Tuesday 25 September 2012

11 mobile startups that will change marketing


We've all heard the numbers. More than half of the mobile phones in the U.S. today are smartphones. And according to a recent MIT study, tablets have already penetrated 10 percent of the market in less than three years. That's a faster adoption rate than we saw with smartphones -- or any other technology, for that matter.
Digital marketers are sprinting to catch up with this rapid rate of smartphone and tablet adoption. Industry observers predict that mobile advertising will grow from an estimated $5 billion today to $18 billion by 2015. And not surprisingly, scores of companies are emerging to help marketers decide where and how to allocate those dollars.
11 mobile startups that will change marketing
It's the Wild West out there in the mobile landscape. So which companies really deserve your attention (and, consequently, your marketing dollars)? To helps marketers cut through the clutter, iMedia is hosting the 2nd annual Next Wave Start-Up Challenge and Showcase. From a pool of 27 nominated companies, 11 of the best mobile startups in the media and marketing landscape have been selected, via iMedia community voting, to pitch to more than 300 digital marketing elites at theiMedia Breakthrough Summit. Mobile innovation experts and advisors from top-tier brands, agency incubators, and the venture community will vote on site to determine the Next Wave winner.
The 11 presenting finalists were selected within three categories: mobile campaign management and analysis, mobile entertainment, and mobile shopping and commerce. Let's take a look at the value they hold for marketers.

Mobile campaign management and analysis

Appsnack

Hungry? Appsnack creates and delivers in-app rich media campaigns for advertisers, publishers, and app developers. Based in Emeryville, Calif., the company develops mini-app creative units that launch from one-touch expanding banners and full-screen experiences on consumers' mobile phones and tablets.
Importantly, Appsnack's bite-sized creative units aren't served up willy-nilly. As a division of Exponential Interactive, Appsnack leverages Exponential's e-X Advertising Intelligence platform to provide insight into consumers' mobile context, behavior, and location. The result is a brand advertising solution that delivers relevant, high-impact advertising at the opportune moment.
In addition, Appsnack allows publishers and app developers to better monetize the display ads in mobile apps. The company provides direct access to brand advertising budgets through the delivery of mini-app brand experiences, launched directly through the existing inventory of publishers and app developers.

Media Armor

Marketers across the board have felt it: Consumers are now shopping on multiple devices and in so many channels, how do they make marketing relevant to each individual? One evening, Eric Brown and Elizabeth Zalman, chewing over this issue at dinner, decided to do something about it and created Media Armor.
Boston-based Media Armor allows brands to drive cross-channel revenue though relevant cross-channel display advertising based on who consumers are and what they are doing, anywhere. Media Armor claims, "It is the first company to unify consumer-level data across any channel (online, in-store, catalog, mobile), effectively translating CRM strategies to online, smartphone, and tablet display advertising."
For example, a consumer's smartphone, tablet, laptop, and in-store activity become linked to drive messaging. If the consumer has never engaged with a brand but "looks like" their best customers, they will see an acquisition message on any internet-enabled device. If they visit a store and purchase, a retention message is sent on any of their devices. If they visit the online site at work, they will receive remarketing instead. Because Media Armor tracks actions after messaging, the company knows exactly what message to send next, based upon past actions. As consumer behavior shifts, so should advertiser's messaging strategy. Media Armor opens the door to flexible cross-channel marketing, providing a shield of protection against irrelevant, untimely messages. According to Zalman, the platform's co-founder, Media Armor offers "the holy grail of marketing: cross-channel relevance, cross-channel revenue, consumer-level conversations."

Placed

Put simply, Placed shows advertisers the businesses where individuals are consuming their mobile content. Need a company to sift through the noisy location data created by the wide-spread adoption of smartphones? Placed analyzes location data and presents it in a clear, actionable format for advertisers, publishers, and developers.
With Placed Analytics, marketers can see the places where users are interacting with their app. For instance, as founder and CEO David Shim explains, "In less than four clicks, Placed enables marketers to understand that 14 percent of site visits occurred while a user was nearby a Starbucks, 23 percent of app sessions occurred nearby electronic retailers, and 38 percent of mobile coupons were accessed at either Walmart or Target."
With Placed, marketers are able to identify opportunities to enhance their product by understanding the locations where their content is consumed. For example, if 55 percent of an app's use occurs while users are in transit, a marketer can implement voice controls within the app to encourage safe use.
The Seattle-based company's goal is to "connect the digital and physical worlds to deliver location insights to the masses." As a result, Placed has made its solution available to marketers and app developers for free.

