Just-In-Time Marketing: LinkedIn versus Salesforce

Recently I had very long negotiations with Paul Palathingal - Java Architect from India about consulting engagement for next 2014 year. It's been a while since I had such strong opponent in negotiations. Historically for me reaching agreement in US were easy, but accountability to deliver negotiated results almost none. It almost became a rule, that if negotiations were easy then other party will forfeit deliverable. This time i have hunch that if we reach agreement then i do not have to worry about results.

Sidetrack of negotiations was discussion about Salesforce and their recent conference in San Francisco - Dreamforce. I made point that Mark Benioff is merging 2 very strong corporate success stories of Apple and Amazon. Apple because AppExchange will do to corporate software what AppStore did to personal apps. And Amazon because opening technology stack (Heroku, Force.com, etc.), that was used to build Sales Automation, to build any corporate software in Marketing, Collaboration, Support, and, eventually, Financials and Logistics will revolutionize ERP, CRM, HCM, and VCP markets. (ERP - Enteprise Resource Planning; CRM - Customer Relationship Management; HCM - Human Capital Management; VCP - Value Chain Planning).

Today, as I was listening to webinar from VoltDB about choosing right NoSQL database, I added presenters into LinkedIn Contacts - new functionality released early this year to keep personal records on people, who not necessary ready to confirm reciprocal relationship. This feature became fundamental to stay in touch with well established connections as well as maintaining notes on "weak" or unilateral contacts.And it made me think about LinkedIn features and possibilities.

If you consider built-in integration with CardMunch - LinkedIn mobile app to capture contacts from old-fashioned business cards, and then ContactsIn - mobile app to remind you about anniversaries, job changes, or relocation of your connections - then you can understand why LinkedIn is "winner, winner, chicken dinner" in personal CRM domain.

Which naturally brought me to thinking what if LinkedIn is considered for corporate CRM as well, because adding Contacts to LinkedIn introduces very lucrative platform to leverage LinkedIn for Marketing and Sales automation purpose.

In the middle of October in Atlanta at Cobb Galleria Centre I attended Salesforce event with introduction of Marketing Cloud - re-branded acquisition of ExactTarget. One of most memorable story was about Trunk Club that used LinkedIn job changes as opportunity to congratulate and offer discount for renewal of formal wardrobe - "dress for the Job you want, not the one you have" kind of marketing pitch. Growth of sales was astonishing and this precedent made me think of era of Just-In-Time (JIT) Marketing. Just-in-Time concept originated from Toyota Lean Manufacturing where the storage of unused inventory is considered a waste of resources. In similar way, creating marketing message with broadcast to masses can also be considered waste of resources, especially considering damage to brand when email is perceived by recipient as spam. In contrast, 1:1 marketing message, like one introduced by Trunk Club, hardly be perceived as spam even if recipient will not convert to customer.

And natural question that comes to mind is why not use LinkedIn natively for such Just-In-Time marketing, by displaying relevant message at the moment when profile is updated right there at LinkedIn.

Next features that needed to upgrade LinkedIn Contacts into CRM platform are:

• ability to send email to LinkedIn gateway that convert automatically into Note associated to contact; optionally adding contact on the fly if new
•  add support for custom forms that would allow entry of custom attributes, including even order entry
• which effectively bring e-commerce support and need for payment processing using credit card on file for premium LinkedIn accounts
• and last, but as personal favorite and not business driven, - support to operate with LinkedIn data via old-fashioned SQL

And maybe even LinkedIn can introduce paid sales pitch with profit sharing, where if somebody wants to make sales presentation to contact he would pay $X for pitch and Y% of that will be allocated/accrued to recipient. Accrued amount to be usud for only paid LinkedIn services or for Charity Vouchers - making it lucrative for VIP to signup for LinkedIn and make, even small, but still effective difference in making world a better place.

With above possibilities and native access to Social Graph it maybe that Linked, and not SalesForce, can be winning battle for Just-In-Time Marketing - the next big thing in driving B2C and B2B sales.

best regards,

Roman Havrylyak

12/11/2013