Tips, tools, and best practices for B2B marketers.

Dell’s IDEAStorm site requires you to login to post there. Among other things, I think this makes the signal-to-noise ratio better and discourages spam posts.

Every social networking site requires you to login to participate, since without it there’s no way to make and track connections and conversations. The bare fact that they require a login doesn’t bother or surprise me.

However, what differentiates Starbucks in this respect is that there is no explicit indication on the form what the email address will be used for or that it won’t be shared with others. Indeed, their privacy policy reveals that they will share your information with all sorts of third parties from credit card processors to web hosts. Yikes. No go.

Meanwhile, Dell states right on the form that the email address is “only used when you forget your password.” However, I couldn’t easily find a privacy policy from their registration form, so who knows for sure.

I, like Nicholas, believe that the reason to limit posting based on login credentials reduces spam posts and keeps the site relevant to those who care enough to sign in and then leave their comments/ideas.

I wonder if the privacy policy linked to (which is tailored for their entire Starbucks online presence, not specifically for the mystarbucksidea.com site) was a casual oversight from the development team, or something that was glossed over.

It seems to me that the ideas and follow through with this initiative are not following a typical marketing site strategy to collect user information and emails, but a genuine attempt to re-shape the company based on faithful customer feedback.

@Marty: Agreed. And I think the Ideas in Action section demonstrates that in a pretty powerful way. Not only that, it’s a pretty bold commitment to continually listening and acting on the customer feedback on an ongoing basis.

Wi-fi, free refills, and free beverage with a 1lb bean purchase!? Hell yeah!

I’ve also gone back and re-read the privacy policy. Starbucks states that they may share some info with these places - CC vendors, web hosts, etc. - not for marketing but so that these places can provide services. That is, for example, if you subscribe to an email newsletter, this email address will in some way be passed along to a service provider (web host, email house) in order to provide that service.

So, this changes my thoughts on that bit entirely, since it’s not nearly as bad as I originally thought. Really, it’s all quite standard and above-board.

There’s a good conversation going on about this on Social Media Insider.

This is still such a new area, with no hard and fast rules, it’s interesting to see people taking both sides.

The real test will be whether Starbucks implements any ideas generated from this site.

Whoah, I have to take that guy’s post with a grain of salt it’s so negative. Seems like he’s got an ax to grind - or is trolling for attention - with such an exclamatory post. Seems like his argument is a semantic one more than anything - whether to call this site a “social networking” site or not, and even he admits that Starbucks never used this term. And it seems the great majority of the commenters, thankfully, are calling him out on this and the rest of his post.

This site, just like the IDEAStorm site, was never meant (at least as a primary goal) to connect Starbucks’ customers to each other.  It was meant to connect Starbucks to its customers, and if Starbucks is lucky, vice-versa.

I think we might be hitting some bias here. People fell over themselves to praise Dell’s IDEAStorm and FastCompany’s forays into UGC sites, but since Starbucks is already hated in the real world they can’t buy an objective blog post about their own attempt, which I think is a good one.

The site itself may have its flaws (apparently it was built in a matter of days by less than a handful of developers, Marty tells me), but the apparent motivation and surely the results are positive and laudable.

Lee, to your point, they already are implementing these ideas. See comments above.

@nicholas I’m not exactly sure where I read that or heard that, so it may not be exactly right - I’m trying to find where. 

I think it was a comment based off the fact that it leverages the exact same platform IDEAstorm does - which would allow for rapid development after someone who hatched the idea said “to hell with it, let’s just do it!” (This also speaks to the agility of openness, but thats another post!)

In fact, as David Mullings states:

“Dell won a PR Innovation of the Year 2008 award for their Ideastorm site which runs on the same exact software from Salesforce that Starbucks is using.” cut. copy. paste. enjoy implementing feedback.

Also, i think the transparency is astounding for a company like this, just check out the latest post on Ideas in Action where they answer questions like why the site was back-filled with comments before it was even opened! 

It just seems genuine to me.  And if it’s not, they’re doing a great job hiding it.

For corporations, I think part of what scares them about social media is how quickly reaction are made know (both good and bad).  Let’s hope Starbucks sticks it out and continues to answer questions like back filling no matter what the critics say.

Do you think that marketers and people who are deep into social media are more skeptical and harder to please than the typical consumer out there (the ones Starbucks is trying to reach)?

