We marketers are very busy people. In today’s challenging economy, with its rapid digital pace and customers empowered like never before, the demands are never-ending. So, we love things that make our job easier. Or at least appear to.

The Words ‘Marketing Automation’ are Like Music To Our Ears

According to one definition:

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI), and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes…

...continue to read "Beware Marketing Automation Without Data Clarification"

A student at the University of British Columbia Web Analytics course reached out to us via Twitter to ask some questions about creating personas, specifically Persuasion Architecture® Personas and the information is important enough that we thought we’d share our response:

“Are you saying that we shouldn’t bother with creating multiple personas with granular details but rather focus on creating only a few (4 if we use the logical-emotional, quick-deliberate quadrant)? But if we add the stages of the buying cycle in…

...continue to read "Dear Confused By Personas"

I’ve been curious about what kind of effect the economy is having on how companies use Web analytics. Econsultancy just released its “Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2009.” This is its second annual report, and the results are fascinating.

First, the pleasantries:

“Companies are focusing on analytics which help them improve their customer acquisition and customer retention. The recession has helped to bring into sharper focus the importance of understanding return on investment and how individual elements of digital marketing impact the…

...continue to read "Web Analytics and Yellow Lobsters"

Most companies measure keyword performance – and especially PPC keyword performance – based on one factor: did that word or phrase bring converting visitors to the site on the visit in which they converted.

So the natural thing to do is trim non-performing words and phrases in order to increase the efficiency of your PPC spend.  And that’s exactly what one client did, except rather than increasing his efficiency, he dropped his sales by 30%.

Why?

Because, depending on what you sell,…

...continue to read "Are Your Analytics Causing You to Lose 30% of Your Sales?"

Yesterday, Jeff Sexton blogged about the importance of watching your cost per visitor (CPV) and revenue per visitor (RPV) trends. One of the best ways to get a handle on optimizing these key performance indicators is to get a better sense of your traffic mix.

Instead of looking at your traffic by what marketing efforts are bring the most amount of visitors and converting best, look at your visitor mix as a starting point.

There are 3 types of visitors who can come…

...continue to read "How Many Potential Buyers Are Visiting Your Website?"

We’re now 6 months into 2009, and if you’ve embarked on a program of Website/ Marketing optimization, you’re probably looking for some clear, common-sense benchmarks to measure your progress.  Here’s what you should be looking at:

Cost Per Visitor (CPV) – How many advertising, marketing, SEO, etc. dollars do you need to spend to bring in each Website visitor you’re getting.   Don’t look at conversion just yet – it’s your website’s job to convert the visitors; marketing’s job is to get them…

...continue to read "Have You Given Your Website a Mid-Year Check-up?"

According to a recent study, Marketers are more likely to “monitor” than act on or react to Internet data. While 79% of businesses reported capturing Internet traffic information, only 30% of them actually modified their Websites as a result of traffic analysis. It makes me wonder if this move to be accountable by marketers is only important to them when they are measuring vanity metrics versus actionable metrics.

Are they only using metrics to make them feel better about their…

...continue to read "Why Bother to Collect Data?"

I’ve written about this before, but new reports keep reinforcing the point that most organizations don’t know what to make of their Web Analytics, meaning they can’t take action to improve their site based on the information they have.  And while the best bet in these situations is simply to hire an expert guide, that may not be an option for you (or maybe you’re just a hard-core DIY-er when it comes to website improvement).  If that’s the case, here is a…

...continue to read "Make Your Web Analytics Actionable in 5 DIY Steps"

As weird as it sounds, it’s the norm for businesses with sales cycles that might be as long as several months to a year and that might involve multiple decision makers and influencers to utterly fail to take these factors into consideration when constructing their website or selecting an analytics package.

In fact, whenever I work with B2B and complex sales clients it’s a sure bet their website won’t:

1) Adequately address the multiple decision-makers and influencers involved in securing the lead…

...continue to read "Can your Website Handle the Complexity of your Sale?"

Kudos to Omniture for posting “Survey: Search Marketers Underutilizing Sophisticated Metrics.” It takes guts to stop applauding customers and share some tough love.

According to the Omniture survey:

Marketers picked cost per click and click through rate as among their top metrics to optimize search campaigns instead of deeper metrics such as return on ad spend, cost per customer (or sale) or profit per order 43 percent of e-commerce respondents do not know how to accurately measure profit per customer (or order)…

...continue to read "Dirty Diapers, Shame and Web Analytics"