Monthly Archives: April 2008

Want Engagement? Get Desirability

Analytical Culture, Brand Management, Marketing thru Operations, Measuring Engagement, Web Analytics,

Forrester’s Marketing Forum this year covered Engagement, but not the kind of Engagement so often discussed in web analytics.

Nope, Engagement from a Marketing perspective, you know, surprise and delight leads to better customer experiences leads to better customer retention and higher profits.

The presentation came complete with some nifty offline Engagement examples, e.g. the more a patient is Engaged in their healthcare the better the result.  The improved results came from, get this, “improving doctor usability”.  And yes, there was a test on this business optimization effort with tangible results generated.

You can get a good feel for where this conversation is headed from Jeremiah Owyang’s blog by listening to the 2 Forrester keynotes, each about an hour long.  For those short on time, pick one, depending on your interest:

Strategic Level: platforms, frameworks, etc. from Brian Haven

Tactical Level: examples, “how to” etc. from Kerry Bodine

No time for a video?

For a bulleted list of the key points you need to understand in order to optimize your Marketing model, see the “Five Fundamentals of Integrated Marketing” ClickZ article here.

I’ll have more to say on why these ideas are so important in the next couple of days.  For now, I will leave you with this:

If the customer is taking control, it’s only because you’re using the wrong Marketing model, maybe one like this one.  No customer wants to have to “take control” in the first place.

The more Engaging you are, the less old-school “pray and spray” Marketing  – online or offline – you should have to do.

That’s the whole point of Engagement.

Comments on the videos or article?  Anything ring a bell for you?

Online Stat of the Year?

Marketing Research, Web Analytics, ,

Over on the Rimm-Kaufman Group blog was a report on what Forrester’s Carrie Johnson had to say at Shop.org’s Marketing Workshop. There are quite a few interesting tidbits, but here’s the pair that blew me away:

Correlation between Google Gross US Revenues to US E-Commerce Growth: .96.

Correlation with Yahoo Display Ad Sales and US E-Commerce Growth: -.04

Now, I understand that Correlation does not imply Causation but at some level when you get directional spreads like this you have to sit up and take notice.

One explanation is this: e-Commerce sites do not buy any Display to speak of, but we know that’s not true – don’t we?

Other questions:

1. Another conclusion would be Yahoo matters very little to e-commerce activity. Sure, less than Google, but to this degree? If in fact Display enhances Search performance, you would think Yahoo would have more of an effect. Perhaps folks see Display on Yahoo and then Search on Google? Wouldn’t that be a trip…

That scenario would really provide a whole new twist on the measurement of view-throughs.

2. Google gross rev’s include AdSense, of course. So we’re not really comparing PPC to Display here, though one could argue AdSense is more targeted than Display. So what we are discussing here is the relevance of ads, not PPC versus Display.

3. Does Yahoo Display include Travel ads triggered by selection of Location? Auto ads triggered by selection of Model? Etc. Etc. You could argue those ads are really “Search” if you look at it from a behavioral (customer) perspective.

Sure would like to find the source on this, and see what we are actually talking about here.

Other questions you would ask / data you need to make a judgment on this? How about wild speculations on what this data means, if anything?

eMetrics Toronto

DataBase Marketing

I’m on my way back from the show, lots of enthusiastic and bright folks up there in Toronto.  Damn cold too – at least for this Florida-based guy.  But I managed to hang in there with a coat I bought for a trip to Edmonton with Bryan Eisenberg back in January of 2001 or so it wasn’t nearly as cold in Toronto as it was for that trip though!

Anyway, great show as usual and thanks to Jim S. and Andrea H. for inviting me to participate in so many ways.  Even more thanks are probably due to Matt and Fanny because they are behind the curtain and are doing all the work! 

Wizards they are.

The biggest news from the show I was exposed to was the awarding of a patent to Joseph Carrabis of NextStage Evolution for his technology enabling any “programmable device” – phone, web site, car, etc. – to look at user behavior and know “how that person is thinking”. This could be a good thing.

Not sure exactly where this goes, but clearly if this idea works out, services like Touch Clarity will be considered “dumb” by comparison.  I mean, parsing a referrer is one thing, knowing how I am thinking is quite another.  “How” meaning (to simplify) what cranial modes the user is in as they are interacting with the device. 

I won’t attempt further explanation, see here and pay particular attention to the C, B/e, M matrix thoughts.

I’ve known Joseph for some time now and he’s an incredibly bright guy – and very entertaining to talk (OK, argue!) with.  Now that he has a patent, I’m sure we will start to hear more details on what is required for implementation and (some) idea of how it works.

Any comments on this development?

On Monday, I taught the DAA BaseCamp Intro Level Course to a pack of 40 fine people who wanted to learn more about the basics of web analytics.  To any of those people who are now blog subs, thanks for the treat of being your instructor and I very much appreciate your kind words on the “user experience”.

Then as everybody else rolled in, there was of course the opportunity to have spirited (in several ways) discussions about everything web analytics until 2 AM.  Great to see Braden, Hosam, Judah and Raquel from the DAA Education Committee team as well as all the usual show management and speaker suspects. 

Tuesday I presented a session on making web analytics invaluable to C-Level people.  One of the issues web analytics faces with C-Level folks is they don’t really care much about history; they get paid for thinking about the future.  So unless you change your mindset and start doing some prediction – like the BI folks do – then it’s likely the C-Level folks will continue to be under-whelmed by your reports.

What does this kind of future-oriented reporting look like? 

Well, for those of you with some experience under your belt, it looks like this, though I dumbed it down a bit for a general audience presentation to a simpler model closer to this.

Comments on any these ideas? If you were at the Toronto show, what did you think of experience?