Who wouldn't want the 'Visibility' piece online (and my 2012 prediction)

So you think you have perfected the online website channel; conversion rate is optimal, revenue stream is consistent, acquisition spend and performance is spot on (lucky you!).
So, where do you go from here? Sure, you could take an early Christmas and kick your feet up, sit back and enjoy the goodies people bring in to the office to spread the Christmas Cheer. Or, you could be doing something unique - something no one else has mastered yet and something that will make you hugely popular should you master it. I'm talking about the 'Visbility' piece, of course.

I coined this phrase back at the start of the year and it's meaning is very simple; "to provide businesses with visibility of what is happening in the social world and effectively merge it with the web site behavioral data", all in realtime.

Just think about it for a second - you have already achieved your ideal KPI's for the performance of the online channel, but what if you could make it even better, with no real significant change needing to be made to your online business, effectively letting you continue what you are doing well already? (low risk then!). What if I could help your business learn how to target new customers or help your business understand who your influencers' are (to keep them influencing), what your poor performing products/services are (social networks is where most people complain or praise something), what content you should be serving to the individual who arrives on your web site based on their likes/dislikes/hobbies and more.

Now, you have the ability to target each individual with what they want to see (before they even know it). It increases your engagement rate (you already know what they like/dislike, so serve appropriate content), likely conversion rate increases, improve satisfaction rate, help promote loyalty and as a bi-product of these improvements, take more revenue online!

It's a no-brainer really but who does this today? No one. In fact, there are technologies (no single vendor... yet), that exist independently that 'could' do it, if only they woke up and smelt the coffee! Think about the business benefits to you, the customer, the vendor and the Industry as a whole - it's a win win win really.

I predict 2012 will see the introduction to such 'theories' whereby they will become a reality - personally, I'm really looking forward to it!
Customer Insight and Social Networks, merging to provide true 'Individual Visibility' - just got to coin a new, whizzy marketing name/phrase for the new internet phenomenon that is imminently (over?) due!

Don't work harder, get Smarter!

So you're boss has just told you that you need to cut your marketing spend for 2012 by 50% - ouch!

What do you do? All the data you need to gather/analyse/predictive modelling and so on... So much to do now!
The old adage that "one half of the marketing budget will be working for your business, but which half?" springs to mind!
Sure, you could look at your usual reports for the information, look at your PPC keywords, attribute revenue and performance to each search engine/keyword and try to work out what is and isn't working for your business - but just take a moment to consider just how many keywords you have? It won't be a few (or even a few hundred), more like thousands!

So, how can you possibly identify the performance of each Paid Keyword? Just because a keyword is or isn't taking most revenue for your business, does that make it a poor performer? What about the touchpoints by each individual on the build up to conversion, have you considered those?

What you need is an automatic bid-management platform; one which looks at the performance of onsite engagement/conversion and feeds what it knows from the web site back into bidding for a better price with the search engine promoting your keywords.

Such a platform (and one I have personal experience with) is Optimine. Who else can make such a bold claim during these difficult economic times as Optimine with quotes like this one: "Improve your paid search returns by 25 percent or more – guaranteed, with OptiMine bid management software".

But looking at the performance of keywords alone is really like looking at the weather forecast wishing you could change it and make it better (such as snow on Christmas day please!!). Ponder for a moment, what would make a bid management platform better?
I can tell you - a Customer Insight platform that looks at the individual level but empowers the business to weight individual activity based on 'Goals' that have been achieved - such as viewed landing page (1pt), viewed product detail page (5pts), added product to basket (7pts), checkout started (9pts) and so on. By feeding information such as this back into the PPC Bid Management platform, I can not only look at the performance of each keyword from a revenue recognition point of view but also ALL the keywords which played a part in the build-up to conversion.

So, when your boss asks you to cut your marketing budget by 50%, now you have a good idea with PPC which keywords you can safely 'bin' without affecting your online business but you can also find golden nuggets of information which help your business boom beyond 25% - how about 250%? A keyword is outperforming expectations today - pay more for the keyword to increase demographic or geographic exposure! You just can't do this sort of thing with traditional web metric platforms - and if you were to try, don't forget to tag everything up!!

eMetrics London 2011

The day has started off well, lots of sunshine and blue sky in Islington, London - at eMetrics too!

eMetrics conferences are a place for all people who are interested in the world of Predictive and Web Analytics to fall into an exhibition hall and attend speaker sessions to learn more about the wonderful world of online visitor behavior and learn about the new features of traditional web metric and predictive platforms (ie. based on this happening, you can conclude that is might happen, type thing).

I'm at the eMetrics London event today promoting a platform I passionately believe in - Individual Customer Insight; not aggregated, no charts and graphs to wow people with, no predictive modelling either - just REAL BigData and the ability to do things with it.

More to come later, as the event unfolds...

What happens when you get Individual Insight right?

I've been preaching, for what feels like FOREVER, about Individual Insight and the benefits it brings to any business. The art of perfecting the offline message based around online behaviours, or perhaps the other way around - knowing what you have done offline and how we should attribute that activity or sentiment to the online world.

Well, I decided it was time to share with everyone some insight I have gathered over the years from customers who have deployed such Individual Insight platforms and the benefits it has brought to their organisation. I should also point out that no one has not benefited from such a platform - all have seen an uplift in online activity, some more than others but all have paid back to the business within eighteen months of being deployed (in fact some have paid back well within year one; try getting that payback with any other technology!).

So, here we go. My Top Five are as follows:


10 x increase in revenue per email  (up to 500 x increase for high value items)
Customers who have previously been browsing high value items on the web site, were targeted with personalised emails during a 'SALE' campaign. The association of high value items, such as Bluray players/LED tv's/iPod's, which were relevant to the individual, saw the average return per email increase from $0.30 to $3 overnight.

$1.0m p.a. incremental revenue from hot online leads passed into the call centre
Where a prospect failed to complete car insurance online and also failed to call in to the call centre within 2 days after the failed online conversion, contact/product details were passed to a dedicated call centre whereby follow-up calls were made by insurance representatives. This resulted in 1/3 of every call being converted into a new customer - previously, that 1 in 3 was a lost online opportunity.

240% improvement in click-to-buy ratio
All products 'touched' by each online individual visitor are distributed to each individually subscribed 'customer' on a weekly basis. This has resulted in a 240% increase in click-to-buy ratio for one particular customer.

3% reduction in # catalogues shipped ($4m saving)
By simply being able to identify which home shoppers were receiving a catalogue but never quoting a catalogue reference number whilst online as well as never calling into the call centre, the decision to stop sending catalogues to identified residential dwellings resulted in a significant saving in shipping and printing costs - without affecting the bottom line!

