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    Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 |  Fax: +1 617.613.5000 |  www.forrester.com

    The Forrester Wave™: Social DepthPlatforms, Q3 2013by Kim Celestre and Zachary Reiss-Davis, July 9, 2013

    For: Marketing

    Leadership

    Professionals

    KEY TAKEAWAYS

    Marketers Seek Better Ways To Tell Their Product’s Story 

    Marketers need to provide buyers with dynamic, customer-centric destinations

    that encourage user-generated content and acilitate interactions rather than withstatic, company-centric web pages. Social depth platorms meet this need by helping

    companies deploy online communities and related social capabilities on their websites

    and microsites.

    Social Depth And Community Platform Vendors Provide Features That

     Add Depth

    Community platorm and social marketing technology vendors provide eatures that

    help marketers launch and moderate online discussions, import and publish user-

    generated content, and manage and track community actions.

    Customization, Integrations, And Analytics Are The Key Differentiators

    Community platorm eatures such as discussion boards, ratings and reviews, and orums

    are now table stakes, and this has led vendors to seek new ways to differentiate. Te

     vendors that led this Wave™ stand out in three areas crucial to marketers: customization

    o eatures, integrations with other marketing platorms, and robust analytics.

    http://www.forrester.com/

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    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available

    resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester ®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar,

    and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To

    purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

    FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS

    WHY READ THIS REPORT

    In Forrester’s 57-criteria evaluation o social depth platorms (SDPs), we identified the nine most

    significant vendors — Acquia, Bazaarvoice, Get Satisaction, Jive Sofware, Lithium echnologies, Liveyre,

    Mzinga, Pluck, and elligent Systems — in the category and researched, analyzed, and scored them. Tis

    report details our findings about how well each vendor ulfills our criteria and where the vendors stand in

    relation to each other; it is designed to help marketing proessionals select the right technology partner to

    manage their social activities on their own branded website, microsite, or online community.

    Table Of Contents

    Marketers Seek Better Ways To Tell Their

    Product Story Online

    Social Depth Platforms Catalyze Activity That

     Adds Depth To A Brand’s Story

    What We Required From Vendors To Qualify

    For This Evaluation

    Our Evaluation Considered Current Offering,

    Strategy, And Market PresenceSDP Vendors Strive To Differentiate In A

    Mature Market

     Vendor Profiles

    Leaders

    Strong Performers

    Contenders

    Supplemental Material

    Notes & Resources

    Forrester conducted product evaluations

    with nine vendor companies in Q2 2013:

     Acquia, Bazaarvoice, Get Satisfaction, Jive,

    Lithium Technologies, Livefyre, Mzinga,

    Pluck, and Telligent Systems.

    Related Research Documents

     Align Your B2B Community Marketing With

    Your Customers’ Life Cycle April 22, 2013

    The ROI Of “Owner” Communities

    February 14, 2013

    Mix Art And Science For Marketing Success

    January 14, 2013

    CLICK: A Design Framework For Online B2B

    Communities

     August 6, 2012

    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013We Evaluate Nine Community And Social Depth Marketing Technology Providers ThatHelp Turn A Brand’s Website Into A Social Hub

    by Kim Celestre and Zachary Reiss-Davis

    with David Truog and Sarah Takvorian

    2

    3

    5

    8

    11

    JULY 9, 2013

    http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES93901http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES93901http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES89201http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES76084http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES76084http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2726http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2745http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2742http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2742http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2745http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2726http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES76084http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES76084http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES89201http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES93901http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES93901http://www.forrester.com/

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    FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 2

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    MARKETERS SEEK BETTER WAYS TO TELL THEIR PRODUCT STORY ONLINE

    Marketers have invested significant budget and resources to make their websites content-rich

    destinations that effectively tell stories about their brands, products, and offerings. And with the

    prolieration o social media, marketers strive to incorporate social eatures that help transorm their

    static, company-centric websites into dynamic, customer-centric destinations that 1) encourage

    user-generated content, and 2) acilitate interactions between their company’s brand and potential

    customers. Tis is because:

    ■ Te Internet is the No. 1 destination for exploration. When exploring a product or service,more than hal o online consumers who have made a recent purchase use the Internet as a

    primary research tool.1 During this process, these individuals ofen wind up on a brand’s website

    seeking deeper content to help them make purchase decisions. Teir secondary research tool is

    the actual retail store or a sales rep. So websites that are optimized or exploration will ultimately

    influence an online or in-person purchase.