I also think a great strategic move on Starbucks’ part is implementing some ideas so quickly - within the first week! Now, I’m sure this was a calculated move and they could probably have even guessed what their top ideas were going to be (from the “beta” group of customers, if not on their own) and started whatever internal discussions that needed to happen. But it’s just another piece of evidence that they thought through this and are doing this customer feedback thing right.

What astounds me about both this and the Dell site is not that they are listening to their customers - this is just a “Duh!” sorta thing - but that they are able to be nimble enough to implement some rather sweeping changes so quickly. To use Starbucks’ odd terminology, both of these companies are pretty Venti.

The other point in all this: Look at how much discussion this site has spawned just within the three of us. And we know there has been much other discussion - both negative and positive - all over the place.

It’s cliche because it true: there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And isn’t word of mouth pretty much central to the whole “social” movement. Again, +1 for Starbucks.

I don’t mind leaving my email at all - I think having the commenter do this also lends some civility to the discussion, and keeps the ridiculously negative and spam comments to a minimum.

Isn’t there a little irony in the commentary of the blog considering that I had to leave my email here too in order to comment? ;-)

I think asking for an account and email address in order to post a comment is reasonable. If Starbucks just uses the emails to send out marketing material, shame on them. Or, perhaps, Yo, lost opportunity, Starbucks Peeps.

Shouldn’t they be writing an individual email to each person who submits an idea?

Wouldn’t they be more genuine in offering financial rewards and publicity to those whose ideas were best / most informative / most valuable?

I’m in a personal quandary. I just picked up half a dozen MyStarbucksIdea sheets at my local Starbucks, Dobbin Road. I have a lot of ideas of how they could run their business better.

I WAS going to submit them. But now, as I write this, I am taking a step back. Why does Starbucks deserve the benefit of my thinking and point of view. I could rock their stores. I see trends that are coming down the pike that could transform their business. Am I to give that up for free? I don’t ask to be paid upfront just for “an idea.” But if my ideas graduate to implementation, isn’t that worth something?

Perhaps they would do well to integrate a Kluster.com element into their ideas thing.

They call it social media, but is it really? Yes, there is user-generated content, but who are the users? There are no profiles, no way of connecting with others that I can see. Just “Hey Starbucks, let me take my time out of my day to help you be more functional and make more money. Wow. I feel better already.”

I don’t mean to be a complete nay-sayer. Starbucks has taken a step. And they’re doing their best given that they are a behemoth company. But I’ve decided that they won’t get my ideas, not unless they can build in a give-and-receive model in their system.

Oops. I just gave them an idea. :-)

But only, of course, if they’re brilliant social media folk are doing Google Alerts and watching the internet like a hawk and finding conversations such as the one on this blog. If they aren’t reading this and other blogs, then I guess it just underscores the point that they’re all about the TAKE and the PR and not truly invested in or interested in social media.

That’s my two cents, in any case.

Thanks for the opportunity to participate in a conversation.

Frank, I agree that leaving an email is pretty typical for leaving a comment.  I guess what got me going on the email thing was the way it was implemented. 

When you click “Share your Idea” in the navigation, the “Please Sign In!” box pops up. 

When you try to vote, it pops up again.

When you click, “Got a great idea” - pop-up. 

In the first 10 seconds I was on the site, I was actively hit up numerous times to create an account.  “You need a Starbucks.com account to share, vote and discuss.” It just left a bad taste in my mouth (and not because I don’t like coffee). 

After some time to talk about this here and over on Social Media Insider, I’m asking whether I would have had a better impression had they used a different approach.

In the more traditional comment fields (like we have here) I can enter my comment without creating an “account”.  That seems like more of a commitment that I want to make.  And I guess that’s my choice.

I would have preferred if instead of the pop-up they tool me to a form to enter my idea, along with fields for the personal info the need.

It might have also been a better experience if the pop-ups were more along the lines of, “We value your opinion, but to avoid spam and better monitor the conversation we need to collect some personal information.” With a link to their privacy policy right there. 

It may be the implementation more than the asking.  The focus was on the signing-up and not on what people wanted to contribute.

@jesse - great points, and welcome. 

I think an important element to all this is that Starbucks isn’t setting out to create a site to connect users here.  It’s a site to connect Starbucks to their customers and get a sense of how to make their relationship better. 

In that sense, I don’t see this as a full-fledged social media project - but an interactive community - where Starbucks, in the engame, interacts with the community by implementing their ideas and being wholly transparent in doing so.

@lee - I definitely agree that in this case it is all about implementation and where and how they ask for the information.  Keeping signup inline with commenting or voting would have taken the sting off of having to register.

