Loyalty360 Reads: October 19th, 2018

Books-A-Million Partners With Service Management Group
 
Service Management Group (SMG), a customer experience and employee engagement company, has announced a partnership with book retailer Books-A-Million. The goal of the partnership is to help Books-A-Million amplifying listening and engagement to drive business results. To accomplish this, the book retailer will work with SMG to deploy the engagement company’s various solutions.
 
“As we looked to advance our business, it was apparent we needed not only a robust technology platform but also an engaged partner that would take the time to understand our business, our employees, and our customers,” said Misty Fontenot, Books-A-Million Senior Vice President of Store Operations. “Following a longstanding relationship with a customer experience technology provider, what really stood out about SMG was its unique ability to provide both technology and insights.”
 
Gartner and HBR Reports Discuss Personalization
 
Gartner has reported that CMOs will spend nearly 12 percent of revenue on technology in 2018. In addition, the Harvard Business Review (HBR), in a study entitled “Scaling Human Interaction in Customer Experiences,” discusses the trade-offs between automated marketing tactics and human-driven marketing engagement. The two reports both indicate that a majority of marketers believe that improving personalization has a positive impact on business but also that current technology only offers generic, superficial interactions. Because of this, marketers need to evaluate the long-term impact of their digital investments.
 
“As digital marketing gets more automated, impersonal, and potentially artificial, marketers need to ensure that their current and future customers are being treated as more than just names in a database,” says Joe Hyland, CMO of ON24. “[The HBR] report gives every marketer a business imperative for 2019: find the balance between human engagement and your ability to scale. Then, invest in those digital experiences that offer a unique balance, giving just as much focus on high-quality interactions as high-quantity results.”
 

Recent Content

Membership and Pricing

Videos and podcasts

Membership and Pricing