Share Your Skies With Us

In this elegant synopsis in the Harvard Business Review, author Michael Schrage points out a critical dilemma that I have mused about for some time - "Organizations need to identify the loyal behaviors that most deserve explicit recognition, reward, and investment."  Problem, of course, is that some organizations do more for new customers than they do for existing, long-term customers - and while all struggle with "lead generation" and "new buyers", it is not good business to irritate the converted loyals.  I believe Schrage is pointing out that loyalty is a two way street and is not "programmatic" so much as embedded in an organization's DNA.  His conclusion resonates: "...(loyalty) is one of those rare virtues that can be both a means and an end for new value creation in healthy relationships between consumers and companies. But that only happens if companies commit to offering loyalty as well as asking for it."

This article makes a fascinating point - that we have loose/tight problems with personalization of customer experience. My team has worked on trying to achieve deep personalization - mind you, without web marketing automation tools - in marketing campaigning, and our conclusion at times has been that it can be creepy.  Yet - and over and over again in recent advisory board engagements - we're hearing about the importance of trying to meet the needs of the specific consumer/buyer/user.  So - we have this problem where today's marketing either feels too impersonal, or it gets annoyingly personal (too many emails, people!)  The author calls for personalization's yang - appropriateness.  It's a great pointer!

Click through from this synthesis to find an elegant infographic that highlights 10 key benefits - impacting return on investment - of e-learning. I'm a big believer that when you embark on an e-learning project, efforts should be made to project, based on best assumptions, the ROI of the program or platform.