Kalmia Records Blog

I am sure there is not many people amongst us that have not heard of this multi-purpose, super store. Stocking a variety of products, this shop is known internationally for its cheap products.

Not only does Asda have a great range of your every day grocery foods, its stores are usually so huge they have a wide range of other items. This can include household goods, children’s games and other non food items. The stores usually also have their own cafeteria and also a wide range of fresh produce - for example a range of cooked meats and a fresh fish counter.

Asda’s are usually situation slightly out of town and I would imagine this is the reason that they introduced online shopping. Once you have registered on their site you can do your weekly shop at almost the click of a button! With all the shopping broken down into categories you can easily do your online shop, book into a delivery slot that suits you and sit back and relax whilst you wait for some one else to deliver your shop direct to your door.

Asda are one of the great shops out there for offering discount codes. Offering money off your weekly shop this allows you to save more money they you usually do - all this without leaving the house! You can view Asda discount codes here.

Looking For Ways to Improve Sales and Customer Relationships?

Find Out Where Your Firm Stands in Today’s Customer Touchpoint Management (CTM) Revolution by Taking the CTM Quiz

(San Rafael, CA) What could be more important than improving sales and your customer relationships? Today, there is a fast growing movement, a revolution, among organizations interested in improving their customer-centricity through a better understanding of customer interactions, or “touchpoints.” Called “Customer Touchpoint Management” (CTM), the goal of this new movement is to improve customer experiences, and as a result, improve customer relationships. By improving customer relationships organizations improve market share, sales, and both customer and employee loyalty and advocacy.

But what exactly is a “touchpoint?” Touchpoints are all of the communication, human and physical interactions your customers experience during their relationship lifecycle with your organization. Whether an ad, Web site, sales person, store or office, Touchpoints are important because customers form perceptions of your organization and brand based on their cumulative touchpoint experiences.

Savvy organizations realize that customer relationships can no longer be considered exclusively the domains of sales and customer service. If the accuracy of invoices, or the professionalism of installers or cleanliness of your store or office is lacking, then the relationship can suffer no matter how well the salesperson or “owner” of the relationship performs. Savvy organizations know that they can best enhance relationships with customers by improving touchpoints across the entire enterprise.

In fact, improving your customer relationships can deliver powerful results to your organization. For example, through a comprehensive Customer Touchpoint Management (CTM) program developed to understand and improve key customer touchpoints, Avis gained market share in key travel markets and became a leader in customer loyalty and satisfaction as measured by Brand Keys and JD Powers.

So, where does your organization stand in the growing Customer Touchpoint Management movement? Take the following six-question CTM Revolution Quiz to find out if your firm is a CTM Observer, Follower, Leader or Visionary. If you want to see how your organization compares to others, take the quiz online at http://www.tpmetrics.com/tp_quiz.asp.

CTM Revolution Quiz (Circle your Yes/No answer)

Does your organization know…

1. All of its points of customer interaction (called touchpoints)? Yes No

2. Which touchpoints your customers highly value? Yes No

3. Your customers’ views of the effectiveness of highly valued touchpoints? Yes No

4. Your customers’ needs in each stage of their relationship with your company? Yes No

5. The most common sequence of touchpoints prospects encounter as they consider your offerings? Yes No

6. How your current customers classify themselves (for example: as dissatisfied, satisfied, loyal or advocate)? Yes No

Add up your “Yes” answers to find where your organization is positioned in the CTM revolution:

0: CTM Observer. While your firm may be doing well, there are opportunities for dramatic improvement in the customer-centricity of your organization. If your approach to better understanding and improving customer touchpoints has been to observe or monitor customer service trends in your industry, you may be finding it more and more difficult to compete. New clients and strong sales may be masking poor customer satisfaction and retention issues, which could lead to a serious problem down the road. You know that improving customer-centricity will help, but your organization may be having trouble getting its hands around just how to accomplish this - you’re not sure exactly where to start. Previous efforts to improve customer experiences have generated mixed results. As a consequence, staff are highly skeptical of new programs and their ability to truly effect change. A change of culture may be required to dramatically improve customer-centricity, and you probably need third party assistance to accomplish this.

1 - 2: CTM Follower. Your organization is making progress on improving customer experiences and is generating some positive feedback as a result. However, you are still following the Customer Touchpoint Management leadership of others. You appreciate that you are more customer-centric than some of your competitors, but worry that you have significant hurdles to overcome to catch up to the customer service leaders in your industry. You are proud of the improvements made to date and you want to continue the organization’s positive momentum. You realize that you may need outside experts to help the firm get to the next level.

