After several years of instability on this list, 2018 saw things settle down a bit. In past years, blogs would make the list for a flurry of great posts one year, then fizzle the next. Sometimes, bloggers would change careers and their CRM content would dry up. Once in a while, a great blogger would get hired by a major vendor and see his or her output bent to fit the corporate line.

That didn’t happen much in 2018. Much like the core CRM world, the CRM blog world settled down. The major players stayed major; cracking the top 20 became tough — only two new entries made it in 2018. Regular, disciplined blogging leads to thoughtful, informed posts, which is how the 10 blogs below found their way to this year’s list.

Our criteria remain unchanged after 10 years of ranking blogs: You may not be a vendor (though there are good vendor blogs out there), and if you work for one your blog must be vendor-agnostic. You must have posted at least seven times in the last calendar year, and your primary focus must be on CRM, or at least be what CRM analyst Brent Leary describes as “CRM-ish.”

Some rose on the list, some fell. How did your go-to blog fare? Take a look at the list, starting with number 20.

20. Toolbox Tech CRM Blog

The volume of CRM content of the
Toolbox Tech CRM Blog dropped by almost 75 percent in 2018, which left a mere 72 posts about CRM. That number of points suggests that the blog would be something of a grab bag, and it is. Reporter’s notebook-style posts, opinion pieces and news analysis elbow for position within the blog.

There’s no distinct identity here; authors range from freelance journalists and tech industry execs to the cryptic “CRM Desk,” which sounds like a well-informed piece of furniture.

However, the sheer volume of content means that almost any topic of value is covered here. Don’t expect it to be in-depth or particularly timely — its post about SAP’s acquisition of CallidusCloud, which was announced in January and finalized in April, ran in November — but do expect posts that will provide a firm foundation and help in learning the basics of the rapidly evolving CRM world.

Posts in 2018: 72

Favorite Post:
Nearly One-Third of Salespeople Think CRM Fails them on Productivity

19. Kerry Bodine & Co.

People in business are all about acting, doing, going and moving.
Kerry Bodine & Co. (coauthored by Amelia Sizemore) is like a big stop sign for businesses. I don’t mean that it’s a destroyer of momentum, but that it’s a reminder to pause and think about what you’re doing and where you’re going before you take off, or you could be motoring into trouble.

An expert on the process of journey mapping and measuring customer sentiment, Kerry also is a major advocate for the concept of businesses honestly examining what they really hope to gain from their customer experience initiatives, and whether those objectives properly sync with what the customer wants.

For example, one post makes the simple but incredibly profound and frequently overlooked point that a customer journey and a customer lifecycle are two entirely different things. Treat them that way, and the customer’s going to feel it. Another post riffs off an older post about customer support and reaches a new conclusion about its impact on CX.

The blog has some self-promotion for the business — maybe too much this year — but it offsets that with a very helpful
perpetual listing of CX events that’s a really useful practical tool. If you care about CX, this blog needs to be on your reading list.

Posts in 2018: 23

Favorite Post:
Jobs to be Done: a Lens to Keep Journeys Customer-Focused

18. Lynn Hunsaker

In a world where facts are fighting a constant, uphill battle against noise,
Lynn Hunsaker’s blog speaks forcefully and effectively. She stakes out her idea, makes an assertion, and then applies some jiu jitsu to her skeptics: “You don’t believe me? Well, here’s what a bunch of other experts, analysts and researchers have to say about it.”

Her posts aren’t essays, or musings or meditations — they’re logical arguments with supporting evidence.

She doesn’t come right out and say it in her Customer Think blog posts, but her underlying theme is one of business coherence and balance — getting the proportions correct so that any one aspect of your efforts doesn’t cannibalize your other efforts.

An example of that was her great post “Acquisition Addiction’s Impact on Customer Experience ROI,” which points out that there are three opposing forces at work within marketing departments: maximizing profits, maximizing revenue, and creating and keeping customers.

If CX is so important, why is acquisition prioritized, lauded and rewarded? This isn’t an easy thing for a C-level executive to admit, so Lynn lays down the numbers and makes it hard to argue against her.

She used this formula repeatedly in 2018, and if you pay attention you should be able to detect why companies say CX is important even while customers say CX is getting worse. Let her give you a dose of reality, then square up your CX efforts.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite Post:
Acquisition Addiction’s Impact on Customer Experience ROI

17. Dr. Natalie Petouhoff

It takes some kind of skill to jump wildly from topic to topic and still seem like you’re discussing the same theme in a coherent way. That sums up
Dr. Natalie Petouhoff’s blog in 2018 — all over the map, yes, but headed somewhere with a purpose.