    ■ Social activity attracts site visitors. Marketers find that having an active online communitymakes their sites more likely to rank high in search engine results pages. So the more social

    activity on a brand’s site, the more individuals will discover the brand through online searches.

    And by moving social activity into domains that they control, marketers can drive more traffic

    to their brand’s home page.

    ■ User-generated content favorably influences buying behavior. Ratings, reviews, comments,and other content rom users — rather than just your brand — strongly influence buying

    behavior. In act, 50% o individuals preer to buy products or services rom websites that allow

    customers to post ratings and reviews.2 Because big consumer packaged goods (CPG) brandsand retailers have figured this out, most incorporate ratings and reviews directly into their own

    branded web pages or import them rom external review sites — and companies rom other

    industries, including business-to-business (B2B) companies, are increasingly investigating how

    to use ratings and reviews to influence purchases.

    Social Depth Platforms Catalyze Activity That Adds Depth To A Brand’s Story 

    Vendors have evolved their offerings rom basic discussion orum tools to robust online community

    platorms that enable up to millions o users to interact, create content, and engage with a brand

    on its own community website. Some marketers have taken this one step urther by incorporating

    standalone community widgets and social applications into their brands’ home pages and product

    pages. Forrester now reers to these community and social technologies as social depth platorms:

    Social depth platforms are technologies that add social content and experiences to marketing sites.

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    FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 3

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    Social depth platorms allow marketers to:

    ■ Launch and moderate online discussions. Marketers have primarily deployed social depth

    platorms to provide online venues where their customers can ask questions, seek support, andshare their experiences o the brand’s products and services. But increasingly, marketers seek

    ways to expose these discussions to prospective buyers, too, who visit their website to explore

    and gather inormation to inorm a uture purchase decision. Social depth platorms provide

    both private (i.e., “gated”) communities and the ability to publish community content on the

    home page and product page(s).

    ■ Import and publish user-generated content. In addition to the vendor’s owned content,prospective buyers seek out content rom peers when visiting a brand’s web pages. Social depth

    platorms acilitate the process o importing user-generated content rom third-party social

    networks (e.g., Facebook, Pinterest, and witter) and rom the brand’s own online community.

    Tis content can be viewed through real-time streams and curation on the brand’s web pages,

    turning the website into a public social hub. SDPs also let marketers incorporate user-generated

    comments, ratings, and reviews directly on the brand’s product and community pages.

    ■ Manage and track community actions. SDPs provide administrative consoles that allowmarketers and community managers to set permissions, moderate actions, and analyze

    user activity. Te platorms also generate standard and custom reports and dashboards that

    marketers can use to present the community’s perormance to internal stakeholders.

    Te SDP space is rapidly evolving as marketers seek to consolidate multiple technology platorms

    that overlap in eatures and unctionality and thereore drain internal resources. In response tothis need or an end-to-end solution, traditional online community vendors have extended their

    platorm capabilities by snapping up other vendors, integrating with marketing systems, and

    partnering with technology vendors.3 Other user-generated content platorm providers are also

    seeking ways to extend their platorms by adding more community-like eatures to their offerings.

    What does this mean to marketers? Tese platorms will continue to become more robust and

    integrated, eventually eliminating the need or multiple, disparate technologies.

    WHAT WE REQUIRED FROM VENDORS TO QUALIFY FOR THIS EVALUATION

    o assess the state o the social depth platorm market and see how the vendors stack up against

    each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses o top social depth platorm vendors

    (see Figure 1).

    Forrester included nine vendors in the assessment: Acquia, Bazaarvoice, Get Satisaction, Jive,

    Lithium echnologies, Liveyre, Mzinga, Pluck, and elligent Systems. Tese vendors were selected

    or their ability to provide:

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    FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 4

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    ■ Externally facing social features to a brand’s “owned” website. We included in this evaluationonly vendors with active customers that currently use the platorm to deploy externally acing

    communities. Vendors must also have the ability to add social eatures such as blogs, social

    network eeds, and ratings and reviews to the brand’s home and product pages.