$1.2m p.a. saving due to online fraud detection
By identifying behaviours that were 'not-typical', such as entering 6 different credit card numbers incorrectly within a few minutes or by flagging up high risk addresses which where known fraudulent activity hot-spots, customers using Celebrus have benefitted from being able to identify fraudulent online activity taking place, in realtime, online. Now, they are stopping shipments at the tailgate, saving on the associated expense and improving customer satisfaction/loyalty.

There are more, there's always something new you learn every day in the world of Individual Insight and I would be happy to share these with anyone who's interested - just comment in the box below with your contact details and I will send out updates as and when I have them to hand.

Online Individual Insight - Is It Really A New 'Big Brother' Practise?

Standing on the Celebrus Technologies booth at ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 yesterday, I had a couple of references made to me that got me thinking "That's a bit Big Brother like to me...". That may be true in the online space, but you telling me most of us who drive a car, use a debit/credit card, travel on the train, walk into a high street shop, are naive enough to think that you're not being 'tracked' by an even bigger brother?

Every road near the office has a road 'traffic' camera on it - but are we sure it's only traffic they're monitoring? Are we sure they don't take down your registration number and count the number of times a day you use that road?
What about when you walk into a shop - what are they doing with the camera footage they have taken of you?
What about every transaction made on your credit/debit card? How much YOU spent, where YOU spent YOUR money, WHO you paid it to and so on.
What about the London Underground - what station did you enter, which station did you leave - what was your route?

You see, BIG BROTHER is everywhere - isn't it therefore only 'normal' that some online monitoring is also taking place? Perhaps more to the point, if I really can make your experience better (online or offline - and I really do mean, make it better!!), then is a platform that performs detailed observations a bad thing? After all, if the platform is genuine and not malicious in any way, you can always 'Opt-out' by the click of a mouse button...

Either way, the choice is yours. Personally, I encourage it.

ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 - The Power of One

The alarm went off at 0510 - couldn't stomach another 0445 and felt 0515 was a little late (if not to mention lazy!), so I compromised with 0510.

After an early start, I finally arrived at Battersea Evolution, London, for the 2011 ExactTarget Connections event. We arrived early yet it still felt late based on the number of people in the hall already!

Either way, after setting up the stand, seeing many ex-colleagues from my Webtrends days and listening to keynote presenters, it was my turn to talk at the booth (maybe I can present at Connections 2012? Hint/nudge...).

Customers very quickly got the message: "Ah, so you provide tag-free, individual online customer data which can be fed into ExactTarget for more granular visitor targeting in eMarketing and their Audience Builder platform" - yes! We do, and have been very good at it with other customers in the same space as you - after all, wouldn't you like me to turn £100,000 into £350,000 for your business? Overnight? What an ROI! How about if I managed to save you £300,000 in eMarketing activities which were not impacting your business in terms of an uplift in sales?

But you know what, my biggest takeaway and most interesting Breakout of the day was the 'Offline and Online Marketing Integration' presentation. We had Tony Mooney from SkyIQ presenting (a subsidiary of BskyB), and he was talking about how hard it all was. We also had a presentation about Doordrop marketing (you know, the fliers through the door that we all love to hate??).
This is when it dawned on me that Doordrop marketing isn't dead! Far from it. In fact, I think it will make a comeback - how about doordropping marketing campaigns to particular known visitors in the online world who failed to convert online, or haven't been back for some time since their last visit?

It's the complete reverse to what we think today, but I think it could make a comeback.
Time will tell, I guess...

In the meantime, thank you ExactTarget for a great Connections UK 2011 - I look forward to the event next year - hopefully with me presenting!!

Demand on the increase for detailed individual insight

It's not news to say 'if you don't have a web site, you're missing out', but what if that conversation became 'if you don't know who is on your web site, you're missing out'?

Numbers these days mean great things when they're tangible. Take for example a bottom line sales number for an online travel agent - sales are down, 50% to this time last year (a worrying thought for those in the travel industry). But why was that? Who influenced that?

If you don't know who or why, how can your online business recover?

Take this scenario, which is typical of a customer insight platform - a visitor (known as ID 12345) arrives on the web site, looks around Summer holidays for 2012 and in particular, focuses on Caribbean cruises worth in excess of £3000. They go away and come back later that evening.
During the day, they phoned the call centre to ask about whether the travel insurance included covered over 65's with existing health complications - bad news, history of cancer rules them out. Deflated, the caller ends the call, but makes further enquiries with another insurance company who WILL cover them. A great result!
They go back on to the web site later that evening, and go to buy the holiday - they enter all their details for the cruise, name, age, address, phone number and more. It is during this process the platform discovers that the traveller is Mary Smith, a long time, loyal customer of the brand. However, the web site doesn't accept their booking due to availability no longer being available.

Consider this in a Customer Insight world - you have all their web browsing history (individual, not aggregated insight), you know they looked for Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises, you know they called in to the call centre and spoke to John Doe on x2233 and you know the message they got during their purchase was 'no availability', so what can your business do for this traveller?

You have a phone number, postal address, email address... Why not follow up via any of those marketing channels to re-engage Mary and show her you care about her business. Offer an alternative cruise and at a discounted price for the inconvenience caused (effectively saving Mary the cost of separate travel insurance).

As a result of this typical customer insight story, the travel company has reinstated it's brand with Mary as a company that cares, Mary still gets her holiday and the travel company still makes some money instead of losing money! All from some simple insight.

Tangible results mean everything. To say a bottom line is trending up, down, static or is +/-xx% doesn't mean much when you want to take action on the information you are presented with.

Use aggregated insight reports to tell you how well or how much you could improve your online business by, but don't try to bend it to do something it was never built to do - provide detailed individual insight. Leave that to a platform that has been doing it for years, has experience and is more cost effective than you might imagine.

If only all online businesses operated this way...

iPhone5 - Why All The Surprises?

Yesterday was an exciting day - Tim Cook, now CEO for the World's richest brand, took to the stage to announce all the great things and gadgets Apple have been working on over the last 12months. Most were widely expecting the announcement of the iPhone5, but as we all now know, that didn't happen.

I've read blogs from others that it was disappointing, no one really cared about the other Apple products, it was afterall the iPhone5 they all wanted. But has anyone thought about the history of Apple since the iPhone 3G came out? Has anyone considered the Worlds richest brand went through an internal re-structuring process to replace an inspirational and truly thought leading CEO, Steve Jobs with Tim Cook?

One thing is for certain though, we can't ignore the sentiment from the public - that knocked 5% off the value of Apple yesterday due to NOT releasing a new iPhone5.

