We do love employee engagement and internal reward and recognition programmes. It gives us the chance to focus on keeping people happy and motivated which is always a refreshing change. Chances to influence an existing programme structure are rare, but opportunity knocks on occasion, and we’ve really got under the skin of Vauxhalls internal programme, changed the landscape, and rocked their world with a brand new reward and recognition ‘universe’.

It’s been 12 months in the making and the team have delivered an innovative application to help Milton Keynes Council in the field of community dialogue. With a fully integrated mobile and cloud solution it’s revolutionised the way they work. We have also found a new talent in Becky with an amazing voice over performance!

Have a look at the video to see how it works!

Following the launch of our “RoadTrip” app for Vauxhall Fleet, we have experienced great feedback – achieving a top 25 listing on the free business apps at the App store, with an average 4 star rating! A big thank you to the team: we are all looking forward to the Android release.

It was a proud moment for the Vauxhall Fleet team at Graymatter as we watched our campaign, tools and apps brought to life at the Vauxhall Fleet Product Update Conference. We looked back over 2011, looked forward to 2012 and felt inspired by the fantastic and exciting new product line-up. It was great to have a day out with team and spend time with Vauxhall outside of the office. Thanks to them our knowledge of extended range technology is now second to none and we were able to experience the brand behind the wheel of half the range. The penalty shoot-out brought out the competitive side in all of us, however it is safe to say it was the competition at the end of the day which really tore the room up!

Two hundred retouches later and our CRM solution for Chevrolet is being delivered. When you buy a new Chevrolet they’ll let you know about three key stages; order receipt, shipping, arrival in the UK, and a nice touch is the final thank you postcard, all personalised by name, vehicle, colour choice, and fully automated.

Gazzang are a small company located in the US of A who have some rather interesting and creative products in the field of data security and PCI (among other standards) compliance. Really good stuff, if you’re a techy. If you’re not – they make the IT people very, very happy and don’t charge crazy prices for the privilege.

As well as being creative genius, techy wizards and brilliant strategists, a few of us are also a little obsessed with security. Call it paranoia, call it risk-reduction – but either way it can’t hurt. This is where Gazzang have come in. We’re not actually doing any work for these guys, in their eyes we are just another consumer. However, the solution and customer service that we’ve received to date really does deserve some recognition. Well done Gazzang, we love you.

If you want any details on Gazzang, head over to their website. And as usual, if you want a super-dooper, brilliantly thought-out, awesomely designed website (or anything else!) just contact us.

Her article also drew attention to the fact that users very rarely read the full terms and conditions for posting and sadly this often results in rejected posts. If you offer people the choice of video, text or images, video will get the lowest number of entries and this is more often than not due to the amount of effort required by users to prepare a posting.

According to Littleton, ten is the magic number. As a rule of thumb:

• 10% of people who look at the campaign will actively take part (post, like, upload etc).
• 10% of those people who take part (10% of the 10%) will abuse the system.

So how do you keep your campaigns simple? Here are a few considerations:

• Choose your media for entry carefully (text, image, video or a combination).
• Be clear about what is and what isn’t acceptable to post.
• Think carefully how and what you want people to submit.
• Check for permissions to use whatever is submitted.
• Choose prizes carefully – the best prizes are often things money can’t buy like to chance to feature in an episode of Corrie. Don’t forget to make prizes appropriate to your brand though!
• Choose your channel of engagement and ensure it’s appropriate, accessable and can be moderated to remove unwanted or spam content. Remember, people behave differently on facebook vs. youtube for example.
• No-one reads long Ts & Cs – keep them short and as clear as possible.

Finally, we’d love to hear your experiences of including user-generated content in your social media campaigns. And we would, of course, be delighted to tell you more about how we can help bring innovation to your digital programmes.

The problem is that in today’s market, “turning up the volume” on your sales effort has the same effect as shouting in English at someone who speaks another language in the rather desperate hope that a louder message might stand some chance of being received and understood.

Sadly, of course, it doesn’t and it simple annoys people. It also means you join everyone else who’s doing the same thing and achieving the same result.

In our personal lives, very few of us would welcome companies trying to sell us insurance or double glazing, whether that be by post, door-to-door or over the phone. Many of us find some of the sales processes and techniques used aggressive and painful. Our impression of companies who do take this approach with us is usually less than favourable and we tend to place our business very deliberately elsewhere.

So why is it right to do this in our own businesses? First thing on a Monday morning, we expect our own sales team to be doing just that…SELL SELL SELL. But if we don’t like that, then it begs the question – what can we do as an alternative?

Last year a group of C level exec’s were asked how they prefer to be approached, and how they like to be dealt with. It will come as no real surprise to know that the senior executives you’re probably trying to reach feel exactly the same way as you do about being sold to.

At Graymatter, we’re investing time in building tools to help you ‘not’ sell, so give us a call and we’ll tell you a bit more about how these tools will net you far greater returns – and give your sales people the power to get to the opportunities faster.

After browsing many articles I stumbled across this, the Payvment Shopping Mall. Only in the US at the moment, but it’s only a matter of time before our retailers start to appear in shopping malls in the FB envronment. For me the shopping experience enters a new dimension of personalised shopping.

The Mall shows you what you and your friends are “liking”. A “Your Cart” feature holds on to your saved items in a universal basket and updates pricing and inventory information. Facebook users can also comment on any item and post comments to their News feed.

Payvment’s quick growth on Facebook is impressive. The idea of a virtual shopping mall on Facebook certainly makes sense considering how the social network is evolving as a destination for e-commerce. Of course, Facebook, which is reportedly ramping up e-commerce initiatives in 2011, could open its own shopping mall, and use Facebook Credits as a form of currency. Now that’s interesting!

Features of the Shopping Mall include:

The ability of users to “like” different products in addition to a retailer’s fan page.
Retailers have their own searchable page within the Shopping Mall on Facebook, where shoppers can sort products by price, and most liked item.
Personalised recommendations based on what a user already likes.
A dashboard for sharing “likes” and seeing what others are “liking.”
The ability to comment on any item in a retailer’s store and post it to the News Feed.

Tesco plans to offer Facebook fans exclusive offers and promotions and uses the Facebook pages to interact with customers and answer customer service enquiries.

So are the Supermarkets our friends?.. Virtually..