Loyalty is a major focus for almost every business with customers. The need to reach customers and please them through almost every available portal that they could be using is crucial to gaining their loyalty and ensuring repeat business.

These 10 individuals all know how to make a loyalty solution work for a business, which is why they’ve made our list of the 10 key minds involved in customer loyalty.

Brad Bennett

With more than 20 years of experience in CRM, customer service and customer experience, Bennett is an advocate of social media as a driving force for shaping customer experience.

Twitter Followers: 42,412

Klout: 57

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

Jim Connolly

Having worked in marketing for 26 years, having founded his own successful marketing business in 1995, Connolly specialises in helping small business owners make massive sales, boost profits and grow their business. He runs the 2nd most influential blog across social media, SEO, design, start-ups and technology.

Twitter Followers: 7,590

Klout: 69

LinkedIn Connections: N/A

Clive Humby

Founder of DunnHumby and now head of H&D Ventures, Humby is one of the most experienced people in the loyalty, marketing and omni-channel sector. His work has helped major brands engage more meaningfully with their customers.

Twitter Followers: N/A

Klout: N/A

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

Terry Hunt

Having been the founder of Evans Hunt Scott in 1986, as well as going on to become Marketing Direct’s top of DM Power 100, Hunt has a wealth of experience under his belt in advising and informing businesses on their loyalty marketing strategies. He’s also been appointed as the president of the Institute of Direct Marketing, and joined the Advisory Board of Aimia too.

Twitter Followers: N/A

Klout: N/A

LinkedIn Connections: 474

David Johnston

Having worked in various roles at both PepsiCo and Bass, Johnston’s biggest contribution to loyalty has undoubtedly been as President and CEO EMEA at Aimia. Now, in his new role as Group Chief Operating Officer at Aimia he’s expertly positioned to help businesses utilise the power of brand in capturing customer loyalty.

Twitter Followers: N/A

Klout: N/A

LinkedIn Connections: 433

Dean Van Leeuwen

Co-founder of TomorrowToday International, an organisation that inspires leaders to think about people and the industry differently, Van Leeuwen taps into his 20+ years of experience in marketing, innovations and strategy to help companies shape powerful loyalty ideas.

Twitter Followers: 2,467

Klout: 50

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

Jan-Pieter Lips

A key player and influencer in the loyalty and omni-channel space, Lips is the Regional President of Aimia and has helped shape the UK’s biggest loyalty programme, Nectar, into what it is today. Lips’ influence and knowledge of attaining and retaining customer loyalty through an omni-channel approach means he’s got plenty of tricks and tips to share.

Twitter Followers: N/A

Klout: N/A

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

Sir Keith Mills

Deputy chairman of LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games), Mills also invented the incredibly lucrative Air Miles scheme and the massively popular Nectar Card.

Twitter: N/A

Klout: N/A

LinkedIn Connections: N/A

Bryan Pearson

Author of The loyalty Leap: Turing Customer Information into Customer Intimacy, LoyaltyOne CEO and prolific blogger and guest contributor to Total Customer, Pearson is undeniably knowledgeable and influential in the loyalty, big data and omni-channel space. His thoughts on how to reach and engage customers have helped shape many businesses to date.

Twitter Followers: 1,375

Klout: 46

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

Michael Seifert

As CEO and owner of Sitecore, a global software company committed to developing products to solve real world problems through CRM and omni-channel solutions, Seifert knows his way around the omni-channel web. The knowledge he can pass onto others is incredibly valuable.

Twitter Followers: N/A

Klout: 43

LinkedIn Connections: 500+

To help understand exactly what those in the industry think omni-channel is and how it can be used to help brand loyalty, as there is certainly much confusion, CloudTags put together a rather handy – and amusing – video to answer the question.

We’re also holding a wonderful secret meet up in May that brings together all the key players involved in the omni-channel space. Places are strictly limited, but you can avoid disappointment by signing up for it now.

A recent survey by Forrester (via Fortune) shows that people are loyal to Google, but have no devotion to the company in comparison to Microsoft and Apple.

That is when they’re devoted at all as – from a survey of 9,766 ‘global information workers’ – the vast majority of computer users (85 per cent worldwide or 88 per cent in the US) have little to no loyalty to any particular computing system.

