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Meet At The Gartner CRM Summit? September 6, 2008

Posted by Elana Anderson in Marketing, Marketing Technology.
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I’m off tomorrow (Sunday, 9/7) to DC and the Gartner CRM Summit. I’m excited to attend my first Gartner event — understandably, I’ve been a Forrester bigot until now… — and to see how the other half lives. If you are planning to attend and want to connect, drop me a note and we can arrange to meet up. Also, please plan to drop by the Unica booth. I’ll probably be hanging close by during booth hours. Hope to see you there!

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Goin’ corporate again… June 4, 2008

Posted by Elana Anderson in Marketing, Marketing Technology.
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Well folks, wanted to let everyone know that I’m going back to work for “the man” and his name is Yuchun Lee. As of Monday, I am officially on staff at Unica where I will lead product marketing and strategy (link to press release). I’m really excited about this move. When I left Forrester, I told my friends and colleagues that I was tired of just talking about technology enabled marketing. I said that I wanted to put my ideas into action and go and build something. Who better to do it with than the leading company in the sector? 

I will continue blogging and, although I will no longer be a true independent, I will continue to keep my blog going in the same vein and not use it as place for shameless promotion of my company. It’s also my hope to tap some of the smart minds at Unica and get them into the blogosphere as well.

In fact, check out my colleague Akin Arikan publishes an excellent blog: Multichannel Metrics. Akin also just published a book, Multichannel Marketing (which I reviewed before I knew I was going to Unica). The book includes a lot of great examples and tactical advice. It also does a great job introducing marketers from different disciplines (e.g., direct marketing and web analytics) to one another and making the case for why deeper collaboration can yield multiplicative results. For another reviewer’s opinion on the book, see Jim Novo’s comments on his blog.

What To Expect From Your Web Analytics Tool (Web Analytics Series, Part 2) January 15, 2008

Posted by Elana Anderson in Customer Analytics, Database Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Measurement, Marketing Technology, Online Marketing, Web Analytics.
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In my post just before the holidays, I shared a framework to help marketers think about how web analytics contributes to data-driven marketing effectiveness over time. Marketers agree that they want to deliver more relevant and timely communications, establish a two-way dialog, and generally be more customer-focused and integrated, but many are struggling to make positive progress. Use the framework to understand understand the maturity of your data-driven marketing practices. Then define your objectives and timeframe for making incremental progress. In this post, I want to discuss how marketers can use their placement on the framework to define the key requirements for their web analytics tools. I work with an awful lot of firms out there that are not getting the benefits that they should be out of the technologies that they purchase. Why? Well, I think one key reason is that they are overly aggressive in their expectations of what they will achieve and over what time. The result is a lot of wasted technology — and wasted time.

Web Analytics Maturity Framework

If we were more realistic about what we are trying to achieve (i.e., the business outcome) with our web analytics tools then I believe our learning curve around how to effectively understand and leverage the data would actually accelerate. Why? Because we wouldn’t be constantly struggling with the technology. The free tools on the market are getting better and, while they are not sufficient for marketers that are beyond Stage 1 maturity, they will meet the needs of many. Here is a starting point to help you get beyond vendor eye candy and align functional requirements with business objectives:

Stage 1: Site analysis

Key questions you need to address:

  • How many visitors are coming to my site?
  • How are visitors using my site?
  • How are visitors finding my site?

Core functional requirements:

  • Visitor analysis
  • Referrer analysis (pages and keywords)
  • Strong library of parameterized “out of the box” reports

Comments on the market: These capabilities are table stakes to enter the web analytics market and most of the solutions out there do a reasonably good job here. Expect a more limited library of reports and more limited customization features from the free tools.

Stage 2: Site optimization

 Key questions you need to address:

  • How can I increase site visibility?
  • How do content and taxonomy influence desired action?
  • What would improve site navigation?

Core functional requirements:

  • Path analysis
  • Page and scenario drilldown analysis
  • Drop-off analysis
  • A/B and multivariate testing

Comments on the market: This is currently an area of focus for leading vendors in the market. The once-standalone optimization players – like Offermatica (acquired by Omniture), Kefta (acquired by Acxiom), and Optimost (acquired by Interwoven) – have been acquired and other vendors are looking to add these capabilities through acquisition or organic development. Given current client emphasis on customer experience management, expect this to continue to be an area of hot competition in the near future.

Stage 3: Segment targeting

 Key questions you need to address:

  • How can I logically group site visitors?
  • How can I target visitor content by segment?
  • How can I leverage site learning in other communication?

Core functional requirements:

  • Segmentation model templates
  • Ability to persist segments
  • Ability to create dynamic segments and apply them historically

Comments on the market: Leading web analytics vendors like Coremetrics, Omniture, Unica, and Visual Sciences (acquired by Omniture) offer segmentation capabilities but this is an area where vendors differentiate.

Stage 4: Individual customization

 Key questions you need to address:

  • What is the best content for an individual based on prior site interaction?
  • Should I reach out to an individual customer NOW?

