Personal Social Brand

Social media is changing how and the way people communicate. We all have multiple persona's online. Each channel gives you another way to express yourself. Lately I have been segmenting/clustering platforms and creating a "purpose" for each. This is mainly due to the blurring of social platforms. A year ago Linkedin had a purpose, it was a social network focused on work and work relationships. Now Linkedin is connected to Facebook, twitter and (everything). Do you want your work persona to become your personal persona? Facebook is doing the same. "Facebook Friend" means different things to different people. There are tools to segment your "work facebook friends" from your "college buddies" and you family. I mean I really don't want my mom or 13 year old niece watching my interaction with my college buddies do I. My point is that we are all going to have to start building in time to manage our personal brands online eventually we will have to become "One two One" marketers to our own social circles.

The flaws in behavioral targeting or Please stop retargeting me

I am just getting a little tired of retargeting. I mean if I happen to visit brand website for whatever reason; blog mention, twitter mention feed or whatever, it doesn’t mean that I want your brand in my face everywhere I go.

Retargeting is simple, basically you are an animal and the targeting network “tags” you. They follow you and put advertising in your “way” based on where you have been or what you have seen. I don’t necessarily like “Brand X” or want to ever buy anything from them, I just visited their site. Targeting companies don’t know intent or why you were there; they just know that you were there.

Things need to change, customers are getting annoyed and advertisers aren’t getting what they paid for “target advertising to consumers that are open to my brand”. I have seen a few up and coming companies come up with new ways to target. They are using Claritas Prism or Mosaic cluster to better target based on lifestyle. The flaw there is that this is extrapolated from IP and some computer based information and you are going to tell me that because I own a Mac I am 18 – 25 Male with an HHI of 65k – 85K and belong to the green segment. Um, no that isn’t me; sorry. It is better than the basic targeting but not quite there.

Targeting companies need to build out preferences and allow the customer to be able to pick which content to serve to the consumer. Google is the first that I have seen doing this, but someone need to create a service of global preference that is an open api (OpenID’ish) that all the targeting companies can access. But the preference need to be more than lifestyle, demo and Geo they need to be “hey don’t follow me if I visit your site” and “if I type these keywords don’t serve me ‘relevant’ ads”. It should list out the brands that are following you and you should be able to say “no, I don’t like that brand”. This method will also help with the impending congressional hearings around targeting and how it can or cannot be done.

All I ask is to present advertising to me that helps me and stop being a nuisance.

"The Internet is a Fad"

I cant divulge where this quote came from but I can comment on it. There are still people/communities/societies that feel that the interactive medium we call the internet is a fad. It is just going to be here for a short time then "poof" it will go away as fast as it appeared. In some ways I feel that they are correct, but not in the same way that they mean "go away". I mean that the medium will evolve and become something different. We keep on hearing about the semantic web or web 3.0 an intelligent internet that understands you and caters the internet to you. I don't know how far this new frontier is but it will be interesting to say the least. As far as the internet being a fad, well to some people it is and it always will be one. There are companies that feel/felt burnt by the hundreds/thousands/millions they spent frivolously online and didn't get "anything" for it. They hope the internet is a fad because if it isn't then they will have to figure out a way to make the medium work for them. Yes, I know it is 2008 and internet spending is up double digit percent again and yes I saw that GM is going to spend over a billion online "some day soon". Even with that said there are companies out there that don't know how effective the medium is nor are they quantifying their spend. Companies that don't understand measurement and optimization, just spend and hope for the best. Eventually they too will hope the internet is a fad.

I am not a good blogger

I have struggled with posting since this blogs inception. I don't know why, but I just cant seem to get on a schedule. I think it may also be that I don't/didn't think I had anything useful to say. I love blogs, I read over 50 different feeds per day. I think i am an internallizer opposed to someone that can let my thoughts run free. I have been able to semi-consistently update Twitter , so that got me thinking "why can I do one and not the other?" I think it is my expectation, I think about the blog posts too much and I need to just let it go. I am going to try the un-bridled approach and see what happens. Maybe something good will come out of my mouth.