Ranging from flying cars to customer acquisition to the flagging power of blogs (ahem!), she covers a ton of ground, can talk tech as easily as she can outline business concepts, and seems like she’s having a lot of fun sharing things she’s learning.

With fewer guest bloggers than in 2017, there’s more Dr. Natalie in the blog in 2018 — which is a good thing. A Salesforce VP (and program executive in the Innovation and Transformation Center), she keeps the blog mostly vendor-agnostic (hey, Dreamforce is so enormous that it demands CRM blog space the way a black hole demands matter).

She also offers smart takes on key issues without getting mired in the perspective of customer, business or employee — she has them in mind, but she’s able to consider all their perspectives.

Easy to read, brimming with information and totally unpredictable, Dr. Natalie’s blog is a grab-bag of thought-inducing viewpoints.

Posts in 2018: 17

Favorite post:
Why Artificial Intelligence is an Agent’s Best Friend

16. ScienceSoft

An eastern European software development company,
ScienceSoft’s team finds the time to write posts that outline the basics of CRM very concisely, providing a useful introductory-level foundation of knowledge about the technology.

While there’s an emphasis on areas that the company wants to stress — Salesforce gets a lot of nuts-and-bolts attention, as does the worthy topic of customer support — the blog doesn’t feel forced or laser-focused on driving leads.

That’s because the writing is clear, relaxed and readable, and best of all, well-organized. The structure is well thought out, and as a result the thoughts are well-structured.

If you’re objective is to look over the horizon and imagine the next big thing, this isn’t your blog. If you want to make sure your CRM knowledge foundation is strong before expanding your capabilities, it is.

Posts in 2018: 11

Favorite post:
Sales Automation: Why, What, How

15. Customer Experience Matrix

Don’t be confused by the confusing name of David Raab’s extremely insightful (and never really confusing) blog,
Customer Experience Matrix.

Customer experience is just one part of the coverage area, which spans marketing, analytics, and the category of technology that’s been dubbed “customer data platforms” (CDP).

David explains how to screen CDP vendors in this helpful post. David has a knack for getting deep into the technology and providing a spreadsheet’s worth of supporting numbers, while at the same time maintaining a sense of humor and readability.

For example, a post about the collapse of public faith in U.S. institutions affects trust, and the ability of companies to speak to their customers has the wry headline,
Collapse of Civilization Makes Marketers’ Jobs Harder.

Raab also examined Salesforce’s efforts to pull customer data together via its Mulesoft acquisition (and subsequent announcements at Dreamforce), and Adobe’s moves in the CX and commerce spaces, and turned a skeptical eye toward hot technologies like blockchain.

If you’re a CIO who works closely with sales and marketing, you need to read this blog. Raab includes detail that an IT junkie will love, and he weaves it into a business narrative that puts the technology into context — something no other blogger does so well.

Posts in 2018: 37

Favorite post:
Why are There So Many Types of Customer Data Platforms? It’s Complicated

14. Nick Baggott’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

This year,
Nick Baggott’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog got down in the weeds, focusing almost entirely on the digital marketing side of things. Nick talked about engagement — a fascinating and ever-changing topic when it comes to social media — and the use of tools like WhatsApp for reaching the right customer segments with the right messages.

Nick squeezed in some high-quality content about the right ways to do search engine optimization. He also penned a very good piece about influencing the influencers — something many companies try to do in a half-hearted or haphazard way, but which he says is crucial to the success of a company’s social media marketing.

This year, Nick’s biggest contribution was to highlight the outstanding work of others, then offer his own extra expertise on top of it. It’s a workmanlike blog, from a hard-working advocate for changing the way businesses market themselves.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite post:
Content Marketing Institute Advice on Influencing Influencers

13. Duct Tape Marketing Blog

Targeted at smaller businesses, John Jantsch’s
Duct Tape Marketing Blog continues to generate good advice for people in sales, marketing, and any other part of the buyer-seller experience.

A lot of posts offer personal advice about how to manage a busy work life — not a bad thing for anyone to learn more about, really — while others dig into the details of how to succeed, like
The Seven Steps to Marketing Success — How to Build a Marketing System, penned by John himself.

