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!
Ever since the brilliant Nerd-Geek-Dork Venn diagram below started zipping all over blogs in Sept 2009, I have been waiting for genius to strike me so that I might think of ways to apply this to the analytics topic.
Sadly, genius never struck.
But here are a few Venn diagrams anyway that kind-of, sort-of make sense and contain a few useful reminders.
The Analyst vs. Change Agent Venn Diagram
A good reminder how critical both business acumen and political skills are so that analysts can be the change agents that we so much desire to be.
The Bean Counter Venn Diagram
A web / marketing analyst also needs to balance an eye towards saving money with an entrepreneurial spirit towards identifying new sources of cash. Veer off too much into one or the other direction, you might be either a bean counter or something worse.
The Segmentation to Recommendation Venn Diagram
A good reminder how critical segmentation is to analysis because static reports probably never tell a story that leads to action. Good reminder also that the true goal of analysis is to get to recommendations as Eric Peterson was pointing out in his keynote at the eMetrics Marketing Innovation Summit conference in San Jose in May.
The Business Optimization Venn Diagram
The purpose of the last one is to remind how web analytics by itself just doesn’t lead to web business optimization. It needs to be combined with customer analytics and put into context with the wider marketing history. The latter refers to preceding marketing touch points and each individuals’ responses (e.g. did or didn’t click-through on an email that they received).
Another possibility that arises at the center of this Venn diagram is interactive marketing. My colleagues and I at Unica take interactive marketing verbally, i.e. the kind of targeted marketing communications that take into account each customer’s past and current actions. That makes the combination of web analytics, customer analytics, and marketing history indispensable.
Today is another exciting day in the history of web analytics.
Or was today another step forward on the inevitable path of web analytics (as we knew it) to becoming history?
For Unica’s read of today’s news, check my post on IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics on Unica’s blog.
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:
Earlier this week, Unica announced the addition of innovative social media marketing capabilities for users of our online marketing solutions. Among these capabilities are Social Media Analytics for Unica’s web analytics solution, NetInsight. And one component of these capabilities is the integration of Twitter analytics into website stats.
More specifically, Unica’s Solutions Pack released today enables customers of Unica NetInsight, NetInsight OnDemand, and Interactive Marketing OnDemand to:
Tweets are included within a regular website profile in Unica NetInsight which makes it possible to view website visitation statistics within the same charts as the trend of Tweets obtained from the Twitter API.
Unica NetInsight report on trend of Tweets vs. site visits and conversions
Tweet trends for the keywords that you specified can also be broken out separately as seen in the above screenshot. For example, Unica is monitoring tweets on hash tags such as #measure, #SEM, #CRM, #emailmarketing, #interactive, etc.
As seen in the next screenshots, tweets can of course also be monitored intra-day. Alerts can be set up that send an email to responsible social media managers when the volume of tweets on a certain topics exceeds thresholds.
Unica NetInsight report on Tweets by hour by Tweet topic
As mentioned earlier, Tweets can also be tied to individual Twitterers and reported that way to identify top influencers for your brand or targeted topical keywords.
Unica NetInsight report on top Twitterers by Twitter hash tag
You can also drill to individual Tweets and read their content to understand context. Unica NetInsight’s limitless flexibiliy is showcased nicely by the fact that a simple click on any individual Twitter’s comment will hyperlink the analyst directly to that individual’s Twitter page to see all their updates or to respond to them directly.
Unica NetInsight drill down to individual Tweets
With the full text available, it is possible to set up metrics in NetInsight such as “Re-tweets”. Now, you can measure for example how viral your own tweets are, i.e. how often you get re-tweeted.
How does it work? You simply set up a metric that starts with “RT” and contains the text pattern from your original update.
The latter also works for Twitter’s newly announced Promoted Tweets. This way you can identify engagement with your promoted Tweets even if they did not click-through to your site.
Going from Twitter Analytics to Action
As always with Unica, the story doesn’t stop with reporting but extends into action. For Twitterers where CRM records contains both the Twitter ID and customer registration, or website cookie information, Unica Interactive Marketing can turn analysis into action.
For example, provided that permission to market exists
The latter bullet point also applies to click-throughs from Promoted Tweets. In your promoted tweets, just as with any other tweets, simply make sure that hyperlinks back to your site include tracking codes. That way your web analytics can attribute the source of the click-through for the session.
For more information
For more information about the Solutions Pack for Social Media Analytcis, Unica customers can contact their account managers.
As a final note, Unica absolutely also recommends that customers use social media monitoring solutions such as Radian6, Scoutlabs, and Viral Heat for more complete monitoring. Some of these solutions also provide APIs. It is the plan to provide similar integrations for these APIs.
Unica announced the addition of innovative social media marketing capabilities this week. Among these capabilities are Social Media Analytics for Unica’s web analytics solution, NetInsight. Specifically, one of the components of the Solutions Pack released today encompasses analytics for Facebook applications. This enables marketers to gain insights on application usage and users including details from the Facebook API.
More specifically as a customer of Unica NetInsight, NetInsight OnDemand, and Interactive Marketing OnDemand you can:
Report in Unica NetInsight on Facebook application usage trends by visit duration
You can also include any desired detail from the Facebook API along with the click-stream analysis as long as you comply with Facebook’s platform policies. The API data will help you understand usage trends, success, and user preferences based on available insights about users’
Unica NetInsight on current locations of today's Facebook application users (based on API data on users)
Privacy and Facebook’s Platform Policies (Note: I updated this section on April 27th)
Key to including any insights from the Facebook API in analytics is not only marketers’ good stewardship of this data. This is also expressed in the Facebook platform’s developer principles and policies.