ThinkNear

Have you heard of situational targeting? At ThinkNear, it's the bread and butter of operations. Rather than hit people with irrelevant ads, ThinkNear leverages situational targeting to help advertisers connect with consumers based on location, behavior, and context. The Los Angeles-based company pairs precise location targeting capabilities with a variety of real-time data, such as weather, traffic, and events, to engage customers when they are ready on mobile apps and optimized websites.
According to ThinkNear's CEO and co-founder, Eli Portnoy, the company "focuses all of its time on and excels at providing the most precise location targeting available, which in turn enables an incredible amount of campaign types that were never before possible." For example, when consumers face weather delays at an airport, hotel advertisers can reach stranded users with messages regarding overnight stays.
Also, with ThinkNear, advertisers can access billions of location-enabled impressions, targetable within 100 meters, and every impression is bought individually, in real time. Meaning, advertisers pay only for the impressions that work.
So, does the company face any challenges? As Portnoy told iMedia, "One of the things holding everyone back is that the [mobile] ecosystem feels like the Wild West. This is somewhat common in the early days of a new medium." However, Portnoy remains optimistic and expects "that the leaders will emerge, and the space will become a bit easier to navigate in the not-too-distant future."

Mobile entertainment

iMediaShare

Available for iPhone, iPad, and Android, iMediaShare is a cloud-based mobile media discovery and control technology designed for the connected home. iMediaShare makes it easy for users to stream media from their mobile phone to internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and other connected devices with no cables, syncing, or complicated set-up.
Users simply open the app, choose a connected device, enter their Wi-Fi password, and share their videos, pictures, and music with others. In addition, the app delivers thousands of on-demand options for consumers -- from popular shows to breaking news -- and media automatically adapts to the best suitable format for the screen of choice (i.e., HD, 3D, etc.).
iMediaShare's distribution technology makes it easier for content providers to be everywhere for their customers, and it enables media companies to engage millions of viewers on multiple connected devices. In addition, the company offers digital marketers an outlet for highly segmented, accurately placed ads.

Mimiboard

For centuries, bulletin boards have served as valuable surfaces for posting messages and connecting with one's community. With the rapid rise of connectivity and smartphone adoption, South Africa-based Mimiboard has taken the bulletin board and made it virtual.
Mimiboard allows users to upload announcements (texts, tweets, or shout-outs like traffic reports); news (real citizen journalism in action); and advertisements (local ads placed by the community on the board -- things for sale, services, etc.) to engage and trade with one another. Anyone can create a Mimiboard, give it a name, assign categories to it, and get the community to pin notes onto the board. Once this begins, the board can be added to the user's website, mobile site, Facebook page, or blog.
By serving as a virtual hub of social engagement, Mimiboard has great potential to solve every publisher's problem: maintaining an engaged community of followers. A digital board that is updated with local, relevant content in real time might be a strong solution.   

SeeMail

SeeMail is a photo-sharing app that adds something new to photos -- voice. Inspired by the short notes written on the back of old photos, Scottsdale, Ariz.-based SeeMail was created to add context to images, allowing the story behind the photo to travel along with it. The company claims it is "the first and only app to combine images, voice, captions, and location in a mobile peer-to-peer photo-sharing experience."  
By adding human voice, SeeMail attaches a greater level of emotion and feeling to digital picture sharing, something that can be lost online as pictures are shared without context.   
From a digital marketing perspective, SeeMail's value is in providing brands with the opportunity to personalize their offerings with voice. Brands are now able to communicate their stories on a much deeper level by showing consumers the people behind the products (or, as SeeMail might say, the story behind the photo).

Mobile shopping and commerce

good2gether

Based in Melrose, Mass., good2gether helps businesses that do good advertise by connecting them with consumers who care and the local causes they both support. Retailers, restaurants, businesses, and more can use good2gether to inform consumers about their positive impact in the local community.
How does it work? A business attaches a "DoGood" badge to a wall or window that is embedded with information such as the causes it supports and special offers the company is making to benefit nonprofit organizations. When a consumer taps the badge with an NFC-enabled mobile device, information associated with the good the business does is delivered through the "DoGood" mobile app. Users can then check in, learn ways to get involved, find deals that benefit both the consumer and local causes, or donate directly. If consumers don't have an NFC-enabled device, they can simply launch the app and a list of socially responsible businesses appears on the screen.
The company's "DoGood Corporate Social Responsibility Dashboard" allows businesses to manage their DoGood badge network by understanding how many people are checking in, what causes matter to users, how information is being shared socially, etc. Put simply: The app enables and encourages social responsibility while providing a medium through which business can reach consumers. 