3 - 4: CTM Leader. A Customer Touchpoint Management revolution leader, your organization is benefiting from being ahead of the customer experience curve. You excel in comparison with the majority of your competitors. Your sales are increasing, and you have improved the retention of both customers and employees. Customers who advocate your offerings are helping to fill your sales pipeline and employees who advocate your company are helping to attract outstanding staff. You are committed to continuously improving touchpoint performance through a dynamic Customer Touchpoint Management plan, and have systems in place that enable your organization to surface and apply touchpoint best practices. Not satisfied, however, you continually look internally and externally for opportunities to improve customer touchpoints in order to improve your customer-centricity and to stay ahead of your competition.

5 - 6: CTM Visionary. Your organization is the inspiration for the touchpoint revolution both within and outside of your industry. You have established benchmarks and best practices for developing and implementing a comprehensive Customer Touchpoint Management plan. You have developed a system of two-way communication that encourages ongoing and honest feedback from both customers and employees. Based on customer and staff input, you have established touchpoint standards and manage to those standards. Your customers consistently experience excellence in every touchpoint they encounter. Outstanding talent is clamoring to work for you and your competitors covet your employees. You are able to charge a premium for your products or services, and your corporate leaders are invited to speak about the customer-centricity of your organization. Happy to share your CTM story, you know that your success is based on an ingrained culture of relentlessly looking for better ways of understanding, improving and measuring your customer touchpoints in order to strengthen your position as a customer service leader, and to further distance yourself from your competitors.

We are in the early stages of the Customer Touchpoint Management revolution. If you find your organization positioned as a CTM Observer or Follower, it is not too late to learn from the Leaders and Visionaries and to apply the concepts of Customer Touchpoint Management to improving relationships with your customers. The benefits are powerful, creating happier customers, employees and owners.

About The Author

Hank Brigman is author of the upcoming book “Touchpoint Power!,” and President and CEO of Touchpoint Metrics (www.tpmetric.com), the research consultancy that pioneered Touchpoint Mapping. Based on their proprietary methodology, Touchpoint Metrics delivers data, insights and recommendations that serve as a foundation for Customer Touchpoint Management efforts. Hank can be reached directly at 415.258.8524 or via email at: hbrigman@tpmetrics.com.

Affiliate marketers and webmasters are gearing up for the holiday season. Tips from Spreadshirt’s affiliate marketing manager.

It’s November, leaves are turning, nights are colder and there’s that particular smell of marketing in the air. It’s making its way onto the Internet.

Already the big players: Amazon, Ebay, Marks & Spencers have rolled out Christmas affiliate campaigns and bonuses. Slowly, even the smaller websites: personal sites, blogs, small company pages are looking to get involved in seasonal affiliate marketing.

Following online newspaper formats, operators are finding they can make a profit with little effort. Keyword ads campaigns from Google and Yahoo are neat, clean services that work. Partially due to their relevance - the ads that show up are driven by the content of the page - but also a subtle layout that takes away from the garish and dated pop-ups.

Another unobtrusive method is the integrated ad. With readers used to seeing adds in all forms of journalism, bloggers in particular can use this medium to introduce ads that readers will see and that can even add an aesthetic element to the page. The fun fashion-bash blog gofugyourself.typepad.com does it well, as does the food site www.101cookbooks.com/. When the ads match the style and topic of the website, they’re not only a means of funds, but provide a valuable service for site visitors.

Affiliate programmes are the small operator’s tool of choice. They serve to link websites to a large pool of companies happy to pay for the chance to advertise on the site. With a variety of setups, owners can get paid for every click made on an advertisement or any purchase made through clicking on an advertisement. There’s a host of European and UK-focused programmes: they collect merchants especially catering to the UK market. The big players offer the most options, and usually sign-up is completely free. Some favourites are: Affiliate Window (www.affiliatewindow.com) Trade Doubler www.tradedoubler.com and Commission Junction (www.cj.com).

What to look for in advertising? Especially for the Christmas season, sites offering gift options are attractive. Always popular are food and alcohol sites.. In the season of giving, gift-able items in the £20-50 price range can add spark to the site with seasonal banners and some extra spending cash. Popular options: wines and spirits from wine.com, decadent chocolates from www.godiva.com or something more personal and unique: photographs and photograph gifts from Shutterfly www.shutterfly.com or customised apparel from Spreadshirt www.spreadshirt.co.uk.

