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, targeting, Uncategorized, Web Analytics by akin
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Ask anyone in the know about blogs around “multichannel marketing”, and you will be immediately referred to:

1. Kevin Hillstrom
2. Jim Novo

So, mark your calendar now! The first ever webcast featuring both Kevin Hillstrom and Jim Novo and, ahm…, me, is coming on May 19th, at noon US ET.

Join, The Three Multichannel Tenors, as I have been calling the panel, for three opinions on what online marketers can teach offline marketers (and vice versa).

You have to forgive me for being extra excited about this one!

The three panelists are the authors of the three multichannel marketing books that I am aware of:

Each offers a different method for making sense of the daily chaos that online, direct, and brand marketers  live in due to the ever growing number of channels.

Just the online world by itself is already a mess given web site, mobile, email, RSS, advertising, search, and social media channels.

Similarly, the offline marketing world includes mail, call center, sales, advertising, etc.

There must be many methods to share between the camps that can help you regardless of whether your personal focus is online or offline or both.

——————–

Since the time of writing this webcast took place and must have been one of the best of its kind. See for yourself in the replay!

Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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For those about to compete on analytics – I salute you!

The reference to ACDC isn’t unfounded. After all … data rocks!

If you want to create competitive advantage for your company by using analytics more cleverly than your competitors, then the first question is:

What kind of data will you use for those analytics?

When it comes to customer data, most marketers today have many choices to to pick from. Their (unified or disparate) data marts contain everything from

• transactions
• to personal details
• to marketing contact and response history,
• and in much too few cases also the web site interaction history of individuals, i.e. web analytics at the personal level

Leaders have found ways of using some of this data to leave the competition in the dust:

• Online marketers may think of Amazon, for example, or its cousin in the Netherlands: Bol.com.
• Offline marketers may think of companies such as CapitalOne who grew rapidly thanks to clever direct marketing fueled by analytics (as documented in the book Competing on Analytics.)

Yet at many other companies the customer data unfortunately are sitting idle in the data mart, collecting dust, and are not getting leveraged as well as they could be.

With some imagination, you could visualize the idle data silos talking among themselves and scheming how to get out of their isolation and boredom.

You could say, the data are in a competition with each other to get adopted by the marketer first. For that, each data source needs to make the case that it is the best weapon for the marketer to take with her into the battle against the competition.

“Hey, pick me, I can help you more than the next data silo”

So in the hustle and bustle of the various data sources fighting it out with each other, you might catch following battle cries:

“I am the transaction data”

I come in many forms, for example, shopping baskets at retailers, call data records at Telcos, and account transactions at banks or credit card companies. Since virtually all companies study me already though, it is going to take some more ingenious analytics before you can differentiate yourself using me.

Such distinguished analytics can for example be behavioral event detection, i.e. the detection of changes in individuals’ patterns of behavior. For example, banks do this very successfully by flagging individual customers who may be ready for cross-sales or retention efforts. This may for example be the case when a customer has an unusually large deposit on their bank account relative to the individuals’ personal past deposit averages.

Companies that use me well have increased their marketing success rates 5 to 12 times. So you betcha you can compete using me!

“I am the marketing contact and response history”

Most marketers think of me as just a tactical “log” of past interactions. If at all, I am used for calculating a direct marketing campaign’s response rate.

But in today’s world of multichannel, interactive (or dialog) marketing, I have a much more strategic role to play. Namely, a marketer that doesn’t take me into account is like someone who is talking while turning a deaf ear to the conversation partners’ responses.

Therefore, I am the one who can help you go from mass marketing to interactive (or dialog) marketing. Since few marketers use me well today, you can really compete on analytics with me!

“I am demographics data”

Most companies have some form of me available.

I am often helpful for framing who is in the company’s target audience so that you don’t waste your marketing funds talking to people who won’t buy anything from you anyway.

But I have been around for such a long time, even I can’t remember how you could use me to create a competitive advantage. What can you do with me that your competition isn’t already doing?

“I am the customers’ permission and preference data”

I may seem like a bore at first — after all I represent the customer’s interests and not the marketer’s. But companies that use me well are able to continue the interactive exchange with customers while companies who ignore me lose their permission to market.

