Is WEM for Local Gov? (January 4, 2011)

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:

  1. Content Optimization
    This include native or tightly integrated analytics, content and experience personalization, multi-variate testing and optimization and SEO.
  2. 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.
  3. Conversational Engagement
    WEM supports this through communities, user generated content, commenting, trackbacks, micro-blogging, social media integration, analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.

Mchannel

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.

Qs

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…

 

Selling Futures — when will "then" be "now"? (December 29, 2010)

The software world has built a long and successful track record by selling *the next thing*. It's a practice designed to keep buyers and shareholders interested in the otherwise tedious and rather expensive business of software development. And it reminds me of this amusing clip from Spaceballs the movie.

There's so much excited chatter about Web Engagement Management (WEM) at the moment and I wonder if it's vapor-ware? Is WEM a realisable promise? Web Content Management (WCM) vendors are all banging the WEM drum while analysts and pundits write reams, describing the features and benefits of WEM solutions and the technology-pillars required to realise the WEM-dream.

Vendors view of WEM

Most of what is written about WEM is framed in a marketing context. And an old world one at that. Old world marketing spends most of its time *telling and selling* and its idea of modern one-to-one marketing is to know (read: smoke and mirrors calculation) its audiences' preferences and to then tailor propositions and push these to individuals and tighly defined groups in a targetted fashion. Engaged audiences in this context amount to segmented audiences that can be monitored (Social Media Monitoring and Web Analytics), measured (LTV) and generally sold to.

What others say about WEM

— Ian Truscott of Gilbane wrote: Into the Engagement Tier... and Introducing the Web Engagement Capability Model
— Brice Dunwoodie of CMSWire wrote: What is Web Engagement Management (WEM)?
— Irina Guseva wrote: WEM Market: WCM + Ricotta

These well informed folks base their discussions around technology and what marketing wants. Perhaps we could look at WEM from the audience point-of-view? Switch this discussion around and look at what people want. I know…commercially naive…. Well, perhaps some further reading on this subject will help:

— Cluetrain Manifesto by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
— Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs by Guy Kawasaki

The Cluetrain Manifesto states "markets are conversations." Guy Kawasaki says outbound marketing is old-expensive-style marketing, while inbound marketing is more efficient and aligns with audiences expectations. Hold those thoughts for a minute. You see, over here we have vendors promising one-to-one marketing with engaged audiences, while over here (many foots steps tailing off into distance) we understand that one-to-one conversations are useful and are wanted by audiences wishing to participate in sharing values, opinions and ideas. Are they not the same thing? No. The former is old-push, the latter is new-pull.

People want conversations with people. They want organisations to respond to them and they want responses from people that are empowered to discuss *stuff* without being bound to a script. These conversations will traverse organisational strata and structure because people want to talk about more than just what's on offer. People want to converse with other people and organisations with whom they identify. This is significant!

Generation-Y expectations

An organisation maybe able to personalise its offers but it cannot personalise its values and opinions to match those of its audiences. Generation-Y is heavily influenced by company type: good, bad and ugly. Organisations have felt little of this effect to date but Gen-Y is becoming more significant in numbers and therefore importance. And Gen-Y's approach is spreading to the rest of us. Audiences now want to know what organisations stand for? what's their customer service record? are they green? are they lean? is their pay-structure fair? Audiences want to identify with organisations' values and opinions before they friend them or buy from them. And people now expect to do this with large organisations as well as small.

Convo

 

What is WEM?

It's more than a technology or collection of technologies. It's bigger than marketing and the CMO.

It starts with an organisation defining its values and opinions, what it stands for and what it does to make the world a better place. (Shareholder value has to take a backseat but ultimately will be bettered by this approach). Engaged audiences will not remain engaged when they sense their *one-to-one* conversations are being driven by machines with repositories of pre-built replies and pre-baked propositions.

WEM is the process by which conversations are conducted, whether across Twitter, blogosphere, Facebook it's of no consequence. The machines behind WEM help organisations by allowing joined-up conversation to be converted into joined-up audience information. Who are our advocates? where do people complain about our products or services? what do they say about us? and how do we engage with them to fix their issues? and how do we improve our organisation in the process?

WEM is therefore underpinned by a collection of software-building-blocks: CRM, analytics, Content Management and Social Media Monitoring. It doesn't have to be big expensive blocks either, nimble open source technologies can be just as effective. The point is, no one supplier will deliver the whole solution.

As ever, don't buy a technology and expect it to deliver the end game of its own accord. Engagement is something that happens between people, the technology is merely the delivery layer.

WEM is a collection of ground-breaking strategies and sets of actions:

— empowered staff; *thinking* replaces scripts
— V&O established and understood by all
— conversations are allowed between audiences and customer representatives of the deepest darkest recesses of an organisation
— people from across the organisation Tweet and Blog — not just the C-level directors and the marketing folk

In the past big companies had the advantage of money to invest in technology. WEM swings the advantage to small to medium sized businesses. Small budgets don't limit the possibilities because it doesn't cost lots to build social media channels with friends and followers and it's far simpler to orchestrate across an SMB.

When will this new future be here? A long time after the technological capability has arrived. Why? Because WEM is all about organisations being social, and not even the purveyors of WEM know how to implement/practice all that that means!

Related blog post: http://johngoode.com/open-for-business

Postscript:
Social commerce in 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/dec/30/facebook-2011-sophy-silver