15 authors, 15 articles. Free, yet with priceless insights.

Learn from marketing thought leaders how to engage with customers and create value for stakeholders in a complex digital world. Covers digital channels, marketing techniques, accountability and technology. Truly a must-read resource for every CMO!

One-click Download from CustomerThink.com (no registration required)

With many thanks to our producer, publisher, and my co-editor, Bob Thompson at DigitalMarketingOne.com and CustomerThink.com

And, of course, all my gratitude to our 15 authors, bloggers, consultants whose insights into digital marketing strategy make up this ebook.

• Digital channels
  • Edward Boyd
  • Eric Enge
  • Alan See
  • Kim Dushinski
  • Jim Sterne
• Digital marketing techniques
  • Ardath Albee
  • Robert Lesser
  • Chris Ryan
  • Steve Woods
  • Naras Eechambadi
• Digital marketing optimization
  • Jim Lenskold
  • Laura Patterson
  • Tom Manning
  • David Raab
• and myself for the digital strategy framework

Together, we set out to puzzle together the silo’d niches of digital marketing into one coherent strategic roadmap. The resulting strategy advice could maybe be summarized as follows (and I hope I am doing justice to all my co-authors):

1. Derive digital strategy from your overall marketing mission and the role that you want digital to play in it
2. Pay attention to the special nuances of each digital channel but also fuse the channels together into a cross-channel approach
3. Do the opportunity with digital marketing justice by making appropriate use of its biggest strength: intelligent interactivity
4. Consider the additional contribution that digital channels and analytics can have on your online-offline customer sales and marketing programs
5. Get more of what you want (e.g. revenue, budget, etc.) by investing in marketing accountability and ROI optimization
6. Derive technology strategy from your overall digital strategy

The following is cross-posted from the original at the IBM Unica blog.

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Exciting news for our IBM Unica NetInsight OnDemand customers and really all marketers: IBM today announced the new IBM Digital Marketing Optimization Suite which accomplishes three great “coming-togethers”. Namely, the following:

1. Combines the Best of IBM Coremetrics and IBM Unica NetInsight OnDemand

Since IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics and Unica our web analytics teams have been merged together like a deck of cards to make the best use of the combined development and best practices expertise. Our combined team now takes care of both IBM’s on demand and on-premises offerings and customers for web analytics.

And as previous competitors, it was much to my surprise that we had been very like minded in the decade leading up to this merger. Both Unica and Coremetrics had been working in parallel to make sure web analytics delivered not just reports for optimization but also provided individual customer insights for refining relevancy of marketing messages.

2. Fuses together: Customer Profiles, Analytics, and Digital Marketing Execution

The next great coming together I see for our customers in the IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite is the tight integration between LIVE Profiles, Web Analytics, and the IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Applications such as IBM Coremetrics LIVEmail and IBM Coremetrics Intelligent Offer. This tight integration is the secret sauce that enables our users to execute more relevant digital marketing campaigns driven by analytics. The IBM Coremetrics suite inherits this product design from the Coremetrics side where this combo had been available for years while other vendors were merely talking about it in Powerpoint presentations.

3. Adds a More Flexible and Open Data Architecture for Multichannel Analytics

Now, like D’Artagnan teaming up with the three musketeers, the new IBM Coremetrics Suite adds increased flexibility and openness to the trio of LIVE Profiles, analytics, and digital marketing applications. This is being achieved thanks to experience and technology assets coming from Unica NetInsight OnDemand. And it is a true 1+1 = 3 situation. Not only can marketers extend their analytical lens by combining online and offline insights (using the new IBM Coremetrics Multichannel Analytics add-on), but now they can also target digital marketing execution programs, e.g. through IBM Coremetrics LIVEmail, using the cross-channel picture of an individual’s interests.

The Result: Two Great Growth Paths for our Customers

All marketers have web metrics available to them. Competing on analytics requires us to be cleverer with our use of analytics than the next marketer.

Technology needs to be our “power arm” that helps get things done quickly that would be very tedious, expensive, and time consuming otherwise. The new IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite provides IBM customers with a “power arm” that helps them go beyond commodity web metrics and move towards digital analytics where discovering new opportunities with segments or individual prospects and customers means more strategic opportunities.