It’s the marketing-oriented posts that keep the blog on this list; they go to the discipline of CRM rather than the technology of CRM. Posts include frequent podcasts with experts like Shep Hyken, Allen Gannett and Jantsch himself, meaning that this blog delivers its messages through more media than most.

This frequent blog is part beginner’s course, part upper-level classes, and part expert advice, all rolled into one.

Posts in 2018: Many (the format precludes an exact count)

Favorite post:
Six Ways to Enhance Your Sales Pipeline with a CRM

12. B2B Lead Blog

A word that kept coming up this year on this blog, penned by Brian Carroll and others, was “empathy.” That might have sounded weird a few years ago — after all, this is B2B, not B2C! — but in 2018 it finally started to penetrate businesses’ collective minds that if you want to provide a great customer experience, you need to understand how customers feel. How they react to your business is based on their needs and preferences, not on what the business wants or what it assumes customers desire.

I particularly enjoyed
How Sales Hustle and Automation Can Hurt Customer Experience, which nails a truth all people who are sold to know, but which most people selling (or managing salespeople) never seem to internalize while on the job.

The blog always has been exceptionally good at providing solid advice and thoughtful examinations of the current marketing thinking in posts like
Transform Your Customer Success and Accelerate Growth, but this year showed that the team at this blog has embraced customer experience fully, and what that means.

It’s not enough anymore to just close deals — you need to close deals in a way that leads to the customer’s next purchase. It’s fun watching this evolution unfold in the posts of this blog.

Posts in 2018: 30 or so (the format makes an exact count difficult)

Favorite post:
Why Marketers Fail at Customer Empathy and How to Fix It

11. CX Journey

Annette Franz’ valuable, thought-provoking posts in
CX Journey fell a little in quantity in 2018, but the quality increased.

Her musings on CX, corporate culture and employee experience are insightful and full of actionable ideas, but perhaps the greatest value of the blog is to drive home the point that all of these very human considerations are intertwined. Employees suffering through work drudgery can never deliver a great experience, and culture sets the tone for employees.

CRM and loyalty efforts are reflected through this prism. Executives can talk a big game about the importance of CX, but unless they grasp the fact that CX balances on the top of a fairly complex structure, and ensure that structure is sound, the CX talk is just talk.

There are a few guest posts, but most of the time the blog is Annette’s own writing — which simultaneously can be on the long side and concise. That is a clumsy way to say there’s a lot of meat to each post.

Many times, you’ll get a checklist of things to do, or watch for, or measure. Her
post on journey mapping should be required reading for anyone new to or confused by the topic.

When you realize that the point of the blog is to drive business for her consulting company, and that there’s very little self-promotion in the posts, it becomes clear she walks her talk: Customer engagement needs to be about the customer first. This is an excellent blog that keeps getting better.

Posts in 2018: 44

Favorite post:
What’s in Your CX Budget?

10. Destination CRM

In May, the old reliable blog
Destination CRM stopped updating, which was a shame, since for years it had been a helpful reporter’s notebook-style blog that delivered consistent, high-quality content.

It wasn’t flashy, but it was very effective in spotlighting influencers and people working in CRM who should be influential. Since it was written by reporters (this year, exclusively by Sam Del Rowe), there almost always was a link to any studies or research mentioned.

In 2018, the blog focused a lot on customer behavior — how customers want to buy, what they’re doing online, what they like and dislike about customer service, and so on.

The blog didn’t grab onto the customer experience train; it seemed a step behind, talking to the business about how it should react to customers instead of trying to get out in front of experience. This is still valuable information to learn and consider as you try to adjust your CX focus.

Posts in 2018: 10

Favorite post:
Majority of Online Shoppers are Multitasking, Study Finds

Stay tuned for Part 2.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Chris Bucholtz has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2009. His focus is on CRM and other topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. He is director of content marketing for
NewVoiceMedia, and a speaker, writer and consultant. He also has written four books on World War II aviation.
Email Chris.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

Something very interesting is happening in the world of CRM blogs: CRM is becoming less and less of a subject. Oh, it’s in there — it’s just being elbowed to the back of the stage by a whole host of other related disciplines and technologies.

Customer experience, customer engagement and content marketing are vying with artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and bots to elbow CRM to the back of the stage. CRM is still back there, though — and it’s CRM that glues these disparate trends and market forces together.

So, instead of creating lists of the five top customer experience blogs or the seven top customer technology blogs, we’re going to stick with the top 20 list — for now, at least.

Some of those at the top have been there for a very long time. Some toward the bottom and middle are on the list for the very first time. They all share a similar commitment to consistency, quality and attitude that keeps readers coming back, and that makes them important voices for anyone working in the CRM field.

