at http://www.i-legions.com).

For years, everyone has been moving in the wrong direction, assuming
that customer relations is a software issue. It's not. It's a
people issue. Consequently, simply personalizing a web page comes
across as a fairly transparent software gimmick that may serve up
cookie-based data, but does little else. More importantly, it
furthers the fallacy that "interaction" is a monologue directed at
the user from the brand. True interaction occurs between users via
the brand as dialogue.

This is the basis of Branded Community and why such communities can
not only motivate users to take ownership of a brand, but command
sales rates of 8% to 18% at any given time, as well.
--
Rob Frankel, "Yes, I really do turn users into evangelists for your brand."
Big Time Branding (SM) http://www.RobFrankel.com
Revenue-generating Branded Community (TM): http://www.i-legions.com
New series of e-books: http://www.RobFrankel.com/store




Received on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 22:23:15 CDT