CD

Measurability is the easy part, right?

I think something that is consistently taken for granite is measurability. The practice of measuring or planning how to measure something. We are constantly just making sure the basics are covered we don't think about the bigger picture. If you just take the time to sit back and asses the situation you will have better results. The WA community need to embrace Measurement Planning.

CD

Tangible Technologies and Analytic Widgets

I had a conversation with Chad Stoller (Organic's Marketing Wizard) the results are on ClickZ.

http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625094

Organic Detroit is Hiring (so am I)

Anyone out there that is passionate about Web Analytics and Site Optimization should send me their information. We are looking for both Sr. and entry level analysts. The job will be challenging and fulfilling. You may learn to hate me or even like me. I do know that you will have fun and really enjoy the work if again you are passionate about the space. I look for people that have an internal drive to solve problems, work collaboratively and want to make a difference. If you find yourself asking "why is site X doing that", "if they do it this way they will have a better conversion rate", well then I want to talk to you. The jobs @ Organic and are in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Details can be found @ http://careers.organic.com/

The position are listed as strategy positions, that is a good thing.

If you just more details without talking to a recruiter then just ask me in the comments and I will reply to your email address.

Chris

Answers

I know I have not been attending to my posts. I think I have "posters" block. I have been noodling around an idea lately that may remedy the situation. I am coining it "Analytics Answers". It really isn't a blog it is more a free consulting service, yes I am letting the cat out of the bag and now anyone can do what I am proposing. I just want to offer free advice. Help on the most difficult problem. I know you can search the Yahoo! Group for answers, but I am planning on tagging everything so the questions and answers are easily searchable. What are your thoughts? What are your opinions? Should I invest the time and money into this initiative or should I try to focus my energy in posting more often?

Chris

Comparison: Web Analytics for Blogs

Great overview and comparison of the three major blog analytic softwares; Measure Map, Blogbeat, and Performancing Metrics.

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Change

Change is a good thing. Within web analytics change is what drives everyone of us, it is the reason we go to work. We are like school children waiting for that blip, rock or erratic trend. Without change web analytics would not exist, it would just be ho hum look at the data. Well, today I made a change. I started a new journey at Organic Inc heading up their Web analytics practice. I have spent the last four years building the analytics pratice at JWT, but it was time for a change. I hope I have the same success at Organic that I had at JWT. I am energized like a school child........

Multi-Variant Testing of Online Media

Online media budgets have been growing exceptionally year-to-year, some analysts have indicated that one day online media will surpass good old TV. This really doesn't surprise me; you can purchase a target audience online. With TV you can only hope that out of the 10 Million eyes that viewed your spot some of them were influenced and may purchase your product. You can’t track them to sale, cart, or even a KPI. And that is only the beginning. Within online media you can continually optimize message, creative and calls to action to drive more actions. This is where multi-variant testing comes into play. If you are trying to assess if banner A is performing better than banner b you can run a split test to see which one wins. If you want to know if placement a with banner a and message a with call to action a performs better than placement a with banner a and message b with call to action a then you need to start building a multi-variant testing matrix. This is easier said than done. We were just discussing a test where the banner had four calls to action and we wanted to assess which combination was more effectually driving actions. Well this became a production nightmare. To produce every permutation we needed to create 75 different combinations. We then needed to run them in the same place with a comparable weighting, which meant that we needed to run them all at 1.25% of the time to ensure a proper distribution. This is all well and good but to get a significant sample we will need to run this placement for a month to get any actionable data.

Is this worth the time? Should we be doing this? Well those are really the two major questions. If the results display that one combination converts consumers at a significantly higher rate and by running that "winning" banner we offset the cost of producing 75 permutation then I would say yes, if the difference is negligible then you have learned not to perform that test again.

