Commentary

Merging Web Analytics With E-mail

by editor , David Baker , November 6, 2006

What a hot topic. Who wouldn't want to see the behavior of all Web visitors and be able to track it back to the source that impelled them to the site? The analysts are talking about it as the next phase of "e-mail relevance"--using Web analytics data to target and trigger messages--but is it really a new issue or an old issue with a new sense of "urgency"? In a column a few months ago on Business Intelligence, I wrote that e-mail marketing data is the poor man's Business Intelligence dashboard--and with the integration of e-mail systems and Web analytics vendors, this is becoming more of a reality.

If you are in New York this week, stop by the Ad:Tech Conference, where I will be moderating a panel on this very topic. The panel consists of the CEO of Silverpop (an e-mail technology company), the CEO of an analytics firm (Theorem), and the vice president of strategy for an interactive agency (AvenueA|Razorfish). They will provide three completely different perspectives on e-mail and analytics, trends, issues, methodologies and what is really working today.

Four key observations will form the themes of our upcoming discussion:

What are e-mail technology providers doing to integrate with Web analytics systems--and why is this important?

The difference between analytics and analysis. One is reporting and the other is strategic thinking. How are businesses managing this today, with so few people in the organization skilled to manage it? As Jason Burby, Director of Web Analytics for ZAAZ says, if you're spending 80 percent of your time reporting KPIs and 20 percent on improving them, you need to rethink your resource allocation.

Actionable insights. The business is flooded with data that is virtually useless if you don't have a process for making decisions, or "unit/cell" level pressure to improve performance. Your evolution as marketers will progress from, "can we track this data past an open rate" to "do we trigger a message, since the majority of people exude this path behavior?"

Dashboards of the future. Transforming raw data into meaningful dashboards driven by KPIs. Don't forget the "balanced scorecard." Dashboards are not only behavioral data; other considerations go into truly measuring marketing performance, including customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Scores and the sources of softer measurement.

Your business culture will dictate how fast you move forward with this integration and your focus. But here are some facts and trends to consider:

--56% of marketers say that the Web is the HUB of their organization's marketing strategy (Webtrends CMO Report).

--E-mail driven based off Web site click-stream data offers a three times to nine times revenue improvement over broadcast e-mail campaigns (Jupiter).

--Only 15% of marketers use click-stream data as an audience segmentation attribute, but that is growing (Jupiter).

--But over 40% tag outgoing e-mail With Web analytics identifiers (Jupiter).

--Only 15% of marketers state they have dedicated staff for Web analytics; 9% have more than one staff member; 15% have no staff and over 50% state this is a part-time role for one or more staffers.

As Jupiter says, the need to drive "relevance" and justify the bottom-line impact of e-mail is driving technologies and providers to streamline this service to accommodate a closed- loop view of data. I'm excited about the discussion next week and the investment many companies are making in this integration of e-mail and Web analytics data.

We are entering a time when performance marketing is taking on a new foundation. and the organizational excuse will no longer be "Well, that is managed by a different group." Business Intelligence or Marketing Intelligence is a global strategy, yet measurement is a unit/cell level function.

As John Naisbitt (author of Supertrends) quipped, "Trends, like horses, are easier to ride in the direction they are going."

As loyal Media Post readers, if you'd like a copy of the Ad:Tech presentation and links to other relevant reports on this subject, send me an e-mail at david.baker@avenuea-razorfish.com.

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