Our customers also have another growth path to go from analytics to digital marketing execution, and from there to integrations with their enterprise (e.g. to their Netezza data warehouse or their IBM Unica Enterprise Marketing Management system), and with the rest of their digital marketing eco-system, e.g. through the eco-systems of IBM Coremetrics LIVEmail (i.e. Email service providers), and IBM Coremetrics AdTarget (i.e. display ad networks).

Now the ball is in your court. How are you going to put all these multichannel analytics and digital marketing opportunities into the race for beating out your competition?

For Our Customers …

Existing NetInsight OnDemand and Coremetrics customers, please keep your eyes peeled for further information by email. Please register for the upcoming customer-only launch webinars. There is no requirement to move to the combined solution immediately. IBM plans on continuing support of the existing Unica NetInsight OnDemand and Coremetrics versions into the future, accompanied by the same industry leading service and support you have come to expect. IBM believes there are compelling components in the combined release that are meaningful and important to your business. In the launch webinars, you will learn about all the great business benefits that our Unica NetInsight OnDemand customers that upgrade will have available. For example, all customers can use their current and new release in parallel during their upgrade process.

For More Information …

Please keep an eye on Unica.com and Coremetrics.com as we will progressively publish more details in the next 10 days of about the new capabilities that our customers can expect. For now, see:

• The press release
• Summary of the IBM Coremetrics Digital Marketing Optimization Suite

Our mini series at Digital Marketing One on marketing performance measurement and accountability continues with a contribution by Tom Manning on management techniques.

Very noteworthy is the following take on measuring returns with new media:

“progressive marketers rely on ROI directed funding for traditional channels and media, and they rely on return on objectives (ROO) for non-traditional, “new territory” funding (ex. parity in search ad exposure)”, from Tom Manning’s article

I think what we have here is another reminder that returns in the short term aren’t always financial but can be strategic. Eventually, though the financial returns have to start shaping up (assuming a for-profit business) so that the initiative can be called successful.

Tom is a partner with Ninah Consulting, who specialize in quantifying and helping increase marketing effectiveness and profitable business growth. They do this with analytical rigor and by producing models that lead to actionable recommendations.

This concludes our mini series on accountability and performance measurement from following authors:

• Laura Patterson, 5 steps for better marketing accountability
• Jim Lenskold, ROI measurement
• Tom Manning, guiding digital marketing spend.

“I often describe the value of brand awareness as the equivalent of half of a $100 bill. Unless you know where to find the other half, there really is no value.”, Jim Lenskold on CustomerThink

Something rarely seen appears in Jim’s article on five key principles for improving marketing ROI within the Digital Marketing One series for CMOs.

Namely, an ROI calculator for ROI measurement. Click the image and see the “Measurement ROI” tab on this calculator by the Lenskold Group.

I have been loving how the authors in our Digital Marketing One series have packed pearls of wisdom from long years of front lines experience into tight paragraphs. Almost taking for granted the hard work that has to happen in order to follow the best practice recommendation.

Nothing comes easy.

Two gems in Jim’s article I’d like to quote. Here comes the first:

“measurements must be prioritized based on the expected improvement to effectiveness, the strategic benefit of gaining insights that can influence many marketing initiatives, and the cost.”

In other words a metrics based approach to metrics!

Here one more gem:

“Key measurements to improve digital marketing include: … Capturing incremental sales conversions and customer value to optimize the digital marketing spend. …”

Advice like this tends to be written out in long, long blog posts or entire books when us web analytics people try to write about it.

Notice the little word “incremental”. Don’t care whether you use first touch or last touch or hold out groups. But the key to useful measurement is to get to that incremental contribution. Otherwise we are just wasting time on numbers games.

Easier said than done, of course.

So Jim article’s hsa advice on five best practices.

Jim is the author of Marketing ROI and an international speaker on the topic. At his firm, Lenskold Group,  his team produces and publishes many articles and research on the topics of marketing ROI, marketing strategies and business growth strategies.

