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?).

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?

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).