Google doesn’t fare well here, snatching only 1 per cent of the 6 per cent of devoted users. Apple, unsurprisingly, takes 56 per cent while Microsoft nabs 44.

Things are different in the ‘Loyalist’ camp of users – determined by their affinity to having mostly unified or networked devices, but not completely.

Here Google takes up a tasty 25 per cent of the share while Microsoft sits tight with 17. Once again Apple dominates with a 58 per cent share of the 9 per cent who fall into the Loyalist category.

For those who keep trend with technology, the results aren’t surprising at all. Microsoft owns the vast majority of workplace computing, meaning consumers generally have multiple windows devices across the board – yes, some people do actually use Windows Phones.

Apple understandably have the high count in the devotees section as they’ve secured many users into their unified ecosystem of iPad, iPhone and Mac with many purchases and saved information being easily transferred.

Google, however, haven’t managed to move out of the middle Loyalist bracket due to having little to no penetration on the desktop front.

Lots of people have Android-enabled phones, with Google’s platform holding 75 per cent of the entire smartphone market. Lots of people also use Android tablets meaning data is easily transferred between the two. However, Chromebooks haven’t taken off with many so, bar those using Google Chrome browser, the network cloud appeal of Google’s offering diminishes fast.

What could they do to secure these Loyalists as Devotees? Make something consumers want.

Apple have managed to create devices that, until many used them, nobody knew they wanted. They positioned them as desirable and functional.

Google tried to do similar by showing that cloud computing and Chromebooks are the future. The trouble was they were far ahead of everybody else in that thought and the idea sunk – it’s only now beginning to take off. For now Google need to create a Chromebook that has the computing power that many want, with sizeable offline storage and capabilities with a superior online experience when available – currently Chromebooks are entirely online devices.

What Google need to do is appease customer wishes for now before rolling out what they know they’ll really want once they get their hands on it.

Google are used to playing the long game. They’re biding their time with Google+ as they tweak it and slowly integrate it Android, Chrome, YouTube and even Google Glass.

Do you think that Google can win over consumers into a completely integrated system?

Is there any way to improve customer loyalty within the technology sector at all?

As always, let us know by leaving a comment below.

In a new survey from consumer helpers Which? shows that newsagents and stationery store WH Smith is the most disliked high-street store in the UK.

Comprised of over 11,000 consumers opinions, WH Smith came out on the bottom with only 51 per cent of respondents saying they had a positive experience in the store.

Other brands that floated around the bottom were TK Maxx with 56 per cent and Millets with 57 per cent.

Conversely, the top-rated store was (unsurprisingly) Apple.

Consumers said that they loved the “unique look and feel” of its stores, along with the “great customer service” received. All 37 stores were described as having “great atmosphere and products” alongside “excellent” and “knowledgeable” staff.

All very positive things for Apple and its in-store ethos with an 85 per cent customer satisfaction rate.

It wasn’t alone up top though as fancy natural soap retailer Lush bagged an mark of 82 per cent and the Disney Store sat pretty with 80 per cent. Hi-fi and TV specialist chain Richer Sounds also managed to grab 80 per cent and women’s clothing store Bon Marché scooped 79 per cent.

The most interesting point of the survey wasn’t the dissatisfaction with WH Smith. Instead it came from the high percentage (88 per cent) of consumers who were unhappy about many retail chains closing over the last year.

Despite 52 per cent admitting that they buy online, consumers still use high-street shops more often than they do websites, shopping centres and retail parks.

As you can imagine, WH Smith have debunked the survey’s results saying it isn’t reflective of consumer thought. However, it’s been one of the lowest-rated shops for the last four years.

Even Mary Portas – who is speaking at this year’s Loyalty World in London – described it as a “dump” that she “truly hates” shopping in.

Do you think that WH Smith is really the worst store on the high-street?

Are consumers really visiting high-street stores more than websites, shopping centres and retail parks?

Let us know by leaving a comment below for us.

Yahoo have set out to recapture the young demographic that they’ve managed to lose by buying Tumblr.

Most of Yahoo’s users are older than that of other search engines, chiefly because Yahoo captured these people when the World Wide Web was young and there was no such thing as Google – as impossible as that is to imagine.

These young and tech-savvy users stuck by Yahoo mostly and then the partnerships they’ve formed with others over time (namely BT Broadband) have helped keep them relevant as time as passed.