Pogoseat

Have you ever snuck down to better seats at a game only to be embarrassingly escorted back by an usher? Well, Pogoseat allows fans to upgrade their seats at sporting events or concerts from their smartphones -- without all the risk. The app provides a map of the stadium or venue, identifies the empty seats, and allows users to purchase upgrades. These in-game seat upgrades are priced according to the user's original seat location and time left in the game or event, and they factor in any promotional discounts applied by the team or venue.
Pogoseat is quick and easy. Users sign in with Facebook, Twitter, LinkdIn, or a Pogoseat user name; enter their existing ticket information; use the map to purchase seat upgrades using PayPal, Amazon, or a credit card; and present the original ticket and the electronic upgrade to the usher when they move to their new seats.
Pogoseat is currently working with several brands to offer free or discounted upgrades at events. With regard to the app's potential brand value, Pogoseat's co-founder Abel Cuskelly said, "Imagine, for example, a wireless service that wants to offer its customers a free seat upgrade at the next football game they attend. Pogoseat can identify every fan in the stadium who's a customer of that wireless service and automatically offer a free upgrade that fans and customers can redeem at any time during the game."

Point Inside

Based just outside of Seattle, Point Inside is a leader in mobile shopper engagement. Its Interact platform combines indoor shopper and product location technologies with shopper purchase intent data to deliver highly relevant, personalized advertising to in-store customers. With Point Inside, retailers and brands can engage with shoppers in three ways. First, by understanding shopper and product locations, the platform connects users to in-store physical assets. Second, it provides users with routes through the store while suggesting additional products along the way. Lastly, Point Inside delivers a channel for brands and retailers to reach consumers with the perfect message at the perfect time.
Discussing the service's unique value, Point Inside's CMO Todd Sherman said, "This hyper-targeted 'private ad network' has information on the shopper's current purchase intents -- through their shopping list -- as well as their purchase history and, in some cases, their location within the store (section and aisle). This deep understanding of the shopper creates the most targeted ad network for brand advertisers, where they can leverage knowledge of the shopper to determine the best combination of what, when, and how to engage and convert."
When asked about the greatest hurdle Point Inside is currently facing, Sherman explained that it's all about awareness: "The biggest hurdle had been retailers' awareness of the benefits of engaging shoppers through mobile devices. This has decreased significantly over the last 12 months." However, with platforms like Point Inside on the rise, it's hard to believe that this lack of awareness will continue much longer.

Rumgr

Rumgr is a mobile app that lets people buy and sell with friends and neighbors -- something Craigslist should have done years ago. When users open the app, items for sale appear in the app's image feed and are presented in order of proximity. Selling items on Rumgr is as simple as uploading a photo -- no descriptions, no tags, and no location details necessary. The result is a mobile shopping environment that encourages hyper-local purchases and excites users with the possibility of stumbling upon random, unique items -- just like a garage sale.
So, what unique value does Rumgr offer brand advertisers? As the company's marketing lead Ana Yoerg told iMedia, "Our platform is not and will not be ad-supported. However, we are open to brand involvement. For example, we can promote venues (e.g., Starbucks) by providing 'recommended' meeting points for the item exchange." In addition, Rumgr could offer a valuable service to brick and mortar stores by helping them manage their excess clearance items. "These deeply discounted items (50-80 percent off) would be eligible to list on Rumgr as part of the Rack program," Yoerg explains. "Buyers can 'follow' their local store on Rumgr to view items on the clearance rack in their feed, which pushes them into stores for those items and more."
Since the summer of 2012, Rumgr launched news tools for Facebook integration, faster communication, more control over items for sale, and transaction history. In addition, the company introduced "Groups," which are smaller marketplaces based around common locations, such as the workplace. 


http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Tuesday 4 September 2012

Social Media & The Finance / Loan Industry - The Greatest Story Never Told?