For example, leaders in email marketing offer their subscribers not just an “opt-out” but a way to manage for themselves when and how often they wish to be contacted about what. Ditto with RSS marketing. Instead of losing a prospect to an opt-out, you are given a chance to be relevant.

“I am the web analytics data”

Most web marketers package me into reports and good looking dashboards. They use me to make their web sites and advertising more successful.

But since I am used that way by almost everyone already, it is really tough for you to compete on me this way.

You have to be cleverer than that to turn me into gold!

A straight forward but rarely tapped opportunity is to make web analytics personal (download the whitepaper), i.e. to learn about each individual prospect or customers’ current interests as demonstrated by their most recent web site sessions, clicks, and keywords.

This can fuel behavioral targeting, event based marketing, or highly predictive analytics. Marketers can use me to send the right re-marketing, on-boarding, cross-sales or retention recommendation to each customer at the right time.

Companies that use me well today are the leaders in their space, e.g. Amazon, eBay, Verizon, and many others.

————————-

So, if you have so many data to choose from which should you pick?

This will depend on your business and your competition. Most likely you have many more than just a single opportunity. And just like any other marketing investment you want to forecast potential returns vs. costs of getting there.

You’d start implementing the opportunity that has the best potential. But you shouldn’t stop there. Rather, all initiatives that promise a lucrative ROI (above your hurdle rate) are worth doing and should be funded. That is the only way in which you will maximize total returns.

So, go ahead, make your business case and your CFO will get you the funds.

Yes, these days many budgets have been cut.

But just today I was hearing from a business intelligence manager at a large client of mine. She made her case for solving a long standing business problem through extremely innovative use of (web) analytics. This was a business problem that the company hadn’t been able to solve through any other means. And sure enough, three weeks ago she got the resources that she wanted.

For those about to compete on analytics, we salute you. You rock!

Tags: Business Metrics, Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, Marketing Disciplines, multichannel marketing, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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Here is a small nugget from the Feb 5th Webinar with Josh Manion and Bryan Eisenberg. I touched on this in my little intro during the webcast because it is the source of a fascinating disagreement. It is also in the Multichannel Metrics book in chapter 3.

When an online and an offline direct marketer discuss their approach to outbound marketing, this is the one that they disagree about. I am talking about email or SMS channels for the online marketer and direct mail, telemarketing, or direct sales for the offline direct marketer.

Say that you want to cross-sell brokerage accounts to customers who have nothing but a checking account at your bank. This will grow the wallet share that you have with customers and make them less likely to leave to competitors. You design an attractive offer with appealing creative.

But who should you send that offer to? Everybody for whom you have contact information and permission to market?

Certainly not, says the offline direct marketer. The table below shows different sizes of mailings and their effect on your profits. Click the table to expand it in a separate window.

The big apparent difference between online and offline is that offline marketing has a higher variable cost per contact, e.g. call center costs, postage and production fees for mailings or direct sales costs. In contrast, sending an extra email or SMS or serving an extra banner, mistakenly, seem close to free.

Therefore, the offline direct marketer has to take these costs into account from the beginning. 

The cost per contact is the economic pressure for targeting before testing.

1. Look at column 1 of the table, This is the untargeted and untested campaign. Since the target group has been selected too broadly, you will have no chance to break even. The campaign is simply too costly and typical conversion rates these days are too low.
2. Column 2 is after applying super star testing. We now increased the conversion rate to 1%, a whopping five-fold increase!!! Yet, the untargeted campaign still loses money because it is too costly.
3. This is why the offline marketer has been obsessed with improving conversion rates by targeting the most promising segments.  Column 3 shows that. Reduce the campaign to the most interested 10%. Costs go down and conversion rate for this segment goes up. Now we have a profit.

How to Target? 

Various ways of targeting campaigns range from predictive analytics at the high end to simple common sense list selections, suppression rules, etc at the minimum end of the spectrum. There is a lot to be said about the data to use for better targeting. May I recommend a new whitepaper on just that subject: Making Web data personal.

What’s it to me, says the Email and SMS marketer

Having a negligible cost per contact for email and SMS, the default approach online has widely been to ignore targeting, especially predictive analytics.

But there is a hidden cost that we have too often ignored online, namely the opportunity costs inucrred by spamming audiences and wasting our future permission to market.

