forrester wave social depth platforms t5os6shz
TRANSCRIPT
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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.
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© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
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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
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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
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3
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JULY 9, 2013
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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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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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© 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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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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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
B a z a a r v o i c e
G e t S a t i s f a c t i o n
J i v e S o f t w a r e
L i t h i u m T e c h n o l o g
i e s
L i v e f y r e
M z i n g a
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
0.00
3.52
3.40
4.00
3.10
2.75
3.45
F o r r e s t e r ’ s
W e i g h t i n g
50%
20%
25%
25%
15%
15%
0%
50%
80%
20%
0%
50%
50%
3.32
4.00
2.88
1.95
5.00
3.75
0.00
3.88
3.60
5.00
4.45
4.75
4.15
2.83
3.15
2.78
1.95
4.00
2.75
0.00
2.92
3.40
1.00
2.83
2.00
3.65
3.62
3.60
3.95
2.85
3.50
4.50
0.00
4.44
4.30
5.00
3.75
4.50
3.00
3.92
4.65
3.67
3.65
3.50
4.25
0.00
4.66
4.70
4.50
3.10
2.50
3.70
2.49
2.90
2.82
1.20
3.50
2.50
0.00
2.54
2.80
1.50
2.55
2.00
3.10
2.05
1.85
1.80
1.90
1.50
3.50
0.00
2.30
2.50
1.50
1.43
1.00
1.85
2.58
2.45
3.57
2.25
1.00
3.25
0.00
2.74
3.30
0.50
4.23
4.25
4.20
T e l l i g e n t S y s t e m s
3.43
4.15
4.15
3.10
2.50
2.75
0.00
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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■ 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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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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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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FOR MARKETING LEADERSHIP PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013 12
© 2013, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited July 9, 2013
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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