I watched an Apple video a few days back when they were talking about iOS and how iOS is what makes the mobile Apple devices as fantastic as they are today. What is the point to release a new iPhone if the OS is not capable of fully exploiting it yet?

iOS 5 is being released on 12th October - I'm excited! This should make the already great iPhone4 even better - but think back to when the iPhone 3G became the 3GS, a similar pattern occurred. Think about what happened when the iPhone4 was released and how everyone went crazy over how revolutionising it was - if you kind of forget the really bad launch with 'Antennagate'. Now think about just how impressive the iPhone5 could be if it is going to be such a marked improvement over the 4S as the 4 was to the 3GS.

Will I upgrade? I don't know. I like recording my children when we play as a family - will 1080p make me think it's worth the upgrade? Unlikely. Do I care about the 8MP camera when I take pretty good shots with my 5MP in the iPhone4? Not really. Do I care about the increased memory and A5 chip? Maybe; I really fancy using AirPlay mirroring through my Apple TV2. I guess it depends just how well it all takes off.

Example: Customer Insight Delivering Personal Communication

Last night, I was on www.autotrader.co.uk to list my car for sale. As the V5 has not returned from DVLA yet since we moved (it has been 7days now DVLA...), I decided not to complete my advert until such time the revised address on the V5 returns.

Interestingly though, this morning on www.ebay.co.uk, I noticed a creative spot for Auto Trader - and inside the creative messaging was 'Complete your Ad'.

I talk day in, day out about getting Customer Insight into the hands of business folk who need to be able to do just this - reach the right person at the right time in the best way possible. One could argue that promoting an Auto Trader creative with messaging that may discourage me from advertising with eBay might not be in eBay's best interest, but nonetheless, it is an example of individual personalisation which has been gleaned from Customer Insight.

Although I didn't click on the creative, it did get me thinking... if Auto Trader and eBay are already working together to bring together a better experience to their visitors in the online world, why aren't more businesses wanting to do the same? Why the resistance? In most cases, the insight returned by such platforms pays x5 of the spend in ROI and payback to the business (if based on examples I have heard about are to be believed) is within the first 10months!

Just take a read of these additional stories below to learn the true value on gaining detailed customer insight:

10 x increase in revenue per email
(up to 500 x increase for high value items)

Customers who have previously been browsing high value items on the web site, were targeted with personalised emails during a 'SALE' campaign. The association of high value items, such as Bluray players/LED tv's/iPod's, which were relevant to the individual, saw the average return per email increase from $0.30 to $3 overnight.

$1.0m p.a. incremental revenue from hot online leads passed into the call centre

Where a prospect failed to complete car insurance online and also failed to call in to the call centre within 2 days after the failed online conversion, contact/product details were passed to a dedicated call centre whereby follow-up calls were made by insurance representatives. This resulted in 1/3 of every call being converted into a new customer - previously, that 1 in 3 was a lost online opportunity.

240% improvement in click-to-buy ratio

All products 'touched' by each online individual visitor are distributed to each individually subscribed 'customer' on a weekly basis. This has resulted in a 240% increase in click-to-buy ratio for one particular customer.

20% increase in online conversion rates

By better understanding the reasons behind 'Abandoned Baskets', the discovery was made that there was in fact an stock inventory problems whereby mid-value items were out of stock! By addressing the levels of stock, the number of abandoned baskets dropped and increase conversions occurred.

3% reduction in # catalogues shipped ($4m saving)

By simply being able to identify which home shoppers were receiving a catalogue but never quoting a catalogue reference number whilst online as well as never calling into the call centre, the decision to stop sending catalogues to identified residential dwellings resulted in a small decrease (but significant) saving in shipping and printing costs.

$1.2m p.a. saving due to online fraud detection

By identifying behaviours that were 'not-typical', such as entering 6 different credit card numbers incorrectly within a few minutes or by flagging up high risk addresses which where known fraudulent activity hot-spots, customers using Celebrus have benefitted from being able to identify fraudulent online activity taking place, in realtime, online. Now, they are stopping shipments at the tailgate, saving on the associated expense and improving customer satisfaction/loyalty.


Customer Level Insight platforms are an absolute must for businesses and organisations who want to get an advantage in an ever increasingly competitive landscape!

The Emergence Of Social Networks Has Not Just Changed How People Communicate And Share Information With One Another

The emergence of social networks has not just changed how people communicate and share information with one another. It has the power to fundamentally change business in ways that are just beginning to be discovered. The social network is no longer just an interesting technological showcase; it is a cultural phenomenon and the most disruptive technological force in society today.

Consider this, you are a representative for Sports personalities; you make money off the back of the success (or failures) of individuals through PR. The people or personalities you represent are high profile, always in the limelight and sometimes get things wrong, or very right!
Wouldn't you, as their representative, like to know the value (and risk) the individual holds in the Social Networks?

That is where you need individual 'customer' insight. This term 'Individual Customer' insight, is often associated with end-user web sites where personalised content can be promoted or served based around the ongoing profile being built around an individual, from the very first click! But, such technology now exists to analyse in microscopic detail the behaviours that are occurring on Facebook, for example.

Facebook is the world’s biggest self-updating data source, with over 750 million members, who willingly give up around 150 crucial bits of lifestyle information about themselves.

Consider the value of knowing a high profile personality has 250,000 fans - now consider the marketing opportunity you have to those 250,000 fans. Perhaps you can establish partnerships with leading brands such as Adidas or Nike, Cannondale or Scott, BMW or Mercedes and so on. Suddenly, 250,000 fans in the Social Networks have a seriously attractive financial attraction - increase the wealth of your Sports personality, keep their loyalty and increase your own wealth and portfolio by becoming increasingly more successful and popular.

You have the connections, technology exists to feed you with the valuable insight you are yearning for. What are you waiting for?

The Future Is Already Here, Businesses Are Just Not Aware

This morning my 5yr old boy asks me for a computer so he can go to the CBBC web site to play games. Now, imagine the CBBC web site profiling children over time - learning what games they play and the time/outcome of them playing it. Imagine the CBBC web site pushing the capabilities of a child playing a 'game', making something easier or harder for a child to help develop their learning skills.

With increasing pressures being applied by the UK Government to raise the bar on a child's development from a young age (the UK is not as strict as other countries within the EU), using fun methods that involve a child to interact on a site that self-learns seems too obvious to many. Couple that with electronic devices that are more and more becoming 'internet-capable' or enabled, and you have multiple channels open to young children today, whether at home or on the move.

It is nothing new to pick on how the gaming sector has shaped the lives of young people today. But perhaps instead of blaming the gaming sector, we should be embracing it (especially in young children).