In the sense that Peppers and Rogers emphasize in their recent books we incurr a real cost when we spam. Namely, the future potential purchases by a prospect become a little less likely since they aren’t listening to us. Peppers and Rogers would say that our expected life time value probably goes down for those recipients who feel spammed.

If the online marketer takes that cost into account, the economic pressure is now very similar to offline marketers. There now is a real variable cost per contact to reckon with.

Therefore, the calculation in the table above is just as relevant to the online and shows why targeting has to come before testing.

Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics 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, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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Coming up this Thursday, December 4th, the WAA is hosting an educational webcast on the topic of behavioral segmentation & targeting.

Segmentation is finally becoming mainstream:

• It is now available in almost all web analytics solutions (even if some solutions’ segmentation capabilities remain more comprehensive than others).
• Multivariate testing solutions too are offered not just for content testing but also behavioral targeting (see Interwoven/Optimost, Sitespect, etc.).

2005

Back in 2005, most web analysts may have said that their job was about improving key performance indicators (KPIs). They would be excellent analysts if they ran their numbers and advised their organization how to achieve the KPI goals.

2009

In 2009, I think that more web analysts will start being explicit about the fact that their job is also about identifying key visitor segments (KVS maybe? Should we pronounce that “kay-vees” maybe?). Analysts need to advise their organizations what the most effective content will be for targeting each segment via web site, email, or SMS.

Of course, multichannel marketers will want to apply the segments not just online, but also offline:

• Why not make the next catalog that is mailed relevant to the interactions that each customer had via the web site?
• Or if an offer has been shown 5 times to a customer on the web site but the customer did not click in response, then why would a company repeat the offer when this customer calls into the call center for a service call?

It is high time that we focus our attention on how to use segmentation effectively and turn it into action.

Just like there was a danger of getting lost in too many meaningless metrics, there is now a danger of getting lost in too many meaningless segments.

Web analysts can draw on their relationship marketing colleagues for some advice here. In direct marketing there is a concept of strategic segmentation. There should only be very few strategic segments, e.g. new customers, high value customers, at-risk customers, etc.

But web analysts have richer behavioral data available to them. So, it is reasonable to assume that there would be more KVS than just the strategic segments.

What is the relationship? Remains TBD. Let’s see what we will learn in the web cast about this question.

SHIFT

For web analysts, the shift that has to happen is that web analytics needs to grow beyond a focus on content, ads, and conversions to a focus on visitors and customers. Granted, we have been talking about  visitors for a long time. But it seems to me that visitors have taken 3d place in our attention compared to content and ad optimization.

Unica signed up as the sponsor of this webinar. That brings me the extraordinary pleasure of joining Gary Angel and Anil Batra on the panel. I have also seen a sneak preview of their excellent content. Without doubt, these two are key authorities when it comes to segmentation and targeting having written and shared their thoughts on the subject over many years.

Come join us this Thursday and be sure to ask lot’s of questions to the panel!

P.S.: Speaking of visitors, don’t miss a great post by Jim Novo on the subject of visitors vs. customers under the backdrop of web analytics vs. BI.

Tags: Customer Centricity, multichannel marketing, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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A few weeks ago I posted the first part of some (unsolicited) advice to the online grocery Freshdirect.com as to whether they would be well advised to invest into social media for their site.

If you read that post, you may recall that Freshdirect offers an awesome site and customer experience but that they have so far stayed away from investing into social media. That is to say there is at the moment no user generated content (UGC), i.e. no uploaded recipes, cooking videos etc.

But the big question that I couldn’t answer in part I was whether investing in such UGC would raise their revenues.

After all, any shopper can only eat so much in any given day, so how much more could they buy from Freshdirect just because somebody posted a recipe?

Well, part II of the post has been out as an article on CustomerThink.com now and you can read it there if you are curious. The answer gets to the crux of the matter of what Freshdirect would have to do with the UGC in order to make it profitable.

IMHO, that is.

My spouse who is a hobby chef didn’t have to think about it for more than a second to come up with the solution. Hey, if Freshdirect wanted to hire a consultant they should hire her not me.

…

Let me wrap up by saying that I heard from my contacts at Freshdirect. They have already come up with new ways of improving their site. Namely, it will now remind you of things you might have forgotten to put in your basket. And that is or could of course be based on other people’s baskets, i.e. UGC if you will.

