Strategy

Lean Marketing Tips: Increasing Lifetime Value With Email Campaigns

Mike | July 9th, 2012

It is a truism of the business world that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. It is also a truism that every business extracts a relatively predictable economic value from a given customer based on amount of money spent with a company minus the amount [...]

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Small Business and Startup Tips: Analyze This (a Data Primer)

Mike | May 21st, 2012

Our awesome Customer Service Master, Bianca, came to me last week with a simple request: “Let me have more responsibility.” Well it’s not everyday that a member of the team asks for the opportunity to do more, and it’s not every person in the world who expresses interest in learning new skills. We had a [...]

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Small Business Pinterest Starter Guide

Ross | May 16th, 2012

Are you wondering how you can leverage Pinterest for your small business? Pinterest is currently one of the hotest websites. For some businesses, Pinterest is delivering more user trafic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. For those of you who haven’t heard of Pinterest, here’s a brief summary: Pinterest is a free social sharing site [...]

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Dear Mentee

Mike | May 15th, 2012

Hi. I’m Mike. Yesterday Amanda posted an article in which she talked about the experience of professional life for a young person just starting out in her career. Well, as of tomorrow Amanda has been working at crowdSPRING for one year (note to self: get cake for Amanda); for the first few months she was an unpaid [...]

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Dear Mentor

Amanda | May 14th, 2012

Hi.  I’m Amanda. I know you’ve seen me in and out of these parts for a little over a year now, but here’s a formal introduction: I’m 22-years-old and I just graduated from college.  I’ve been fortunate to have three internships during my undergrad years.  My tenure at crowdSPRING has included working on PR, marketing, [...]

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Growing Your Small Business Using Social Media: The Facts

Ross | May 9th, 2012

We’re previously written about ways that small businesses are using social media, how businesses can leverage social media to deliver customer service, and the innovative ways some businesses use social media. There’s no clear consensus about social commerce and whether businesses should invest marketing dollars in social media. For example, Forrester Research, last year, released [...]

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Lean Marketing: Delivering Customer Service via Social Media

Mike | April 30th, 2012

We write often about the power of great customer service and share ideas for how to engage with customers. improve delivery, and analyze your performance in this crucial arena. There are reasonably priced tools aplenty which can help you provide better service to your customers: help-desk software like Zendesk, virtual call center services such as [...]

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Free Advice for: The New York Times iPad App

Mike | March 19th, 2012

I am a crank. There, I said it. Around the cS offices, I have a reputation as a curmudgeon and grouch. I have never been slow to voice an opinion, file a complaint, or take a company to task for everything from a unreliable product to poor customer service. This post is intended as the first [...]

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DIY Branding, Self-published Fame, and Romantic Trolls

Mike | January 30th, 2012

Amanda Hocking is a star of the publishing world. Last year she signed a 4-book, $2 million dollar deal with St. Martin’s Press, one of the largest publishing houses in the world. While in itself, this is not unusual – authors become best-sellers every day, and publishing houses announce contracts with authors just as often, [...]

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Crowdsourcing: a 7+7 Primer (Pt. 2)

Mike | January 23rd, 2012

Last week I posted the first part of this article on crowdsourcing strategies. In the post, I discussed some of the big-picture issues that I believe should be considered carefully when planning a crowdsourced project. Best practices for crowdsourcing require managers to first determine the best venue for their project, effective management of the process, [...]

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