Beauty Store Business

OCT 2015

For beauty business news, beauty store owners turn to Beauty Store Business. Beauty business trends, beauty business profiles and more!

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12 October 2015 | beautystorebusiness.com we question Sprinklr's vision and focus. The vendor's recent buying spree finds it focused more on integrating a series of lackluster technologies into an end-to-end social suite than on helping marketers con- nect their social efforts to their broader marketing programs. And the product's complexity—combined with its relatively poor ease-of-use—means Sprinklr clients pay far more than average in services fees," Elliot concludes. MORE CHOICES Not surprisingly, there are also a number of "middle-of-the-pack" solutions on the market that could do the trick for a beauty in certain circumstances. Elliot says these often have singular strengths, citing the following: 1. Shoutlet (shoutlet.com): Good if you want a well-rounded tool at a good price 2. Expion (expion.com): Very good at cus- tomer support and measurement 3. Hootsuite (hootsuite.com): Offers the best content and publishing automa- tion available 4. Falcon Social (falconsocial.com): The perfect tool for beauty stores most concerned with responding to customer comments on social media Elliot also found a number of also-ran products—less impressive that the industry leaders, but still helpful: 1. Sprout Social (sproutsocial.com): A competitive tool at a great price that outperforms market leaders for ease- of-use and scheduling 2. Adobe Social (adobe.com/marketing- cloud/social-media-marketing.html): A good tool for stores marketing globally on social media 3. Oracle Social Cloud (oracle.com/us/ solutions/social/overview/index.html): Another good global tool that can analyze social-media sentiment in seven languages 4. Salesforce Social Studio (salesforce.com/ marketing-cloud/features/social-media- marketing): A decent choice if you're already using other Salesforce tools For beauty stores that want to dig deeper and do extremely detailed compari- sons of the strong performers, Forrester also offers a "vendor comparison tool," which enables organization's to adapt Forrester's criteria weightings to fit their specific needs. A final consideration: While the above pro- grams are essentially designed to address an extremely wide spectrum of social-media needs, stores with a milder commitment to social media may be able to get away with programs that are somewhat narrower in focus—and easier on the wallet. TARGETED, SIMPLE OPTIONS Ian Anderson Gray, a social-media consul- tant at Select Performers Internet Solutions (iag.me), says relatively less expensive programs auch as Sendible (sendible.com) and MusterPoint (musterpoint.co.uk) still go a long way towards managing multiple social networks for beauty stores. Other tools have an even narrower focus. Commun.it (commun.it), for example, is an excellent tool for a beauty store look- ing to manage its presence on Twitter only, Gray says. "It is a social-media relationship management tool—it helps you find out who is in your Twitter community—those who support you and your content—by retweeting, favoriting and mentioning— and those who influence you," Gray adds. And Feedly (feedly.com) is a perfect tool for beauty stores simply looking to moni- tor what's being posted on websites and blogs they follow, Gray says. Essentially, Feedly can be programmed to monitor an individual blog, for example, with a single mouse click. Headlines from that blog—as well as any other blogs and websites the beauty store is looking to monitor—show up in Feedly's inbox, which looks a lot like the inbox of a typical email reader. ■ Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan (New York City). He can be reached at joe@joedysart.com. Some dashboards address a wide spectrum of social-media needs, while others are narrower in focus. Salon proven, two part formula cuts down blow dry time for faster, stress-free styling while light conditioners provide silky smooth, frizz-free hair all day long! ™ 6 Piece Counter Display Cuts Blow Dry Time in Half! w u t s B l o w T i m e ! For more details or for a distributor near you visit six9haircare.com or call 800 555-8895.

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