Very clever!

You won’t feel so stupid when your spouse sends you to the store to get butter and you come home with beer, chips & salsa while forgetting the butter.

Just kidding on that last one.

The forgetful spouse alerter has been invented a long time ago. It is called the shopping list!

Tags: Customer Centricity, Direct Marketing, multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics 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, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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In this little story, you can put yourself in the driver seat of a real eCommerce business. And think through whether it makes sense for this business to invest into web 2.0 style, social media capabilities for its web site.

It turns out that the answer to this question may have a lot to do with good customer analytics.

But this post is just a teaser. The full article is planned to be published on CustomerThink.com in October. This teaser only describes the question really. The answer that is on my mind will be proposed in the full version of the article.

Hey, but maybe you can make a suggestion and help me shape that article with your opinion?

…

If you are a Manhattanite you will know Freshdirect, the online grocery. Their delivery trucks are seen throughout the residential areas of town. If you are not a New Yorker, then I am sorry that you are missing out on this most awesome of online grocery shopping experiences.

Most importantly, not just the web site but the end-to-end customer experience is terrific. Freshdirect delivers really good produce and even some of the best fresh fish in Manhattan. Their bananas come protected in bubble wrap. Should anything go wrong with a delivery, replacement arrives for free the next day.

As for Freshdirect’s web site, it has become really sophisticated over time. To minimize the time it takes to shop you can pull up your previous shopping carts and edit them. You can load the entire ingredients for recipes into your cart with a single click. There are suggestions of other items that you might also like.

Yet, one thing that you will not find on Freshdirect.com today is a Web 2.0 experience.

That is to say, there are no customer reviews, no recipes uploaded by customers, and no videos uploaded by customers to share their own take on Freshdirect’s recipes. Neither are there dinner clubs that allow home chefs to network with each other over Freshdirect meals.

Imagine now that you are a customer experience consultant brought in to advise Freshdirect’s CEO whether they should augment their web site with social media features vs. investing in other ways of growing the business (e.g., advertising, promotions, etc.) So should they do it?

A while back, I asked a room full of Manhattanites that question. And everybody agreed that the mentioned Web 2.0 features would be highly desirable for the customer experience. But then I asked the key question that Freshdirect’s CEO would probably want to know:

Would Freshdirect sell more groceries as a result of these Web 2.0 activities?

The room could not come up with an answer, and neither could I at that time.

Why?

Well, would more New Yorkers switch from shopping at brick & mortar groceries to shopping online because of the Web 2.0 capabilities?

Some probably. But it seems that most people’s preference would have a lot more to do with their life style, whether they have a car, or whether they prefer picking produce themselves. I could easily imagine some folks going to Freshdirect.com to participate in the social media while continuing to shop their groceries wherever they are used to doing.

Will Freshdirect’s existing customers buy more groceries because of the Web 2.0 features?

Probably not, we thought, because a person can only eat so much in any given day. So, how much more could they be shopping?

Therefore, to the room full of Manhattanites and me it seemed far from clear whether web 2.0 would offer a pay back to Freshdirect, besides offering a desirable customer experience.

——-

Now since those days I have received an essential clue from a subject matter expert that shall be revealed in the next part. That insider information reshaped my recommendation to Freshdirect.

I didn’t just make up my mind on whether they should do it, but more importantly: How and Why.

But more shall not be revealed right now. Until the full version of this discussion appears on CustomerThink.com.

Meanwhile, I’d be curious though: what do you think Freshdirect should do? 

Tags: Customer Centricity, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting, Web Analytics by akin
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The eMarketing + Commerce magazine interviewed me recently on the subject of multichannel marketing metrics. There is just a growing interest in this stuff!

Time to look over the fence and get a more complete picture of marketing results. Web analysts have no excuse for ignoring offline conversions resulting after online activity. Direct marketers have no excuse not to tap into all the rich behavioral data in their web analytics data marts. And brand marketers’ worlds are changing into a combination of online + direct marketing as ad dollars are beginning to migrate online by the billions.

Multichannel metrics and methods are becoming a key skill, not to be neglected any further.

Tags: multichannel marketing, Multichannel Marketing Measurement, Multichannel marketing metrics, targeting by akin
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