Multichannel Marketing Metrics
with Akin

In part 1 of this series I summarized the crossroads at which digital marketing has arrived in 2010. In this part we will look at the surprising advances that direct marketing has made in the past two years.

The old-new direct marketing: Outbound

What web marketers don’t realize is that the new direct marketing (since the late 90s) has been a highly digital discipline in terms of the sophisticated, predictive analytics that were employed. Just not so digital in terms of the channels through which messages were brought out.

But why do we still have so much spam and junk mail then?

Because, while direct marketers employed PhD level analytics they lacked any timely data on their customers’ current interests. So the predictions were only true on average.

It’s like having a GPS device that tells you the neighborhood in which you are currently driving but can’t tell you which street corner you need to turn at.

The new-new direct marketing: outbound and Inbound and real time

The increasing digitalization and integration of channels made inbound and real-time marketing possible. Now, while a client is still on your website, or on the phone with your call-center, in front of your ATM, or using their mobile phone application to interact with you, the new direct marketer’s sophisticated analytics can be fed with real time context. That puts them in the position to refine their offer decisioning (i.e. behavioral targeting) on the spot.

Direct marketers from many industries have taken notice and expanded their ambitions to embrace the real time in their work. Thanks for that, web analytics are now increasingly on their minds too as a rich source of very current behavioral data.

Examples of the new-new direct marketing:

• Banks in Europe and the US have implemented interactive marketing programs that target individuals behaviorally in a consistent and analytical manner, regardless of which channel the interaction is on, i.e. the branch, the web, the phone, or outbound channels.
• Telcos in Australia, Europe, and US are including web behavior as part of their scoring calculations for attrition risk
• Multiple large, high-tech, B2B businesses in the US have designed demand generation marketing programs that integrate the web with other channels of interaction.
• Cable TV operators in Europe have implemented marketing programs that deliver targeted ads through direct TV. They are able to follow up consistently through phone, email, and web to nurture their leads and measure response across.
• With retailers, the degree to which the web team is asked to participate in a one-to-one marketing program depends on whether the team rolls up to the CMO or whether it is silo’d within an eCommerce, i.e. sales function. In the latter case, the web tean is told to focus on the website alone and it is difficult to get funding for cross-channel projects.

Overall though, we do seem to be heading towards a tipping point some time in the coming years.

Europe vs. USA, who is ahead?

From working with companies across continents, I gain the impression that more Europeans have been working on integrated marketing vs. Americans.

This is despite the fact that Europeans are much more concerned about privacy.

More European companies seem to have implemented sophisticated cross-channel programs or are issuing related projects. Until this year maybe, where noticably more American marketers are launching similar projects.

But until recently I felt as if the average American marketer was still building “Marketing Cadillacs” whereas Europeans were building “Marketing BMWs”.

Add to that the fact that Europeans (and Asians) are also ahead in their adoption of mobile devices including the willingness to interact with marketing messages.

Then you wonder what happened to the days when America was still 5 - 7 years ahead of Europe with any business innovation.

Wake up call!

—

In the final part of this series we will look at web marketing that has truly become multichannel in 2010.

Tags: Direct Marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, multichannel marketing by Akin
5 Comments »

In the two years since publishing the Multichannel Metrics book, the face of marketing has changed drastically.

We are entering a critical crossroads in 2010.

By 2013, will we look back and find that this was the year when marketers from online and other marketing teams first realized how similar their goals have become and took steps towards integration across camps?

Or will we look back and find that the camps remained ignorant of each other and instead set in stone silo’d technologies making integration more difficult than ever? 

What do you mean, web and direct marketers’ goals are aligned now?

Marketers have had no choice.

Greatness has been thrust upon them!

Direct marketers

1. Have seen marketing dollars beginning to shift from offline to online
2. Finally see clearly that a large portion of interactions with their customers has moved online. For example, according to anecdotal feedback from several older European banks, 25% to 50% of their clients use online banking now. Some financial institutes acquire the majority, if not all, customers online.