The criteria are simple: You may not be a vendor (though there are good vendor blogs out there), and if you work for one your blog must be vendor-agnostic. You must post at least seven times in the last calendar year, and your primary focus must be on CRM, or at least be what CRM analyst Brent Leary describes as “CRM-ish.”

With that established, let’s take a look at the list, starting at number 20.

20. Lynn Hunsaker

Sometimes, you just need the facts. Lynn Hunsaker, writing for
CustomerThink, lays out the facts of customer experience in every post. There’s usually an introduction, which may touch on a metaphor for the lesson in the blog — and you’d better catch your breath now, because when you get into the meat of her posts there’s a lot to digest.

Laid out in an organized, almost scholarly manner, Hunsaker’s blogs deliver checklists of best practices that go deep and are very complete, perfect for organizations that want to overhaul their customers’ experience efforts or build can’t-miss systems for measuring their success.

She also brings the numbers: In one post about customer service and customer loyalty, she argues that you must immerse all employees at all levels in the customers’ realities, which is easy to assert. Then, she drops the bomb: A company that has done this — and in the process reduced its time to resolve issues by 89 percent, saw a 288 percent increase in customer lifetime value.

Most of her posts use this tactic: Make an assertion, offer advice based on it, and then use some statistics to show how solid the initial assertion is. Customer experience, marketing operations and understanding how to evaluate success and failure effectively and economically are among the most frequently touched-upon topics.

Posts in 2017: 20

Favorite post:
Preventing Customer Experience Process Silos: 4 Prerequisites

19. Kerry Bodine & Co.

Former Forrester analyst Kerry Bodine brings her expertise on managing the business aspects of delivering customer experiences to her
Kerry Bodine & Co. blog. While it’s clear she enjoys talking about the process of journey mapping, and the science of measuring customer sentiment about their experiences, there are some very human things she and occasional contributor Amelia Sizemore have to keep returning to.

Technology will never keep a promise made to a customer — only a human can do that. Technology can never think through the odd things that may go awry for a customer, and prepare for those events in advance to ensure the customer’s problem turns into a positive experience — but people can do that.

Bodine describes herself as a designer, but the systems she talks about designing are neither digital nor analog — they’re a synthesis of technology and human activities, reflective of the real world.

Too many people talking about customer experience are so touchy-feely businesses can never put their ideas to work; others become so fixated on the technology that their advice loses its humanity and thus has little impact on the customers it is supposed to influence.

Bodine does a great job of bridging the gap, presenting achievable ways to create better experiences for buyers, outlining smart strategies for evaluating how you’re doing, and prioritizing the two.

Blog posts in 2017: 42

Favorite post:
Why You Need to Measure Journeys — Not Just Touchpoints

18. Natalie Petouhoff

Natalie Petouhoff, Ph.D., may be a Salesforce VP (and program executive in the Innovation and Transformation Center, to be exact), but
her blog is completely vendor-agnostic, and she assiduously sticks to a purely educational tone.

Roughly half of the posts are from guest bloggers, but this blog is at its best when Petouhoff puts virtual pen to electronic paper. For instance, her story about a program to boost employee development highlights three things: the value of talking to customers (in this case, the company’s employees); the need to cater to the emotional needs of the people you’re trying to influence; and the value of establishing an ROI number, especially when trying something new that may seem “warm and fuzzy” to an executive who controls the purse strings.

The blog is sprinkled with these sorts of articles — which, in a small number of words, touch upon a collection of interconnected larger points.

You’ll need to read with your brain turned to 11 to pick up on all the little lessons mixed into the larger customer experience, business and CRM discussions — what was that? a paragraph on the hazards of group-think in a piece about digital transformation? — but it’s worth it. Petouhoff’s blogs are fun to read, packed with ideas, and backed up with data.

Posts in 2017: 25

Favorite post:
What’s the Number One Thing Today’s CEOs Must Do? Do the OODA Loop Faster and More Innovatively

17. Toolbox Tech CRM Blog

Toolbox Tech, the former InsideCRM blog, has been streamlined and cleaned up, resulting in a nifty product that delivered a post for every business day in 2017.

The quality of the posts is still fairly varied, but it’s a lot steadier, thanks to writers like Rick Cook, Henry Kaiser and Lewis Robinson — people who have been around the block enough to watch technology history repeat itself.