The policies previously used to limit the kind of API data that can be stored, including by web analytics solutions, for longer than 24 hours. However, with the launch of the Facebook open social graph on April 21st 2010 the policies were revised to remove that limit. Instead there is
I think that is a great move by Facebook but clearly means that marketers must act responsibly. It may only take a few violations to create a backlash by Facebook users. All marketers would suffer a set back as a result.
Unica NetInsight report on today's Facebook application users by gender and age range
Going Beyond Analytics to Interactive Marketing
As always with Unica NetInsight, the built in data warehouse stores the granular and complete interaction history of each individual Facebook application user keyed in their Facebook ID.
Unica NetInsight, granular data drill down to individual Facebook app users
Not only can the Facebook application remember its user’s preferences. But by going from analysis to action, Unica customers can also use the profiles of Facebook application users to personalize future emails or website sessions. This assumes, of course, that the Facebook user is identified with their email address or website cookie and that permission to market has been earned.
What data is available from the Facebook API?
As Facebook application developers can glean from the documentation of the Facebook API, rich access to details about app users is available through API functions such as Users.GetInfo.
It is however key to point out that not all data fields from API functions such as the one above are available for all users. Rather, only the fields for which the user’s privacy settings permit access are available to applications. Additionally, some particularly sensitive fields require explicit user permissions.
For more information
Unica customers can contact their account mangers for more details on the Solutions Pack for Social Media Analytics.
One of the most exciting developments in web marketing over the past twelve months has been that the website is now considered only one of multiple components of a company’s web presence. Among the many other web presences that companies have these days is often a Facebook Fan page such as the one from Unica seen in the image below.
Fan pages can include custom HTML content on custom tabs such as the tabs “MIS2010” for Unica’s upcoming customer conference and “Save Ned” for an innovative social media campaign of ours.
These things take effort to create. So, naturally you want to measure usage and behavior to help you improve usability and ROI.
To that effect, Unica announced the addition of innovative social media marketing capabilities for users of our online marketing solutions this week.
And among these additions is the Solutions pack for Social Media Analytics for Unica’s web analytics solution, NetInsight. Part of the solutions pack addresses tagging of Facebook fan pages and custom tabs for tracking with Unica NetInsight.
More specifically, Unica NetInsight, NetInsight OnDemand, and Interactive Marketing OnDemand customers can:
(click to enlarge)
Users can also create engagement funnel reports such as the following example. This shows visitors interacting with the Fan Page Wall vs. those who proceed to interact with various tabs vs. those who interact with dynamic content within tabs. An example of a custom tab with dynamic content is for instance the Save Ned tab on Unica’s Facebook Fan Page.
Below is an example of such a funnel. (not actual Unica data from Save Ned)
(click to enlarge)
For more information about the Solutions Pack for Social Media Analytcis, Unica customers can contact their account managers.
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.
The great Eric Siegel is going to speak in a webinar on March 31st 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.
In part 1 of this series I summarized the crossroads at which digital marketing has arrived in 2010. Then part 2 explored the surprising advances that turned database marketing into a digital marketing discipline.
Now it is time to look at online marketers.
Back in 2006, my colleagues and I at Unica were still joking about our web analytics competitors’ understanding of multichannel marketing. Back then it seemed much like a scene in the movie Blues Brothers where they would go into a bar to be told by the bar owner that he was interested in all kinds of music:
”Country and Western”
Similarly web marketing back then was multichannel only in a sense similar to:
“Google and Yahoo”.
The old web marketing
In the growth years of Internet usage, web marketers’ focus was centered on their own website and biased towards acquiring visits to the website through advertising.
Rocket science algorithms would optimize advertising spend automatically, e.g. with automated search bid management. Rocket science testing solutions would generate and evaluate thousands of multivariate versions of the same web page to test which one is best at persuading visitors.
But any thought of focusing on the customer was deprioritized.
For example, I recently called my iPhone carrier to say that I was thinking about cancelling the service since reception at my home was unusable. Yet, when I logged into my online account afterwards the website made no attempt to retain me or win me back.
Instead, it was still busy cross-selling me stuff.
Web marketing in 2010: Focus on individual level data for targeting and accurate ROI calculations
It wasn’t due to learning from more tenured marketing colleagues that web marketers changed. After all, in 2010 the web vs. other marketing teams still remain frustratingly silo’d.
But the addition of new online channels has thrust greatness on the online marketer:
Mobile
Mobile is an inherently personal device. So, web marketers aren’t just treating it as a second website but looking into opportunities for more personalized dialog.
For example, San Francisco based GoodGuide’s iPhone application allows users to scan barcodes in the store to get information on a product’s environmental and social acceptability, as well as healthiness. But users can also set lists of favored and “avoid these” products in their GoodGuide account on the fixed Internet website. When you login to your account from the iPhone your favoreds and avoids become available to you.
It is hard to think of a more crunchy-granola (i.e. socially responsible) business than GoodGuide’s. And yet they have integrated individual level data across channels!
Not as an evil scheme, but as a service to their customers! And with opt-in, of course.
That is very promising!
Behavioral Advertising and Email
While ads and email were mass marketing channels, they are now increasingly becoming an extension of a company’s website.
Advertisers
It is most unexpected, but another push to go from the aggregate to the individual level comes from advertisers.
Why?
As more marketing funds are shifting online, accountability is king. Media buyers want to take credit for influencing individuals that were exposed to ads even if they didn’t click on them. That requires integrating web and ad serving analytics at the level of individual ad viewers and website visitors.
Several analytics vendors, including Unica, make that possible now.
Social Media
Finally, social media pushed web marketers over the edge in their appreciation for multichannel integration with an eye towards individual level interactions.
There is still a missing link for integrating CRM with Social CRM in terms of mapping individuals’ identities. However, vendors are already working on closing that gap.
Summary
I am excited for 2010.