Online marketers

1. Have had to abandon their silo’d, website-centric thinking because their websites are now only one component of their total web presence. Other presences include social media, mobile sites, behaviorally targeted ads and personalized emails.
2. They may continue to treat the offline as a step child for another couple years. Yet, they are already adopting multi-online-channel marketing practices for the purpose of integrating all these web presences.
3. The latter has required them to move from their traditional focus on aggregate level metrics and dashboards to looking at data about individuals across website, mobile, social, and advertising. This experience with individual level data will also make it easier for them to integrate their customers’ offline interactions down the road.

As a result, both online and direct marketers are now pursuing multi-channel data integration at the level of individual prospects and customers. Both camps do this for the purposes of

1. behavioral targeting,
2. better understanding of marketing ROI.

The technology gap is closing

While all vendors talked the talk for 360 degree views, the reality was different. Web analytics data was far removed from a direct marketers’ access.

• After all, the data are owned by the web team who couldn’t care less about individual level data at that time.
• The data are also hosted remotely at SaaS based web analytics vendors that prioritized reporting and good looking charts over granular data. As a result, data feeds (while available) would come with no SLAs. A feed might or might not arrive at the agreed time of night. That made it too unreliable for driving interactive (let alone real time) marketing programs.

Meanwhile, web marketers could integrate analytics based targeting into email marketing only by bridging the gap between several vendors and paying for integration services.

These technology gaps are now increasingly closing.

• Omniture is positioning its online marketing suite along with integrations with ESP partners through its Genesis program.
• Unica is positioning both
  • Its eMessage and Interact products for email and web personalization integrated with Unica’s web analytics and campaign management products for enterprise clients
  • Its recently launched Interactive Marketing OnDemand product where SaaS based customers use web analytics, email, and web personalization within a single application and UI.

The crossroads

This alignment of methods, goals, and technology represents our arrival at a crossroads.

(note added on March 12th): Maybe the word alignment is too much said.  But methods, goals, and technology are now more parallel and similar than ever.

But will we leave these crossroads into an integrated future or will we set in stone two silo’d multichannel worlds between online and direct marketing teams?

That is the big question.

—

In part 2 we will look at direct marketers vs. digital. Then in part 3 we will review where multichannel web marketing stands in 2010.

Tags: Business Metrics, Direct Marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics, multichannel marketing by Akin
1 Comment »

I have to say, I am growing increasingly annoyed with the silo’d nature of the discussion that seems to still be dominating our web analytics industry.

We have been so silo’d that, for example, even something as adjacent to web analytics as audience measurement and its vendors (i.e. the comScore, Hitwise, Compete of the world) seem to appear more like second class citizens in our discussions. Meanwhile, 90% of the chatter among web analytics vendors, consultants, and bloggers seems to focus only on core web analytics topics and vendors.

A symptom that should give us pause is that most of our guru authors and bloggers - who are such rock stars to us web analytics people - are utterly unknown outside our little niche. Forget offline marketers, not even other online marketers know them!

Surely that isn’t because “the others” are all stupid and don’t understand performance optimization.

Honestly, I don’t know exactly why we seem to be such a silo’d breed. It is probably just a function of specialization in the workplace. Web analysts handle web analytics tools, multivariate testing, voice of customer, and maybe participate in behavioral targeting. But

• Who owns audience measurement / competitive intelligence? Probably a shared function with marketing/PR?
• Who owns social media monitoring? More often the “social media manager” or PR rather than the web analyst?
• Who owns search optimization tools? SEO and PPC teams, of course. (And they too can be separated from each other in larger organizations)
• Who owns email marketing? The direct or customer marketing functions.
• Who owns ad servers and behavioral targeting networks? The online marketing or media team
• Who owns site performance? IT
• Who owns the replay stuff? Web developers?

If there is any way out of this strange situation it is probably to be found in embracing the different aspects of web marketing in a more balanced fashion instead of losing ourselves in increasingly nuanced web analytics details that seem esoteric and boring to people outside our niche.

Might we find bigger gains in 2010 by looking more for a breadth-first approach vs. continuing our deep dive?

Take search marketing as an example

The diagram below shows the search marketing funnel starting from potential visitors, i.e. users of the search engines (or their content networks). The search marketer aims to acquire them on site and then lure them deeper into the funnel to engage, persuade, and convert.