Finally the time has come and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has made her first move in making Yahoo the ‘cool’ brand it once was.

AllthingsD are reporting that Yahoo’s board of directors today approved that first move by accepting a $1.1 billion deal to acquire the simple and stylish blogging site Tumblr.

Such a move has been done to bring in the core userbase that Yahoo lack, 16 – 24 year olds.

This is the biggest deal that Marissa Mayer has made since she joined Yahoo as previous ones have focused on the mobile market in a bid to secure a younger audience.

So, why’s Tumblr such an attractive proposition?

Well, the social networking and blogging service has more than 100 million blogs and has been rolling out a bigger and better mobile strategy and app.

Tumblr also gained 117 million worldwide visitors in April, with 37 million coming from the US alone – placing it in the same realms as LinkedIn and Twitter (at least in terms of desktop browser visits).

The deal now means that Yahoo can revive their staggering advertising branch and hopefully revive their brand image with a younger audience – probably scoring a hipster or two along the way.

The biggest challenge that Tumblr does present is how to place adverts on personal blogs without encroaching on personal space. There are also a lot of pornographic images on Tumblr, meaning Yahoo have to be careful about what they advertise and where.

Do you think that Yahoo were a bit money happy with this venture?

Could it really turn around Yahoo’s fortunes with the younger generation?

Let us know by leaving a comment below with your thoughts.

JC Penny has had quite a bad time lately with their customers. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ll know that their efforts to revolutionise the store met with an awful lot of dissatisfaction from their customers.

So much, in fact, that it nearly hit rock bottom as customers fled the store and the newly appointed CEO, Ron Johnson, was fired for the unsuccessful changes he made.

Who knew that American consumers wouldn’t like the idea of a store having no discounted ranges anymore?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question as everybody could tell you that American consumers are on the hunt for a deal. Removing that element from your store is sure to wind up with you losing few hundred here and there.

That’s not all though, the change of store layout alienated even more consumers, leaving the brand in a state where it may as well have been operating ghost stores.

Now it’s made some changes, re-hired Johnson’s predecessor Mike Ullman as CEO once more, listened to customers and put out a rather large apology ad campaign, has it all worked?

The numbers would say that, indeed, it has. But, it’s still got a long way to go.

Having issued its latest financial reports, net income fell by 113 per cent – equating to a loss of $348 million.

Despite all the changes, store losses were higher than expected.

What should be noted is that the 16.6 per cent drop in same-store sales is actually a large improvement over the 32 per cent decrease that JC Penny reported last quarter.

While that’s little consolation, seeing as it’s hard to go further beyond the bottom of the barrel, JC Penny are clearly starting to do something right.

Now just time will tell.

While there won’t be any horror stories on par with JC Penny, at this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival discussions around ensuring customer loyalty and customer engagement through the bad times as well as the good will help you really understand and shape how you engage with your customers.

At our conference in 2012, Tony Ventrice, Senior Game Designer, Badgeville, presented on how to connect game design fundamentals to generate brand excitement

Click here to see his presentation

Tony Ventrice works at Badgeville and is a veteran game designer. In the past, he has made games with Playdom and Zynga, and he has since turned his attention to bringing the most motivating and fun aspects of games and applying those techniques to businesses. Through this presentation you will be able to find out:

- What issues traditional loyalty programs are facing

- How to learn from games

- What things makes games more fun

- What does gamification look like

- What are the intrinsic rewards

Check out his full presentation

To learn more about this subject, check out Loyalty World USA 2013

At our conference in 2012, Bill Hanifin, Consulting Practice Leader, Aimia, presented on the importance of why companies should retool loyalty marketing in a digital economy.

Click here to see his presentation

The idea of loyalty marketing has progressed beyond a novelty idea, and is currently undergoing what might be described as a midlife crisis. The simple act of having a loyalty program for customers is not enough to lasso consumers to a particular brand in the digital marketplace. Through this presentation you will be able to:

- Check the results of the Aimia’s survey, which confirm that people are interested in loyalty

- What these results tell us

- When social loyalty became a reality

- What are the benefits from social loyalty

- What is contextual loyalty

- Some examples of loyalty

Check out his full presentation

To learn more about this subject, check out Loyalty World USA 2013

O Facebook, a rede social com mais usuários no mundo, e a Google, a maior companhia de internet, escancaram uma briga que não é novidade para quem acompanha de perto o universo digital. A briga é velha e se acirrou desde que a rede de Zuckeberg atingiu a marca de meio bilhão de usuários no meio de 2010 e piorou quando o Google resolveu concentrar suas forças em mais um projeto de rede social, o Google Plus.