    ■ A platform that can be integrated with other marketing systems. We also required that the vendor’s platorm have the ability to be integrated with at least one marketing platorm (e.g.,

    marketing automation, customer relationship management system, or analytics platorm).

    ■ Large deployments with big brands. We required that vendors have at least 10 customers withknown business-to-consumer (B2C) and/or B2B brands that have deployed communities with

    more than 200,000 members or users. At least 15% o each vendor’s customers must have over

    $1 billion in revenue.

    ■ Strong market presence. We included vendors that have at least 100 active, named accounts.We also included vendors that Forrester clients have considered or implementing social depth

    capabilities on their own brands’ websites.

    Figure 1 Evaluated Vendors: Product Inormation And Selection Criteria

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

    Vendor

    Acquia

    Bazaarvoice

    Get Satisfaction

    Jive Software

    Lithium Technologies

    Livefyre

    Mzinga

    Pluck 

     Telligent Systems

    Product evaluated

    Drupal Commons

    Bazaarvoice Conversations

    Get Satisfaction

    Jive

    Lithium Social Customer Experience Platform

    StreamHub

    OmniSocial Engaged

    Pluck 

     Telligent Community

    Product version

    evaluated

    3.2

    NA

    NA

    Jive 7

    Spring 2013

    NA

    NA

    5.4

    7.5

    Version

    release date

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    April 2013

    Vendor selection criteria

     The vendor offers the ability to add external-facing social features to the website.

     The vendor has the capacity to integrate with at least one marketing platform.

     The vendor has at least 15% of customers with over $1 billion in revenue and at least 10 customers withcommunities of more than 200,000 members or users.

     The vendor has a minimum of 100 active, named accounts.

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    FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS

    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 5

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    Our Evaluation Considered Current Offering, Strategy, And Market Presence

    Afer examining past research and user need assessments and interviewing industry experts and

     vendors, we developed a comprehensive set o 57 evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against

    these criteria, which we grouped into three high-level categories:

    ■ Current offering. We evaluated each vendor’s capabilities to help marketers add social andcommunity eatures to their brand’s owned web properties. We assessed how each vendor

    perormed across the entire range o social depth platorm tasks. We studied how many SDP

    eatures each platorm can provide and how well they perorm those unctions.

    ■ Strategy. We examined the strength, experience, and vision o each company’s executive teamand what proessional services and strategic services it offers and collected inormation on client

    satisaction. We also assessed each vendor’s product development road map and how the vendor

    is evolving its platorm to better connect digital, social, and mobile channels.

    ■ Market presence. Last, we examined each vendor’s overall size and marketing position based onthe number and size o its clients and deployments, 2012 revenue, existing partnerships, global

    presence, and customer retention.

    SDP VENDORS STRIVE TO DIFFERENTIATE IN A MATURE MARKET

    Te evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 2):

    ■ Lithium echnologies, Jive, Bazaarvoice, and Acquia are Leaders. Lithium echnologies

    maintains its position as a Leader due to a combination o marketer-riendly admin consoleand community eatures, its social marketing thought leadership, and its breadth o marketing

    platorm integrations, all o which provide marketers with a cohesive end-to-end solution.4 

    Jive continues to maintain its leadership position with its robust set o community platorm

    eatures, strong services offerings, and healthy financials. Bazaarvoice is also a Leader due to the

    platorm’s strong ratings and reviews capabilities and its usability and administrative eatures,

    but it lacks basic community eatures that the other SRP providers offer. Acquia provides

    marketers with a large ecosystem o application programming interaces (APIs) and widgets

    that provide many options or easy customization o a community or website. In Forrester

    interviews, customers praised all o these vendors or the administrative eatures and ease o use

    o their platorms. Tree out o our o our Leaders offer above-average analytics eatures that

    them apart rom other vendors in this evaluation.