See Lenksold.com for additional free ROI measurement resources.

Marketing budgets have a chance to grow in 2011, writes Laura Patterson in her article in our Digital Marketing One series for the CMO.

But – not  to steal Laura’s punchline – but there is a catch:

Accountability!

I.e. marketers’ ability to prove the returns on the moneys spent.

So, what is meant by accountability?

Laura’s article is a great to read executive summary on that and includes 5 recommendations for getting it right.

Something that I liked especially well in her article is that Laura doesn’t equate accountability with just short term financial ROI. Instead, read how she emphasizes accountability “to the financial and strategic initiatives of the organization”.

Very well taken even if the strategic initiatives must of course in the long term also lead to financial ROI, unless we are talking about a socially oriented organization.

Laura’s article kicks of a mini series on articles about accountability in digital marketing. Her company, VisionEdge Marketing, specializes in enabling organizations to leverage data and analytics towards accountability and operations, and better marketing performance. You may have seen Laura speak at various conferences. She is also the author of three books including Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance Driven Marketing Organization (Racom, 29).

(click to see on Amazon)

See also VisionEdgeMarketing.com for free resources.

It makes sense to have a maturity model as a companion to the new digital-marketing strategy framework . (See the thumbnail of the framework below.)

What’s a maturity model?

Maturity models are well established today. Their purpose is to be a roadmap to marketers. You find your personal “You are Here” point on the map. Then you see what next steps you may wish to consider for further growth.

How does this model (below) relate to the framework (above)?

The framework proposed five major components for digital-marketing strategy:

1. Setting Digital’s mission
2. Deriving the digital strategy
3. Deriving the interaction strategy
4. ROI measurement and improvement
5. Technology strategy

The job of the maturity model below is to score different levels of maturity with each of these 5 different areas.

Here is the Maturity Model

Click to expand

How can we use this model?

Below are three examples of typical companies that you will find in the market place today.

1: Digital laggards

Typical laggards may look like the following spider chart when scored against the digital strategy maturity model. Usually there is no defined mission, or only a vague or basic definition for the contribution of the digital channel.

And everything goes downhill from there.

Sadly, many CPG, pharma, manufacturing, or book publishing companies find themselves in this boat. The reason is not ignorance at all. It is that these business models make it hardest to prove the contribution that their digital channel has on the business. They typically don’t sell directly, neither online nor offline.

These companies will need very creative business and ROI measurement strategies to unlock their digital potential.

2: Digital leaders that lack cross-channel integration

Digital marketers can get very sophisticated within their silo without yet taking a look beyond their plates. So many web teams have grown up in isolation from the rest of marketing (or sit outside marketing alltogther) so that they slide into this one-way street.

Part of the reason for the online-only silos has also been that marketers have tried to avoid their IT departments at all cost. That locked them into SaaS only technologies and clicks & cookies only views of their customers.

Again, it wasn’t for ignorance. For many reasons, IT at most companies has been ill equipped to support digital marketing. So marketers that experienced this voted IT off the island and crossed to using SaaS technologies in the past 5-8 years.

3: Digital leaders including a true cross-channel view

While still the tip of the pyramid, you now increasingly enocunter digital marketers that have moved beyond the digital silo. They are typically building data warehouses that bring together customers’ online click behavior with the same customers’ offline transactions and other marketing data.

They prioritized these (not cheap) projects because they realized a true (i.e. cross-channel) view of ROI of digital strategies was necessary in order for company leadership to take the digital channel seriously. They also use this central data mart as the basis for cross-channel marketing integration, e.g. re-marketing, cross-sales, or retention marketing. 

Even these leaders don’t necessarily apply long term analytics yet. I am thinking of analytical methods such as Kevin Hillstrom’s Multichannel Forensics. He aims to predict longer term migrations of customers across channels or products to help companies decide where they should invest now based on that forecast.

Summary

There are many frameworks and maturity models. They each have their merrits, and their blind spots. See a few good ones below:

• Dave Chaffey: Digital Marketing Strategy Planning Tool
• 64clicks: Omnipresent marketing
• Stephane Hamel: Web analytics maturity model
• Gartner (Bill Gassman): Web analytics maturity model
• Many more …

Take a look around and pick the models that best speak to your own business needs.