So, what I am saying is that no matter the outcome the results will benefit the company, good bad or indifferent. I also believe that the tests need to be controlled because if you have to create too many permutation you never be able to get an adequate sample and you will be in testing mode for years before you have actionable results.

Just test within your means.

What exactly is Web Analytics?

I know this article is a little old, but I like where Eric is coming from. He breaks down the basics of web analytics and presents solid recommendations to the novice. I wish there was more information like this 3 years ago.

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Seven Thoughts to Arm Yourself With in 2006

Good article written by Bryan Eisenberg. It outlines areas of focus for any company that has a web presence.

Enjoy


CD

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Even Michigan is getting into the WiFi game

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Web Analytics Is Out, Web Analysis Is In

This was a paragraph from a clickZ article written by Shane Atchison from ZAAZ. I just really liked and believe what it said.

Web Analytics Is Out, Web Analysis Is In

It's a subtle, but important, terminology change.

"Analytics" is the technology or tool that produces reports that contain data. "Analysis" is the process or action that reveals answers to how well your Web marketing initiatives are performing and identifies where and how to improve them.

Why the terminology lesson? The Web analytics market is maturing into a services-driven business, where support, consulting, and expertise (a.k.a. Web analysis services) are the more valuable assets savvy marketing executives are now investing in to help solve the measurement dilemma that haunts their teams.

Simply put, it's not about the tools anymore. It's about how you use the tools to analyze, and ultimately optimize, your results that really matters. This, too, is a point industry leaders all agree upon. Just ask them.

Is Google using Analytics information to build TrafficRank?

Google is collecting a lot of information about web usage now that Google Analytics is free. Are they going to get something back from their "investment"? This article describes how the web traffic data Google is collecting could be used to build search results that don't rely on links or the content of the web pages being indexed.

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Telling a Story

What sets an analyst apart from the pack? The ability to take the insights or findings from data and weave it into a story. The days of "just the facts" is gone. To get the attention your analysis needs you have to be able to captivate your audience. I don't mean write a novel, just make sure to convey a full, actionable, thought in a properly formed sentence. That will separate you from the "There was a 10% increase in visits" and become "The 10% increase in visitors to the site was caused by the additional media support and buzz surrounding product x".

CMD

Testing Your Hypothesis

Recently I attended a research session. The session was a market research session. One way glass and everything. The purpose was to test a few issues and hypothesizes to quantify our initial analyses. The whole process is very surreal, I mean you are watching the consumers and their session at the same time. All the consumers were sitting in a room all at a laptop browsing the pages we asked them to visit. There were two projectors that were broadcasting the sessions realtime. It was very interesting watching consumers facial expressions while they were browsing. When the behavior was appearing erratic you could see the frustration on their faces.

We learned a ton about some of our perceived problem areas and also learned about some anomalies that we have been observing. It was like "oh, that why we are seeing that data".

So, what this proves is that with every quantitative analytical plan you need a qualitative plan to dig into the why.....

CMD

Advertising

I never thought that I would ever put a ad on my site, then the spam sucked up my bandwidth and I don't have a choice. For me to keep posting I needed to start advertising. I apologize in advance and hopefully I can block most of the spammers so I can get back down to my affordable bandwidth threshold.

Chris

Update
I removed my advertising. I started reviewing and blocking the IPs that were causing all the trouble. Truthfully I didn't really like having ads on my blog. I mean the purpose of the blog is to get information out to the masses. Not - get information out to the masses while making a buck. Maybe this is naive of me, but that is how I feel.

