While the figure of just over 6 million referrals should be applauded, and it’s promising it’s going up, I question what the BBC’s policy is for inserting these links?

Steve Herrman writes on the BBC News Editor’s blog, and discussed at News Rewired last week, about how they are doing and points out the top destinations:

The top destinations for external click-throughs in any month depends largely on what the top stories are for that period, for example in February this year there was news of the street-level crime maps being published (www.police.gov.uk) , ITV footage of an elderly lady confronting armed robbers (www.itv.com) and stories about tickets for the Olympics in 2012 (www.london2012.com). Those sites all showed up high in our list of onward referrals.

I understand the BBC has the auto-generated box at the bottom which links to other – and sometimes random sources – for ‘more on this story’, and like Google News the website which breaks the story doesn’t often get featured here because they aren’t seen as ‘current’.

But how does it decide to credit a news source within a story, when it writes ‘as revealed by The Daily Telegraph’. But what, as with a lot of the more human interest and quirky stories, they’ve started out on page 7 of a local weekly paper? Will the BBC still link to the Daily Mail’s rip-off version or will it seek out the original source to link back to and reward the media organisation who sourced that story in the first place?

It’s a problem we now face in the age of the battle for online supremacy, as soon as a local news source covers a story and it goes ‘viral’ so the feeding frenzy begins and every news site under the sun covers the story, doesn’t provide a link, and the site which actually broke the story is left way down the Google News pecking order.

Is the equivelent of sending an invoice in the online world now going to be sending an invoice for the amount of page impressions missed out on by that hard-working original site? Although Paul Lewis said at News Rewired the age of the scoop is dead, yes he’s technically right, but discovering a story and putting it out there first before anyone else still holds a lot of value.

We need to see more linking, better linking and news organisations making an effort to give credit to the source. The way Google is structured, it will always try and reward the original source – but unless everything links back to that original story, how will Google know how to credit?

I’d be interested in people’s thoughts on this issue. Has the BBC got it right? How can we flag up the origination of content on the web? Give me your views in the comments below

He gave an insight into how the BBC is beginning to use CRM and how it is changing the way the organisation works in the digital age.

Kelleher started by saying that using CRM in a non-commercial organisation is more difficult than for commercial ones, as CRM systems are traditionally based around converting leads into sales and building a relationship with the customer.

The BBC in the analogue age had a policy of not using direct marketing, after all they didn’t need to as there were only up to five channels and limited radio stations, 30 odd million used to watch the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

However, recognising that the corporation has moved into the digital age they set up about working out how CRM could be used to target and deliver to an audience that was fragmenting, changing its behaviours, becoming less loyal and changing their methods of consumption.

He then showed a rather wacky diagram with all the ‘social media’ and other tools that could be put into the direct marketing mix and asked ‘how much of this stuff is going to add value?’. That is the question that all organisations need to be asking themselves.

To respond to the changes in audience then the BBC is adopting some principles for how to engage with the audience:

- Personalise. Make content relevant to the person.
- Customer insight. Use data to understand what the audience likes
- Self-help. Provide resources for the audience to get help there and then, not wait to speak to a person
- Accountability. New media tools can be used to show transparency and explain why decisions are made
- Online channels. Explore new ways of delivering content to the audience.
- Brand experience. Ensuring that through a distributed strategy the brand is not diluted and the BBC is still respected as an institution
- Data drive decision making. Data will be available at all levels of the organisation to inform decision makers, rather than relying on assumptions about the audience.

Kelleher then made an interesting point about CRM. The systems will produce endless amounts of data and reports but it’s knowing how to interpret these reports – you can produce reports until you’re blue in the face but if your non-data geek decision makers can’t understand them or are overwhelmed then this defeats the whole purpose of having the system.

In the new digital world it’s all about relevancy. The content needs to be tailored to fit the audience member, not the audience, the audience member. Mr Smith likes very different things to Mrs Jones, even though they might be the same age, live next door to each other and work in the same industry. The digital world should offer personalised interactions wherever possible for the audience and give users the chance to set preferences, more of what they want more of the time.

We were shown an example of an SMS pilot that the BBC had run using Radio 1. They had been unsure of how to use SMS as a marketing tool and they decided to pilot it with the Scott Mills show on Radio 1. This was because a lot of the listenership are under-25 and SMS is embedded in their lifestyle. They tried various different styles and tones for the texts and found that the more informal texts that matched the celebrity (Scott Mills) were most popular and prompted the best response rate.

However, it’s easy to get carried away with SMS marketing and bombard your audience – instead organisations should focus on adding value for the audience wherever possible.

Kelleher then briefly touched on the iPlayer – a huge success for the corporation – and how direct marketing was being used there. There was a subtle recruitment button in the bottom corner of the iPlayer frontpage (can’t say I’d ever noticed) that pushed users to a simple sign-up form. From this customised updates were produced to inform them of new content that they would be interested in.

The BBC is in the process of refining it’s data collection touchpoints as they have hundreds, if not thousands, of them. They send out 110 different email newsletters and 30 million are sent every month. The most popular is the BBC Food email newsletter.

Kelleher briefly touched on a new project that the BBC is running around its Darwin campaign. This is TV, radio, online and offline events all related to the theme of Charles Darwin. The website features a very simple ‘Sign up’ plug and all the user has to do is enter their email address – nothing else. This is then cross-referenced with the main CRM database and added to a list of ‘They like Darwin’. A personalised email with call to actions are then sent out related to Darwin content on different media. The open rate for the emails is a phenomenal 80% and the click through rate was 20-25%. Not bad for a campaign I’d never heard of.

Ultimately thought content is king, and I agree completely with Kelleher on this. He used the analogy of a first date. You meet a girl and you find out she likes guinea pigs, France and red wine. After two years worth of dates you’re still discussing guinea pigs, France and red wine. You never learn more. You are eventually going to get bored of discussing the same things and go off and find something new. This works with direct marketing and CRM, you need to be constantly offering up something new, something different and something that makes people say ‘Yes! I’d like to know more about that!’. You can’t afford to be static, because it’s easier now than ever before for someone to disappear off and find new and fresh content with the touch of a button.

Finally, Kelleher finished with the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age:

1. Research the audience’s propensity. Ensure you’re using the right approach and technology for the audience you’re targeting
2. Go where the audience are. If the audience all use Facebook, you need to use Facebook to get to them.
3. Make the user’s recruitment journey easy. Simple sign up forms.
4. Make interaction relevant. Don’t ask for data about whether they have a pet, and then never use it. The user will be expecting something related to guinea pigs they’ve put in that they have guinea pigs.
5. Make the interaction timely. If an event has just happened, hit the user with some content about what happened. If an event is upcoming, allow enough time for them to register and attend.
6. Provide value. This is key, you need to make your content stand out from everyone else.
7. Be clear about what you want the audience to do. Is it a call to action? Are you asking them for money? Do you want them to watch a video?

Overall it was a great keynote from Kelleher and gave a real insight into what the BBC are up to and his new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age will no doubt be banded around the industry for a few months to come until someone events the newer new rules.

What do you think, are the BBC using CRM well? Could they be using it better? What do you think of the new rules for CRM and direct marketing in the digital age?

Be interesting to see if they promote someone and if they do keep true to their promise of keeping a political correspondent. The comments from Woodthorpe about the move to ‘fluffy’ reporting is interesting.

• The difference between living life and not

Makes you think. If you turned off the TV for a few hours a week and did something, what difference would it make?