Social Finance Infographic(Infographic via MediaBistro AllTwitter & CEO.com)
Just over a year ago, I received a phone call from the Compliance Department. No one ever wants to receive a call from Compliance, and the tone of voice on the other end of the line told me it wasn’t to ask how my weekend was.
“Brian, I need to talk to you about your LinkedIn account.”

“Really?” I asked, feeling relieved. LinkedIn seemed a far more innocuous subject than any other, considering my day-to-day responsibilities. I worked at a boutique investment bank in midtown Manhattan, re-selling distressed, asset-backed bank loans. In English, that means I took people’s bank loans for mortgages, cars, condos, etc., and packaged them into pools of other similar loans and sold them to buyers for anywhere between a few cents to, let’s say, $0.75 on the dollar (still a great deal!), depending on the quality of the “asset” and loan. The loans were “distressed” because since 2008 we had been in the biggest economic tsunami since The Great Depression. The housing bubble had burst, and home foreclosures were occurring across the nation at an alarming rate. We were never busier, and I was already counting my year-end bonus.

So you can imagine my relief when Compliance just wanted to talk about my LinkedIn account. “It seems you have your Twitter account feed on your LinkedIn profile,” she said.
At that point in time, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) hadn’t yet released their ominous-sounding, “Risk Examination Alert – Investment Advisor Use of Social Media”. Neither had the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. (FINRA) released guidance on the issue of social media. It was generally assumed that we didn’t have to comply with the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which prohibits advertising. Basically, Broker/Dealers (BDs) had no official guidelines on how to deal with the use of social media.
Summoning my knowledge as a Series 7 & 63 certified Broker/Dealer, I responded, “But I’m not talking about stocks or giving any financial advice whatsoever.”
“Yes, but you could,” she threatened.
Right then I knew: I was working in the wrong industry.

That may sound awfully dramatic, but it speaks to a larger issue regarding the perception large corporations have of social media in general. The global community has the ability to connect and communicate like never before, yet for the most part, social media is vastly underutilized by too many corporations. Forget about individual voices with something to say. I’m talking about big companies doing great impressions of the silence in the wind.
Since then, FINRA regulates what BDs can do with social media, but several of the laws are so out-of-touch that it’s ridiculous. For example, records of all social media correspondence must be maintained. “Liking a Page” on Facebook is allowed and encouraged since it is not considered a type of testimonial, but “Liking a Status Update” is an “endorsement” of another user’s post and is a violation. Yikes. Certainly not encouraging for open and direct communication.

Did you know that less than one in 25 (3.8%) of Fortune 500 CEOs use Twitter? Only nine Fortune 500 CEOs have tweeted at least once in the past 100 days. Interestingly, Rupert Murdoch is the most active CEO, bucking the excuse that someone is either too old or out of touch to engage in social media.


I see this as money literally left on the table. As the infographic above shows, a recent study by Chadwick Martin Bailey says that 50% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company after following their tweets.

In addition to driving sales, investment firms are missing the opportunity to start a serious rebranding of their images. We all witnessed incredible vitriol from Americans in the vastly divergent camps of the Tea Party and organized members of Occupy Wall Street all voicing their anger towards abuses in the financial marketplace. Neil Barofsky attests in his book, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, to abject abuses of our trust as to how the $700B in TARP bailout money was used by banks.

Never before has a change in public perception been more necessary, and it may be the biggest marketing challenge of all time. But social media allows people and brands to connect in an unprecedented fashion. Now firms can influence the dialogue and address what people are saying.

Social Media provides data about what customers want, need, and desire. Investment firms and banks can fundamentally change the way they interact with customers and create great consumer experiences. This can drive real change within the organization, and there is real ROI that can be measured when a customer explicitly says what they want.
Major banks also have a tremendous opportunity to elevate the dialogue surrounding their industry. There are wonderful philanthropic efforts within that affect people in meaningful ways. Social media gives banks a voice to tell this story and become more than a faceless institution. Instead, they can actually talk and share ideas with the public to create a great customer experience.

I suggest that there is a huge opportunity to change the dialogue with the American public and social media landscape. I know that as a general rule, the finance community is a slow adopter of technology, but I also know that real changes are being made within these institutions. It’s time to let the public know that investment firms employ people who genuinely care about helping you and your family grow your income.
So feel free to connect with me on Twitter at @B_RockNYC where you will not get stock picks but you will get movie quotes, and a myriad of thoughts ranging from the spiritual to the absurd. Because I have a voice and I have a story to tell. I believe that your company does too. If not, it could be the greatest story never told.

