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Connected’s Delightful Approach to CRM

By Mark Evans in Startups No Comments Tags: , ,

One of my core beliefs about online startups is how they have to delight users. It means offering users a service that addresses their needs in a user-friendly, intuitive and accessible way to meet a need or solve a problem.

Without the delight “factor”, most startups will struggle to capture the attention and loyalty of users no matter how well they are at digital marketing, social media, media coverage, etc.

For anyone looking for an excellent example of delight, here’s one I discovered recently: Connected, which was recently acquired by LinkedIn. As part of the deal, Connected has gone from $9.99/month to free.

Connected is a customer relationship management service that describes itself as “the easiest way to manage your professional contacts”. For anyone who has used CRM, they can be labour-intensive and not terribly user-friendly, particularly for small business owners who don’t have the time to constantly update and tend a database.

A CRM Made Easy

What makes Connected different and delightful is the ease of creating and maintaining a contact database and, as important, getting information and intelligence out of it.

Connected’s power starts with the ability to import contacts from LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, address books, applications such as Google Voice and Evernote, and e-mail marketing tools such as MailChimp and Constant Contact. In little time, Connected creates an extensive database that can then be searched, annotated, enhanced and expanded.

Even more delightful is the ability to look up a contact, and quickly see recent status updates on Twitter and LinkedIn, blog posts, their LinkedIn profile, mutual contacts and a healthy amount of personal information (e-mail address, corporate information and personal Web sites such as their blog, speaking About.me page, etc.)

For anyone who has resisted the use of CRM or never thought about using a CRM, Connected is a simple and straightforward way to use a tool that offers lots of information, easy navigation and plenty of value without investing a lot of time and effort.

In other words, Connected has created a CRM that delights, which probably explains why it was snapped up by LinkedIn.

LinkedIn and the Downside of an IPO

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

The world is abuzz, aflutter and agog about LinkedIn’s IPO, which saw the price of its shares more than double to $94 from the offering price of $42. LinkedIn is now worth a staggering $8.9-billion, or 40X revenue.

To some people, the LinkedIn IPO harkens back to the original dot-com boom when valuations were sky-high and investors were completely irrational. That may be true but remember most of the IPOs done a decade ago were crappy companies with little or no revenue that played upon the bubbly enthusiasm of this new thing called the Internet. LinkedIn, on the other hand, has revenue, 100 million users and a global brand name. In other words, it has fairly strong fundamentals.

But as people sober up from LinkedIn’s spectacular debut yesterday, here are a few thoughts:

1. The biggest thing about being a publicly-traded company is everything you do is on the table. There are no secrets anymore that can kept behind the scenes like when you’re privately-owned or VC-backed.

At the same time, there are expectations to meet from investors and analysts looking for certain finance results. If you exceed targets, you’re rewarded; if not, you’re penalized. For publicly-traded companies, it puts pressure on them to perform, and may get them to do things such as raise prices or introduce new services to drive revenue.

2. While LinkedIn had strong revenue ($243.1-million), I think companies that don’t have strong revenue will have a more difficult time doing an IPO unless they also have a compelling brand. Facebook could do an IPO in a heartbeat, and I think the enthusiasm among investors would dwarf LinkedIn’s.

Twitter could easily do an IPO based on its user base and brand recognition. The only problem is Twitter’s financial fundamentals may be an issue because it’s still not generating enough revenue. This explains some of the strategic decisions Twitter has made recently.

3. There will likely be a flurry of IPOs as entrepreneurs and, as important, VCs try to take advantage of the LinkedIn IPO to pull some money off the table. My advice to investors is to be pragmatic and careful, and be prepared to get stung if you’re not prepared.

More: The New York Times has a good piece on LinkedIn’s IPO with a great first paragraph: “It’s not 1999, but the big Internet I.P.O. is back.”

A Perfect Approach to Business Cards

By Mark Evans in Product Reviews 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Maybe I’m old school but in my world, the business card is still alive and well. Although far from sexy or digital, a business card still has clout. It’s something tangible that can be given to someone to establish a relationship. And the upside is accepting a business card is quick as opposed to having to slowly type contact details into an address book, or “bump” someone, which seems fairly intimate if you’ve had just met someone.

But what happens with all these business cards after they’ve been collected? They can be manually imported into an address book or, in many cases, they pile up on your desk and collect dust. There are technology solutions such as CardScan that are designed to make it easy to deal with business cards but they can be expensive, which seems strange for a small piece of hardware.

There are services such CloudContacts in which you send business cards so someone else can digitize them. And there are iPhone apps that claim to capture business cards by taking photos of them.

