I've been thinking about this WEM stuff (Web Engagement Management). And I want to know more: what is it? and who's it for? 5 May 2010, Brice Dunwoodie defined WEM this way on CMS Wire's website.
The 5 Pillars of WEM
Web Engagement Management is a composite concept. These are the 5 parts we consider its core:
- Content Optimization
This include native or tightly integrated analytics, content and experience personalization, multi-variate testing and optimization and SEO.
- Multi-channel Management
Consistency is important and WEM maintains it by delivering the same message/experience to customers across devices and channels both online and offline.
- Conversational Engagement
WEM supports this through communities, user generated content, commenting, trackbacks, micro-blogging, social media integration, analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.
- Demand Generation
Targeted marketing is huge. With an overall goal of increasing the number and quality of relationships, WEM comes to the aid of demand generators through need recognition, relevancy enhancements and engagement triggers.
- Sales Automation
Love isn't the only two-way street, and as social media analyst Jeremiah Owyang put it, "real-time isn't fast enough." This idea is manifest in WEM in areas like two-way CRM integration, social CRM and e-mail or other campaign integration with the content platform.
Let's do some analysis to better understand if WEM is for Local Government.
Scenario 1
North Somerset Council, my local authority want web-engaged audiences because these audiences can self-serve and therefore reduce contact costs.
Content Optimisation
— Web analytics will confirm what the council knows to be the busy, useful, frequently-used parts of the site.
— Personalisation won't be terribly helpful as assumptions made about my visit could be wildly inaccurate.
— Multi-variate testing? Well this ain't no Tesco or ASDA website and anyway, MV testing is seen as an ongoing exercise, not just a project. And budgets won't stretch even if the benefits were proven.
— SEO? Well North Somerset doesn't have any competitors so SEO, though important, isn't going to get the lion's share of budget.
— UX is not listed under content optimisation, yet it can be treated as a project cost and will yield useful results even if the study is heuristic.
Multi-channel Management
I take issue with the assertion that WEM delivers consistency of message/experience both on- and off-line. Please tell me how that's going to happen? Unless organisations adopt a web-first publishing model I cannot understand how WEM will orchestrate offline publishing or say, an above the line campaign.
Conversational Engagement
The statement: WEM supports this through communities is woolly. Would a WEM solution involve building a community? Or, is this a Facebook connector for example? Put this issue of community definition to oneside and I have to say the remainder of the list is bang-on. For me, conversation is the central pillar of Engagement. The term engagement should as much about conversation as it is about conversion if WEM is to benefit an organisation as much as its audiences. I'd like to think of this pillar as *real conversations between real people* and I hope they occur where the people choose.
Demand Generation
Don't know about this one. Anyone from local government care to comment?
Sales Automation
In a local authority context, Sales Automation could be renamed integration. Systems such as WCM, CRM, Email and Analytics need present a dash board of information about the #topics being discussed, about the citizens involved in discussion and the sentiments of conversations.
Conclusion
WEM is relevant to local authorities in part. These organisations don't sell and neither do they compete for your business. But they do provide vital services funded by tax payers and they are accountable for the services they provide. A joined-up engagement strategy, under-pined by a sensible collection of joined-up systems will help local government engage with its citizens.
Further scenarios to follow…
