Erm, what do you mean it's wrong?

It's frustrating, isn't it. You have just spent the last 12months planning for the launch of a swanky new web site, invested tons of time and money in ensuring the insight datapoints are tagged up correctly, selected/chosen and signed with new affiliate partners to help promote your new swanky site and a whole bunch more and then suddenly it all comes crashing down; you've noticed something is wrong... the account ID being used in the page is for the development platform - bummer!

That means ALL your visitor behaviour insight is going to go into a black hole where no one other than you has access which now means you will be spending roughly 30mins a day, extracting those reports and placing them into an Excel sheet to distribute manually, distracting you for doing your day job.
OK, but that's not too bad - we've all had to do that before, and it's only for 4-6weeks...! BUT, what about next month, when the powers-above have brought onboard this hot new tech company that is going to drive our traffic and more importantly, our sales through the roof! More tags. More time. Being lost = More Pain!

privacy widget goes in here...

What to do - your budget has been halved, there are code freezes coming up due to the Christmas rush and the ink hasn't even dried yet on the contract your Director just signed. Heart rate, blood pressure, stress - all increasing. Job on the line? Doubtful, but your patience? Likely being tested!

Well, this is the first giveaway sign that a company such as this one needs a platform which can be remotely controlled outside of the company when it comes to placing/replacing technology vendor tags on the web site. Do you need one? Well, consider the options. How many times has the scenario above presented itself to you and/or your company? I would guess it happens monthly, maybe even weekly (dare I say daily)? How often do changes to the web site take to get started, let alone completed; weeks, months (never?)? And how much does that translate into lost insight/missed opportunity? I would guess the financial pain is a figure that already has five 0's in it already... and growing!

The good news is such technology to help ease the pain exists today and the shortlist is somewhat 'short'. With the ever increasing burdens being placed on visibility, availability and actionability, today, companies need to be so much more dynamic in the electronic media world and this is where tag management platforms can help.
Such platforms are yielding massive ROI's for their customers, making companies like yours innovative/dynamic and helping to make the lives of analysts 'easier'. You are no longer hired as an Analyst who needs to also know JS/HTML inside and out because it is you making the site change recommendations and developers are leaning on you. Once you start using a Tag Management System (TMS), you will notice you start to do on a daily basis what you were initially hired to do, Analyse and spot trends/make recommendations; you will also get more of a life, drink less wine, smoke less and generally lead a happier life.
Maybe it is time you considered a TMS for your company, after all. If you are still reading this rather lengthy blog post, the chances are you are someone who is suffering and can relate to all my points above. Need I say anymore?

End of message.

Individual insight - now more important than ever!

It seems 2012 is the year for digital Individual Insight. Everyone is asking for it, but why should you consider it? That, is what I hope to clear up in this post today.

First of all, what is 'Individual' and what does it mean to me and my business?

Individual is exactly that, a single instance of a person and anything/everything that person says or does.

Why should I care about knowing what an individual says or does?

Knowing someone has been on the web site, failed to complete a process and then left means your business is failing to convince an individual to do something online (that translates into lost opportunity)! When that individual calls into the call centre and completes their transaction offline, understanding why and what the outcome was will help you better tailor your efforts in channels they are less effective.

Take a scenario, someone has just been on Facebook and told their 100+ friends how bad a particular service your company offers, is. Think about the potential impact that might bring to your business - those 100+ friends also have 100+ friends each, taking the total level of exposure of something good or bad to well in excess of 10,000 people! If one in those 10,000 people were about to buy from the same company (or maybe the same product or service), but now don't due to a 'Friends' update, think about the impact that now brings to your business - now consider what if 10 or 100 of those 10,000 people were about to buy from you?

So, knowing the 'individual' activity is highly important, and that is only in the Social world - have you considered your own web site? Imagine the opportunity that awaits you in your own online shop; you know what every individual does that comes to your web site; you know what products they always look at but never buy; you know they like discount items - so next time you run your Sales email marketing campaign, send them a personalised and relevant email.

It may all seem like a no-brainer - after all, why wouldn't you want to get to the level of the 'individual' activity?! They have the ability to give you so much input into what is and isn't working for your business. The reality is no one has really considered or thought about this level of detail, mainly due to not realising such technology actually exists to help them achieve it.

Well, it does exist and I urge any organisation that wants to better target individuals

What can I expect to achieve if I adopt a platform that gives me 'individual' insight?

That promotion you have always wanted? It could happen, if you help shift the mindset of a business to think more laterally. Individual insight will help your business go from good to great, how can it not? Individual insight is now about aggregated views of data; individual insight gives a business the power to know, the power to change, the power to deliver - look at the success Unica and Bluesheep have had over the years, mostly derived from non-online individual insight. Imagine the value your business would get if it were possible to replicate the level of detail known about an individual from the online world in the same way the offline technologies have done so in previous years?

Still not convinced? Individual insight has demonstrated to businesses how they can save £250,000 per annum in adword campaigns, without impacting sales.

It has demonstrated uplift in excess of £1M in incremental revenue every time a Sale email marketing campaign is sent.

It has helped save in excess of £1M in online fraudulent transactions taking place on a web site with multiple credit cards, or shipping to known fraudulent hot-spots, OR individuals getting insurance quotes who chop and change their personal and historical circumstances to achieve a better price...

Individual insight just works! It can bring huge benefits to any organisation, you just have to try it for yourself to appreciate the value it brings.

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!!

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?

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.