David Harkins' Blog

Finance, fundraising and technology

Finance, Fundraising and Technology: Beyond the Bottom Line Please note that this presentation is Dave Harkins’ work created in other partnerships or organizations and the design templates have not been changed. Additionally, this content may now be dated but can still be used as an idea starter for your specific needs.

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Improving the bottom line

Improving the bottom line: A case study in direct marketing list management Please note that this presentation is Dave Harkins’ work created in other partnerships or organizations and the design templates have not been changed. Additionally, this content may now be dated but can still be used as an idea starter for your specific needs.

READ: Time for a do-over

How to keep your job in marketing

In most organizations these days–regardless of if you’re selling to consumers or to businesses–marketing’s primary job is to support new sales in an anxious push for increased revenue. Certainly, driving new sales can generate new revenue. However, blindly focusing on acquisition can wreak havoc on an unprepared organization in terms of insufficient capacity to handle front-line sales or merchandising, sales fulfillment, customer service or technical support. Worst of all, with the organization concentrating on bringing in new customers in the front door, no one is watching the back door as existing customers stroll out. We would all agree, I think,

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Overcome CRM Challanges: Address People, Process, and Technology

Organizations are often their own worst enemy when it comes to implementing a CRM strategy. In some organizations, the culture and processes are so ingrained that it is difficult to facilitate change, even if you have effectively addressed issues of technology and human behavior. Moreover, the mindset that permeates the organization’s processes is often based on limitations of technology in place at the time a specific process or procedure was developed. What has been done in the past may no longer be the best guide for what to do in the future. Organizations must prove themselves adaptable with processes and

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Innovation

Playing Games with Wireless Advertising

I couldn’t imagine anyone sitting around playing games on their cell phones while killing time. I then remembered that the day prior I was sitting in the airport waiting to pick up a friend and found myself-for the first time-playing a game on my cell phone. The difference is that my game is loaded on the phone and doesn’t cost anything to play. To take advantage of these other games or entertainment, it requires a connection to a server and that means I’m paying for the call and the data transfer. Call me cheap-make that “frugal”-but, I’d never do it

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Marketing

Preparing for trouble with CRM

A strong CRM vision is critical because it helps ensure that the decisions made in selecting technology will be made on the basis of the goals of the company and not be driven-or limited-by the functionality or capability that a particular software application may provide. Remember that technology should support the vision of CRM, not drive it. Best practices suggest that the way to ensure success with CRM is to…

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information kiosk
Technology

Information you need, exactly when you need it

For marketers, this technology, like many others can improve value to customers by providing such services as updates on order status, access to purchase history, and current sales promotions. However, what’s different, and perhaps most intriguing about this technology its ability for dynamic interaction. Unlike most wireless content that’s pushed from a business server to a user, this technology allows content to be pulled based on a user’s request-enabling information to be provided both on demand, and with personal relevancy. Let us look at a couple of examples of how this might work…

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sunlight across black clouds
Marketing

The Trouble with CRM Systems: Tomorrow’s forecast – Sunny with some early fog.

When CRM began to evolve in the mid-90’s every software vendor who had an application that had anything to do with managing customer or prospect data began pitching itself as a “CRM System”. Many of these systems were built to address one particular aspect of CRM, such as Sales Force Automation (contact management, Campaign Management, or Customer Analytics, and could not possibly deliver the value promised as “CRM System”. It was a case of “over-promise and under-deliver”.

Unfortunately, there were no end-to-end technology solutions for CRM at the time, and today, there still aren’t (although we’re getting closer). As much as

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Strategy

The Trouble with CRM Systems: It’s always darkest before the dawn

In the last four years, billions of dollars have been spent on CRM technology that doesn’t live up to its promise. A Gartner study suggests that nearly 60% of managers will view their CRM initiatives as failures. Organizations are wise to be skeptical of CRM system capabilities, but they themselves are as much to blame as the system vendors. Many of the organizations that have failed with CRM because they did not conduct appropriate cost-benefit-analyses, reevaluate processes, procedures, and organizational structure, or fully-develop CRM as a business strategy. Instead, they invested only in the technology, because as one manger said

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