Here is a revised framework for digital marketing strategy.

Why the revision?

This fixes a number of shortcomings in the first version that I had proposed 10 days ago.

• For example, David Raab and Laura Patterson, members of the Founders Council of DigitalMarketingOne, caught a critical flaw in the earlier version. Namely, my placement of channels (e.g. Search, display, etc.) in the framework diagram was flawed. I placed them in specific locations of the customer lifecycle whereas they can play a role in many stages of the lifecycle.
• Additionally, I was in round table discussions at the eConsultancy peer summit in NYC, and it was a good reminder that many companies still haven’t made explicit what mission their digital channel has, i.e. how it should be contributing to the business.

Elements of the new strategic framework for digital marketing

Informed by overall marketing strategy

First of all, before CMOs think about using this framework they still ought to start with a higher level framework such as Doug Goldstein’s briliant work at MindOfMarketing.net. That global strategy needs to be in place so that the CMO can now drill-down to define the contribution of digital within the bigger setting.

Define Digital’s mission

Job one is to define how digital is to contribute to the business and to the customer life cycle across multiple channels.

Select your overall digital strategy

Based on your digital mission your CMO can now derive the overall approach in terms of presences that you should prioritize (e.g. mobile, Facebook, website, etc.) and their related “site types” or business models, i.e.

1. eCommerce,
2. lead gen,
3. customer service,
4. content/publishing,
5. or brand marketing.

Based on these decisions you can then derive the top five KPIs and targets that you should work towards. You can also form an initial opinion on the ad channels that suggest themselves for the audience that you wish to reach.

Interactivity

As pointed out in the last post, interactivity is what digital is really good at. So the new framework retains the prominent role for interactive marketing across the customer lifecycle. I removed the reference to channels (e.g. search, etc.) however since each channel can play a role in multiple lifecycle stages.

ROI measurement and optimization

The other strengths of digital are measurability and testing. This needs to be put to use towards continuous improvement. Using the insights marketers change their investments in the familiar cycle of continuous optimization.

Unlike the original web analytics cycle of continuous improvement however, the emphasis here is that the continuous improvement applies not just to web pages and advertising. But you want to apply it to your entire digital and interaction strategy.

Technology strategy and selection

Finally, your use of digital marketing technology should of course be determined by the digital and interactive marketing strategies that you are going after.

When talking about retailers’ savings / discount cards, the first thing the analytics industry used to point out was the benefit for customer identification. The card helped tie transactions to known customers or households and facilitated the range of well known customer analytics such as: Market basket analysis across transactions Shopping preferences segmented by any demographic information that was supplied when signing up for the card Loyalty analysis in terms of RFM and latency Response analysis to preceding marketing contacts Marketing targeting analysis based on past purchases

And so Wikipedia still says: “The store — one might expect — uses aggregate data internally (and sometimes externally) as part of its marketing research. These cards can be used to determine, for example, a given customer’s favorite brand of beer, or whether she is a vegetarian.”

So we should add a point #6 to the list above, i.e. turn the customer data into a revenue generating product that the store can sell to others.

But why a savings card when credit cards help identify you anyway?

Do you recall the last time you paid cash for the weekly basket at the supermarket? Or for any clothing item or really any item above $20 at a retailer?

So, given that the use of credit cards is pervasive and the card reveals name and credit card ID of shoppers, what is the point of needing a loyalty card anymore? (Never mind whether it is an actual plastic card or a virtual card on your Smartphone that is scanned into the register).

Doesn’t the credit card identify you sufficiently anyway?

Granted, there is a law against reverse credit card append, i.e. matching your credit card number against a database with addresses and contact information. But using just the name from your card + your zip code (that you sometimes get asked at the cash register) retailers can match your data against 3d party databases to satisfactory degrees without violating the reverse append rules (see e.g.  Address Capture).