The diagram then lists the different categories of marketing tactics and technologies that are involved in moving prospects through the funnel. Let’s take a deeper look at each category.

1. Audience measurement and influence

This category includes more items than one might think at first glance, namely the following.

2. Search marketing

This category includes the most obvious items associated with search marketing optimization:

3. Landing page management, and 4. site management

These categories include similar items that I shall list together here. But it makes sense to keep them as two categories because the vendors/tools for landing page management are sometimes not the same ones as those used for managing content on the rest of the site.

Not to even mention product recommendations, product reviews, etc.

Is that all?

No, there is much more that is critical. Search visitors will often not convert on their first visit. So re-marketing is essential.

More importantly, maybe, the customer life cycle doesn’t end with the first purchase. That is in fact when the work of the customer marketer only begins and the life cycle continues with on-boarding, growing lifetime value, attrition risk detection, and win back. Some additional tactics and technologies that are involved on the online channels include the following:

5. Interactive Marketing

Do we really need all of that … stuff … to optimize search marketing?

If your goal is merely to improve search marketing, e.g. PPC, you need nothing more than a Google AdWords account while paying attention to the built-in couple of metrics. But if you are after optimization, then the above are truly all part of the funnel or chain. Each of these pieces are truly needed and will pay for themselves.

And we are supposed to integrate that with web analytics?

As a supporting function and nerve center, web analytics has the potential to glue most of these elements together. When done right this could make your web analytics people some of the best known employees across all of these teams.

But you would be forgiven if you are thinking that integrating all of these functions with web analytics could be too big of an effort and cost. That is precisely why vendors such as Omniture and Unica are building out online marketing suites.

Today, not all of the above are available (and integrated) within one vendor’s suite. But that day will come because there is a real need by marketers.

Tags: Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Search marketing optimization, Web Analytics by Akin
No Comments »

“The best things in life are free”, they say, and organic search traffic might seem free at first glance.

But in truth, as you will know, organic search isn’t free at all. It requires hard SEO work upfront before you can rank well for highly coveted keywords.

This wizard is for any marketer looking to get more business results (traffic + outcomes) from organic search (and who doesn’t?). It walks the analyst through a series of steps for increasing results, e.g. by identifying the keywords to prioritize for SEO, doing the on-site and off-site SEO, and optimizing your web marketing for organic search visitors.

Click here to start the SEO wizard Click here for a bird’s eye view, i.e. summary flow chart

This wizard is the third example of an expert system that I got a chance to work on now. The wizards aim to help web analysts (and in this case also search engine marketers) with their complex work. Earlier releases were the wizards for PPC optimization and troubleshooting a drop in website conversions.

Couple comments and observations:

• As always I would like to point out that these wizards can neither replace the need for experienced SEMs nor web analysts. The goal of the wizards is just to make their work more systematic.
• A good example of why this is true may be the following. Namely, for any specific website, an experienced SEO can probably point out the 20% of the steps in this wizard that will help achieve 80% of the results. In contrast, in the wizard all recommendations seem to be of equal priority / importance. That is a bit of a flaw with this SEO and also the PPC wizard, I have to concede.

As I am not an SEM myself (neither SEO nor PPC), this wizard will only become truly exciting with the help of user comments that can be added to any step of the wizard.

Look forward to hearing what people think and hope that this proves helpful.

Tags: Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Search marketing optimization, Web Analytics by Akin
1 Comment »

This Thursday, Angie Brown from Elsevier is presenting live in a webinar within the Web Analytics Association’s webcast series. She is going to share some very clever examples of her web analytics work at the publishing giant.

I had the chance to listen to Angie’s presentation live at Unica’s annual customer conference earlier this year in Paris. Her anecdotes about using web analytics to inform offline and other strategies showcase that the insights go much further than just to improve the website or advertising.

As the webcast is sponsored by Unica, I will get to follow Angie’s featured presentation with a few words on Unica’s view of next-generation use of analytics.

Register here to attend live on Thursday at noon US ET or to receive the recording link after the live event.

Tags: Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics by Akin
No Comments »