I wonder if that is a limitation of trying to tie in the sign-ups to their main Starbucks.com signup architecture.

I think if they were approaching this as a user-to-user type site, creating an account would be necessary in order to establish yourself inside the community.  In this case, I really think it’s a signal-to-noise issue, and probably should have been done in a less obtrusive GIMME YO INFO, NOW! way.

@jesse: Love the kluster.com + MyStarbuckIdea.com idea. Presumably, someone at Starbucks will see this very conversation and put something like that in place.

Never even thought of this sort of thing being akin to design on spec or the like. I think that for so long companies have been deaf to customers’ feedback (outside of the dreaded focus group) that now that companies are openly accepting and enacting ideas, the empowerment customers feel makes it worth it to them. Plus, in the end, you are “paid back” by the company through the better experience that comes from the enactment of the ideas.

See you at the next CxCC! :)

@lee - thanks for the reply. Your points are well taken - they would have annoyed me too. Pop-ups are annoying in the extreme, especially if they sprout from everywhere like weeds in the spring and won’t go away.

And that, I think, is one of Starbuck’s problems now - it’s not that they don’t get just Social Media - it’s that a company that many of us worshipped as “getting it” for years has all of a sudden slipped up violently. Who would have thought we would ever be having a discussion about pop-up windows on the Starbucks site?

I just can’t imagine who they are getting their marketing advice from now. It seems to me as though they are doing too much blogging and talking and not enough listening.

@Frank and @Lee - I’m sorry, but I just don’t get the “we’ll have to see” and “not enough listening” type of comments. The site was up for less than a week and they were already implementing ideas from the site.

I can’t believe we are talking about pop-up windows on this site either, but for an entirely different reason: it misses the much larger point of all the things they are doing right with this site.

FWIW, they do give you a link to create an account right in that pop-up. It also says that you need an account to “share, vote, and discuss” so you know after the first time (and every other time) you see it what’s required.

You need an account to participate, which it seems we all agree is not a bad thing - what better way do you suggest they let people know this when trying to participate prior to logging in?

Anyway, like I said above, I think focusing on the pop-ups is beside the point…

@frank - For a company that has been “getting it” for years - who sees their market share dipping in the last year - they “get” that they have to make changes.

They have decided to make changes based on the people who give them their hard-earned cash - not some ideas which get massaged and approved in a board room. 

What here is not “getting it”? Isn’t it all about what your users want and giving that to them? 

The site could be ugly and a usability nightmare, but if it’s generating results - and Starbucks is listening (they are) - it’s a success.

IMO, they get interaction perfectly in this context.  It’s about listening to what we want, seeing who says, “yeah, me too!” and a week later giving me a free drink when I buy a 1-lb bag of coffee beans with my starbucks card.  Simple.  Effective.

@Nicholas - the pop-ups (in terms of how they were used) are what gave me the icky feeling and made the site feel more like lead gen than customer engagement. 

Frank’s comment made me think about why I was bothered and I realized it was the implementation more so than the asking.

In my last post, I did suggest a number of alternative ways of getting at setting up an account and making the entire experience less sales focused. I think making some changes along these lines would make for a more positive experience, might even get more people to sign up.  (Does anyone know anyone at Starbucks willing to do a little testing?)

The “not getting it” part for me was that the experience I had didn’t line up with what they said they were trying to achieve. 

So if Starbucks is making changes faster than a speeding bullet, and truly listening, I applaud them.  That turns this whole discussion into something more along the lines of how to create the best online customer experience.

@nicholas @marty - Excellent points, both. If they are indeed listening, I applaud them as well. If they are listening and making *changes* after only a week that’s fantastic. Maybe your experiences have been different from mine - maybe you’re better connected and know more - but I have yet to notice any difference in my small corner of the universe.

I am a sample of 1, but in the past week I got stale coffee at O’Hare in Chicago, and a dry pumpkin scone in Roanoke. My wife received a tepid Caffe Mocha. I’ve read scores of complaints by those with similar experiences, and I guess it’s going to take some time to turn the ship back on the right course. The important thing now is that they know they have a problem and are acting to fix it.

I’ll keep going to Starbucks. I love the company. Love their commitment to quality, to the environment and to good causes. I love the fact that they pay health benefits for employees. Lord knows it took them for freakin’ EVER to get to Roanoke, so I’m not about to give up on them now.

Thank you both for taking the time to respond.