Tag Archives: Analytics

June 16, 2015 · 10:27 am

Are We Getting Dumber?

Every day there are more articles written about the vast treasure trove of data marketers, publishers, and others gather from their interactions with customers.  Every mouse click, every social interaction, every store visit is another source of information that a business can use to make the

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customer experience more enjoyable and, hopefully, more profitable.  Nice ideal, but the reality is far from it, since most of the time the data is not collected, analyzed, and organized by capable people.  In fact, I’m willing to bet that the folks who could benefit most from all of this information know the least about it.

Here is something from eMarketer:

In a March 2015 study by Signal, 51% of marketers worldwide reported that they did not have a single view of customers/prospects across devices and touchpoints. In comparison, just 6% said their current solution provided an adequate single view of their customers. And Econsultancy polling in association with ResponseTap in March 2015 found that only 5% of client-side marketers worldwide had a seamless integration of customer touchpoints across channels that allowed for exploitation of opportunities. Just under a quarter had integrated channels but were channel-focused, not customer-focused.

That was about marketers’ understanding of mobile but there is much evidence that the same sort of low integration applies in other channels as well.  I mean think about your own experiences on-line and off.  I know my supermarket knows everything I buy because I’m diligent about using my card to get gas rewards – cents off gasoline purchases. That is a great value received – along with some good store discounts –  in return for me giving up my data.  That said, when I check in the scanner doesn’t acknowledge me by name nor are the coupons I sometimes receive at checkout very well targeted.  The mailings I get from the store – not the circulars – that’s asking a bit much – the coupon packs and email offers don’t seem very well targeted at all.  They have the data – they should be getting smarter and I should never want to go shop anywhere else – but nether of those things are true.

Every customer interaction counts.  We are getting a lot better about collecting them but we’ve got a long way to go to create a better experiences for our customers.  Media need to understand how to create that same better, efficient experience for their advertisers.  Heaping 15 minutes of ads into a 60 minute window isn’t it and the data can show us that.

So are we getting dumber?

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March 10, 2015 · 10:48 am

Dark Social

I will admit upfront that today’s screed is a little wonky.  You might want to stay with me though – you might just figure something out about your business as we go.  Ready?

The topic today is what’s been called “dark social” traffic.  No, these are not teenagers cruising Main Street late at night.  It refers to people coming to your website based on a link that’s been shared to them socially.  In other words, when I see an article I like and share it with a friend via email or messaging, most web analytic systems don’t really get how the recipient got to the website (although some are beginning to).  Since they clicked on a URL and went directly to the site (not from another website), it’s reported as direct traffic which is a big dumping bin of mostly unknown sources (even though it’s supposed to be users who came by typing the URL or via bookmark).  With me so far?

I did a little exercise on one of my client’s site traffic.  I looked at direct traffic which didn’t enter the site on the home page, an indicator to me of dark social traffic since people don’t generally type in long URL’s.  11% of their traffic was dark social.  With another client it was 34%.  I did some research and it turns out that those numbers are pretty typical – The Atlantic Monthly, which receives 5M monthly uniques, reports 60% of traffic from dark social.  Smithsonian Magazine realized it was 82% of their shares. Why is this important to you?

If you’re spending time analyzing your data to make better marketing decisions – which audiences to target through which channels, which content is socially relevant, etc – knowing what’s being shared and by whom is important.  The client I checked usually has a somewhat older skew and we use that in marketing.  The dark social traffic, however, demonstrates not only a higher rate of sharing of content among younger (18-24) people but also a higher conversion rate.  Very interesting and actionable data point.

The broader point is one you’ve heard before.  We need to spend time thinking about how our customers and potential customers come to and interact with our brand.  We need to formulate good questions and try to answer them with the data.  Data for data’s sake is useless.  Using data to drive actionable business decisions is where we are right now in marketing and business, at least where I and my clients are.  You?

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August 26, 2014 · 11:37 am

The Only Two Numbers That Matter

Everyone in business has heard talk about “big data.” It Takes 2!There is no question that we know more about our customers, their buying patterns, their media usage – heck, just about anything – than ever before. It’s easy to get trapped into micromanaging all that data which will overwhelm even the best systems and the smartest analysts.  So today I’m going to try to get you to follow some great advice from Thoreau:

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.

He wasn’t exactly talking about big data, but he might have been.  In my mind there are really only two numbers that matter.  While I’m going to speak of them in web terms the reality is that they apply to every business as I will explain.  They are:

That’s it.  Multiply those two and you get a measure of success.  The first is how many opportunities you have to create a successful interaction; the second is the rate at which you do so.  That successful interaction can be a newsletter sign up, a sale, a social share of some content – you will need to define it.  Taking the number of times that successful thing happens and dividing it into the number of people who potentially might have done it (your traffic) gives you a conversion rate.  Simple!

You would be surprised how many of the analytics accounts I’ve looked at over the years haven’t set up goals, and without goals there are no conversions.  It’s not just web-based businesses that can do this.  Retail can count foot traffic and numbers of sales, for example.  Numbers of customer service calls with a successful (in the customer’s eyes) resolution.  Once you’re focused on measuring traffic and conversions, you can place everything else you do in marketing in those contexts.  More traffic without conversions is useless.  More conversions from the same traffic is fantastic.

Big data is great and I use it all the time.  As with all things, however, start with the simple, which often gets overlooked – the necessary and the real, as Thoreau says.  You agree?

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