Multichannel Marketing Metrics
with Akin

Exciting times! The consolidation in the marketing technology industry is producing a big league of solutions providers.

Dreaming ahead into the future, what can companies hope to achieve with this new breed of marketing software and services providers?

The end-to-end conversion optimization vision that still seemed far reaching to me back in February, looks much more limited now given the new outlook today.

Disclaimer: The following perspective reflects only my personal dreams and shouldn’t be taken to represent the positions, strategies or opinions of my employer.

Digital Enterprise Marketing++

It isn’t possible to do the coming future justice by calling it next generation analytics, campaign management, or marketing automation. The step up in caliber requires also a step up in language.

Might the following become every day terms in enterprise marketing technology in 2011 and beyond?

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Tags: Business Metrics, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Search marketing optimization, Web Analytics by akin
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The previous post had concrete recommendations for proving the ROI of behavioral targeting. Several smart reader comments brought together a pretty clear picture.

However, when I was meeting with a number of experienced online bankers in Europe recently, the question that I received was more difficult to answer than just proving the ROI of targeting.

Namely, the question was whether one can expect greater ROI from testing or targeting? Whichever promises greater ROI, shouldn’t that be where you may want to start?

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Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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It is often said that building (or proving) the business case for (site-side) behavioral targeting has been a lot harder than justifying an investment in more straightforward site optimization techniques such as A/B testing.

As a result, you can read independent industry analyst reports observing that some applications that can do testing and targeting (hint, hint) are a lot more frequently used for just testing rather than targeting today.

You can even hear from some of the best known and experienced consultants in the online optimization industry that they don’t feel convinced by the business case for (site-side) behavioral targeting because they feel it is less clear cut vs. testing.

This doesn’t need to stay this way.

The problem is that we have been asking the wrong question.

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Tags: Direct Marketing, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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You might be squandering a huge opportunity if you aren’t using web analytics as a rich source of behavioral insights on individual prospects and customers.

Read the full article published on the brilliant new online-behavior site. There you’ll also see uses of Venn diagrams for behavioral analytics that are more serious than the recent fun with the nerd vs. geeks Venn diagram post.

Kudos to Daniel Waisberg for launching online-behavior.com!

Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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Like most vendors at the eMetrics marketing optimization conference this year, I only had a chance to attend very few of the sessions. But each of the ones I did attend was awesome.

Even more awesome than I remember from past years.

Here are five track sessions that were real gems:

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Tags: Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel marketing metrics, Social media metrics, Web Analytics by akin
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Last Wednesday (March 31st) Eric Siegel presented on 5 Ways of leveraging predictive analysis using web analytics data.

Registrations and attendance were very strong which isn’t surprising because the WAA”s yearly survey had recently shown that predictive analysis is a top question on which web analysts seek to get more education.

You can access the recording of the webcast here.

Meanwhile, Eric was nice and speedy enough to answer all the questions that came in during the webcast. You can access the Q&A on the new Unica blog.

Check this Q&A blog post out even if you don’t have enough time to watch the webcast.

By the way, did you know Unica had a blog? It was recently restarted and is on fire with lots of contributors blogging across the company now.

Thanks much to Eric Siegel for a super insightful webcast and Q&A. If you had any doubts on whether predictive analysis makes sense on web analytics data, then be sure to watch this webcast to open your eyes.

Tags: Business Metrics, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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The great Eric Siegel is going to speak in a webinar on March 31^st on the topic of predictive analytics for online applications using web analytics and other data as input.

In web analytics we always think that predictive analysis is the natural next step and will do great things for us. But most of us, when asked, have a very hard time explaining what exactly predictive can do. Avinash Kaushik in his (otherwise groundbreaking and highly recommendable) book Web Analytics 2.0 (and earlier on his blog) almost downright discourages predictive analysis on web data.

But, this is one area where I think Avinash’s opinion is not as balanced as it should be.

Predictive analysis folks such as Neil Mason and Eric Siegel and myself have made various recommendations in articles and posts in the past to showcase opportunities from predictive analysis. Of course, Eric Peterson too has aimed to describe the possibililties in his paper “The coming revolution…” 

But come and see the webinar with Eric Siegel so you can make up your own mind.

… 

P.S.: I highly enjoyed Avinash’s web analytics 2.0 book though and will hope to post a critique  in coming weeks.

Tags: Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics by akin
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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, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics by akin
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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.

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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, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics by akin
1 Comment »

In a recent post readers and I mulled over the fact whether Amazon really is that cool with their customer analytics and interactive marketing as we keep saying in our industry. Or whether their real secret to success is that they simply offer the cheapest price.

To that effect, Jared Waxman was kind enough to leave another thorough comment as an ex-Amazon’ian. (or do they call themselves Amazones?) Thought, I’d point you to it so it doesn’t go under in its location within a past post.

Thanks much to Jared and Ned and others who commented.

Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, targeting by akin
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