Lets close the 2007 deal, SR, campaign, order ... and welcome the business of 2008

As they say, another good year behind us. Had to really resist the temptation of blogging about '08 predictions or '07 observations as my final post for the year.

Think '07 was a great year for CRM and one look at products from vendors like Oracle and SAP indicate that the next (2.0) generation is very much here and mainstream. So I would say buckle up as we are on for a ride in 2008.

Happy New Year everyone.

Top 20 Things Sales and Marketing folks should know

Ran into a couple of great compilations by Rohit Bhargava on his Influential Marketing Blog. Through these two posts what he has done is classified terminology that todays marketing folks should avoid using going forward or focus on in 2008. Now while I agree with most of what he describes in his posts, I have a slightly different take on these.

I would say that what he has provided are the Top 20 things that sales and marketing folks should be aware of in somewhat descending order. But make sure you familiarize yourself with these as it'll be increasingly difficult to market in 2008 without understanding what inbound links, engagement or impressions means in todays world.

The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008

1. Inbound Links (from influential sources)
2. Direct URL Access
3. RSS Subscribers
4. Email Link Referrals
5. Time Spent (engagement)
6. Organic Keyword Referrals
7. Email Longevity and Multiple Opens
8. Abandonment
9. Clickstream
10. Microsharing

The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007

1. Impressions
2. Technorati Authority
3. Comments
4. Trackbacks
5. Time Spent (searching)
6. Keyword Conversion Rate
7. Number of Pages
8. Email Open Rate
9. Popover Click Rate
10. Page Views

Biggest Business Challenges for 2008 - HBR

Harvard Business is building a crystal ball around responses from readers on the Biggest Management Challenges in 2008. Among some of the early responses;

Social Networking. “Companies must learn to effectively utilize social
networking tools both inside and outside the companies to keep up with what the
younger workers grew up with — fast and furious communication tools like
texting, facebook, My Space, You Tube, etc. that spread the word now. Not in the
next quarter, next month, next week or even next day, but NOW.”

Absolutely agree !! and thats where customers should be going with their CRM 2.0 initiatives as well.