Read more at http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-finance-the-greatest-story-never-told-0264657#KZtEC0tv7BsOtTKf.99


http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business

Cloud Based Loan Processing Called "A Game Changer"


Time is money, and entrepreneurs never seem to have enough of both.
This is particularly true for small business owners who can spend hours filling out a tsunami of documents to apply for government-backed loans. And when the exhaustive paperwork finally plods through an esoteric loan processing system, all small business owners can do is anxiously wait…and wait.
Credit union executives know this is not the ideal member service scenario, yet they may be hamstrung by loan processing systems that haven’t kept up with the accelerated pace of today’s business markets. Now more than ever, entrepreneurs under fierce competitive pressures need better and faster service from their financial services partners. For credit unions, better and faster service is a key differentiation point that can retain and acquire new members.
Executives of the $2.2 billion Northwest Federal Credit Union of Herndon, Va., believe they’ve found a new, cloud-based solution that will keep driving that all-important differentiator of delivering exceptional service to members, including entrepreneurs who cannot afford to lose time, money and opportunity.
The new solution comes from nCino, which was spun off as an separate software firm in February from Live Oak Bank in Wilmington, N.C. Though Live Oak is just five years old, it has become the third-largest originator of Small Business Administration loans. 
Pierre Naudé, nCino CEO, said while Live Oak was exploding with growth, problems surfaced with the loan origination system, making it increasingly difficult for executives to monitor and manage their key metrics. The bank’s loan origination system was overwhelmed with paperwork. The heavily regulated SBA loans have as many as 150 documents that need to be reviewed by a complex web of people in the loan processing system. Live Oak employees had to spend time walking desk-to-desk to monitor the status of loans.
Realizing there had to be a better way, Live Oak executives searched for a new solution and found force.com, a SalesForce.com workflow cloud-based platform on which the bank designed a new operating system with two simple goals: Create heightened transparency throughout the entire loan origination landscape and build a portfolio management system that would increase efficiencies throughout the bank.
Through its business relationships with Live Oak, Northwest FCU executives got a first look at the solution about two years ago, recently becoming the first credit union in the U.S. to purchase the nCino’s solution.
“I have seen a lot of systems, and I was really impressed with what this system can do, particularly on the SBA loan side and with commercial loans in general,” said Jim Northington, Northwest’s chief credit officer. “The way our system was set up at Northwest, the processes were pretty fragmented.”
For example, in addition to using several systems that made loan tracking onerous, lenders working in other buildings had to lug their paper-stuffed files to another building to meet with other employees and manually review what documents were completed, what documents were missing and find out the status of the loans in the processing system assembly line.
“Now, it’s a matter of sitting in front of your desktop, having everything in front of you on the screen, taking minutes as opposed to having people spend a lot of time leaving their desks, carrying folders and looking for something or someone,” explained Northwest Chief Loan Officer Colleen Daly. “This efficiency has enabled us to do more with less.”
The nCino system is designed to continuously monitor all of the process steps and they are moving forward. For example, if a process is not completed in the expected time frame, the system automatically sends an email alert to the next process step that the loan is not being handled in the expected time frame. That prompts the loan officer to make a phone or email inquiry to find out what the holdup is without leaving his desk and looking for something or someone.
“We saw the nCino solution as a way to pull everything together to track loans, have the loans routed to the right people and then have an audit trail that enables you to track where those decisions were made and who made them,” said Northington.
Northwest began using the nCino solution in April, Northwest does not have formal metrics to share. Nevertheless, executives have noticed a 15% to 20% improvement in process efficiencies.
Based on metrics from Live Oak’s experience, nCino’s solution reduced the average time to process a commercial loans (start to close) from 65 days to 40 days. What drives this reduction, Naudé said, is nCino’s document manager system.
In traditional systems, documents go through a rigorous, serial step process from one department to another. But nCino took a social media approach by designing its document manager system as a loan wall, enabling authorized credit union employees to work on their own process steps on the same loans simultaneously.
“So anyone from the most senior manager to the most junior clerk in the credit union can actually look at the loan origination process and spot outstanding issues,” said Naudé. “That level of transparency is speeding up the process.”
Other metrics shared by Naudé include:
  • 54% decrease in document exceptions,
  • 19 % increase in loan volume,
  • 22%  increase in staff efficiency and
  • 17% reduction in operating costs.
Greg Gibson, Northwest’s chief financial and chief operating officer, said he was excited that the nCino solution has the potential do enhance the credit union’s market differentiation by letting entrepreneurs track the progress of their loan online.
“This is a big feature for borrowers because it helps them monitor the loan process, giving them the ability to estimate when their loans will be approved,” said Gibson. “Northwest works to create a very positive member experience, and this feature is a potential differentiator that will provide value to borrowers.”
The nCino system also enables managers to oversee the workload by department and employees, how many loans are being processed by every employee, as well as the history and performance of every loan and loan referrals.
So impressed with nCino’s solution, Northwest is collaborating with the software company to develop loan origination system for home mortgages and consumer loans.
In particular, Gibson has been impressed by nCino’s flexible architecture, which allows Northwest to make customized changes in less than a day and at a lower cost. That’s in stark contrast to other solution providers, which can take months and charge a higher cost to make changes, Gibson said.
“It is completely different from the way software has been created and delivered in the past from my personal experience,” Gibson said. “That is a complete game changer.” 