The future of web site profiling, segmentation and personalisation is already here and the sooner businesses all over the world develop the appetite to perform Individual Visitor Insight on their own sites, the sooner they will be profiteering, performing and over-achieving beyond all targets ever imagined.

Now, if only we could do something similar with the Utilities sector...

Tags! Why All The Bother?

Tag it! That's what I always hear - put a tag in that page, on that button, in that search box (in fact, make it x25!).

I kid you not. I recently thought I'd check just how many 'tags' are on a retail focused web site who uses a traditional marketing analytics platform - on one page, I found x25 tags! I then proceeded to look at three other pages and guess what, found more tags! In total, across three pages, I counted 57 tags! Who do you think has to manage those? Deploy them? Report on and Analyse them? Developers/"Analysts"!.

I put Analysts in quotes above because invariably "Analysts" are hired to perform analysis on the insight collected from the online channel, yet increasingly it is in fact the Analysts that must build the "tagging doc" that the business will deploy to deliver the insight required for the latest Business case.
 
How much does that Developer/Analyst cost our business again? How much time are they spending not developing or analysing the insight collected but building tagging documents and configuring non-retrospective (providing insight from only today onwards) reports?

Using a single insert file, one which removes the need for 'Tags', will not only save the business significant benefits when it comes to Time to Data, free up the Analysts time to perform Analysis, but also remove the human factor when it comes to tags being deployed incorrectly or not at all. All of which stack up to a business not performing at its full potential and losing out to the competition.

Don't keep up with the 'Joneses', just because your nearest competitor is using a platform from 'X' vendor (and you believe them to be successful with using it - trust me, some have taken 18months+ to fully deploy, which is such a long time!!!).
Take the opportunity to get ahead and adopt a platform which will provide increased visibility of online successes (and opportunities) whilst at the same time freeing up your team of experts to do what they do best, providing Insight that will deliver business and commercial advantages and value!

Is Customer Intelligence Delivering Results?

I have just read a very interesting blog posting by George Hollister, (someone who I value, listen to and enjoy following on Twitter) where a recent study, "CI Teams: Blocking and Tackling is Not Enough" carried out by Forrester suggested businesses were failing to get valuable insight from the Customer Insight (CI) team as they were focusing on Data Integration rather than gleaning insights from the platform. It is a message I heard all the time in my Web Analytics days...

The blog (and study) goes on to suggest Web Analytics is a platform being used to glean such insights, and to me at least, there in lies the problem! Web Analytics platforms are not CI focused, typically run as a SaaS model and are therefore a) costly to export, b) time consuming to extract data into a EDW whereby analysts can really use it, c) it is aggregated!


The blog (and Forrester study) goes on to suggest the problem does not lie with the CI team themselves, or Data Integration but in fact an it is an Organisational Integration problem. Yet again, disparate data silos is the problem! Data that is needed in one silo is 'unavailable', causing delays in being able to glean insight, making it difficult for the marketing analytics or CI team (who are usually located in another business unit, building, city, country...) to include the data, resulting in reduced insights from increasing efforts - all in all, producing far from eye watering results!

To fully empower the CI team, businesses need a platform that delivers insight in a contextualised manner and at a non-aggregated level into an EDW within seconds of the event occurring. Preferably with a platform that is tag-free too! (who needs or wants the pain, time delays and cost of identifying and deploying tags to then build charts and graphs from?). As I understand it, most Web Analytics platforms struggle to populate EDW's in less than 72 hours... Hardly 'realtime'...

I know customers who have done just this and with a CI team to hand have experienced significant benefits in doing so (have shifted them to be a leader in their game in online commerce).

Realtime delivers results; not just in promoting the right message at the right time to the right prospect, but also in getting valuable insights delivered to analysts in all business units, in all departments, in all office buildings and in all cities/countries to glean actionable and relevant insights from to achieve (and most often exceed) their primary (and often secondary) business goals in a very short space of time.

Heard it all before...

Again, I have read another article which suggests traditional visitor insight platforms are capable of providing detailed and actionable insight on the behaviors exhibited by people like you and I on their web site(s). They articulate it in a way that fools you into believing they can actually do it - I challenge anyone to show me a working example?

I hate to say it, but it's all tosh! They cannot get to the low level of visitor insight and I can vouch for that having used most of the leading platforms in the business today. IF (and that's a BIG IF) they can/could get to low level visitor insight, what can they do with it in realtime? Surely, any organisation that wants low level visitor insight wants it to do something with it other than build pretty charts and graphs?
What if you could promote complementary/cross-sell products based on a previous purchase? Or, perhaps proactively let someone know via SMS that their car MOT is due for renewal (before it expires!)? Or, maybe deliver to them a personalised message/offer based around their sentiment on posts in Facebook or Twitter? Perhaps they dislike your prices (and they are a high value, existing customer?) so they have told the world about a deal they got with a competitor? Surely you don't want to lose low risk, high value customers? If you didn't know, it costs approximately 6-7 times more money to re-market a lost customer than it does a brand new customer...

When we live and talk about making cost cuts, why do we never really consider where we can make significant savings on the web rather than throw our money at prospects who will never buy, unlikely to buy or as in the home utilities markets (such as Electricity, Gas or Water suppliers) have bought in to a story/vision but then had such a bad experience they left? We need to know who these people are, in advance and preferably before they leave without buying or have bought and don't buy again through poor performance on 'our part'? The problem, from my own experience, is these companies factor 'defective traits' into their business models. What if, for once, they didn't and it was increasingly important to every energy company to keep hold of an existing customer. What might that mean to wholesale energy prices? What would that mean in fiscal terms to our household bills?

At the end of the day, to do any of the above you need low level, realtime visitor insight. Such platforms exist today but they are not your traditional insight platforms. You might also be surprised to learn the time to data and insight using such platforms is VERY short - a few weeks versus a few months/years/never?

In my humble experience (15years+), I'm yet to see a traditional insight platform deliver such insight to an organisation which yields such significant insights, revenue, customer retention, increase loyalty and more.

I will happily 'eat my hat' if I'm proven wrong (so please show me what I'm missing, if anything?).

Can you bend technology too far?

I hear it all the time. I need this tool to deliver this, that tool to deliver that then a year or few later, they retire to the fact that the technology will never be capable of delivering on a 'false promise'. It didn't stop the vendor selling the software and happily taking Mr Customers money though, did it!

So, perhaps we are now living in an era where there really is no-one platform that is capable of providing a definitive business platform. After all, I'm sure (like me) you have worked on projects where horrendous amounts of time have been spent (as well as money!!) to deliver on 'false-promises'. Add up the amount of money spent, then work out the ROI on that spent cash! I bet its not as good as you were hoping for, huh?