Nessa constante luta para ser o líder do mercado na web, o google mais uma vez expande sua expertise e incorpora um novo recurso na sua plataforma Google Play , O Google Play Music.

Durante um evento que acontece em São Francisco, nos EUA, o Google I/O 2013. O Google anunciou seu novo serviço de música pago. Por enquanto, o Google Play Music só está disponível nos EUA, mas a empresa diz que o serviço chegará aos outros 13 países em que está disponível o Play Music –o que exclui o Brasil.

Mas o Google não está de brincadeira . O aplicativo é interessante e relativamente fácil de usar e rápido. O ponto forte do serviço são as recomendações personalizadas, feitas com base nas músicas que você mais escuta , e oferece acesso ilimitado ao catálogo por uma mensalidade fixa. Por enquanto com uma mensalidade mais barata do que oferecida pelos seus concorrentes e com 30 dias gratuitos para teste.

Ficou interessado em saber mais sobre o Play Music? Quer saber quais os benefícios e as vantagens em cima de seus concorrentes? Clique aqui.

Case Study of Wrong is a light-hearted look at a particular company or brand that has done something to alienate customers or damage its reputation. Ultimately: don’t do what they’ve done!

Abercrombie & Fitch, the fashion clothing brand that’s been running since 1892, has performed something of a faux pas recently when it’s chairman and CEO Michael S. Jeffries  proclaimed that they won’t ever make plus size clothes for women.

The brand also stumbled on another key consumer point by revealing that any damaged or faulty clothes are burned instead of donated to charity like many other brands do.

The reasoning?

To keep it out of the hands of the poor and homeless, instead allowing it to remain pure and for the elite.

Those aren’t the only eugenics-sounding comments Jeffries has made, stating that A&F only go after “the cool kids.”

“In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids,” said Jeffries. “Candidly we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don’t belong, and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”

It must be said that Jeffries should be acknowledged for his forthrightness on such an issue – one that many other CEOs would have skirted around.

Was it the right thing to do though?

Probably not.

As you can imagine, there are pockets of people online outraged by such a stance in a clothing brand that associates itself so candidly with a certain subsection of society they deem ‘beautiful people’.

It’s also terrible to see and hear a company so obsessed with its image that it goes against some of the pure basics of human morals. It shuns charity and helping others in favour of pushing forth its own agenda in an attempt to propel itself to god-like standing in the fashion world. Something that’s unlikely to happen for a high-street retailer who’s main hook are pubescent teens and 30 year olds who wish they still were pubescent teens.

Jeffries’ actions have now spurred an online campaign (video below) to boycott the clothing brand, while also donating any A&F clothes that you own or find to homeless people.

While this may seem as exploitive of the homeless in what is essentially a viral marketing campaign, at least deserved people are benefiting from the firm two fingers up at Abercrombie & Fitch.

His services to the industry through Marks & Spencer, Argos, the Arcadia Group and the Burton Group are well known, and so when Total Customer got a chance to speak with him at our secret Loyalty Meet Up – of which we’re having an omni-channel focused on at the end of May – we had to ask him where he saw the future of retail.

As you can expect, we got an insightful response.
For more videos around the areas of customer loyalty, omni-channel, big data or retail, subscribe to Total Customer’s YouTube channel.

Esta semana a marca Danette, deu o que falar nas redes sociais. A marca postou uma imagem na sua fanpage com a seguinte frase: “Poderia ser Danette, mas foi um chocolate no seu time do coração”. Chocolate, na gíria futebolística, se refere a uma derrota com placar elástico, como foi o 4 a 1 sofrido pelo time da capital paulista frente ao Atlético-MG.

Ponto para a marca que que estava atenta aos acontecimentos na sociedade para tentar divulgar a sua marca através das redes sociais. Várias marcas obtiveram sucesso realizando esse mesmo tipo de estratégia, como o caso do biscoito Oreo na super bowl, clique aqui para mais informações sobre este caso.

