• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 4, 2010

Moving social signals into analytics tools, iPerceptions plans to unveil Monday a suite of tools that analyzes individual customer experiences based on the combination of voice of customer (VoC) and Google Analytics data. The 4Q suite includes Facebook and Twitter links, automatic alerts when significant changes occur within the data and global industry comparisons from more than 6,000 Web sites across 35 industry verticals.

The 4Q product suite, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, builds on the original 4Q Free version developed in collaboration with Google's Avinash Kaushik, known as an analytics expert. The suite now expands to offer several paid versions licensed monthly: 4Q Basic, 4Q Plus and 4Q Premium.

Kaushik challenged iPerceptions about a year ago to create more insight for users through the tool, according to Claude Guay, iPerceptions president and CEO, who believes marketers need to listen to the voice of customers. "The listening product lets visitors tell you why they did what they did," he says. "We're trying to take data and technology and make it meaningful to the business. The coolest job for me is making the data relevant to a variety of teams in a company such as marketing and research."

The data industry supporting online advertising and marketing has begun to realize the importance of integrating across platforms. This year we saw partnerships and integrations between Omniture and comScore and Facebook, Marin and Facebook, and even IBM digging into its pockets to acquire Coremetrics. While not in direct competition with iPerceptions, it provides an example of the need for companies to work together and allow data to flow across platforms, rather than get stuck in silos.

When customers set up their account through the iPeceptions' Web site, they provide access to their Google Analytics account to pull in and crunch the data. A dashboard in the platform presents the combined data. Through processing and alerts, the tool provides insight as to why site visitors dropped by, driving two metrics: task completion and overall experience.

Since iPerceptions specializes in providing an analytics tool that listens to the voice of the customer, at the beginning of each 4Q session the tool will ask marketers to fill out a short questionnaire before logging off. People can opt-out of answering the questions, but similar to social media, those who provide the feedback achieve the best results. Benchmarking tools allow users to analyze their results and site visits against others in the industry.

Guay, a data-driven techie, spent years at IBM, a company trying to increase its own position in analytics for marketers, supported digital and online channels for aviation and travel industries. He participated in IBM's development of SurfAid, which read Web site logs. IBM sold SurfAid to Coremetrics, but bought it back with the latest acquisition.

Now Guay ties in experience with analytics and enterprise resource platforms (ERP) to tweak and tie in Facebook and social media features. At the end of the survey, marketers using iPerceptions can ask consumers to join Facebook or Twitter. Pulling in the data from Google Analytics, Facebook or another social media site allows users to filter the data to determine intent and identify the locations visited before or after a specific site.

While the overall premise around asking the four most important survey questions remains the same as 4Q Free, the 4Q suite offers Individual Behavioral & Attitudinal Analysis, Industry Benchmarking, Automatic Alerts, Social Media Link, Customer Relationship Management, and Invitation Customization. The company plans to announce the suite at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit.