JitterJam® Social CRM

This totally fluffy and fun video is just my way of wishing you joy this holiday season. Sometimes Fun Stuff Friday is just about simple fun, so I decided to share my favorite YouTube video with you.

Happy Holidays to you. May you share the joy of the season with the people (including the four-legged kind) that you love.

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

In our past discussions, we have talked about how individual initiatives are the genesis of the use of social media / social marketing within a business or a brand, and that these initiatives are usually driven by a single purpose—a use case. The fifth use case in our Creativity Coffee series, Sales Promotions, focuses on how businesses can derive direct revenue from their use of social marketing.

Recent studies have shown that almost 40% of people connect with brands over social channels because they want to receive offers and discounts. But another recent study stated that people DISCONNECT from brands because of over-posting or irrelevant content.

Brands want to see ROI in their social marketing efforts, and one of the core ways for them to directly associate revenue and profitability to social marketing is through sales promotions. Dell Outlet is one of the key success stories along that line; they have a Twitter account dedicated just to selling discounted merchandise. But how can the brand take advantage of engagement with consumers for Sales Promotions? What are the rules of engagement? How much is “just right?” What are the best practices? Here are the ideas sparked during our Creativity Coffee.

1. How much is too much?
• Example: An outdoor products retailer is sending out email marketing newsletters EVERY DAY or TWO. They are not segmenting the list by interest, they are not providing special promotions other than through email marketing, and their promotions are similar each time (usually 20% off). While people are more forgiving of promotional emails around the holiday season (they are LOOKING for deals), how long will it take the average consumer to disengage and unsubscribe? If this retailer were doing the same thing on social channels, how much LESS tolerance would a consumer have to this barrage of deals?
• Brand exclusivity often drives how contacts perceive a promotion. Designer brands may erode their brand status by offering discounts too often; but when they do, many people will probably jump at the chance of getting 20% off of current season items.
• Predictability may erode a brand’s revenue stream. If a retailer provides discounted offers too often, consumers may just wait for deals before purchasing rather than looking for every day value a retailer.
2. Unless the social account is JUST for deals/promotions, there should be a healthy mix of content and promotions.
• People come for community, stay for content!
• While people are looking for deals when they connect to a brand, great content that pertains to the brand’s target audience will help the consumer engage with the brand on levels higher than just “give me a coupon.”
• Brands that ONLY provide promotions through their social channels will miss the opportunity to learn more about their customers, engage them further and develop those customers into brand advocates.
• Social channels may be the lead to a consumer opt-in to sales promotions, but they may not be the PREFERRED channel for the delivery of those promotions. Savvy marketers will enable delivery of promotions on multiple channels and let the consumer drive their preferences and the rules of engagement.
3. Frequency of communication varies by social channel.
• Twitter updates can fly by, and a consumer may see an occasional Tweet. Multiple promotions may or may not be noticed and may or may not “annoy” followers.
• Frequent Facebook updates, however, may have a greater annoyance factor especially if a contact doesn’t have a huge volume of communications from their contacts. The brand’s status updates may stay on the consumer’s news feed, and too many promotions (or even too many updates) may cause the consumer to disconnect from the brand.
4. Should the brand offer “exclusive” deals through each channel (or to drive more people to a desired channel)?
• That depends on the brand’s goals for each channel.
• IF a brand decides to offer “exclusive” promotions on a particular channel, they better make sure that they follow through and make the deals worth the consumer’s engagement on that channel!
5. Value of social channels to brands = the database!
• Example: Pepsi Refresh campaign. Tons of people signed up to support different causes…and Pepsi built a huge database. What now? How are they going to use this information? Where’s the ROI?
• The database can lead to distinct, attributable ROI for social marketing. Deal distribution, tracking by channel and by person, offer redemption in the retail channel and direct ROI. This is happening today!
• The database can also provide media impression data. ROI for traditional marketing/advertising used to be about media impressions and ROI based upon sales volume for a period during/after a campaign. With social, there’s a greater ability to measure the direct and residual impressions (through social sharing) in a traditional light AND measure sales promotion redemption as well.

Intrigued? Would you like to join the discussion? Our next Creativity Coffee will be focused on The Use Case for Measuring Buzz and Brand Sentiment. We hope you’ll join us!

Thanks to a blog post by @econsultancy, I discovered this slideshare presentation by Izzie Zahorian, a graphic design student from Cincinnati. There are some great insights and truths here, and I suggest you take time to go through it. It’s worth the read.

Are your company’s values reflected in your brand?

Happy Fun Stuff Friday!

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

In our past discussions, we have talked about how individual initiatives are the genesis of the use of social media / social marketing within a business or a brand, and that these initiatives are usually driven by a single purpose—a use case. The fourth use case in our Creativity Coffee series, Direct Customer Engagement and Feedback, focuses on how businesses can take advantage of the open nature of social media and have unprecedented direct access to customers and prospects.

One of the core opportunities for brands and businesses to utilize social marketing is to engage directly with their current and potential customers. While brand awareness is a first step in a business’ social marketing value chain, the ability to directly connect with a consumer to draw them closer gives the brand the opportunity to drive consumer advocacy, engagement and feedback. How are brands achieving this today? What are the best-practices they need to use to ensure positive consumer response? Here are the ideas sparked during our Creativity Coffee.

1. Businesses can take full advantage of social media channels by enabling engagement by type of consumer.
• Finding and publishing meaningful content for social sharing that will engage consumers can be a daunting task. What kind of content are people looking for? What are the best practices in engaging people socially?
• Altimeter Group published an “Engagement Pyramid” and accompanying tactics for marketing to different social consumers in the marketplace. They hypothesize that in social networks, 90% of people are Audience members, 9% are Editors (create content), and 1% are Curators (heavily involved in online communities). Their recommendations for engaging people at all the levels of the pyramid are included in the SlideShare document below.
2. Should social marketing carry over the brand’s marketing messaging to its social voice? Will this be “engaging” to consumers?
• Your social voice should be your brand’s voice (reflecting brand identity, values), but on a personal level. A social voice should be just that…social (rather than just messaging/promotion oriented).
• The social voice, and the content and communications that are published socially, should reflect the “pillars of the brand” (the company’s/brand’s values) as well as the topics and flow of conversation by people using the brand’s products. For instance, an organic food product’s social voice should include content and comments about the organic lifestyle, organic recipes, sustainable farming, and other “key pillars” and topics that support the brand’s identity. This kind of content will attract the “audience” that’s most likely to buy the brand’s products and create an opening for “Watchers” to become “Sharers” and even “Commenters” (in Altimeter’s terms).
• The social content shared by the brand should enable target customers to identify and develop brand affinity and advocacy. Even brands with “commodity” products (e.g. gasoline) can engage with consumers based upon their brand’s “pillars”; for instance, an oil company can engage with consumers about conservation, ecology, etc. Just make sure that the social voice is a true reflection of corporate values…social consumers want to see authenticity in the brand’s social voice.
3. The depth of a consumer’s social engagement with a brand is closely tied with brand affinity, the brand’s social activity, and the trust built between the brand and the consumer.
• People buy from the brands they like, use, admire. If they find those brands on the social web, it’s an opportunity for the brand to get closer to the consumer.
• When engaging consumers that may not have a relationship with the brand, a business should use a light touch first and then let the consumer set the pace of engagement and communications. For instance, a brand can comment on a consumer’s Twitter status update and follow that person. If the consumer follows back and even sends a comment back, it’s a great first step. Brands shouldn’t try to sell at first touch; they should let the consumer investigate the brand; just following that person will introduce the brand to the consumer.
• Most brands look towards driving new contacts to their website; social media (and content sharing)helps people “find” the brand, and the website enables the brand to explain what benefits they offer to the consumer. Make sure that the website is clear, provides great conten and value, and supports the brand’s social identity. Make sure links from the brand’s social pages (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) are directed towards appropriate pages on the brand’s website.
4. Asking for permission to market is the best way to ensure that you don’t overstep your boundaries with the consumer.
• Strictly adhering to the communication preferences of the consumer helps you keep that consumer engaged and helps you develop trust with that consumer.
• The “ask” should NOT be done at first touch; however, asking at various junctures on the brand’s website, Facebook page, on landing pages, etc. is desirable and acceptable.
• Remember: Date first before thinking of marriage!
5. How does a brand place value on consumer “engagement?”
• There’s pressure from “corporate” to have measurable, tangible results from social engagement. In fact, some within corporate leadership still don’t see the value and are afraid of seeing the negative comments that are being posted about them. Remember that the comments are happening whether or not your company is listening; social engagement is an opportunity to receive feedback from customers and to urn negative consumer experiences into positive outcomes. But you can’t do that if you’re not listening to and engaging with social consumers.
• The value can be measured like other media–impressions, clicks, and even commerce. The use cases are there…but the business needs to commit to moving forward with social marketing in order to prove the value.

How are you engaging with consumers? What is/are your use case(s) for social marketing? What value has it brought to your company? We’d love to hear from you!

Diving Deeper into Consumer Interests

Part I in this series focused on the benefits of adding segmentation to the contacts stored in your JitterJam intelligent contact database and discussed segmenting by consumer interest. In Part II, we take a deeper dive into the broad category of consumer interests and cover that features of JitterJam that facilitate segmentation by interests—namely JitterJam Topics, Tags and Custom Fields.

Topics
“Topics” within the JitterJam platform allow you to segment your database and provide consumers the opportunity to specify their topics of interest when they opt-in to receive communications from you (via JitterJam’s Make Me Happy™ permission marketing system).

Expressed Consumer Interest(s): If you have a list of interests you would like to present to people for their consideration (in a form or a pick-list, for instance), you can designate these choices in a certain type of “Topic” called a “Consumer Interest”. In the Account / Administration area of JitterJam, you can quickly create new topics; clicking on the “Consumer Interest” check box will allow you to include it as one of the interests on the Make Me Happy subscription sign-up or customer preferences forms that you can easily create and customize within JitterJam. These expressed consumer interests are stored with each contact’s record in the JitterJam database.

Implied Consumer Interest(s): Here’s another use for JitterJam Topics…Because you assign each JitterJam social search to a Topic, the search results and their authors can be viewed/analyzed by the Topics (categories of conversations) that one or more social searches roll up into. Let’s say you sell health and beauty aid products and have set a goal to increase sales in your aromatherapy line, and you’ve created a number of social searches to find social conversations about your product and market. A consumer’s online chatter discovered by one of your JitterJam social searches is assigned to the Topic of “Aromatherapy.” Once this person is added to the JitterJam contact database, we’ll track this and any future conversation by this consumer which matches any of your social searches and count the number of times they posted a public comment on the various “Topics” you’re tracking. With this data, you can assume that this consumer may have an interest in one or more of your Aromatherapy products! By understanding the time frame and frequency that a contact converses about a Topic, you’ll be able to gauge their level of interest in your product category. This is what we refer to as implied consumer interest(s) instead of expressed consumer interest(s), as described earlier.

Combining these two uses of JitterJam Topics makes analysis and outreach very interesting! If you use a JitterJam Topic as both a consumer interest and have one or more of your JitterJam social searches assigned to it, you’ll be able to segment the contacts who have expressed an interest, implied an interest (complete with their degree of interest)—or both! This is powerful knowledge. Consider the people whose conversations about “Aromatherapy” are picked up a significant number of times by your social searches and who have also given permission to market and have checked a box expressing an interest in “Aromatherapy”—these could be your hot prospects!

Tags
A second way to store consumer interest information is by tagging all contacts for whom you discover specific interests, a particular role in your community (e.g. blogger) or a note-worthy affiliation. While the Topics feature automatically counts the number of times a contact has has conversed about a subject or has explicitly expressed interest in a topic, applying Tags to contacts is a bit more manual on the part of the JitterJam user but is incredibly valuable none-the-less.

While reading and analyzing discovered conversations, you will find people who are important to you in a number of different ways. You may discover a blogger in your industry, an expert in the field, or someone asking for product references. You may see communications by your competitors or from companies which have complimentary products to yours. You may find customers who love your product and some who are not very happy. You may discover new uses of your product or a way to customize it for a greater appeal. When you review all this important information, you can tag the contacts who authored the relevant content (click on their user name to open their profile) so this knowledge is at hand when you prepare future outbound marketing messages.

Additionally, you can automatically apply tags to all contacts who fill out a particular Make Me Happy form or whose conversations are picked up by a particular social search. You can import tags with contact information you might be pulling from another system or applied to a group of authors or contacts who share a set of common characteristics.

Custom Fields
A final way to represent consumer interests is with JitterJam Custom Fields. You can create up to ten custom fields in each JitterJam account to store any alphanumeric information at the contact level. Currently, these fields can be populated manually (data entry on contact edit form) and automatically by a programmatic call to the JitterJam API or by importing these values for your contacts. This data can indicate product and/or distribution channel preferences, sales volume or anything else that is meaningful to your business and that helps you market to and service your existing and expanding customer base.

Best Use Scenarios
Each of these distinct JitterJam segmentation features is capable of storing interest data, but each has their own strengths and best-use application.

• Spend a little time thinking about the scenarios presented in this post to help you determine the best configuration for you! Think about the types of subjects which people will talk about and/or be willing to express an interest in. JitterJam Topics is the best feature for this set of interests.
• Think about information garnered from your on-line sales or point-of-purchase systems and the data you’ve gathered from surveys. JitterJam Custom Fields might be the best feature for this set of interests/preferences/patterns.
• JitterJam Tags are the best feature if you are capturing a contact’s role in your industry (blogger, expert, analyst, competitor, complimentary product representative, etc.) or relationship to your company/brand/product (competitor, employee, season pass holder, etc.). Tags are also easily applied when you are mining sets of conversations or contacts in an attempt to find commonality among people as it relates to your product space. Once you hone in on the right set of people, you can quickly apply one or more tags to this group of authors or contacts.

Once you’ve started to use Topics, Tags and Custom Fields, the data gathered is readily available as segmentation tools so you can select and communicate with groups of contacts by any of the values stored in any of these numerous fields! The possibilities are immense, so jump in and get going!  As a word of advice, don’t let the decision of which JitterJam feature to use stop you from getting started. Tags can be removed, Custom Field values can be updated and Topics can be changed. Once you get started on an approach, the best configuration may become obvious; and we’re always here to help you think things through. Just email support@jitterjam.com with your rough thoughts and a structure you’ve been thinking about; we’ll get a dialog going to come up with a plan to meet your needs!

Be sure to tune in to Part III for additional segmentation options that are NOT related to consumer interests.  Promise!

What Do You Think?

Would you find it valuable to understand which activities, hobbies or past-times your consumers enjoy or participate in? If you knew this, what would you do differently?

Sometimes, you just have to have fun.

As a marketer, “fun” to me can be…um…a little different than most people. I read blogs like others read People magazine. I love spinny graphs and charts. KPI’s make me dizzy with excitement. Well, maybe not dizzy. ‘A little lightheaded’ might be a better description.

So, to me, trying out something like Xtranormal‘s Text-to-Movie is fun. And here’s the result entitled “JitterJam is Like a Chocolate Sandwich Cookie with a Creamy Vanilla Filling.”

I guess Xtranormal is a wholly appropriate name. It’s silly and fun. With the right context, it can enable anyone to create a “viral” video.

Have a happy Fun Stuff Friday.

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

In our past discussions, we have talked about how individual initiatives are the genesis of the use of social media / social marketing within a business or a brand, and that these initiatives are usually driven by a single purpose—a use case. We identified a number of use cases that drive ownership and implementation of social marketing within a business. The third use case in our Creativity Coffee series, Customer Service, focuses on how businesses can utilize social networks to improve the customer service experience for consumers.

Comcast’s @comcastcares is the “poster child” for the successful use of social networks to provide customer service. Frank Eliason (@FrankEliason), who has since moved on to Citi, led a team of 17 people to provide customer care over Twitter. While some companies have followed suit, others are reluctant to provide “public” customer service. What’s clear from today’s Idea Spark Creativity Coffee discussion is that regardless of whether companies address brand issues and sentiment publicly, people will talk. So what should companies do—and expect—from customer service as a use case for social marketing? Here are the ideas and points from our discussion.

1. There are three core customer service opportunities.
• Reactive: Response to a direct customer complaint, comment or inquiry. For instance, a customer sends @ComcastCares a message stating, “I can’t figure out how to work this new interactive guide on my DVR.” @ComcastCares responds with a link to their online user guide.
• Proctive: Engaging a customer who has posted a complaint, question or comment about the company, brand or product on the real-time web. For instance, if a consumer Tweets, “I can’t figure out how to work this new Comcast interactive guide on my DVR.” While the remark wasn’t directed at the Comcast customer service group, they respond with an @ message to the consumer with the same link. This proactive approach shows the consumer that they are keenly interested in ensuring a positive user experience.
• Progressive: Engaging a consumer who is is having issues finding a solution to a problem or even having a problem with a competitor’s product and engaging them with the brand. For instance, a consumer Tweets “I can’t get more than 1Mbps of speed on my DSL.” @ComcastCares could respond with, “We’d love to help you solve your issue. What’s your zip code? Perhaps we have a better solution.” This could be a Sales or a Customer Care function.
2. The main barriers for companies to enact socially-focused customer care are fear and “lack” of resources.
• Fear. Fear of “airing dirty laundry” in public could be a significant barrier for a company or brand to enact real-time customer service. However, remember that consumers are going to talk about your brand regardless of whether you are listening and responding to those comments. Wouldn’t you rather have the opportunity to turn a negative experience into a positive one?
• Resources and Planning. Taking a reasoned approach to providing customer service via social networks takes some planning and coordination. How many hours a day will be covered? Who is responsible for coverage? Do those people cover social networks exclusively? Does this effort require additional resources, or can the business start with existing personnel? How does this overlap with sales/marketing? These questions are asked and answers for other customer service channels and should be addressed for social as well. Current escalation procedures, PLUS procedures for escalating critical public issues, should be known and in place.
3. Customer service is a form of Marketing.
• How does thinking of customer service as a Marketing function change the scope of the role of customer service for your brand?
• There is a huge opportunity for brands to enhance their relationships with their customers and develop advocacy through customer service. Comcast was able to change public perception of their brand through the positive public customer service experience. No all problems CAN be solved to a customer’s satisfaction; but the willingness of a brand to show they care about the customer’s experience is half the battle.
4. What can brands do to offer live social customer service?
• Test the waters. It’s more than likely that brands that are socially active are already fielding customer service questions and issues through their social accounts. Brands can begin by actively listening for customer needs, questions, issues, etc. and involving the customer service organization as part of the social marketing process. Those key individuals can be tasked with responding (in a timely manner) to the real-time customer inquiry and problem resolution. There needs to be a mechanism in place for coordination and assignment of social conversations and responses to make this a viable first step.
• Measure value. How does this shift in activity improve customer satisfaction? How has call/email volume decreased since enacting real-time customer service? Has the sentiment about the brand improved? Make sure that you have Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure the effectiveness of the effort. But also make sure that you give the effort enough time TO have an effect.
• Pick the right people. Make sure that you select the right people to provide this type of support. The people chosen should be well-versed in social media as well as your brand/product. The make-up of your work force can drive or kill the opportunity. choose wisely!
• Dedicate. Brands who have successfully tested the waters can take the next step—dedicating resources (personnel, procedures, social accounts) to customer service. But don’t forget that it’s just one avenue for customers to connect with the brand and have issues resolved. Don’t lose sight of the overall value of customer service and satisfaction.
• Be first. Brands that take this step to provide real-time service set the bar for their competitors. They are seen as forward-thinking leaders rather than playing catch-up. Being first in a brand category provides significant competitive advantage (press coverage, brand buzz, etc).
• Crowdsource. Part of the advantage of “public” customer service over social networks is the ability to crowdsource. Publishing useful information and great content to support the customer experience is a great way to have your customers spread the word through their own personal social networks. It’s a mind shift away from traditional customer service towards the development of a customer community. Your customers can help others, and you can point your customers to the community as a resource.

 
Customer service is never an “easy” function, and selling social media as a channel for customer service may be difficult in your organization. While saving money may be one goal, make sure you also think about customer satisfaction (and extending customer lifetime value), retention, developing advocacy and community, reducing the cost of customer acquisition, crowdsourcing and other benefits of good customer service (and good marketing) when pitching a plan to your company. And don’t forget that ALL your employees are your brand ambassadors. Even though they may be home and surfing through Facebook, it’s likely that they are still “on the clock” when it comes to advocating your brand or company. Customer service is every employee’s responsibility, whatever their job.
 
Has your company or brand engaged in real-time customer service? How has the experience changed your company?
 