No caso da Danette, o resultado não foi muito favorável, antes do post ser excluído, a tal postagem continha mais de 500 comentários, a maioria negativo, conforme informa o site Máquina do Esporte. Fale bem ou fale mal mas fale de mim, nem sempre é o melhor caminho para o fortalecimento de uma marca. A empresa deve tentar sim, propagandas espontâneas através redes sociais mas evitando uma imagem negativa da marca. Caso os comentários negativos aparecam, a empresa deve estar preparada. Segue aqui, dicas para lidar com comentários negativos nas redes sociais.

Para saber mais sobre fortalecimento e fidelização de marca, participe da conferência Loyalty World Brasil 2013

For some, social media seems to be a task that seems somewhat unfathomable unless you’re safe behind the veneer of a corporate logo or brand.

A look at the Fortune 100’s top 20 most social CMOs just goes to show that only a few in the business actually make use of their own personal Twitter and Facebook accounts successfully.

Many of those who use their own personal social media channels – of which, worryingly, there aren’t many in the Fortune 100 – use it as a corporate tool rather than a means of engagement.

Would you like to follow an account of the CMO of a hugely influential business, only to hear the same regurgitated marketing message thrown your way?

Surely not.

Instead you want an insight into their lives. A way into their brain to see how they think about situations and moments so you too can grow to understand how they come up with the strategies they do. You want to see a more personal side of their lives and the business they work for.

One man has managed to do this better than any other, better than he or his employer could have ever imagined, and – to really drive the point home – he did it all from space.

Commander Chris Hadfield, a moustachioed Canadian astronaut who is part of the Canadian Space Agency, prepared himself for a journey home from the International Space Station with 900,000 Twitter followers hanging on his every word – or softly played guitar note.

Commander Hadfield, who has had absolutely no social media training beyond teaching him how to use a high-end camera to record video and take photos in space, took to Twitter and went down an absolute storm in the process.

Because of his photo, video and general tweets, traffic to the CSA website increased by 70 per cent. He’s not just tapped into the hearts and minds of Canadian citizens – like CSA were hoping – he’s managed to inspire people all across the world.

He did have a hand in his expansion thanks to former Star Trek actor William Shatner tweeting him with a question.

Obviously you may well shun this social media realisation by placing it entirely on the idea that the man is in space – who can resist a man in space after all? But you’d be wrong as many other astronauts have used the social media platform in space before to no avail.

What sets Hadfield apart from the rest is what he tweeted. Instead of spouting corporate messages or endorsements for the CSA, he put up images he’d taken, videos he’d made, he talked about his kids, sport and make absolutely terrible jokes.

His extraordinary situation and role connected with people across the globe because they realised he was just like everyone else.

That’s the key to winning over social media.

You can find out more about how to utilise social media at this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival as many social media, omni-channel and loyalty specialists share their knowledge of this lucrative space.

They bring a fusion of creative and engineering skills to any business looking to capture the digital space with ease.

Spanning eight countries with around 1,600 employees, Valtech is a full-service business that operates across all stages of the product lifecycle, from strategy and consulting, through to user experience, delivery, maintenance and optimisation.

They’ve also consistently been at the forefront of innovation, meaning blue-chip companies from around the world ask Valtech to help them adopt agile methods to improve their business’ performance.

Unlike traditional digital agencies, Valtech really drives home their services thanks to utilising hard-core software engineering with real engineers crafting the valuable services they integrate and build. Because this is married with creative talent, Valtech efficiently deliver a strategic vision by ensuring that priorities are always kept in sharp focus.

Valtech’s greatest strength is helping their customers unlock the potential to deliver superior digital user experiences efficiently.

A snapshot of their clients shows just how influential they are, with names such as Audi, BBC, Mercedes-Benz, Gore-Tex, BMW and Louis Vuitton to name but a few.

To find out more about what Valtech can do for your business, as well as have a chance to pick their brains a little, they’re attending this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival at the Business Design Centre, London on the 16th – 17th September 2013.

To find out the answer, omni-channel specialists CloudTags went out and asked marketing managers, digital gurus and social media savvy minds about what they thought omni-channel really was.

The answers were certainly very surprising.

What do you think omni-channel is?

What does it mean to you?

You can share your thoughts, feelings and opinions on omni-channel ventures at our May secret meet up for omni-channel specialists and those interested in the world of omni-channel opportunities.