    ■ elligent Systems, Get Satisfaction, and Pluck offer competitive options. Get Satisaction,Pluck, and elligent Systems all hold positions in the Strong Perormer category. All vendors

    in this category have solid leadership teams, healthy customer ecosystems, and extensive

    services offerings. However, usability and integration capabilities vary widely. wo vendors

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 6

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    offer multiple out-o-the-box plug-ins or all types o marketing platorm integrations, while

    the third primarily provides integrations through proessional services. Vendors also differ on

    their industry ocus. For example, one vendor ocuses primarily on large B2C retailers, but

    others ocus on the B2B high technology segment. Marketers must establish clear priorities andobjectives or their social depth marketing strategy to select the best-fit vendor in the Strong

    Perormer category.

    ■ Livefyre and Mzinga are Contenders. Liveyre and Mzinga offer very different platorms thateach ocus on specific SDP eatures. Liveyre provides real-time, user-generated content streams

    and comments that can be plugged into a brand’s website but has essentially no traditional

    online community platorm eatures such as discussion orums or basic content search. Mzinga

    provides basic community eatures that can be implemented on both private communities and

    on a brand’s website but lacks the advanced eatures that other community platorms in the SDP

    space provide, such as sharing, rich media, and mobile. Marketers who seek a quick, lightweight

    community platorm may preer Mzinga over other providers. Marketers who need no more

    than the minimal set o discussion eatures and have customers that create a high volume o

    user-generated content online may turn to Liveyre, which provides user-generated content

    (UGC) streams and curation in real time.

    Tis evaluation o the social depth platorm market is intended to be a starting point only. We

    encourage clients to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their

    individual needs through the Forrester Wave™ Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 7

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platorms, Q3 ’13

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

    Go online to download

    the Forrester Wave tool

    for more detailed product

    evaluations, feature

    comparisons, and

    customizable rankings.

    Risky

    Bets Contenders Leaders

    Strong

    Performers

    StrategyWeak Strong

    Current

    offering

    Weak 

    Strong

    Market presence

    Mzinga

    Livefyre

    Pluck 

    Get Satisfaction

     Telligent Systems

    Acquia

    Bazaarvoice

    JiveSoftware

    Lithium Technologies

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 8

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platorms, Q3 ’13 (Cont.)

    Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

        A   c   q   u    i   a

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        P    l   u   c    k

    CURRENT OFFERING

      Platform

      Features

      Integration

      Usability

      Services

      Pricing

    STRATEGY

      Leadership

      Other staff 

    MARKET PRESENCE

      Financial strength

      Customers

    3.51

    3.15

    2.66

    4.65

    4.50

    2.50

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        F   o   r   r   e   s   t   e   r    ’   s

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    3.60

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    4.45

    4.75

    4.15

    2.83

    3.15

    2.78

    1.95

    4.00

    2.75

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    2.92

    3.40

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    2.83

    2.00

    3.65

    3.62

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    2.85

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    4.65

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    2.50

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    2.82

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    2.50

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    2.54

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    2.55

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    3.10

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    1.50

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    1.43

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    2.58

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        T   e    l    l    i   g   e   n   t    S   y   s   t   e   m   s

    3.43

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    3.38

    3.60

    2.50

    2.30

    1.00

    3.60

    All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

     VENDOR PROFILES

    Leaders

    ■ Lithium echnologies enhances its social depth offerings, leaving others in the dust. Lithiumcontinues to make its vision o providing the “one social platorm” a reality or marketers

    through its acquisition o Social Dynamx in 2012 and continued enhancements to admin

    eatures and customizable community capabilities. Key differentiators include its ability to

    acilitate crowdsourcing o user-generated content (i.e., “ribal Knowledge”) and its advanced

    search engine optimization (SEO) and analytics platorm, to name a ew. Customers find the

    Lithium community platorm to be marketer-riendly and intuitive, with lots o out-o-the-

    box eatures such as influencer identification and gamification. Customers also praise Lithium

    or being a “true partner” and give the vendor high marks or its strategic, proessional, and

    management services.