Until recently, the byline was almost always a cryptic “CRM Desk,” as if a piece of furniture were churning out this prolific blog, but the writers are getting the credit now — as they deserve to.

There’s none of the rewritten press release posts of last year, either — this is all fresh stuff, and it’s written at a level that will be beneficial to all but the most battle-worn CRM practitioners. Your humble reporter started this blog, but he’s not being sentimental — the crew at work on it today elevated it to a new level in 2017.

Total posts in 2017: about 270

Favorite post:
Winning the Clean Data Battle

16. Customer Experience Matrix

David Raab’s somewhat cryptically named
Customer Experience Matrix (its moniker is taken from a tool he developed to visualize marketing and operational interactions) is the smart person’s guide to marketing automation, the changing approaches to marketing, and the various other technology tools that are being pulled into marketing’s orbit.

That’s a pretty broad swath of stuff, and Raab negotiates it with a seemingly bemused attitude — he may be a serious authority on this stuff, but he does not take himself seriously.

Evidence of that came in a post called “2017 Retrospective: Things I did Not Predict,” sort of the opposite of a predictions article, in which he describes eight trends that surprised him.

At times deep in the technical details and at other times up at the level where strategy is discussed, this blog is becoming more readable over time, while also growing more indispensable as a guide to the confusing world of MarTech.

Total posts in 2017: 45

Favorite post:
Amazon Buys Whole Foods. It’s Not About Groceries

15. B2B Lead Blog

In the age of customer experience, the pendulum has swung hard toward the customer. The advice is always about being “customer centric,” or putting “the customer in the center of everything you do.” But your business is still a business, and it needs to do things in order to survive and thrive. How do you achieve a balance?

The
B2B Lead Blog, written by Brian Carroll and others, does a great job of explaining how to address conflicting business and customer needs without seeing them as a zero-sum game.

Yes, you should be hugely empathetic, deliver great value, and build your processes around customers — but only after you’ve been rigorous about marketing activities, like deciding which customers are going to pay off best for you and focusing on them. This realistic advice is complemented by long-form interviews with marketing leaders with similar outlooks.

Total posts in 2017: 16

Favorite Post:
How to Attract B2B Customers with Amazing Content

14. The Epokonic Blog

Stumped about the possible ramifications of an acquisition in the CRM space? Hit the
Epikonic blog, written by Thomas Wieberneit. He’s probably already thought about it, applied his experience as a consultant to the subject, and turned around a 1,000-word post on this blog that provides multiple takes on the subject.

That’s not the real strength of this blog, however. Perhaps the most eager-to-learn thought leader I’ve ever met, Wieberneit also delivers treatises on topics like ambient computing, artificial intelligence and customer service (his comparison of a modern call center to a soccer team — with position players, assignments from a “coach,” and scoring the goal of customer satisfaction, for example) demonstrates storytelling ability with an objective in mind.

What frustrates him? Disconnected and fragmented systems that make it impossible to deliver a consistently high-quality experience to customers. The answer: stepping back and understanding that trust, human connection and empowered people are required on both sides of the buying and selling interaction.

Those things, Wieberneit notes, don’t require any technology to deliver, and that is part of the point of the blog. Great customer experience is the goal; all the technology that delivers it is merely a tool set for achieving the real goal.

Posts in 2017: (54)

Favorite Post:
Customer Service — How to Turn a Poor Experience into a Positive One

13. CX Journey

In 2017, Annette Franz went from being a thought leader working for someone else to the CEO of her own CX consulting firm. You might think the extra time required to run the show would have sapped her energy for the
CX Journey blog — and if so, you’d be wrong.

Yes, she included some guest posts here and there, but they weren’t there to buy her time. Instead, they added to the conversations she already had started. Since CRM (the discipline, not the software) starts with engaged employees, her frequent advice on how to engage, educate and enthuse workers is especially helpful.

Franz’s efforts to shed new light on subjects like company culture, change management, and leadership reinforce her view that engaged customers are a result of the efforts of engaged employees.

Lest you think all the advice here is focused inward, there’s plenty of push for activities aimed at making the organization more customer-centric: better customer journey mapping, more effective voice-of-the-customer programs and customer communities, for example.

Instead of offering a lot of little point solutions (“collect data about THAT!”) as some blogs do, this one takes aim on creating a healthier organization that leads to healthier customer relationships.