Chris

Visits are not always Visits

As I posted a few months ago I started tracking all my traffic and then posting my reports to everyone. Well that backfired, with posting all my traffic details I opened myself to spam. Automated engines would traverse my reports and see their website on it then constantly hit/visit my site to make sure it was number one. Why you ask? Because of relevance, if the site is number one it would be viewed by everyone that visited my report pages. This adds more traffic to my site and indirectly references to their site. The visits also sucked my bandwidth to an extent that I couldn't manage/afford. It was an ugly proposition, so I had to disable all my links to my reports. Another thing it made me realize is that there are only a handful of people visiting my site a day (not that is a bad thing, I welcome everyone and anyone). With filtering all the spam and bot traffic I went from 200 Visits a day to 10 - 20 Visits a day. It is actually a really good thing, now I can see what content is valuable because real people are looking at it. The thing that kills me is that I already knew this because I have lived through it many times. It is just different when t happens to you. Maybe it is the geek in me that thought/hoped it was a reality. Well I am now using Google Analytics and I hope the spam leaves me alone.

Chris

Feeding the change in the world

Data feeds are changing the way the world deals with information. It has changed the distribution and colation of data.

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Google Analytics: They aren't just storing the data...

It's a fact, they are now using data they have been collecting... to what level is still unknown, but they are definitely using it as revealed by this article.

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Google starts accepting new Analytics registrations.

Google has started to open up it's Analytics service once again. As of right now, there are 236,780 accounts up 2055 from when they stopped accepting sign-ups.

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Spam is not Tasty

So, I had to remove all references to Webalizer and Nettracker on my site because of the massive influx of spambots. These helpful little bots are eating up all my bandwidth and disc space. I also installed the free Google Analytics which looks pretty promising for a free application. I think that it will be an awesome solution for small to medium businesses. It still needs to grow to be a viable enterprise big business solution.

CD

Automotive Internet Roundtable

Every year J.D.Power conducts an industry roundtable to discuss all the positive was that the automotive industry has progressed online. This was my first year there and I thought that there was some really good learning, but more for C level executives. The information was more about "you need to concentrate on your consumers" and "you need to invest in online media, specifically behavioral targeted media". They did have some panel sales pitches that were a little over the top, but what conference doesn't have that entity. To sum up the conference it is the same message as the Forrester Consumer forum: Listen to Your Consumers and Market with them not to them....

Sound advice

CD

Are Sweepstakes worth the Money

From the day I started working with online data I was told "Sweepstakes are worthless". Yet I have seen more Marketing sweepstakes come and go in the industry than I can count. I mean there are specialty companies that create sweepstakes and they are really profitable. The company isn't putting up the money for the prize, they are just producing the site and fulfilling the prizes, the client is coming up with the money. So, are companies seeing real returns for their dollars? I can't speak to my data but looking at the press releases and other sources it appears that sweepstakes do generate awareness about new or reborn products and yes have attributable sales to them. The only thing I would like to see is did the consumer enter the sweeps to "get a chance to win" what they already planned on purchasing? I will continue to scour the blogs/posts/PR to find the answer because to me that is the real question not, did anyone that bought my product enter the sweeps....

Web Analytics Planning Update

Bob posted a comment on the previous planning post:

Bob Page said...
"It's been six months since you implemented your methodology .. how's it working out?"

I felt the need to respond where it was picked up by the feed readers, due to that is how I am realizing this blog is being consumed.

Well, here is the update. Things didn't go 100% as planned, but we have made tremendous progress. The full blown planning document didn't quite make the light of day. The core of the document made it into our Scope Of Work document (SOW). Which is a massive improvement from our previous process. The SOW identifies all the business requirements and all the supporting documentation needed to perform the campaign analysis. We work in a very fast paced marketing climate and I wasn't able to be everywhere all the time. We "upgraded" our account staff and we went through an education process, "Web Analytics 101" if you will and they are now asking the questions that need to be asked. We made our account staff web analytics advocates, this eliminated the stress of having to be everywhere and also enabled the analysts to do their job, not sit in meetings. I/We decided that the "Value Add" part of what my department does is the analysis, consulting and optimization recommendations. We need to continue to educate the front line and foster their advocatcy.

The methodology has changed slightly, but I learned that trying to force people to behave differently is not in anyone's best interest. You need to work with the system and make the system work for you. I think the methodology with constantly morph and will become more perfect with every revision.