I find myself speaking more and more to businesses that can and do provide a solution to address the modern day business pains, but it's not by using one business reporting platform. Businesses need to consider what it is they need/want to deliver and then work out what they need to deliver it.

For example (and speaking from an Analysts point of view), I might need full, rich data from every data silo, including the search platform, telephone/ivr platform, email platform, web platform, marketing attribution platform and more. In fact, the more data I have, the better an Analyst I can be and the better the insight I can provide! I need BigData then! Problem with 'BigData' is it can sometimes be too much!
So, I need a Business Intelligence platform that can handle BigData; one that is with me at all times, not just restricted to the desktop and one which is scale-able and quick to deploy (and one which won't hurt the budget!!).

So, which vendors make claims to be able to do all this today? I know a few and I also know a few end-users who have a lot to say about a vendors inability to deliver on the promise, now known to me as the 'false-promise'. And that's after a VERY EXTENSIVE tagging discussion, time consuming and detailed documentation and testing processes... I really believe businesses are tired of tagging everything they want insight on. There are alternatives, Atomic Labs with their PION platform or Celebrus Technologies spring to mind - both working very differently but neither requiring 'tags'.

Disparate data needs to come together, I appreciate that. If you think back a few years ago, this was a big problem with such badly fragmented data, however now platforms exist which can 'power customer data hubs' and I can speak from 15 years experience, that these platforms ARE delivering a step change within organisations, are winning awards and and delivering on the promise (with customers shouting about their successes - how many have done that before?!).

Perhaps now then businesses need to step back a bit and take a look at their infrastructure, where they want to be, how they plan to get there and the value to the business on getting there sooner. Cloud based storage is now cheap enough, fast enough, efficient and secure enough to become a possible hosting platform for most types of business, business platforms can feed into 'the cloud', tag-free platforms exist, cost effective BI exists, individual visitor level tracking exists, real-time communication exists... Need I go on?

What Do Visitor, Weather, a CDH And Online Performance Have In Common?

We all know that today we live in a world of readily available technology gadgets providing almost an unlimited ways and means to access information on the WWW. We also appreciate that Social Networks can now play a big part in driving traffic to our web site, as well as away.

But what happens when the weather outside is hot or cold? Wet or dry? Have you, as a business, considered the effect weather plays to your online and high street sales? Usually, it's one or the other; strong high street sales in nice, warm weather or strong online sales in nasty, cold and wet weather. But could you literally have your cake and eat it by addressing online better, regardless of the weather outside?

Which brings me to my purpose of this blog posting; you can now feed Weather data to your Customer Data Hub (CDH for short) which is THE place to store all your offline and online data. Couple that with a Real-Time engine and you have a powerful combination for providing relevant content to the appropriate people!

Recently, Google launched its own Weather API. So, Consider this theory with an online retailer:

With real-time content injection into a browser now possible, based around various attributes known or unknown of a visitor, a business can promote relevant items which a shopper might well be in the mood for buying.

For example, let's assume for a minute that I'm visiting your web site in October and I'm from Southern England. It's now Autumn and according to Google Weather, it's windy, raining and chilly (but not freezing cold) and I happen to be in the market for something that will take the chill off a chilly day whilst I'm out walking the dog, keep me dry for the rainy days and hopefully keep me from being too windswept!
So, when I arrive on your web site, why are you promoting big winter coats, scarves, bobble hats and gloves?
However, in northern England, it's bitterly cold, significant amounts of snow have fallen in the higher grounds and I'm in the market for a big warm coat, scarf and gloves.
Your current web site setup is only really appealing to 50% of your customer/visitor base today.

When it comes to relevant and appropriate communication, we need to consider the above scenarios. Just because we have seasons doesn't mean the current weather reflects the season we're supposed to be in.

If, as a business, I know weather for the region a visitor is coming from, surely as an online clothing retailer, I can promote the relevant products, to the right people, at the right time. Better still, if I know their purchasing history, also at the right price!

Simply putting the location you're interested in at the end of a Google Weather API string, I get back a vast amount of information back about the weather forecast for the rest of the week: http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Newbury

Give it a go and change your location from Newbury to somewhere else above and look at the XML returned. This could take online clothing retailers to the next level of offering personalized, relevant content. All you need as a business is the location (and you can gleam that from a registration process).

Social Networks, are you monitoring them?

When it comes to social networks, positive and negative connotations spread fast. It is usually the negative ones people write most about and they are the ones anyone should be most afraid of.

Earlier, I blogged about how telecommunication companies should be monitoring their web site behaviors more than they do already. I articulated the potential loss in revenue over a 12-18month contractual period could be as much as £3M if patterns in individual visitor behaviors are not spotted early enough - this could and most likely is through defection to another network provider.

So, continuing the theme, Social Networks also play a huge part in pushing potential losses further for a business that is failing to keep its customers 'happy'.
Take the scenario that a visitor is unhappy. The customer tries to solve the unhappiness, whether it be online, offline in the store or on the phone, but fails to do so. They go to Twitter or Facebook and rant about the mobile phone operator. The update is broadcast to the 'unhappy customers' 500+ friends on Facebook who then join in on the 'conversation'. There is a good/high chance that 1 in 3 of those 'friends' on Facebook have a mobile phone account with your network. Therefore, the 'unhappy customer' has a high degree of influence and that should be of concern to your business.

By using a Social Network insight platform, you can get one step ahead of who is saying what, where and when. By combining that with an Individual Customer/Visitor Insight platform, your business can hopefully appease the disgruntled 'unhappy customer' when they call in the store, on the phone or even visit the web site with a token gesture 'gift' or reduction in tariff or free line rental.

I'm sure you can think of better examples to appease 'unhappy customers', but the important bit here is reaching out to someone who could hurt your brand, image and reputation before the damage has been done. Surely, that is worth saving?

Do telcommunication companies realize how much they are losing out?

Today I'm a happy customer who is happily using your mobile phone network on my Smartphone. Happily watching YouTube clips, texting friends, calling friends, surfing, checking email, facebook, twitter and more.
As a BIG multi-international mobile phone provider, you are most likely racking the cash in (and rightly so)!

Or are you...

What happens when I'm unhappy with my phone and/or network provider? Do you know who I am, where I am, how to reach me? Do you care that I'm having a bad time?

How about another scenario. I signed up to an 18month contract, £30pm, and now I'm 15months into the contract when I re-visit your web site. Did you know I had visited you on the 18th July, 2011? Did you track what I did, where I went? Ask me why was I here?