Photo Credit: thadz

By Ric Pratte (@RicPratte) | Nov 12, 2010
Published on CMS Wire

Businesses are using the openness of the real-time web to engage and interact with consumers to enable a new level of personalization. These businesses have already realized that consumers are in the driver’s seat of the brand relationship, and cultivating that relationship by serving the social consumer’s needs will go much further than simple messaging and brand impressions.

Social media has created a new type of communications channel where people openly discuss and share their activities, moods, likes, whereabouts and interests. Where this once was shared in face-to-face encounters amongst friends, social networks now enable the open sharing — and re-sharing — of information, opinions and consumer-generated brand messaging. How can businesses harness this information and create a powerful knowledgebase and improve community relationships? Through a Social CRM (SCRM) system.

Read the entire article on CMS Wire

The Inbound Marketing Summit is an annual conference where the online marketing community gathers to solve today’s marketing and business communications challenges. This event features the brightest minds in the business, including world-renowned authors and practitioners, as well as leaders from some of the companies already using the new tools and strategies. This fast-paced and information-packed event is your check-up on your existing business communications strategies, and your prescription for the coming months.

Using Social CRM for Rich Customer Engagement

Ric Pratte, President & CEO of JitterJam (@ricpratte), gave this presentation on Using Social CRM for Rich Customer Engagement at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston. Thanks to @ActiveEdgeTeam for recording and publishing the presentation!

IMS Podcast

Also check out the Inbound Marketing Summit podcast including an interview of Margaret Donnelly (@mwdonnelly) JitterJam VP Marketing & Business Development, by @berniebay of Find and Convert.

Did you attend IMS? Did you find it valuable? Let us know what you think!

My work companion, Jasmine

Is Your Office Pet Friendly?

Companies like Petco that cater to the pet trade have also embraced the notion of allowing their human counterparts to accompany them into the office. They also use the pet stories from their employees (and their experiences in the office environment) with the animals as great material for their blog!

For those of us who aren’t catering to the pet industry, how can we convince our employers to allow—and even welcome—pets in the office?

From a USA Today Article:

Dog-friendly policies that allow employees to bring well-behaved pets to work are popping up in many offices and, by all accounts, the downsides are minimal. “We always say around here that dogs have never broken anything. People have, but dogs, never,” says Jeanine Falcon of Replacements Ltd., the Greensboro, N.C., company that warehouses more than 13 million pieces of china, crystal and silver and ships out thousands of items every day.

Benefits of Dogs in the Workplace

(from DogFriendly.com)

• Staff morale and worker productivity increased by bringing pets to work
• Increased camaraderie among employees
• Happier employees result in enhanced job performance
• Increase in sales reported by store owners who take their dogs to work
• Dogs can serve as a crime deterrent

According to a national poll of working Americans 18 years of age and over, nearly one in five U.S. companies allows pets at work. And a majority of those polled believe there are benefits to having pets at work, such as relieving stress, improving relationships with co-workers, making for a happier workforce and creating a happier work environment.

According to the survey:

• 55 million Americans believe having pets in the workplace leads to a more creative environment
• 53 million believe having pets in the workplace decreases absenteeism
• 50 million believe having pets in the workplace helps co-workers get along better
• 38 million believe having pets in the workplace creates a more productive work environment
• 32 million believe having pets in the workplace decreases smoking in the workplace
• 37 million believe having pets in the workplace helps improve the relationship between managers and their employees
• And 46 million people who bring their pets to the workplace work longer hours!

Rumba at Altimeter Group's HQ

There’s plenty of proof that pets provide significant health benefits to their owners. Dr. Meredith Wells, an assistant professor of psychology at Eastern Kentucky University, surveyed businesses that allow pets in the workplace and found that employees believe that the animals reduce stress and improve their mental and physical health. Other studies cite specific physical and emotional benefits of pets (see the article on Discovery Health summarizing these benefits and studies).

And yes, this is an unashamedly blatant shot over the bow of the good ship JitterJam. Altimeter Group has a resident dog, Rumba. His person, Jeremiah Owyang, has made Rumba a member of his team. Ric and Jim, are you listening?

Is your office pet-friendly? What benefits have you seen from having pets in your place of employment?