E-commerce trends - Analytics and Social CRM

Analytics is the buzz word today. Today many companies across industries have started to use to their benefit. With regard to the E-commerce companies they can use it to distinguish from their competitors and there a multitude of them today and it is only going to increase. Through this article I will mainly talk about Social CRM and social media data which can help the companies,

When we talk about a Social CRM, there are so many questions which pop into the mind. What is a Social CRM and how does it benefit one's business? Does it perform the function of a regular CRM? Is it really worth the hype? First the million dollar question. What exactly is a Social CRM? It is a CRM combined with the power of social media. A Social CRM leverages the social media and the online space to generate and retain leads, run marketing campaigns, communicate and collaborate with customers along with other options. Today the social media has become way too powerful to be ignored. Customers frequently voice their opinions in social media through Facebook posts, Tweets and other channels. There is a huge repository of information which lies hidden in them and if utilized properly can do wonders. Not only social media, it also has the capability of extracting information from other online sources like news feeds and blogs.

Consider this Facebook post:

The social media websites are the best places for crowd-sourcing. But this post (considering that it is public) provides a potential opportunity to all the e-commerce retailers(who of course provide electronic items). They can pitch their best offers and discounts and provide a plethora of options available in their store. Hence through a simple Facebook post and without any additional cost, the company can communicate and collaborate with a potential customer. Not only Facebook posts, but also Tweets. The 140-characters say a lot at times and if properly explored through a Social CRM, can do wondersThe Social CRM can crawl through the data and extract what is required for the candidate as well as the recruiting company resulting in a win-win situation. The next thing worth mentioning here is the impact which a negative post or comment can do to damage the reputation of a brand. There have been recent examples where people have posted their bad experiences and the posts have gone viral. And it happens always that a bad comment or review travels faster than a good one.

Another major change which has been brought out by Social CRM is that the customer is also a part of it. They are at the heart of the action. So the same traditional functions are still performed but with an exception that the customer is also included. Previously the data gathered about the customers was used to make decisions about them and the sales and marketing decisions taken were pushed towards them with the hope that they would be successful as they were based on the historical data. This approach may not be necessarily successful today as their customer decisions are very dynamic and tend to change very quickly. Hence the Social CRM replaces the 'Push' approach with the 'Pull' approach and makes the customer a part of every stage of the decision process through constant engagement.

Web analytics and mobile analytics are and should be used by the e-commerce firms. Especially with the emergence of M-commerce, mobile analytics is going to play a very important role in the future.

Vaisakh Krishnan

12DM-155

EBUS - Sec B