You should have, and here is why:

Too many businesses (that includes your competitors!) these days are so interested on making 'sales' that their customer retention's team is working over-time. Yet if only the business brought the 'retention' program forward and put it onto the web site, that way when I visit the web site to look at ways to contact your company about a problem I have, you could identify me and assist me there and then. Why wait for me to call?
Alternatively (and this is highly common and most likely happening to your business today), I've come to your web site to compare a price I have got from another network who wants my high value custom and is charming me more than yourselves...

Of course, no one wants to lose a high value customer... So, why should you?

Complex Event Processing (otherwise known as CEP) systems can and will help your business identify a prospect when they are exhibiting any of the above scenarios and plenty more. When handed complete Individual Visitor Data, they can help identify when a fraudulent transaction is taking place by assessing exposure and risk during the visit based around behavior; they can model and spot when a visitor is exhibiting possible churn like behavior - if you know this in advance, why not communicate with them in an appropriate way, therefore reducing defection and saving a bundle of cash in re-marketing costs.

Come to think of it, there are very few reasons not to have a CEP but there are plenty of reasons why you won't have one today!
The likely reasons you are not using CEP systems today - 1) they are new (technology wise they have been around for some time, but not really used in anger in the commercial world... yet; 2) they are not cheap! but combined with a Customer Insight platform, the potential ROI for a business can be huge!

Too many aggregated, post reaction, online optimization platforms exist in the market place today and they are not able to handle the vast amounts of individual customer level detail that is available to collect when a visitor arrives to your online digital home. Businesses need a non-aggregated platform, one which does not require tagging to get the right level of insight required.

The good news is that technology exists today and tomorrow you could literally be saving your business millions of pounds/dollars/euros...

So, now do you know how much you are losing out? Put into monetary terms, if you have 10,000 visitors a month exhibiting churn behavior and 6,000 churn - on a £30pm contract, that equates to £180k/month! Now multiply that number by the length of a renewal contract, £3,240,000! Now, how about working out the cost of fraudulent transactions occurring on the web site and the loss of revenue - £3M again a good number?

So, using an Individual Visitor/Customer Insight platform and a CEP system, your business 'could' save around £6M over a 12-18month period...

Individual Visitor/Customer Insight platforms and CEP systems do not cost anywhere near the potential loss of earnings articulated above.

So, now do you know how much you are losing out?

Are We Missing The Point?

Whilst we all panic about the new legislation which was brought into power during May this year, perhaps there are some bits we are missing when it comes to getting a visitors 'buy-in'.

First of all, lets clear up what the directive actually means because it is a little fuzzy. As of May 2012, all web sites which contain tracking technologies which are capable of personally identifying an individual and use cookie based technology to do so, will need to present each and every visitor with an opt-in process. Meaning, Big Brother will not be able to track you and your web site experience unless you explicitly say so. Failure to do so will cost £500k, although today no one knows whether that is an annual 'subscription' fee or a per case basis fee.

So, you could argue that most digital marketing technologies today have a significant problem on their hands. With the law on side with the visitor and everyone being automatically set to opt-out when they arrive, if presented with an opportunity to opt-in so digital marketing platforms can personally identify you to provide better web site marketing insight and reports, most visitors would most likely remain opted-out - after all, why would you want to opt-in? What's in it for you?

Or would they - consider this; how do web sites offer better experiences today? How can they serve better experiences to you, me and the person opposite you if they don't know what it is you like, who you are, what you want, what you have bought/not bought and so on. This, of course, is all done through the diligent use of cookies. But the new ICO EU Directive stipulates one cannot use cookies without a visitors consent - so, give them a reason to provide you with consent. Make it painfully obvious that you care about your visitors/customers and give them a reason/offer they cannot refuse.

For example, this 'model', for better a word, would work beautifully for Telecommunication, Utilities and Financial Services companies. It is all in the wording, of course (what isn't these days!), but by paraphrasing something from this: "By allowing me to track and serve you with cookie data, I can give you 'Mr Smith' a far better visiting experience which will ultimately turn you into a huge advocate for my organisation due to the better experience you will have", you could have something which works to your companies advantage and actually not only helps your organisation out with the current dilemma around the new 'Cookie Law' but also serves a better visitor experience to the people you care most about, your visitors/prospects and/or customers.

So, all round then, this is an opportunity for your business to strive! So why not take it?

The Pain Of Tagging - No More!

Over the years I have used them all; Webtrends, Omniture, Coremetrics, Google Analytics et al and the one thing they all share in common is? Tagging!

I've since discovered that there are systems beyond even the most humble Web Analytics platform that also requires tagging. Those include (but are no means limited to) Personalisation Engines and Complex Event Processing Systems.

So, it would seem that if you want anything online to be successful, you and your IT team must embrace the endless fun and joys of 'Tagging' everything up, paying through the nose for it with consultancy engagements and generally missing out on fast time to data and valuable insights during the specification, planning and delivery documents being drawn up - oh, and that is before the actual delivery of reports takes place, from which you must then extract those valuable insights from yourself - and be sure not to mis-interpret along the way.

But don't panic. There are alternatives. Alternatives that require no tagging, can collect every event occurrence from within the page, can model data in real-time and deliver the actions to internal or external platforms, from which your business suddenly becomes significantly more 'pro-active' than the typical 're-active' existence experienced today.

Check out my video blog posting from a couple of days back called 'Tag Free Data Collection'. It can be found on YouTube.com also if more convenient.

Visitor level insight should not be difficult! It should be the easiest part - discovering the truth about what is and is not working for your visitors and business is the hardest part to sometimes accept.

What Do Your Reports Look Like?

Too many businesses buy an analytics tool because of it's the market presence and the eye-candy the reports bring.
Having previously been a data and web analyst for many years, data is typically always extracted and placed into everyone's ever so familiar, favorite reporting platform, MS Excel. So why use the charts and graphs provided by an aggregated data platform in the first place? I know many analysts and businesses who would agree with me and say they don't use them (possibly even the analyst(s) in your organisation right now).

It takes a brave person to make a purchasing decision based around the above two key mentioned areas. I can testify (by speaking from experience) just how many businesses adopt this 'strategy', having worked over many years with a lot of organisations across multiple business sectors, including financial services, travel, retail, utilities and telecommunications. Just because the few charts/graphs you have look good doesn't mean the data in the report(s) it provides to the business are with any insight which is actionable. The charts/graphs need to be interactive!

Most of us have MS Excel on our desktop machines. It doesn't take a semi experienced MS Excel user long to build a dashboard from scratch. The hardest job with any dashboard build is the collation and consistency of the data.