As someone who has spent far too much time trying to find a user-friendly solution, I haven’t discovered anything elegant and cost-effective to capture business cards….until now.

The answer is CardMunch, an iPhone/Web app that has, so far, blown me away. CardMunch consists of a free iPhone application and a Web site to manage business cards. The service used to have a cost but it’s now free after being bought by LinkedIn. Even if CardMunch wasn’t free, I’d still use it.

After downloading the iPhone app and registering for an account, you capture a business card by taking a photo of it using the CardMunch app. The business card is sent to your CardMunch account and, after logging in, there’s a list of pending and completed cards.

The most impressive thing about CardMunch is how well the details of each card have been captured. I’ve used several business card iPhone apps but the picture quality and information captured has been far from ideal. CardMunch, however, does an amazing job. To send the details of each card to your address book, you click on “Export Contact”, which downloads a VCF file that can added to an address book.

CardMunch is one of those “gems” that does a straightforward job in a simple, user-friendly and effective way. Now that it’s free and owned by LinkedIn, it should attract a lot of people who still use business cards. Even if it weren’t free, CardMunch would be difficult to resist.

Why Social IPOs Could Be Troublesome

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

There’s joy among investment bankers and high-tech investors amid growing reports that many of the largest social media players are considering IPOs. There is heavy speculation that LinkedIn will go public, and that Facebook will be follow suit in 2012. Who knows, maybe Zynga, GroupOn and Twitter will also embrace IPOs.

While this is obviously good news for investors looking for a piece of the action and VCs and entrepreneurs looking to cash out, it is important to remember there is a downside to a flurry of social IPOs.

When a fast-growing company is private, the only number that really matters is user/subscriber growth. This shows investors and potential users a company is showing traction, which suggests revenue and profits are not far behind. This is why there’s so much excitement about Twitter, which has 175 million users but is likely highly unprofitable because it doesn’t have a business model yet.

The problem with doing an IPO is user/subscriber growth becomes just part of the overall mix. Once investors have a piece of the action, revenue, cash flow and profits also become important. At the same time, expectations for growth also increase – and we’re talking about revenue and profits as opposed to buzz and coolness.

Faced with demands from Wall St., many companies have no choice but to change how they do business. When the bottom line becomes important, controlling costs starts to count. This means some of the frills and perks that go along with being a cool, fast-growing company are no longer acceptable to investors looking for improved numbers.

And while subscriber/user growth is still a key metric, revenue and profits matter just as much. There could be, for example, pressure to introduce more premium services while shaving away at free services. Maybe some of the ad dollars being thrown around get pulled back to control spending.

For companies that fail to meet expectations, they’ll get punished by hostile investors looking for scapegoats. Heck, Facebook’s value could plummet by billions of dollars if it missed earnings expectations by a cent or two.

Nevertheless, there will be a bunch of social IPOs because demand is robust. Some companies could thrive in the spotlight while others could wilt under the scrutiny of demanding investors.

The biggest lesson for investors is caveat emptor (aka buyer beware) – something they should have learned during the dot-com bust but will likely conveniently forget amid the excitement of a hot social IPO.

The Return of the High-Tech IPO?

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

It’s been a long time since the high-tech IPO was alive and well – probably going back to the original dot-com boom in the late-1990s when just about any start-up with a sexy story could convince investors to participate.

Since then, however, the IPO market has been popular as a skunk at a picnic. Sure, there’s been the occasional public offering but the amount of activity has been trivial.

For whatever reason, there are indications that the high-tech IPO market may be rebounding, and could propelled by some high-profile companies. Facebook, for example, has created a dual-class share structure that could position itself for an IPO; Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told a conference earlier this week that an IPO is possible at some point, and LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman said his fast-growing social network could do an IPO, although not in the “near-term”.

In the scheme of things, talk about IPOs seems strange given global economic conditions are still fragile, and many companies are operating in survival mode. That said, the time is also ripe for stronger companies to capitalize by making aggressively strategic and financial moves at a time when rivals are struggling.

It also doesn’t hurt companies such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook have strong growth, as well high profiles – a recipe that will seduce many retail investors.

Links: TechCrunch, The Deal

Seth Godin on Social Networking

By Mark Evans in Uncategorized 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

Here’s an interesting video of Seth Godin talking at a recent conference about social networking, “fake networking” and the value of “real relationships”.

It’s an interesting observation, particularly given how many people have been trying to build out their LinkedIn and Facebook networks during the current economic slowdown.

As much as these digital networks can be useful and build relationships in some respect, they are different beasts than personal (real-life) relationships where the real value lies.


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