Total Posts in 2017: 68

Favorite Post:
How to Engage Employees in Your Customer Experience Strategy

12. Duct Tape Marketing Blog

Not everyone’s an ideal target for John Jantsch’s long-running and prolific
Duct Tape Marketing blog: It’s aimed squarely at the small business. That means you don’t get a lot of CRM technology content, or discussions of departmental relationships and organization. Instead, you get plenty of posts about actually doing things — something that small business people need to do to survive, but also something the rest of us can relate to.

There are a lot of podcasts mixed in here (and even some articles about how small businesses can create their own podcasts!) and John has a lot of help from guest writers and interview subjects with some great perspectives.

I particularly like Jay Baer’s advice to seek out negative reviews online, because they’re an ideal way to discover ways to make your business better.

There’s a lot of focus on the customer experience, but also on other things that impact customer relationships — content, public relations, website experience and so on. There’s also a healthy dose of advice about back-to-basics sales processes like lead generation, funnel management, and techniques for driving return sales.

There’s a lot to digest here — so the blog has a 15-category menu at the bottom, which can help you binge on posts germane to the business issues weighing most heavily on you today. The basics are important — and this blog continues to cover them very well.

Blog posts in 2017: many (format makes an exact count impossible)

Favorite post:
Why Customer Experience is the Key to an Amazing Business

11. Nick Baggott’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

Writing short is hard. Writing short about complex topics like SEO, content marketing and customer loyalty is really hard. Thus, a tip of the hat to Baggott for managing to get so much valuable advice into his posts, which are to the point and leave you plenty of time to think about how to apply his ideas.

Some are fairly common sense — content marketing and SEO go hand in hand! — but need reinforcement. Others, like his post about dealing with negative social media comments, are much more in depth and tackle topics that worry many small businesses, but for which there’s little practical and actionable advice available.

He also mixes in essays about things like marketing in developing countries, which gives him a chance to go back to the basics — even without a ton of technology, the ideas are the same. Baggott is a helpful voice who provides a useful foundation for professionals toiling away on the marketing side of the CRM equation.

Posts in 2017: 17

Favorite post:
How to Improve Your Influencer Marketing

Stay tuned: Top 20 CRM Blogs of 2017, Part 2

Chris Bucholtz has been an ECT News Network columnist since 2009. His focus is on CRM, sales and marketing software, and the interface between people and technology. A noted speaker and author, Chris has covered the CRM space for 10 years.
Email Chris.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

By Christopher J. Bucholtz
Jan 24, 2017 3:22 PM PT

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer

In a year when it seemed that CRM continued to blur into other technologies — artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, analytics and predictive tools, plus a host of other older technologies — there was no shortage of things to blog about.

However, only a few bloggers really captured what was going on in CRM in 2016 and reflected the evolution of the technology in their own unique ways. Doing that is a great way to land on our list of the 20 Best CRM Blogs of the last year.

Perhaps next January, predictive technology will allow us to project which will be the best blogs of 2018. For now, we’ll look back on a year of writing on the subject of CRM — not just CRM, the technology, but CRM, the discipline. That’s why there are no blogs targeted at developers and a precious few that are from vendors.

Our criteria for inclusion are fairly simple: A top blog must have published at least eight posts in the previous year; it can’t be from a vendor, unless it’s written in such a way as to be virtually vendor-agnostic; and it must show a grasp of both the human and technological elements of CRM. That narrows the field only slightly. From there, judgment is based solely on the quality of the content.

As with any new year-related countdown, we’re starting with No. 20 and we’ll take you to No. 11 in this installment. Next week, we’ll reveal the top 10. Get ready to get your reading in!

20. Inside CRM/Toolbox.com

If “quantity has a quality all its own,” then this blog meets that standard; its post totals doubled over last year. There are some frustrating things about Inside CRM/Toolbox.com. It’s virtually invisible on the InsideCRM homepage, and too many posts have no byline, or have a tinge of salesy-ness to them when they do. Once in a while, a thinly disguised press release weasels its way in. Several posts include interesting statistics but lack attribution (a sticking point for skeptics like me).

Still, when you winnow out the chaff, there’s a lot of wheat here. The trick becomes sorting it so that it meets your needs. The focus goes from the very basic to the advanced, so it’s worth scanning the blog main page for topics that stand out for your interests.

Clearly, the site’s owners (Ziff-Davis) have access to a lot of sources. This blog could stand an editor with an iron fist who can enforce some standards and impose some focus. (Disclaimer: As the person who started this blog back in 2007, that fist used to be mine.)