Chris

Forrester Day Two

The second day was very insightful. Charlene discussed why and how we should be listening to our consumers and developing our marketing on their terms opposed to trying to market "at them". Her take is that society has become "pull" marketing focused and "push" marketing is slowly dying. From my experience I think she is on the right track, more and more people are doing their own research online and generating their own hypotheses. The number one influencer in that research is peer groups not the OEM...

The next session was focused on Frog Design and Sprint/Nextel and how they are working together to create consumer goods of the future. It was a good presentation but more focused on things to come on the next ten years not what is happening today.

I then took a break and caught up on some work.

When I returned I sat in a session about segmentation and how companies are using segmentation to better market to their consumers. I was really enamored with Best Buy and their approach. Most companies segment their consumers and then focus on the high profit segment and let the other segments go away or they try to push the other segments into the highly profitable segment. Both seem pretty silly. BestBuy takes a different approach. All segments are alike, lets create business managers and have them focus on their particular segment. Set goals and objectives for that segment and let each segment flourish on their own. To me this is one aspect Charlene was talking about, find out what drives a particular segment and then market to that segment the way they want on their terms.

The final session I sat in was about Viral marketing, Jacob McKee from Lego was there and I think he really understands what needs to be done for his company. But his responses were more around enthusiast management not viral. He really knows how to foster an enthusiast and convert them into a brand advocate. I really think he and Jim Nail summed it up when they informed the crowd, "people are already talking about your products, find them and make them advocates."


My view.... Of course

Chris

A day at the Forrester Consumer Forum

Today was the first day of the customer forum. The focus of the event is Innovation in a consumer-driven world. I really enjoyed the opening Chris Charron it was focused on how the world is rapidly changing to a pull society, where the consumer has all the power. The key quote was "The consumers aren't listening to you anymore... They are listening to each other". I have been seeing this trend and hearing it more and more frequently lately. I believe it is a reality that marketers have to deal with and deal with now. I think marketers have to stop dreaming up what they perceive is cool and start watching what their consumers think is cool. I think I have stated this before but I will do it again. "A marketer is a sample of ONE" This means, stop listening to yourself and start listening to your consumers, because one persons perception will never be enough sway the consumer.

Why am I writing about this on a web analytics blog? Well, one of the main gate keepers for the consumer is web analytics data. Watching trends, identifying issues and testing scenarios help with the consumer experience. Web Analytics is one of the best ways to understand your consumers. So, to me one of the biggest take-aways from this first day is the Web Analytics is more important now than it has ever been and companies really need to get a plan in place or start investing in the talent to use the information they have at their fingertips!

Chris

How much is a visitor worth?

I was recently in a meeting and a colleague asked about the value of a visitor. This got me thinking about visitors, impressions and CPM. I mean we quantify our online advertising in cost per thousand impressions, cost per click and cost per acquisition. Is there room in there for cost per visitor without the action aspect? Can we state that if there is information on the site and a consumer spends time with that content we have achieved our goal, thus quantifying our spend? Well I think that many people would think I was crazy, but we do this every day with print, billboards and yes TV (the devil). There are countless millions spent on commercials that people are skipping and fast forwarding on the ever growing adoption of the DVR. Thinking about it that way the visitor is actually more valuable than the TV spot because for whatever reason the consumer is on your site. So, my opinion is that we should all take a hard look at our visitors and figure out how much they are worth.