Best Insurance Social Media Case Studies


Taking good care of customers means connecting with them in a way that suits the demands of their lifestyle and social media has emerged as a wonderfully successful platform for companies to do just that. Whether the issue at hand is technical support, promotion or answering pre-sales questions, the platform offered by Twitter in particular brings companies together with their customers in a fast, simple and very intuitive way.


1. State Farm Insurance @statefarm

State Farm Insurance

Utilizing their Twitter page as a full communications platform for customer promotion, State Farm offers several tweets each day to its more than 25,000 followers that showcase insurance related news, contributions to good causes and in-company promotions. Reaching out directly to customers seems to take a back seat with the State Farm Twitter account, providing them a strong opportunity for social growth in the future, especially given their large following.


2. Progressive Insurance @progressive

Progressive Insurance

Running a Twitter operation very similar to State Farm’s, the social media team at Progressive Insurance focuses on delivering news and promotional material to its followers while occasionally communicating directly with clients. With company news and statements at the forefront, Progressive shares State Farm’s potential for growth in social media use.


3. Geico @geico & Geico Service @geico_service

Geico Service

Geico serves as an excellent example of a more thorough use of Twitter by an insurance firm, using two accounts to separate news and commentary from direct customer service opportunities.
According to autoinsurancequotes.net, the company’s main @Geico account serves as a conduit through which Geico presents its face to the world, offering news, promotional material and general hilarity in an effort to work within its historically fun branding scheme. On the other side of the Twitter-use spectrum, the @Geico_Service account works directly with customers, messaging back and forth using the public platform in order to make first contact easier for everyone involved.


4. Esurance @esurance

Esurance

Using their Twitter account strictly as a public relations tool, Esurance keeps it followers informed about company news and marketing promotions while adding in a dash of personal information about the people behind the company itself. Insurance related tutorials posted on its website also play a role, giving customers useful information on how to avoid the accidents that lead to auto insurance claims.

5. American Family Insurance @amfam

American Family Insurance

Touting personalized tweets from “Tom and Debra,” the Twitter feed of American Family is unfortunately lacking in its approach to a personalized dialog with its existing customers but, with more than 10,000 followers and a wide range of promotional activities tweeted about, the company is able to take good advantage of new potential customers.
While after-sales customer service is hugely important, attracting new buyers through promotions is equally crucial from a marketing standpoint, and this obviously holds true with American Family.

6. Northwestern Mutual Insurance @NM_News

Northwestern Mutual Insurance

Supplanting promotion material with educational material, the Northwestern Mutual Twitter account offers nearly daily links to informative articles that aim to help customers new and old to choose the best policies for their lifestyles. While not exactly hands-on, this approach does a great service for Northwestern’s customers by keeping them in the loop on a subject that is often seen as complex and difficult to understand.

7. Chubb Insurance @ChubbInsurance

Chubb Insurance
Chubb Insurance takes an approach similar to that of Northwestern where its Twitter feed is concerned, using the platform almost exclusively for the purpose of customer education. With a level of follower interaction that lies above most of the examples above, Chubb’s Twitter account also serves as a more friendly face to the world for the company.



http://SocialBusinessToday.net - The Best in Social Business