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 9

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    ■ Jive leverages its expertise in employee collaboration communities. Jive has increased itsocus on externally acing communities and applied its collaboration expertise to provide

    marketers with a high-quality solution. Existing customers who have used Jive or internal

    collaboration also find Jive attractive or externally acing communities, since it provides them

    with a 360-degree view o activity. Jive is also notable or its out-o-the-box analytics capabilities,

    which allow a marketer to drill down and “slice and dice” the data. Jive’s main strengths are

    the platorm’s customizable administration eatures, using its drag-and-drop unctionality;

    its collaboration eatures (enhanced by Innovation Jam templates, available through the Jive

    Application Marketplace); content search options; and out-o-the-box gamification. o round

    out its offering, Jive provides extensive proessional services and account management.

    ■ Bazaarvoice continues to improve and evolve its ratings and reviews platform. Bazaarvoice iswidely known or its ratings and reviews platorm, which has been deployed by many big brands

    with large product catalogs. Te vendor continues to extend its platorm as it pursues its visiono the Bazaarvoice Shopper Network, which connects 400 million monthly unique customers

    that share eedback on tens o millions o products on a single network. It also is ocusing on its

    campaigns offering, which is still gaining traction among its customers. In addition to ratings

    and reviews, Bazaarvoice’s top strengths are marketer-riendly administration tools, robust

    analytics, and mobile capabilities. Customers praise Bazaarvoice or its strategic guidance and

    dedicated employees.

    ■ Acquia provides marketers with a flexible and customizable community platform. Drupal’sree Drupal Commons platorm has gained rapid adoption among companies that appreciate

    the flexibility o the platorm to meet marketers’ specific needs. One o Acquia’s primary

    strengths is its large and active developer ecosystem, which includes comprehensive sets osofware development kits (SDKs), APIs, and about 2,000 Drupal modules that allow a marketer

    to easily customize a community or the social elements o a site. Acquia provides the best

    integration options o all the vendors we evaluated. Customers touted Acquia Drupal Commons

    or its flexibility, ease o use, and high return on investment. Marketers who are comortable

    deploying a ree open source platorm and choosing rom thousands o modules will benefit

    rom the unique benefits o Acquia Drupal Commons.

    Strong Performers

    ■ elligent Systems provides robust platform capabilities and community features. Weound that elligent offers marketers a comprehensive community eature set. Te platorm’s

    strengths include support or various rich media ormats, customizable search options, and

    advanced mobile eatures. In addition, elligent offers a large development ecosystem, including

    Widget Studio and elligent Marketplace, which includes dozens o applications that can be

    customized by marketers. elligent’s customers give it high marks or its proessional services

    offerings but are disappointed with the platorm’s overall usability and deployment or complex

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 10

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    implementations. We ound that elligent’s ability to launch a lightweight community in 60

    seconds is a nice eature or marketers who require very short lead times to pilot or deploy a

    simple community. elligent also provides internal collaboration communities and tight support

    or Microsof Dynamics CRM and Microsof Office documents.

    ■ Get Satisfaction offers an intuitive, lightweight community platform. Customers are veryappreciative o Get Satisaction’s easy-to-use community platorm, which offers exceptional

    search engine optimization and data authenticity options. Notable eatures include its out-o-the-

    box collaboration, gamification, and advanced mobile eatures, including responsive design. Get

    Satisaction alls short on integration and generally offers ewer marketing platorm integrations

    than other vendors in this class. Get Satisaction customers also noted that integration was an

    area or improvement. Overall, Get Satisaction offers a solid, lightweight, marketer-riendly

    platorm that is well suited or support, peer-to-peer, and collaboration communities.

    ■ Pluck provides a customizable community platform but has room for improvement. Demand Media’s Pluck provides marketers with a customizable platorm that is supported

    by a robust application ecosystem that includes approximately 500 modules. Its strengths are

    its discussion orums, ratings and reviews eatures, and standalone social applications. Pluck

    has a clear and ocused vision or integrated customer interactions that span multiple online

    and offline channels, combined with a detailed product road map that reflects the vision. But

    according to customers, Pluck must practice what it preaches: Unortunately, customers eel

    that Pluck alls significantly short on ease o use and deployment. Some basic eatures, such as

    sharing and notifications, are difficult to implement.

    Contenders

    ■ Livefyre is a promising new entrant with a unique community vision. With its first enterpriseclients on board in 2011, Liveyre is a young company with ambitious goals. Te vendor is

    rapidly evolving its real-time content curation (initially deployed with big media brands) into

    a community platorm that acilitates the process o transorming brand sites into social hubs.