The point needs to be marketing (while analytics are only a supporting act)

The difference that remains to credit cards is that savings cards can establish permission to market. This may include:

1. Permission to contact you, if you opt-in
2. Permission to sell your data, if you opt-in

So the point is about being able to establish marketers’ ability to contact the individual with marketing messages. Then the analytics and the additional demographic data come in with the aim of making those marketing message more relevant.

Retailers can use the data directly or sell it to other markters that have essentially the same goals.

While frequent buyer cards (e.g. airline miles) enlist the customer in a rewards scheme and attitude, savings cards are just a key to getting the advertised discount in a store. So that is another reason why the burden is on marketers to use the savings card “relationship” for something useful.

How well is it working?

If the point is better marketing then how well is it being done today by marketers?

Do you feel you are getting relevant information in your inbox or mail box by the merchants where you are using savings cards?

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?

Marketing Mix Management (MMM)

Today’s discussion is at the level of point solutions such as search bid management tools (for PPC) and demand side platforms (for display advertising). In coming years, will we see all these combined into a single solution for MMM?

MMM would not only allocate advertising budgets towards marketing mix optimization. It would also automate the execution of these ad strategies, their testing, and the data collection into marketing performance management.

Marketing Performance Management (MPM)

Today’s discussion is at the level of web analytics, benchmarking, landing page and site optimization, social media monitoring, predictive analytics, BI, analytical CRM, social CRM, etc.

In coming years, will we see all these combined into a single MPM environment?

MPM would have to combine the aforementioned point solutions for analytics into one interoperable data environment. Users would want drag & drop flexibility to analyze across silos. Think Minority Report.

The data that flows into MPM would include in-house data marts with sensitive information. That means that we may see the pendulum swinging back to in-house software for things such as web analytics.

Interactive Marketing (IM)

IM is the successor to behavioral targeting and direct marketing. It is based on the accepted notion that marketing is more successful when it is timely and relevant. Therefore, interactions via websites, IVR, email, and any other addressable channel should take into account each user’s past and current behavior to personalize content and marketing offers.

Marketing – Fulfillment Synchronization (MFS)

The dream of automating marketing mix execution requires good synchronization with fulfillment. After all, you wouldn’t want to advertise on product XYZ if it is out of stock. And your ability to set a max PPC bid price for product ABC depends on its true margin, i.e. includes product costs and not just ROAS (ROAS=revenue/ad costs).

Companies such as Amazon have been working on creating ads programmatically for years based on inventory. MFS would take this capability to the enterprise software market.

Marketing Operations Management (MOM)

Already used by the largest marketing operations today, MOM is the successor to spreadsheets, notes on napkins, and the like. It is used e.g. at one famous furniture retailer to orchestrate the development of their catalogues. If any of the other ideas above are to become true, hordes of marketers in the organizations need to work together like a machine. Digital assets need to be created in support of personalized messaging. MOM provides project and workflow management on steroids to facilitate all that.

 …

One level down we may see practical applications that include software and services in support of specific steps in the customer lifecycle. These more confined solutions may help companies start small, prove value, and grow from there.

On-Boarding Concierge

Successful on-boarding is key for turning newly acquired customers into clients with a high lifetime value expectation (e.g. in banking). The automated concierge would connect to marketing performance management and interactive marketing in order to monitor and orchestrate what needs to be done.

Re-Marketing Optimizer

Re-marketing may be the oldest trick in the book. But it is still tricky to predict who needs just a reminder vs. who needs an incentive to come back. The re-marketing optimizer would provide that intelligence based on marketing performance management insights and connect to interactive marketing to get the message out.

Multichannel, Multi-touch Marketing Attribution

Point solutions for marketing attribution online vs. response attribution in direct marketing need to merge into one multichannel platform. Marketers should ask software vendors for more than just attribution reports. They should also ask for advice on which touch points deserve how much of the credit. Ideally, the marketing mix modeling function would also be covered by providing advertisers with a prediction as to what they can expect from placing their next ad dollar in each channel.

…

And the list could go on and on.

…

None of the above can replace good old fashioned, customer service with a smile.

But for companies that are already doing a good job at taking care of their customers and building products that delight, the next step can be to compete on Marketing.

Exciting times should be ahead for that.

For those about to rock & roll with marketing, I salute you.