CD

Measuring Above the Line Advertising

Something that is becoming more and more important is quantifying you ATL Advertising budget. This is easy in some industries (eCommerce) and very difficult in others (Automotive). You can measure or analyze the impact of a highly viewed commercial, you see a direct correlation during and immediately after the commercial hits (this is usually a three hour buzz due to east coast and west coast air times), but how do you measure the constant regional and local adverting lift? Well you can look at traffic in those regions and cross reference the regional or local GRP's to the spikes by analyzing the geographic data on your site. This is just one thought there are many others out there. I think it is important for companies to understand how ATL effects their website and bottom line. There aren't and concrete way (yet) to obtain ROI of TV but with VOD and the upcoming ability to measure down to the household, we may get a lot closer. Think about it, you see a commercial (the cable company knows what show/commercial you viewed) you then go to the internet and view the URL that was in the commercial (the two are cross-referenced) and we now know that commercial had in impact on your purchase, but that is the future. Today, the best way to quantify your ATL is to turn it off and see what is the impact.

SEO demystified

In honor of the SES conference I will post the following: SEO is voodoo! What I mean is that natural search is a game of mice following the cheese and then the the cheese is moved. Understanding the search algorithms is not really that difficult. Understanding how the different measures are applied is the difficult part. I mean we all know that relevance is really important to google, but what constitutes relevance. An automated spider that reads the content and then looks at the URL and Title Tag to see if it is relevant to the consumer? I do think that for the most part the engines are dead on, but when does a search engine know if a consumer is searching for a Ford Mustang when they type in Mustang or a Mustang horse? Today, it doesn't. It is just a software program that does what it is told. I am in the process of pulling together all the different algorithms and I will post the Big three later. I just feel that SEO is not that hard, but then why are there thousands of people attending the conference?

CD

Are Page views a thing of the past?

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I just had a new addition to the family and I have been spending a lot of time with them and less time online. With that said, I have been reading and learning about AJAX lately and deviation it's impact on Web Analytics with some colleagues. This is my take. AJAX doesn't function any differently than a Flash movie does, it just gives a developer/designer the ability to modify the page without a page refresh. So, is AJAX going to change the face of analytics? No, Flash already has. Without knowing it we are moving away from the traditional concept of a page view and using "page views" to measure activity or events. Where I see this effecting the industry is mainly in KPIs e.g. Page Views Per Visit, Page View Per User or any other KPI that utilizes Page Views (there are many more). I also see this mucking up the water as far a billing is concerned because the majority of vendors bill by CPM (of Page Views).

In short all AJAX has done is bring this issue into the public eye, a problem that has existed for years. I would like to see companies either use a different method of calculating the events or exclude that traffic from the web analytics interface, because it may be causing mis information........

CD

I am in Marketing

I had a revelation the other day. It was not a self revelation but more someone "showing me the light". I have always believed that I was an interactive technology person, I now understand that I need to let go of my past and embrace what I am today.

I am a marketing person.....

I market therefore I am..


CD

Logfile v.s. Tagging

I have seen a little chatter about the rationale of why and when to use Tagging (ASP/Pixel) or the Log File approach. Well I can tell you that it depends on your business, I know that may seem like a cop-out but it is true. We have one client that we had to move from logfile processing to and tag based solution because parts of the sites were being hosted with a forward caching hosting provider. This meant that there was only one source server and thousands of virtual servers. The reason they moved was sheer traffic and the ability to absorb substantial spikes in traffic. They also were having issues with proxy servers and the large percentage of consumers coming from AOL. With a log file solution you don't have the ability to track traffic that is cached at the ISP.

There are definite reasons to use a logfile based solution. If you need to understand search bot traffic you have to use logfile based solution. The biggest benefit with a log file based analytics solution is that you can apply different filters and reprocess data. If you didn't create the filter right the first time you can go back and do it again. You don not have this luxury with an asp solution. You better do it right and the first time. Also, if your developer doesn't tag a page you can never recover the data for that page.

There are pros and cons for each implementation. I would use the one that best fits your business. You may want to try both solutions to see which one better fits your needs, I am sure you could find a log solution and an tag solution that would offer a trial.