    Liveyre’s key differentiator and greatest strength is the platorm’s real-time capabilities. Te

    platorm also offers intuitive administration eatures and strong content authentication options.

    During platorm demos, we ound that Liveyre’s rich media and website capabilities were

    superior, compared with other vendors. Te vendor receives high customer satisaction scores,

    but customers eel there are still kinks in platorm deployment. At the time o this evaluation,

    Liveyre did not yet offer any discussion orum capabilities, and its ratings and reviews eatures

    were minimal.

    ■ Mzinga lags behind the competition but plans significant product improvements. Mzinga’splatorm and eatures have not kept up with the competition, and this was obvious during

    our evaluation. Mzinga offers a basic, lightweight platorm with solid data management and

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    The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 11

    © 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013

    authenticity eatures. Its other strengths include its breadth o international support and

    proessional services. Customers elt that some “table stakes” eatures were difficult to deploy

    with the Mzinga platorm. And in our evaluation, we ound that basic eatures such as sharing,

    search, and language translation were subpar. On the other hand, Mzinga has significantproduct improvements in its road map. Te question is whether the vendor will be able to

    implement the improvements ast enough to meet marketers’ needs.

    SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

    Online Resource

    Te online version o Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed

    product evaluations and customizable rankings.

    Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

    Forrester used a combination o three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses o each

    solution:

    ■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluationcriteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where

    necessary to gather details o vendor qualifications.

    ■ Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations o their product’s unctionality. We

    used findings rom these product demos to validate details o each vendor’s product capabilities.

    ■ Customer reference calls. o validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester alsoconducted reerence calls with three o each vendor’s current customers.

    The Forrester Wave Methodology 

    We conduct primary research to develop a list o vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated

    in this market. From that initial pool o vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these

     vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate

     vendors that have limited customer reerences and products that don’t fit the scope o our evaluation.

    Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop

    the initial evaluation criteria. o evaluate the vendors and their products against our set o criteria, we

    gather details o product qualifications through a combination o lab evaluations, questionnaires,

    demos, and/or discussions with client reerences. We send evaluations to the vendors or their review,

    and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view o vendor offerings and strategies.

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    We set deault weightings to reflect our analysis o the needs o large user companies — and/or

    other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based

    on a clearly defined scale. Tese deault weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we

    encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-basedtool. Te final scores generate the graphical depiction o the market based on current offering,

    strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product

    capabilities and vendor strategies evolve. For more inormation on the methodology that every

    Forrester Wave ollows, go to http://www.orrester.com/marketing/policies/orrester-wave-

    methodology.html.

    Integrity Policy 

    All o Forrester’s research, including Waves, is conducted according to our Integrity Policy. For more

    inormation, go to http://www.orrester.com/marketing/policies/integrity-policy.html.

    ENDNOTES

    1  For more inormation on research or product purchases, see the January 14, 2013, “Mix Art And Science

    For Marketing Success” report.

    2  In act, 50% o US online adults who have used customer ratings/reviews indicated they agree with the

    statement, “I preer to buy products/services rom websites that allow customers to post ratings/reviews.”

    Source: North American echnographics® Retail Online Benchmark Recontact Survey Q3 2012 (US).

    3  Social depth platorm vendors have significantly extended their platorms in the past two years to achieve

    their goal(s) o providing an end-to-end solution or customers. For example, in 2011, Lithium acquiredsocial listening platorm vendor Scout Labs, and in 2012, it acquired social relationship platorm vendor

    Social Dynamx. In April 2013, Jive announced its acquisition o analytics platorm vendor Clara (analytics)

    and integration platorm vendor StreamOnce. In 2012, Bazaarvoice acquired reviews platorm vendor

    PowerReviews.

    4  o compare vendors’ perormances with a past related Wave evaluation, see the November 1, 2010, “he

    Forrester Wave™: Community Platorms, Q4 2010” report.

    http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES57521http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES57521http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES57521http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES57521http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES86562

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    Forrester Research, Inc. (Nasdaq: FORR) is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to

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