Last month’s secret loyalty meet up went down a storm and, as usual, places for this month’s May secret omni-channel meet up are strictly limited and are going fast.

You can ensure yourself a place by filling out the short and simple form below and we’ll email you back with confirmation of your attendance.

This past Thursday night, I attended a pre-screening of the hotly contested arrival of The Great Gatsby. Although it has been quite a few years since I first read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quintessential American novel, I tend to spend a day every couple of years rereading the classic. I was incredibly excited to finally see it on the big screen, even though I had a hard time figuring out how Baz Luhrmann would depict Nick’s thoughts in a film format. The previews confirmed my suspicions that the 143 minutes of film would primarily include partying, aggression, lies… and music that most definitely did not come from the 1920s. I had been disappointed when the release of the film was delayed as Luhrmann signed on Mr. Carter himself to oversee the musical direction of the film, but, thinking back to the musical prowess of both Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, I imagined I could wait a few extra months for greatness.

While the release of the soundtrack was kept under wraps until about a week before the film release, the recording artists and expected musical quality was enough to make the soundtrack as big, if not bigger than the film itself. Film soundtracks don’t typically receive this much buzz, unless it’s Danny Boyle, Hans Zimmer, John Williams, etc. My answer to this can be attributed to brand loyalty.

One of the reasons why the film release was delayed from Christmas 2012 to May 2013 included the addition of an all-star music lineup on the accompanying soundtrack. To effectively compete in the summer movie contest, Luhrmann and Warner Brothers pulled out all the stops and managed this partnership with Jay-Z. At least from my perspective, this partnership immediately attracted an entire demographic of loyal Jay-Z followers, who may not have been originally interested in the film itself. As an adaptation from a piece of literature primarily seen in the classroom, Warner Brothers needed to break that connection and portray this film as more engaging and exciting.

Surprisingly, Jay-Z only makes the 20^th rank in a list of highest-paid musicians in 2012, but still banks a cool $38 million a year and boasts a net worth of about $500 million. Money doesn’t need to talk, though, because the jigga man doesn’t need a paycheck to prove his market value. Since coming into popularity in the mid-90s, Jay has a hand in several industries, including clothing, sports, entertainment and alcohol. His influence is wide-ranging, even when not entirely visible at first glance. He has been building rapport with his followers for over 25 years and he can easily bring that following into every new venture in his global empire.

At this year’s Loyalty World USA, we discuss influencers, from celebrity ranking to a purchasing consumer. Speakers will address the importance of building relationships with your consumers and properly engaging with them across different channels.

Keynote speakers at this year’s Loyalty/ Big Data World USA conference include:

· Dhani Jones, Partner, VMG Creative; Founder and Chairman, BowTie Cause; Former Linebacker, National Football League

· Dr. Inderpal Bhandari, Chief Data Officer & Vice President, Knowledge Solutions, Express Scripts

· Derek Strauss, Chief Data Officer, TD Ameritrade

· Jeannine Haas, Chief Marketing Officer, Avis Budget Group

· David Norton, Chief Analytics Officer, Urban Outfitters

Join us on October 28 and 29 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas to learn more about the dichotomy between customer marketing and data analytics.

The Fortune 100 is a list of the biggest and best companies as determined by Fortune magazine. However, out of those companies, just how many are really making use of social media to help further their marketing efforts?

Thanks to BusinessNext Social’s Mark Fidelman, we now have a list of the top 20 CMOs from the Fortune 100 who have an active public presence on social networks.

It’s a key point to focus on and push further in with your marketing team as the findings show that those CMOs with active social media outlets actually had better response and more effective marketing campaigns.

What’s worrying is that, in the Fortune 100 list, the majority of CMOs involved with each company had relatively little experience in building influencer communities or running their own active personal social network.

You can view the Top 20 below, and you should take a look at the top 20 most social media savvy companies in the world while you’re at it.

At this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival you can find out all the ways in which you can help boost your social media marketing campaigns in organic and fresh ways.

We’ve already established that social media is a key part of any business, but who’s really making the most of it?

Thanks to the Dachis Group – and BestMastersDegrees for putting the list in a snazzy template – we have to worry no more as they’ve ranked the top 20 most powerful socially connected businesses in the world.

It’s largely made up of companies you’d expect, with EA, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Nike, Google and Disney making the list. However other businesses you might not have expected sit relatively high up in the rankings.