Total posts in 2016: 636

Recommended Post: “5 CRM Features that Companies Must Continue Demanding”

19. CRM Simplified

If your blog conscientiously avoids talking about your company, you can make this top blog list. This blog qualifies under that caveat. The folks from WalkMe are committed to concepts on CRM Simplified, not to pitching the company.

This year, the post total fell, and the content became a bit lighter. That said, one person’s “lighter” is another’s “digestible,” and the plethora of tip lists and infographics make it a nifty quick snack of CRM information rather than a sit-down meal.

Editor Michael Taylor curates some good stuff, including a few items from other bloggers who appear higher on this list, and he sketches out some basic concepts effectively in his own short original posts.

The pace of posting fell off mid-2016 — hopefully, that merely means the company’s busy, not that it’s lost interest in this worthwhile blog.

Editor: Michael Taylor

Total posts in 2016: 32

Our favorite post: “Skyrocket Your CRM User Adoption with These 5 Tips”

18. CX Journey

Remember that this list is not about CRM as software but CRM as a discipline — a set of practices that help businesses find, keep and strengthen customer relationships. In other words, it fosters a journey, which is the whole point of CX Journey.

Annette gets that it isn’t the data in CRM that helps your business — it’s what you do with it. Her blog often tackles fundamental issues that make or break customer experience. Employee retention and engagement is a favorite topic — and rightly so, because a business’ CRM processes meet the customer through its employees.

With a new post every four days or so, there’s a lot here to digest. Annette keeps the blog buzzing with a few guest posts and several of her own posts that also had appeared on other sites.

We often get too caught up in data, analytics, personas and demographics as we try to increase our business’s performance. If you want to keep the emphasis on the human part of the equation — the part that really pays off — use Annette’s blog to set your mind straight.

Author: Annette Franz Glenecki

Posts in 2016: 83

Our favorite post: “Customer Experience Fuels Innovation”

17. Epikonic Blog

From the other side of the globe comes Epikonic, an entry from perhaps an unlikely source: a New Zealand-based vendor selling a mobile application designed to enhance customer engagement.

From a seemingly limited area of focus comes this blog, written primarily by CEO Thomas Wieberneit, who is unique among executives in being able to engage in deep and detailed discussion of CRM concepts while also resisting the urge to talk about his company and products.

A veteran of SAP’s CRM development efforts and an ANZAC-area CRM consulting practice, he’s also unique among CEOs in the level of curiosity he has for the subject. He doesn’t assert that he knows it all, and that makes for some great blogs as he muses over things he’s not yet formed a complete opinion on.

At times, he brings in additional expert voices to clarify issues or open new areas of interest. From AI to CX, and from chatbots to vendor strategies, this wide-ranging blog invites you to think along with its author.

Author: Thomas Wieberneit

Posts in 2016: 31

Our favorite post: “Customer Experience: It Is All in the Data. Really?”

16. Duct Tape Marketing

By harnessing a small army of guest bloggers, John Jantsch not only maintained a relentless pace of posts but continued to elevate the quality and depth of the content on Duct Tape Marketing.

Every aspect of marketing is here in depth, and while it’s targeted at the small business, it would be a mistake to think that it deals with basic, beginner-level material. There’s advice here about implementing and profiting from techniques that even large companies haven’t gotten around to yet.

The overarching theme of the blog is that there’s a host of ideas out there waiting for you to adopt — and your job is to understand your business and your customers well enough to make the smart decisions about which ones are right for you.

Jantsch writes a weekly roundup of interesting Web content, and there are plenty of webcasts nestled among the more traditional articles. If you’re in charge of marketing at a small business, this blog should be your daily go-to source for ideas.

Editor: John Jantsch

Total posts in 2015: 253

Recommended Post: “The Clear-Cut Guide to Social Media Engagemen”t

15. Nick Baggot’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

“Wide-ranging” is a good term for the 2016 output of Nick Baggot’s CRM and Digital Marketing Blog. The basic themes of sales and marketing were there, but every post explored a distinct and interesting tangent of these topics.

Nick has become a real expert at curation: Most of his posts this year included information (often in the form of graphics) from other sources, but he does a textbook job of including a bit of his own analysis on each one to frame the data, establish some context, and explain why it’s important to his readers.

Some concepts are recurring — personalization in marketing and the changing nature and value of various social media channels for business, most notably — but the overarching idea here is that there are ways marketers can cut through the noise modern customers have to deal with, in order to reach them in an effective way. That’s an area of discussion that will only grow in importance in the future.