One of the most recent dashboards I have built in MS Excel can be seen below. This incorporates non-aggregated visitor data covering all marketing touchpoints (not just first and last click, but all clicks inbetween) which have been weighted to provide a true picture on what channels, promotions, activities, placements, offers, partners and so on actually are working to influence a prospect to engage and convert with a web site.

Additionally, if you have a Business Intelligence platform such as SAP Business Objects, Crystal Xcelsius, Microstrategy, Qlikview, SAS and so on, you can do even better things with the charts/graphs. All with interactive controls and functions, enabling you to get to the lowest level required (which in my case is often the visitor level - their phone number, email address, social security number and so on).

So in reality, if you wanted, your Business Intelligence dashboard could actually look like the screenshot below. Most Business Intelligence platforms today are appreciating Mobile BI is the future by empowering analysts to influence, make decisions and provide real-time insight whilst on the move. The example below is taken from the Microstrategy blog but it shows Mobile BI at its best and certainly provides much better 'eye-candy' than any other online analytics and optimization tool I have used before.

What I love best about interactive dashboards is the involvement of data from more than one channel (typically the web). In the above example, data is being collated in a Customer Data Hub (more about what defines a CDH later), but for a business to see how all channels are performing, volumes of calls, revenue attributed when compared with other channels, trends compared to last year and so on, this insight is like 'Gold Dust'. BUT, what makes this all the more appealing, is the ability to go down to Visitor/Customer/Prospect level and then actually do something with the data extracted; perhaps send a list of possible fraudulent applications to the anti-fraud team by email to investigate, or abandoned insurance purchases to the call center for a follow-up phone call. These are only a few of the actions very few businesses are actually doing today with their marketing insight platform, whilst others so desperately want to be able to do the same.

Without any shadow of a doubt, aggregated data and the charts and graphs associated with them, have limited shelf life. Yes, they are good for spotting trends and identifying upcoming demands, but they are not good enough to give businesses today what they really want. The good news is this, what businesses want from their online/offline marketing channels can be achieved today. But, the right platform needs to be in place. So, the question to ask is: 'Does your marketing insight platform have a Customer data model? (have you seen it? does it address/meet your analyst/business requirements?). Does it provide aggregated or non-aggregated visitor level insight? Can you slice and dice the data quickly, repeatedly, over time, integrate other channel sources and so on? Do you have a Business Intelligence platform in place already? If not, would MS Excel cut the mustard for you?

Done correctly, Customer Insight can be very powerful. The most surprising bit though is the cost to achieve it - it's not as much as you might imagine.

Tag Free Data Collection

A video showing data collection from a fictitious web site - all of which is at an individual level. Every mouse click, mouse movement, page load, key stroke and more is being collected without ANY tagging effort required.

This is how it should be when collecting insight from a web page. Non-aggregated, visitor level detail which can actionable!

Campaign Attribution - Why Do It, Value From Doing It, Who Can Do It?

Today, a large portion of any organisations marketing budget is typically used to drive visitors to corporate websites. Why? Well, according to a survey conducted by IBM in 2010, today, 70 percent of a consumer’s first interaction with a product or service takes place online. Understanding what those individual visitors did and which campaigns are driving the valuable visitors is challenging. 28% of Web site decision-makers dismiss the opportunity, because they believe attribution will never be precise, and therefore is not worth measuring (Forrester Research).

Results from IBM's 2010 CEO Study also in 2010 showed however, that 88 percent of CEOs will focus on getting closer to their customers in next five years and 82 percent of CEOs want to better understand customer needs.

With challenging economic times ahead and to support the stated CEO’s aim to get closer to customers and understand their needs, attribution is now receiving renewed interest. Accurate metrics derived from a sound attribution framework can deliver informed decisions on critical marketing expenditures.  Having this data empowers Marketers to demand more productive campaigns based on key business requirements.

The Challenge

Many believe Campaign Attribution to be purely based on measuring the performance of marketing communications by means of placing ‘tracking codes’ on inbound marketing campaigns, from which charts and graphs can be produced to show effectiveness and provide the return of investment (ROI) proof for partners, creative’s, placements, marketing programs etc. Without additional information, it is difficult for organisations to contest the value and ROI.

Indeed,  perhaps one of the ‘best kept secrets’ in the world of marketing (and particularly online marketing) is that most data models used by analytical platforms are in fact wholly inappropriate. 

An example is the widespread use of cookies as a tracking mechanism on the assumption that “one cookie = one visitor”. This could be misleading, for example:

• One cookie, many visitors - Many people share the same device such as a home or work PC

• One visitor many cookies - A unique visitor uses different devices such as a PC, a Smartphone and a tablet to access the same site

• One cookie , many accounts - The same person accesses different brands or accounts belonging to the same organisation  from a single device

Another common barrier to accurate attribution is a lack of complete and timely data.  The widespread use of traditional web analytics platforms means data may be:

• Aggregated / summarised, by its very nature, aggregating or summarising data means sacrificing individuality and detail. 

• Short lifecycle, possibly  only 30 days or less data is available meaning key events and  complete visitor history are not available 

• Extended latency – Data is processed by a 3rd party and can take over 24 hrs to be available.

• Non transparent – Data may be provided by 3rd parties and not provide the level of detail required

These make it very difficult to measure the effectiveness of online behaviour and thus correctly attribute value to campaigns. Add to this the growth of specialising digital marketing agencies, the increasing variety of analytical measurement platforms and the ever more complex Multi-Channel ‘conversational’ landscape, accurate attribution becomes a real challenge.

Why Change?

Today, agencies across the world are being used by companies of all sizes to manage their marketing communications, whether that is affiliate sites, partner sites, paid search, social networks, television, radio, print and more. The success of a particular marketing campaign is typically measured against key performance indicators (KPI’s) such as revenue, downloads or conversions. Yet no one really measures the success of the campaigns leading up to conversion. Instead decisions are based on first or last click methodology. In many cases, the campaign touch-points leading up to conversion are direct influencers and are significant in aiding and persuading a visitor to take action or make a decision whether or not to ‘convert’ with a brand, site or product.

For true value based Campaign Attribution, it is important and necessary to have a detailed dataset of visitor insight available and at an individual visit level. Lack of ‘business’ data (not click stream or raw data) is a primary reason many organisations are unable to perform such analysis today. 

Web Analytics platforms for example, are widely used to measure the effectiveness of online visit performance but are based on aggregated sets of data. This means the individual journey(s) made by a visitor over time i.e. the customer lifecycle, are lost as most systems summarise on visit level and use first or last visit/click campaign methodology. However, there can be many visits and referrals made by an individual leading up to conversion. Using traditional reporting platforms, only the first or last visit would be available, other potentially influential campaign clicks and the subsequent behavior and experiential data might be lost. This of course leads to an incomplete understanding of the true value of campaigns and visitors and therefore contributes to potentially incorrect and costly attribution.

