• by Masha Geller , April 22, 2002

A few weeks ago, Avenue A quietly held an invitation-only client summit in Las Vegas, where the interactive agency unveiled a “new competitive approach to online marketing.” They called it “Digital Nirvana.”

At first I thought that “Digital Nirvana” was just a fancy new name for the process of employing a little bit of common sense and some proven online marketing techniques (yes, there are some that have been proven to work). Upon closer examination, however, the following five components can stand being reviewed one more time, so here it goes.

According to Avenue A, for companies to achieve Digital Nirvana they need to get five things right:

1. use digital marketing to drive sales both online and offline;
2. deliver relevant personalized messages across all digital channels;
3. continuously (weekly, if not daily) optimize campaigns based on meaningful metrics, such as sales, registrations, or bookings, as opposed to just click-throughs;
4. leverage digital marketing to build their brand and
5. exploit the unique creative power of the medium, which in Avenue A’s opinion is limitless.

Some additional highlights: First, Avenue A was able to prove to one client that for every visitor who makes a purchase on their website, there are at least 4.6 additional visitors who first research a buy on their site and then proceed to purchase through an offline channel.

Second, Avenue A determined that online users who view web media and receive email were 44% more likely to purchase compared to those who only received email. Moreover, those users who click on web media and click on email were 91% more likely to purchase compared to those who click on email alone.

And most importantly, Avenue A said that using online survey methods to measure the branding impact of interactive campaigns is valuable, but the real leverage is to tie those changes in attitudes to changes in consumer behavior. “Once you've measured the increase in purchase intent via surveys, the next step is to follow those anonymous consumers through the purchase cycle in order to determine if changes in attitudes relate directly to changes in sales volume,” Avenue A recommends.

Do all of the above and you’ll achieve “Digital Nirvana.” Simple, isn’t it?