Core functional requirements:

  • Individual visitor profiles retained over time
  • Ability to match profile to current visitor context – in real-time
  • Ability to unify profiles when visitor identifies

Comments on the market: A few leading vendors are really just starting to focus here. Omniture’s recent acquisition of TouchClarity is a good example. Unica is also working on integrating it’s web analytics and campaign management modules in a meaningful way. But, overall, the vendors are just getting started at figuring this out.

Stage 4: Integrated marketing

 Key questions you need to address:

  • How are customers using online and offline channels in the buying process?
  • How can I optimize online and offline interactions?

Core functional requirements:

  • Calculate and retain key profile metrics
  • Track metrics longitudinally
  • Open data model and facilitation of extracts to other systems

Comments on the market: Today, you’re mostly at the mercy of your internal IT shop when it comes to the level of data integration sophistication required to help marketers in large companies integrate their activities across channels. Some firms call upon their interactive agency, systems integrator, or database marketing service provider to help. But, each approach has its challenges. It may make you feel better to know that no one has nailed this one and that gives us all something to aspire towards. At the end of the day, I believe that if the web analytics vendors want to be part of the solution then they need to hire (or partner) with database marketing gurus in order to make real progress.

Web Analytics Needs To Grow Up (Web analytics series, Part 1) December 11, 2007

Posted by Elana Anderson in Customer Analytics, Customer Experience, Database Marketing, Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Measurement, Marketing Technology, Online Marketing, Web Analytics.
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Last week I was privileged to spend the day in the company of several thought leaders in the field of Web Analytics. Dr. Alan Hall, Avinash Kaushik, Judah Phillips, and I participated in several taped panel sessions that focused on how to best leverage web data to improve marketing effectiveness and how to effectively leverage investments in web analytics technology. We were joined by, Steve O’Brien, Akin Arikan, and Karen Hudgins from Unica which sponsored the get together. What struck me most about our conversations (on camera and off) is how committed each of us is to moving Web analytics beyond what today is largely a passive, report-centric discipline towards one that:

  • Improves the effectiveness of individual customer interactions
  • Actively contributes to the understanding of the customer
  • Is a key part of improving marketing’s ability to measure across channels

Five key stages of web analytics maturity

One of the bits of original thinking that I contributed to the discussion was a framework that breaks down five stages of Web Analytics maturity.

Web Analytics Maturity Framework

Don’t pay attention to the stages for the moment… This is not a new picture (I pulled the base graphic from a from a client deck I presented in 1998). And, few would disagree. If a marketer is not leveraging any data to drive marketing communications, just adding a little bit of filtering or segmentation will have a tremendous positive impact on results. But, at some point, our ability to continuously improve results through segmentation levels off. At that point, the way to get the next hockey stick impact on results is to use individual customer data. Definitely not new thinking, but I think it helps level set us that is what “1:1” or “customer-centric” (you pick the cliché) marketing is all about – using knowledge about the individual customer to drive interactions that, at the end of the day, benefit both parties.

This framework can also help us think about how we are using the mountains of web data that we’re collecting to help us move up and right on the chart. I break the role and the progression of web analytics down into five stages:

  • Stage 1 – Site analysis: When we get started, we’re really just trying to get our arms around the data and the traffic on our site. The focus is to understand how visitors are getting to the site and what they’re doing there. But you also need understand why they’re there and whether they were able to accomplish what they set out to do. How do you do that? Avinash suggests that’s quite simple, ask.
  • Stage 2 – Site optimization: The goal, of course, is to avoid analysis paralysis and look for ways to leverage the insight we are gaining about how visitors access and use the site to drive more visitors to the site, to optimize the experience of visitors once they are on the site, and to help more visitors accomplish what they were trying to do.
  • Stage 3 – Segment targeting: As we continue to focus on improving customer experience, we inevitably start to look for ways to segment visitors into different groups either through data explicitly provided by the visitor or through insight inferred from the session and prior interaction data. We then apply the segmentation to customize visit experiences and target content.
  • Stage 4 – Individual customization: At some point, our ability to continually apply finer segmentation and impact results levels off. That’s when we start to apply individual-level web interaction data to customize online interactions.
  • Stage 5 – Integrated marketing: Of course, the holy grail of all of this is fully integrated and customer-centric marketing in which we seek to integrate insight from online behavior with what we know of an individual across other channels. And, we do this in order to inform and optimize all interactions – regardless of channel – with the individual.

The sad part of all of this is that few companies have matured their Web analytics capabilities beyond Stage 3. In fact, I’d estimate that 80% (not based on a quantitative study!) of firms are at Stage 1 or 2. Why? Well, it’s darn hard! There’s tons of data to wade through, the industry is learning as it goes, and the technologies that help marketers move up the curve are still pretty immature and poorly integrated.

So, how will this framework help?

Use the framework to understand where you are today and what you want to work towards and over what time frame. Each stage of maturity focuses on unique business objectives, requires a different level of analytical savvy, and demands different functional capabilities from your supporting marketing technology.

Over the next several weeks, I will continue to drill down on this topic with additional posts. Please add to the discussion by commenting and providing feedback on the blog or feel free to contact me directly.