eMetrics DC - The Place to Geek Out!

Congratulations to Jim Sterne and the eMetrics crew for another great Marketing Optimization Summit. The keynote speakers were some of the best that I’ve seen – James Robinson from The New York Times, Mike Marvel from Home Depot, Joe Megibow from Hotels.com and Kim Johnston from Symantec.

Most of the sessions I attended were good, but in my opinion the best sessions were before the conference at Industry Insights Day. Here are a few highlights:

Joel Book from ExactTarget talked about the future of email marketing. One of his points was about the changing definition of SPAM. He cited a MarketingSherpa research report that:

(a) 56% of consumers consider messages from known senders to be SPAM if the email isn’t interesting;

(b) 50% consider emails sent from known senders to be SPAM if they’re sent too frequently;

(c) 48% of those surveyed said that they’re using the “report spam” button for reasons other than to report unsolicited email.

This drove home the point that we will need to be increasingly more sophisticated in how we create relevant messaging.

Bob Page from Yahoo! talked about how Yahoo! makes their data actionable. The most interesting point was about how they build user profiles and how they use those profiles to provide targeted messages. He also talked about a couple of advanced KPIs including “User Value” and “Search Lift” (the latter is a way of measuring brand engagement.)

Pat LaPointe from MarketingNPV had an interesting presentation about the similarities between measuring offline and online marketing. He had a great model for how marketing programs evolve that he called the “Ladder of Insight.”

Matt Cutler from Visible Measures had a couple of case studies in which VM tracked the full reach of viral videos. By full reach, I mean that in addition to providing video metrics for the videos on your own site, VM can track when your videos are played across a dozen video sharing sites (even when your videos have been modified or spoofed.) Stratigent has partnered with Visible Measures on some key accounts so I was already familiar with the technology, but many people in the audience hadn’t seen it before, so it was entertaining to see jaws drop.

Outside the sessions, there were a lot of good discussions in the Lobby Bar about the implication of the new Google Analytics API and (anecdotally) where we are seeing companies get traction with their web analytics programs.

As always, eMetrics is a great place to geek out. I ’m looking forward to the next Summit in May. Rumor has it that it will be held in San Jose rather than San Francisco, but there are no details posted yet.


Jennifer Veesenmeyer
Manager, Consulting Services
Stratigent, LLC

Web Analytics Wednesday Recap

We had a great turn out at our WAW event last Wednesday in Saint Paul at Dixie’s on Grand, thanks to everyone who attended and to WebTrends, our sponsor! It was definitely a successful and fun evening, attended by a good mix of people representing many disciplines including search marketing, customer experience, marketing consulting, web development, and of course, web analytics.

Topics of discussion included Eric Peterson’s recent white paper on Visitor Engagement, using Google Site Optimizer, creating custom WebTrends reports, report automation, and a host of other related subjects.

There was also a lot of interest in having additional events in the Minnesota area, possibly quarterly with the next one in late January. I have set up a LinkedIn Group that we will use to notify every one of these future events. If you’re interested, be sure to join the group. Thanks again to everyone who made this a successful event, and we look forward to seeing you at future ones!

Jennifer Veesenmeyer
Manager, Consulting Services
Stratigent, LLC

Subscribers Rule!

Last week, Stratigent attended ExactTarget’s Annual User Conference in Indianapolis. On all levels, it was a fabulous show – great attendance, great sessions, and amazing evening events – the highlight was a tour of the Indianapolis Colts’ new football field, Lucas Oil Stadium, and an appearance by Colts head coach Tony Dungy. All in all, a job well done by the entire ExactTarget team!

One of the most insightful sessions of the week was called the “The Triangle Offense of One-to-One Marketing” – a fitting headline in the land of Hoosiers. In the session, ExactTarget explained how the use of CRM data and web analytics data drive successful e-mail marketing programs. The stakes are high in this economic environment when every marketing dollar spent must be justified and proven. When done right, e-mail marketing returns $45 for every dollar spent, much higher than other online marketing programs.

Integrating web analytics data into your e-mail marketing program is an important tactic for keeping your customers engaged with your business. As we mentioned in last week’s blog post Does your e-mail marketing make the grade?, website click stream data provides key insights into visitor behavior on your site. That data, in turn, can be used to create more relevant campaigns that result in better response rates and conversions. And over the long-term, more targeted e-mail campaigns help you stay connected with your customers.

So what do we mean by integration? Most often, companies use analytics data to send triggered emails initiated by a customer action or event. Examples of the most common trigger e-mails include the following:

• Cart-Abandonment E-mails. Re-connect with customers that have left products in their shopping carts.
• Customer Service E-mails. Follow up with customers if they have visited the customer service section of your website or made other inquiries related to their experience with your business.

With $45 returned for every dollar spent, it’s not hard to see why companies are embracing email marketing. But, as ExactTarget demonstrated last week, you don’t get that kind of return if your email campaigns are not tailored to the right audience or the right segment of your audience. Using web analytics data to power your email marketing programs is the key to helping you succeed.