There were a few really high value presenters at last week’s BMA Conference in Las Vegas. Mike Metz from Cisco was one of them.

Metz started out discussing that people are obsessing about web 2.0, but that 3.0 technologies — mobile access, viral video, etc. — are on the rise. Things are changing so fast.

Cisco is getting the message loud and clear that now customers are in control, and push marketing isn’t working well for them. For example, their email response rates are going down. So, Cisco is looking for ways to generate leads, connect with site visitors, and just generally make the entire online Cisco experience more positive. The goal, he said, is to drive more qualified leads, especially in the newer markets they serve in SMB, where an enterprise sales force isn’t feasible.

Cisco is trying to move their web site from rigid and technically driven to become intelligent, personalized, and are looking for new ways to get people through the conversion process that demonstrate innovation.

Some of the ways they are approaching this goal:

Customer forums: Now, Cisco product managers can watch and participate in conversations with customers.

Embedded video: They have incorporated low-end video on their site as a test. The results are that visitors who view these videos stay on the site longer, view more content and return more often. They are more committed.

Product reviews by customers: pretty brave, to offer that, I think. Can you imagine if Microsoft did that?

Mobile web: Cisco launched a mobile web site and have seen visitors grow from 10K to 75K in 3 months. More people watched the embedded video on the mobile web site than any of the videos on their regular site combined, but they don’t necessarily know why – could it be because access to smart phones is greater than to computers (globally)?

Click to chat: Started this as a pilot on 15 low traffic pages. Chat metrics: 43% who opened chat sessions were converted to A leads, a pretty impressive stat. The conclusion is that anyone willing to engage in a real live session is a little further along in the sales process. To pick their pages where to incorporate click to chat, they are doing usability testing to see where it will be the least intrusive.

Virtual: They did their last analyst briefing on Second Life and had a very high satisfaction rate, even though their VP who did it said it was odd to present to horses, unicorns and other weird creatures.

I was pretty impressed with the level of risk being taken by Cisco to try out these new technologies even though there isn’t any ROI basis. And, they are willing to admit they don’t know why some things are successful, or what the residual gain is with customers.