Barbeque Barbecue



             


Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Thrills Drills and Barbecue Drills

Big business is being taken for a very expensive ride. By whom? By each other. Confidence games are being perpetrated by Global corporations upon the only victims that can afford huge losses -- other Global corporations.

How do the crooks get away with this? I submit that it's becoming harder for them to do -- except with each other! Somehow the giant corporations don't get that other giant corporations are scamming them out of huge amounts of cash for dubious deliverables.

CRM (customer relationship management) software costs upwards of $325,000 with additional integration costs of up to $100,000 and according to a recent Interactive Week Magazine article,

http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2777006,00.html

that expensive software is so effective that it triggered a direct mail promotion from American Express to a heterosexual man, but that promotion was targeted at gay men, lesbians and domestic partners. His wife was as confused as he at the obvious blunder! That interesting vignette comes from the same article.

Let's see now, I'm going to pay about a half million dollars so that my company can offend and confuse my customers. Not a bad investment! What this means to the consumer is that they may receive appropriate advertising and promotional material if the software can draw logical conclusions based on past purchases, inquiries and page visits. A laudable goal if it worked perfectly but it clearly does not!

What it means in reality is that users of datamining software can send innapropriate promotions to people that may be confused, may be offended and certainly annoyed by their material even when it was requested, as it was in this case. You've taken a potential sale and turned it into a blunder. What does that do for lifetime customer value? How about return on investment figures with that?

I have a hosted application that can provide you incorrect and mixed-up customer data mining which cost only $60,000 yearly to host for you! I'd sure like to see the ROI (Return on investment) generated by that chunk of change! I also have a bridge for sale.

Is it any wonder that corporations are going bust? They're falling for scams that rip them off on a huge scale perpetrated by con artists offering data mining, knowledge management, CRM solutions.

I'd like to offer up a scenario that might illustrate awful data mining results. I also like to suggest that this is probably illustrative of why this expensive software might work but is inherently flawed in the conclusions it draws.

I visit an online book seller to buy a cookbook for my nephew, who is considering attending a culinary college. The confirmation page is prompted by the datamining software to display an advertisement for a recipe site when the purchase is completed, I'm not interested in that so I jump to my favorites and click on Yahoo, where I notice a banner ad for power tools and recall that I need a new reversible drill to help repair my patio deck.

I click on that banner ad to visit a hardware site and review the information on their available drills, then I realize I won't have time for it to be delivered by tomorrow, which is the weekend and I want to complete those deck repairs before Monday. I'll run down to the hardware store for the drill purchase. But I fill out the contest entry for the giant tool giveaway before I leave their web site.

I return to my online book seller the following week to look up a book my wife is interested in about flower gardening and buy it for her. Based on my previous purchase of the cookbook and combined with this purchase the CRM software figures I enjoy cooking and gardening and serves up an ad on the confirmation page for a Martha Stewart video on vegetable gardening. I'm not interested in that and jump over to Yahoo to look up the latest sports scores and I'm served an advertisement for barbecue grills.

Perfect, I'll order that now and it will arrive by the time we're ready to enjoy the newly repaired deck for the 4th of July. I click on the ad banner and complete the barbecue purchase. I'm looking for a way to make the weekend perfect, so to I decide to order flowers delivered to my wife.

When I complete that purchase, I'm served an advertising banner for a newly released relationship book. I click on that banner and end up back at the bookseller site. Their software sees a return customer that is interested in cooking, flower gardening and love. At the same time Yahoo sees a customer interested in sports thrills, reversible drills and barbecue grills.

Now both of those parties, the book seller and Yahoo, have a different picture of my surfing and buying habits.

The book seller is incorrect because I haven't bought a single book that interests me. Yahoo has me pegged, but guess what? The only value they have gained is increased ad revenue, which only benefits companies that generate huge traffic and create unwavering visitor loyalty. What if I switch my home page to iWon from Yahoo?

The return on investment is negligible unless the site enjoys record-setting traffic levels and commands complete customer loyalty. Who's buying this software? It's bought by global corporations. Who's selling? Really smart cookies.

Mike Banks Valentine
WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet Weekly Ezine emphasizing small business on the Internet http://website101.com/arch/
e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!

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