A Value Based Approach

However, by taking an approach to maintain a consolidated record of every visit by every visitor (Non-aggregated Data), full campaign attribution at an individual visitor level, based on scoring and weighting of goals achieved in current and previous browser sessions, can be applied, calculated and quantified. This opens up the endless possibilities of measuring effectiveness of many things related to online marketing (both on and offsite). Enabling businesses to work out the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns on the lead up to conversion, as well as establish the quality of inbound visitors from various channels and campaigns. Now with complete and accurate data, it is relatively simple to provide summarised and trended ‘dashboard’ views of campaign performance based on visitor lifetime value. With the added benefit of drilldown to more detail.

How Do We Measure Value?

Performance weighting and scoring calculated on goals achieved whilst a visitor is on the web site can be used to gauge the effectiveness of marketing activities in attracting the most valuable visitors. 

For example:

A click-through from an affiliate site might be worth 5 points, arriving on a landing page might be worth 1 point, viewing a detail page might be worth 10 points and watching a video/picture might be worth 15 points.  So, on this occasion, the visitor has attributed 31 points but did not convert. However, the product set is such that it requires research prior to purchase. So, this visit was of value as it demonstrated a propensity to purchase and it’s highly likely the visitor will bookmark and purchase at a later date. Even beyond 30 days

Another visitor clicks through from a paid search link (which by the way, cost £3.20!) The visitor arrives on a landing page worth 1 point, views a product details page worth 10 points then leaves. This visitor generated 11 points but cost £3.20 to acquire.

If the above example were representative of a large amount of site traffic, you would very quickly be able to establish that the paid search marketing campaign has a high acquisition cost associated to it but very low quality of visitor based on their lack of engagement with site content. With this level of insight, businesses may well decide paid search is in fact yielding low value traffic which is depreciating the marketing spend. Therefore it might make sense to drop the particular paid search keywords and invest in the affiliate campaigns driving the ‘valuable’ visitors.

Another consideration when implementing attribution models based on less sophisticated  first and/or last click models is the possibility of significant duplication both in traffic reporting and payments to affiliates and agencies. It is not unusual to have in excess of 20% of budget wasted on duplicate payments for the same clicks/conversions. To prevent this and provide for fair attribution, a simple formula can be applied where no more than 100% of traffic and marketing budget will be allocated (de-duplication). There is a fixed percentage for the initiating click and the converting click, and the remainder is split over visits and weighted depending on the behaviour of the visit (for example, if someone hits just a landing page but then bounces, they will score differently to a visitor who hits the landing page, views target products, adds to basket and starts a checkout process).

How To Implement Such a Solution

For campaign attribution, weighting and scoring for events that occur during any and all marketing channel sessions need to be defined. Definitions for such events will vary greatly depending on the type of business concerned. For example, an Insurance business will have different weight scorings for hitting a landing page, viewing a product, beginning an application through to quote and then on to saving a quote/purchase. Compared to a travel company where a visitor may hit a landing page, search for a destination/route, start a checkout and go through the purchase process and so on. In retail there may be differences dependant on the value of products, higher value electronics will be researched more than say clothing, therefore comparing multiple products and reading reviews might be scored highly.

Once weight scores have been established, these are applied to non-aggregated visitor data. This is not something that can be retrospectively added to summarised/aggregated results typical of traditional Web Analytics platforms so the platforms capable of doing this today are very small indeed, but they do exist!

Thanks for reading.

What Does 'Data' Look Like?

I often get asked the question 'What does data look like'?

So I show them. The problem with showing data (especially if you are a company in the Big Data space), is you can extract very detailed insights from such platforms. That then causes its own problems because then the question 'what do your charts and graphs look like'? At this point, you start to wonder whether this person is an 'aggregated data' fan or a 'non-aggregated data' fan.

As a former data and web analyst, I get data and I get it in a BIG way! I admit, looking at rows and rows of data in tables upon tables does get a little confusing at times (especially if you are only used to extracting insights from charts and graphs), but this is your moment to spot something that no one has spotted before. You can set the trends, spot the opportunities for improvement, impress your boss with the endless amount of insight you are now able to provide from all this 'Big Data'.

I have worked with many web analytics platforms from which many businesses across all industry verticals have asked me to build dashboards in MS Excel. I don't mind doing this. Being creative with data is something I enjoy, bringing insights from the backroom to the boardroom (what's the point in doing analysis if a business isn't going to listen).

But there in lies the problem. Almost all the web analytics platforms produce aggregated datasets from which gleaming any detailed insight into what caused what, when, where and why becomes challenging. For those that are analysts reading this post, I'm sure you have encountered the situation where endless requests to dig deeper into the data have come forward; 'why did we see a decline in sales', 'who saw out of stock items', 'who are my most valuable customers', 'who is exhibiting suspect churn behaviour'. With aggregated data, these questions (and trust me, there are millions more) cannot be answered for two main reasons; 1) it was never tagged in the first place or 2) because it is aggregated data, you will never know.

So, in summary - data may not look pretty but data is actionable. It can be used to gleam far greater insights which are otherwise not possible today (or likely to ever be possible) in web analytics platforms. Businesses need to move to a platform which can provide 'Big Data' from the online channel and leave the 'charts and graphs' to Business Intelligence platforms such as MicroStrategy, SAP Business Objects, Oracle BI or even MS Excel (the BI platform we all have on our machines today).

Social Media And Its Uses In Business

I often speak to people who still consider Social Media to be Facebook. They don't really get it, don't understand its purpose and value. Then when you ask them about Twitter, they like to make jokes about being a 'twit'.

I have read emails, forum posts and heard in conversation that Social Media within businesses is mostly used for PR (Press Releases). Really? I personally use Social Media to either learn something new about something I'm interested in, follow the news/travel/weather updates (more reliable than radio or TV in my opinion). On numerous occasions, Social Media has pulled through for me and given me what I wanted so for that reason, I passionately believe it WORKS!

Honestly, businesses need to really start embracing technology beyond the traditional means of telephone and email. Social Media is here to stay; it is cheap/free to use, has fantastic geographical reach, is incredibly viral and as a Technologist (and futurist), I like to think businesses will one day embrace Social Media to give them the competitive advantage they always yearn for. After all, what business/brand wouldn't like to know what someone thinks about a product or a service they offer?

So, I have a question to all my readers: How valuable would knowing who has said what, where and when be to your business when they visit your web site or call the call center? If you know the visitor is happy, unhappy or undecided, would you communicate differently to them if you knew 'details' in advance?

Thanks for reading.