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Genius.com has released Genius Team -- a new edition of SalesGenius, the marketing 
and sales application it debuted last year. The new team application automates many of the tasks in SalesGenius and provides a venue for greater administrative control, according to Felicity Wohltman, vice president of marketing for the firm.
"A lot of our users had expressed the need for greater oversight in what sales reps were sending out," she told CRM Buyer.
Conversely, many of the sales reps using the application had wanted more guidance, either from the company or the application, or both, she added.
Straddling Several Categories
SalesGenius is an on-demand application combining Web analytics, marketing and sales functionality to help reps better track prospect leads from the company's Web site and then respond with tailored marketing pitches.
It straddles marketing and sales-effectiveness to better align these two sometimes-disparate functions.
From a practical perspective, its goal is to identify Web visitors most likely to buy a product in real time and reach out to those visitors on the spot.
It accomplishes this by monitoring activities on a Web page -- for example, how many times and for how long a user has looked at an item -- via an Instant Messenger-like client.
The client alerts a sales rep when a prospect opens a SalesGenius e-mail and opts to click on the corporate Web site link. SalesGenius then guides the sales rep to establish initial contact with an interested prospect through a tailored e-mail.
One Year Later
Genius Team builds on the SalesGenius functionality by giving a manager more control over the e-mails that are sent, as well as better visibility into the data that is collected by the system.
For instance, Genius Team allows a manager to launch e-mail and Web site marketing programs in real time and automatically distribute instant sales alerts to individual reps. It also provides instant reports to sales managers on which e-mail campaigns and reps are proving the most effective.
Manager reports, for instance, track performance across numerous metrics, including e-mails sent, e-mails opened, Web site visits, pages viewed and visit duration. Managers can also view a comparison of individual reps.
Managers can also determine which e-mail content is generating the best response from prospective customers and provide feedback to their marketing teams for future e-mail marketing campaigns.
Genius Team can be configured so that creating e-mail content, uploading templates, selecting lists, and managing marketing campaigns are done at the managerial level, while ensuring that the relevant sales reps still receive real-time alerts whenever their prospects respond.
Touching the Customer
This category of application is an efficient way to reach out to customers who are not accessible through conventional CRM approaches, Ian Michiels, an Aberdeen analyst, told CRM Buyer. "Typically, a sales person won't have insight on where the customer was looking on a Web site -- in real time -- then be able to tailor the pitch to reach that person."
The immediacy and the ability to customize are key attributes of the system, he added, along with the opt-in design. "Everyone knows that a tailored e-mail results in higher conversion than a generic one. At the same time, because it is opt-in, it is more easily accepted by the prospect."
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