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.
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wide spectrum of social-media
needs, while others are
narrower in focus.
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