CMD

Measuring Search

Search has become the most valuable property on the net. Are you accurately measuring your Search initiative? As everyone know Search Engine Optimization is split in two categories. Paid and Natural, Paid is easy to measure and optimize, right? We not so quick. When a search engine passes it's keyword phrase to your site it usually bounces through a redirect or two. When this happens you loose a small percentage of your keywords, therefore you are getting traffic from an engine without a keyword. What this means is that if you get 10% of your traffic from paid search and about 100k consumers from search you may loosing the data 300 - 500 paid search terms or about 3 - 5% of your total paid search program. What I would propose you do to validate the program is work with the search company and cross reference their data with your data. Is there a discrepancy? If no or yes but it is only a 1 -3 % discrepancy then your tool is probably accurately measuring your paid search program. If yes or more than 3% then you will need to spotlight tag your page with their system. This will tell you if it is their system, a difference in your solutions or dropping the referring data. To further diagnose the issue you need to physically watch the process. Search for the keyword, click on it and see if it is passed to your page. See if the keyword is being passed to your analytics solution, use a http sniffer this will tell you what information is posted to the browser. If you see that the keyword is no longer visible when the page is finished drawing, you have a redirecting issue and you need to investigate further.

I would say that this long ramble can be summarized with "Search is important make sure you are accurately measuring your program and so you can optimize it".

CMD

Light at the end of the tunnel?

Pine Tunnel too
Originally uploaded by cdalessa.

I took this picture over the weekend and when I downloaded it a story started to unfold in my mind. The picture is slightly eerie yet beautiful. The picture reminded me that there is so much data out there and you need to stay the course to obtain your objective. The green glow at the end of the tunnel is the goal and the trees are the data that yield false positives. I know that this story may be hard to follow, but just look at the picture. It motivates me. I don't know why. It just does.

Technographics

Forrester Research coined the term and defines it as a segmentation system designed by to determine how today's technologies are being considered, bought, and used by consumers. Can you create your own technographic study using your web data? I think it is possible and necessary to understand who are your consumers. What are their online consumption habits? What is the dominate OS/browser combination? Is geography key? These are all questions that need answers. I think something that is missed in web analytics is "putting yourself in your consumers shoes". We are constantly asked to find out the cause of the data fluctuations but they is often no explanation to the anomaly. Another reason this is on my mind is that I was conversing with a past colleague and he asked what are the links with Information Architecture and Web Analytics. I think this is where the web analysts need to think like an IA to be able to bring forth actionable analysis. So, Technographics has more uses than just creating standards for the next version of your web site. It is used to better understand your consumers behavior.

Rich Media Emails are Fat

We have conducted numerous email campaigns and have been experimenting for year now with different tactics and techniques. The one finding that jumps out at me and is in conflict wit every piece of research out there is that Flash (or animated) emails perform better than HTML or Text. We have consistently found just the opposite and actually we deployed an Rich Media email that over 70% of the people immediately clicked on the "view HTML version". It may be our target is not the bleeding edge technology demographic or it may be that people are tired of waiting for content. I mean you have less than a second to get their attention and then they are onto email number 100 of 300, thanks to Spam.

CD

Measuring Online Consideration

The only true way to see if a branding campaign had an impact on you product is to conduct a survey or questionnaire. A colleague of mine and I started trying to find ways measure consideration with conducting a branding study. The process is called Behavioral Based Consideration, which is basically someone that you know saw your advertising and eventually visited your site. You would typically measure this by placing a campaign code on your advertising and a spotlight tag on you site. You can also measure it if you know the time frame and analyze your new user share. You can break down the message and see what was the call to action to validate if you had a lift in that section. The ultimate goal would be a sale, but in this case it is just to get an individual to consider this product. This is mainly helpful if you purchase a major portal or a highly visible piece of online real estate. The volumes of traffic that arrive at these pages can sometimes be one million visitors in one day. Knowing that you had in impact with a percentage of these people are potentially people that you have added your product to their consideration set. It is your sites job now to sell the product.

This is just one loose method, we are constantly trying to find better methods and with the potential cookie deletion problem it is going to be harder and harder, unless we just model the trend and apply it to the calculations......

Chris