Multichannel Marketing Metrics
with Akin

If you missed the May 19 WAA Webcast with Kevin Hillstrom and Jim Novo, you can replay it any time on demand.

By the way, do you think it will be 5 or more like 10 years before all TV will be much like the Internet?

That is to say, you will turn on the tube and a big bing or google box will appear in the middle of the screen. You’ll type in “Kevin  & Jim webcast”  and get your multichannel marketing fix while sipping a cup of old fashioned tea.

Unless, of course, you see my PPV (pay-per-view) ad show up towards the right of your TV screen and click on it to read this blog.

Meanwhile,  recommendations will appear at the bottom of the screen that are targeted to your remote control behavior.

Hopefully, something better than “Meet exciting online and offline marketers in <your city>”.

Tags: Brand Marketing, Business Metrics, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Uncategorized, Web Analytics, targeting by Akin
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These are great times for friends of business analytics. There are many telltale signs that after all these years, business analytics are still a rising star. Especially so, when it comes to advanced analytics such as predictive modeling.

Analytics, Superstar

In 2007 we were given the eye opening book Competing on Analytics by authors Davenport and Harris. While mostly a compilation of all the various kinds of analytics that have been used in the enterprise, its claim to fame is to motivate that analytics can be more than just rear-view mirror reporting.

Analytics can and should form the strategic basis on which companies compete.

The kind of math that Davenport and Harris find deserving of the name analytics are in fact predictive analytics, i.e. data mining and discovery of unexpected insights in data. In contrast, the kind of math used within most of today’s web analytics and business intelligence merely deserve the name reporting in Davenport and Harris’ description.

Enter: Predictive Analytics World, Feb 18-19 in San Francisco

For the very first time next month, conference chair Eric Siegel and team are bringing us the Predictive Analytics World conference. The timing couldn’t be better!

Now more than ever, businesses require leadership from their analytics teams. We are all asked to do more with less. If predictive analytics are the top of the line, the kind of analytics that are most likely to form the strategic basis on which our companies can compete, then we all need to learn how, and we need to learn asasp.

In my Multichannel Marketing book I review

• why it is so imperative for direct marketers to draw on predictive analytics for prioritizing their contact lists.
• why brand marketers draw on marketing mix modeling to predict the effect of an extra marketing dollar spent on TV vs. radio vs. print, and even vs. online.
• that web marketers can draw on predictive analytics for behavioral targeting
• how central customer analytics teams at Wachovia (now merged into Wells Fargo) predict which of multiple promising offers should go out to each customer in order to make it most likely that overall results will be maximized.

But most importantly, I touch on practical challenges with getting predictive analytics right.

Why attend the Predictive World Conference?

I couldn’t imagine a better opportunity than the upcoming Predictive Analytics World conference for practitioners to learn first hand how to turn the theory into practice.

My personal prediction is that the math is the least difficult part of predictive analytics.

If nothing else, modeling software can take care of the math anyway and make it user friendly to Marketers.

What is much more critical however is to know how to apply the analytics for generating business value.

Of the many things you could analyze, where do you start and how do you go about it? Rather than spending 2009 doodling in the data, here is an opportunity to make predictive analytics a work horse for your company.

Are Predictive Analytics Worthwhile?

Companies that have competed successfully on predictive analytics include for example Capital One. They used to be a tiny, peripheral player and grew to be a dominant giant by getting predictive analytics right.

Take the survey

Predictive Analytics World starts being educational even before you attend. I encourage you to take the informal survey that they just put out. It doesn’t take more than 4 minutes but it will already teach you something, namely about more business applications for predictive analytics than you ever knew. I certainly learned something.

Plus, you can request to receive a copy of the survey results once the polls are closed. Then you will really know how your peers are using predictive analytics.

Get a 15% discount on Predictive Analytics World

The Predictive Analytics World organizers were kind enough to extend a 15% discount to readers of Multichannel Marketing Metrics. Use registration code

akinpaw09

when you get your ticket and save a big chunk of money.

Not a bad start!

Tags: Brand Marketing, Business Metrics, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, Marketing Disciplines, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics, multichannel marketing, targeting by Akin
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So you think you know what this “online-offline” marketing thing is all about? Forgive my presumptuousness–but I bet you don’t know the half of it!

The electronic Retailer magazine published an article in the October issue that I have been burning to write for a while.

When I meet marketers from the online or the offline sides they both tend to come with ready made assumptions about the “online-offline” thing. 

Yet, from having had the chance to talk to both sides, I came to realize that both camps usually fall short in their views. They can learn so much from each other.

Hope you may find the article a fun read.

Akin

Tags: Brand Marketing, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, Marketing Disciplines, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics, multichannel marketing, targeting by Akin
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I love it when metrics worlds overlap! All the time, different marketing disciplines are coming up with comparable metrics but calling them different names, unaware of each other.

Did you catch MediaPost’s article that TNS Media has released a new offering for in-store metrics? Below is an excerpt where MediaPost captures the value prop:

“Dashboard combines information about where shoppers are in a grocery store at any given time, tracking the number of seconds they spend at any display, the amount of time they spend with other products, and then overlaying it with sales information. “A display’s stopping power is a good thing when it generates a lot of purchasing, but if people are spending many seconds there and not buying, something isn’t speaking to customers properly,” he says.”

Online marketers will dig this. What TNS is offering here is to calculate a view-through metric for in-store displays.

Now, TNS will answer the question: Based on how much viewing/attention/engagement the in-store display is achieving, what is the releative sales success for the products that it is advertising? If people are buying without paying much attention to a particular store isle, the display shouldn’t get as much credit, probably. If people however pick the product out of a special display area after studying it longer on average, the display probably should get more credit. Such displays should be used in other stores of the same chain.

I could not spot whether TNS will measure the interaction with the displays by putting people into the grocery store isle, evaluating cameras, or using a panel of volunteers and something like the portable people meter. Let me know if you have more info about this.

Go multi marketing discipline aware analysts!

Akin

Tags: Brand Marketing, Business Metrics, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, Web Analytics, multichannel marketing by Akin
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A Media Post newsletter alerts us to following controversial article in the Wall Street Journal about Chris Anderson’s book “The Long Tail”: Study Refutes Niche Theory Spawned by Web .

There is something in there that is even more alert worthy than the study that disagrees with the “Long Tail” idea. Namely, the community of Internet Marketers is criticized for talking up amongst ourselves a biased view towards business.

Ross Fadner brings this concerning warning to the point in his Media Post summary:

 ”He says the Long Tail theory flattered readers, who were mostly techies, into thinking that the Internet was changing everything. That group tends to have a “contemptuous” view of mass media anyway, he says, and was thusly predisposed to appreciating anything undermining its power.”

That is a bucket of ice cold water over our heads in the Internet space. 

Yet another wake up call that we should take off the blinders and look at the world from multiple perspectives, not just the online perspective.

Tags: Brand Marketing, Marketing Disciplines, multichannel marketing by Akin
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