Total Posts in 2016: 13

Recommended Post: “How to Humanize Your Brand through Content Marketing”

14. Bob Thompson, CustomerThink

A lot of bloggers write under the CustomerThink umbrella, but CEO Bob Thompson remains its best and most consistent blogger.

In addition to organizing the site and its many talented and knowledgeable bloggers, Bob increased his posting in 2016, continuing last year’s focus of customer experience while examining new technologies, including AI and machine learning.

Bob is one of the best at examining the potential of new technologies and then stepping back to remind readers that the value of those technologies almost always reaches the customer through a face-to-face interaction.

This year’s collection of posts is sprinkled with the odd interviews, looks at customer service, and other topics that aren’t CRM, exactly, but which take the insights generated into CRM and translate them into value for the business and the customer.

Total Posts in 2016: 20

Recommended Post: “Satisfaction is Dead. NOT! It’s the Most Common Emotion in Great customer Experiences”

13. CRM Switch

If you have ever seen the Web, you’ve seen list articles. Like this one, for instance. A lot of time, they amount to empty clickbait, but now and again you run across someone who uses this format to anchor some very good information.

Steve Chipman is great at this, using titles like “5 Reasons to Define Your CRM Requirements First” and “8 CRM Administration Practices for Newbies” to organize truly informative articles in CRM Switch.

There’s a host of other, less format-based material, too, aimed at helping people in the planning and adoption phases of CRM and marketing automation purchasing decisions. The blog is produced by a consulting company, but all efforts to pitch its services are kept away from the body of the blog.

If you’re used to the rosy picture painted by most consultants in their quest for customers, you’ll find the realistic view Chipman takes refreshingly bracing. CRM’s success doesn’t depend on who you pay or what you buy, but instead, as the blog makes clear, on how your company approaches it from the initial decision to buy it, to the point where your sales and marketing organizations are depending on it.

Author: Steve Chipman

Total Posts in 2016: 28

Recommended Post: “CRM Strategy vs. CRM Tactics: Some Examples”

12. Effective CRM

Busy Boysen made just nine posts in 2016, but it’s pretty clear that he spent the time between them putting some serious thought into the topics he discusses on Effective CRM.

This was a year where the customer journey took center stage. Mike skewered company-centric approaches to thinking about those journeys and advocated for a more straightforward approach.

He also pointed out that the default for businesses is to slide back toward their own interests and away from customer needs. As he has noted, companies often ask themselves “how are we doing?” instead of asking the real question, which is “how are you (the customer) doing?”

His posts are authoritative but have a bit of snark to them, which is how you know he’s observing customer relationship missteps in real life and not just theorizing about them. As a practitioner, Boysen is eager to share what he knows, and he clearly envisions a world where businesses approach CRM with the emphasis on the first two letters of the acronym.

Author: Mike Boysen

Total Posts in 2016: 9

Recommended Post: “Is Customer-Centricty Dead?”

11. Customer Experience Matrix

David Raab is not only the pre-eminent independent voice covering marketing automation (and one of the first to cover it, starting about 10 years ago), but also a great writer with a willingness to be silly once in a while.

His “personalized Mona Lisa,” referenced in a couple of posts on Customer Experience Matrix, points out the fallacy that people only want content that is specifically relevant to them, when making it “relevant” removes context and makes learning much less of an experience.

He’s also great at weaving analytics, predictive technologies and other emerging trends into his coverage. His series on account-based marketing this summer is a college level course on the concepts and technology applications needed to pull it off.

As an industry insider, he’s also the first stop for commentary on acquisitions, with a distinctly pragmatic outlook.

He’s forward looking — enough so that his last post of the year postulated the challenges marketers would have in a world where augmented reality and virtual reality would be pervasive, to the point where the perceived realities of every customer were customized.

Yikes! If you’re a marketer who needs to keep abreast of marketing technology — and if you want a scare every so often! — bookmark this sucker.

Author: David Raab

Total Posts in 2015: 62

Recommended Post: “#Personalized Mona Lisa #Marketing #Humor #Fail” Stay tuned for Part 2: Top 10 Countdown

CRM Buyer columnist Chris Bucholtz is director, content marketing, for CallidusCloud and a speaker, writer and consultant on topics surrounding buyer-seller relationships. He has been a technology journalist for 18 years, focusing on CRM since 2006. When he’s not wearing his business and technology geek hat, he’s wearing his airplane geek hat; he’s written three books on World War II aviation.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

CRM Buyer