The grassroots, back to the sources, favourite is the net ring. The fantastic sports blog www.ericmcerlain.com/offwingopinion links unto others and has others link unto him. More organised methods include: Webring www.webring.com and RingSurf www.ringsurf.com. The sites link smaller sites in a large directory: it simultaneously boosts online presence and makes less ubiquitous sites easier to find.

All ranges of sites, including one’s that never thought they could be advertisers, are joining the bandwagon. It’s adding to the ever-dynamic world of online marketing, and offering up the promise of payoff for free expression and creativity.

Sarah Falcon is the affiliate marketing manager for Spreadshirt UK (http://www.spreadshirt.co.uk)

Businesses, which are still sitting on sidelines and not doing business on the Internet, should think seriously about their position! If you are one of them, chances are there, that you have to pay dearly for your indecision as you might lose significant market share to your more proactive competitors in a very short period of time.

Apart from the fact that e-commerce is growing at the rate of more than 25 percent a year, the use of online features can bring efficiency to virtually every aspect of business process, be it supply chain management or customer support management.

But, how can you build an e-commerce business and take advantages of all these great possibilities? After all, you are pretty sure that anything to do with new technology is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive.

Believe it or not, this is just a misconception that most business owners have about the Internet technology. The truth is - in order to run a business online and reap profits, like any new effort, you need to do a little homework, have patience and determination, and get going.

Take the following steps seriously and in no time you will be able to embrace fascinating world of online business.

Take your products online

Getting your product online does not simply mean - having a nice picture and a product narration to go with it. Effective use of the Internet is based on standards. Standards, as you know, are created to facilitate common use of a technology. If you ever imported or exported a product or service, or if you registered your product with some kind of authorities ever; you certainly know that each product falls under certain subcategory according to the classification system that you encountered. Internet is the same thing. Since the emergence of Internet, several classification systems have been developed.

If you think long term and would like to use same catalog with multiple e-marketplaces, you should adopt one of the prevailing classification system in the Internet. The best online catalog classification available from my point of view is UNSPSC. For one thing, many prominent e-marketplaces adopted this particular system, which allows you to post your products on multiple e-procurement systems and e-marketplaces.

How do you do this? I would suggest you to become a member of one of the e-marketplaces, where you can aggregate your products using some kind of simple wizards or forms. E-marketplaces based on Commerce One’s the largest B2B e-marketplace enabler, have this facility.

Our own Rusbiz e-catalog system, which is also based on UNSPSC, also allows you to integrate your products using a very simple but sophisticated form. If you do not have time to do it by your own, you can use the service of a B2B exchange. Rusbiz also provides with similar service.

Get an online presence

What should be your next step once you have all your products transformed into e-catalog? Naturally, you need to have an online presence to sell the products. There are number of options how to do this.

Become a member of an e-marketplace

This could be a large geography oriented fairly large horizontal market or a vertical e-marketplace specific to your industry. The membership fees are in most of the cases not so expensive. But many of them charge some percentage on your transactions, usually, from 1 to 3 percent. If you expect big sales volume, you may think this might not be the best choice for you. However, if you get new customers, thanks to your mere presence in an e-marketplace, the percentage that you have to pay on the transaction you should consider as customer acquiring cost. Under any circumstances, it is good to become a member of at least one e-marketplace as you -automatically get exposed to thousands of new prospective customers.

Build a website

There are several ways you can construct an e-commerce site to your need.

You can build a website in house by employing developers or you can hire a web development company to do this for you. The advantage is you can have a website with the look, feel and functionality according to your given specification.

However, both of these methods could be way costly for a small business. Average cost of building an e-commerce website runs starting from US$ 600 plus hosting and maintenance charges for a miniscule site with limited features to several hundred thousand US Dollars for a powerful e-commerce website.

Another option that you have as a small business is to build an e-commerce site from prefabricated templates. While this is affordable and easy, you considerably lose flexibility and customization possibilities in comparison to building a site from scratch.

Build a web store

All these above mentioned cases do not allow you to have the potentials and advantages that come with an e-business website integrated with a B2B exchange. Which means, whether you are a business to consumer company with occasional sales to businesses or you are a pure play B2B company, a Web Store merged into an e-marketplace is what you need.

A web store from a B2B exchange gives you the best of both worlds. You are having a professional e-commerce site which incorporates all the features that an e-marketplace has to offer. And you build a site from simple and easy to edit templates.

For a detailed information about the features that come with a web store and benefits that you can get from them, follow this link: Powerful E-business Store

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business e-commerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, e-marketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a bi-weekly E-zine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.

nowshade@rusbiz.com