You can take a look at the entire list below, and you’ll find out more about how to improve and increase your social media interaction at this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival in London this September.

With social media growing to exponential levels, shadowing almost every other sector of the Internet as its impact on mobile devices begins to grow even faster in the last few years, it’s understandable more and more brands and businesses are jumping aboard.

It’s perfect for pushing forth marketing campaigns, especially if done well, as they’ll explode and cause more positive hoo-ha than any TV advert ever could.

Take KMart’s “Ship My Bed” advert that, once uploaded onto YouTube, grew from a few thousand views to well over 15 million within a matter of hours. Now, a month since its release, it sits pretty on just shy of 17 million views – most of which we’d bet on being viral.

The trouble with pushing marketing in this direction is that what was once a tool for sharing fun and amusing things could quickly become a hotbed of advertising being pushed by friends around the world.

While we all like to think we’ve got effective, amusing and interesting advertising campaigns, that just isn’t true.

Now it seems that as Facebook usage begins to drop as the key demographic of teens become disinterested with the sharing-heavy nature of the service, some companies are turning to the more popular and prolific members of social media society.

These networking elite, who have healthy Klout scores and numerous friends and followers across a wide variety of social networks, can do all the marketing any company would really need in an online space. And all they need is a little bit of preferential treatment to push them in the right direction.

But is this really the right way to go about doing things?

Is it right to split your customer base up based purely on the analytics of how much someone shares things with others?

Klout, a site that kindly aggregates the social networks of an individual to work out how influential someone is, have been running a rewards scheme for a while now. Whilst usually used to gain some small points or money off vouchers in the past, American Airlines have now partnered with them to give popular social media users the chance to experience their Admiral’s Lounge at airports.

In South Africa Quicksilver have been running a “Spaaza My Price” promotion that sees prolific Klout users gaining a discount due to their score. They’ll even get more money off if they share knowledge of their purchase with others there and then.

Surely this method of rewarding customers serves as little more than a high school popularity contest, gifting the popular individuals with freebies and goodies, while other customers are forced to pay full whack – even if they’re already loyal to the brand.

It certainly hasn’t taken off in a big way yet – which could be an indicator that such a popularity-based way of marketing isn’t a good idea – but, if things continue in this direction, it could end up just dissatisfying the majority and only pleasing the minority.

At this year’s Europe’s Customer Festival we’ll be talking about how to best engage with your customers through social media channels. You can register for free to find out more.

This ebook focuses on the top 25 loyalty programes in Germany and how they are helping companies understand their customers better, as well as encouraging customers to return to the business again.

Download this ebook now for free >

This is ideal for those looking at entering the German loyalty market, or those interested in understanding how global markets operate compared to other territories.

What You’ll Learn:

• Discover which companies belong in the top 25 loyalty programs in Germany
• See what offerings they make to customers
• Understand why customers hold these schemes so valuably
• Learn more about who will be in attendance at Loyalty World Germany 2014

Download this ebook now for free >

If you would like to know more about Loyalty World Germany 2014 or would like to sponsor the event, please contact Ingrid Olmesdahl either by email or via direct line on +44207 092 1344.

O Big Data está evoluindo rapidamente no Brasil já que é uma grande ferramenta competitiva, pois possibilita usar as informações de forma mais inteligente para se aproximar dos clientes e aumentar a lucratividade dos negócios. Mas as empresas que estão investindo nessa tecnologia estão investindo de maneira correta?

O Big Data é uma ferramenta relativamente nova, e um pouco confusa para muitos. Possuir um grande volume de banco de dados não significa que a empresa possui uma estratégia de Big Data. Para construir uma arquitetura de Big Data, primeiramente os dados devem ser acessíveis, e depois reunir dois dos três critérios que a IBM descreve como os três Vs: variedade, volume e velocidade. Onde variedade significa o uso de dados estruturados e não estruturados. Volume significa uma quantidade muito grande de dados sendo recolhida e analisada. E velocidade refere-se à rapidez com que os dados são processados. Tudo isso alinhado com uma equipe qualificada de TI.

Quer saber mais sobre o  Big Data, como surgiu, os mitos e a diferença entre Hadoop e Big data? Clique aqui

Vem aí o Big Data World Brasil, para saber mais sobre esse grande evento, clique aqui