Actions Speak Louder Than Clicks

I recently conducted a webinar with Brett Hieggelke, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at TouchClarity Omniture called "Actions Speak Louder Than Clicks - The New Rules of Engagement Optimization". The presentation is based on our shared approach to optimizing the on-site experience. It shows a selection of results we have jointly achieved by applying both technology and marketing best practices.

Spotlight On Rich Media

According a Forrester Research report entitled "US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 To 2012," Rich Media or Interactive ads are expected to grow to 42 percent of the overall US Online display market by 2012. As a result of this expected growth, the accurate measurement of rich media campaigns will become crucial.

DoubleClick recently launched Spotlight for Rich Media - the first DoubleClick report to correlate individual rich media metrics, such as interactions, expansions, multiple click-throughs and video plays directly to site conversions. Therefore enabling advertisers to measure and optimize to the actual dollar return of specific graphical and interactive elements within creative campaigns. The report allows marketers to:

• Monitor conversion rates for multiple click-through links and update creatives to promote the link that’s driving the most value.
• Estimate the real dollar return of different types of video.
• Calculate the direct revenue effect of aggressive implementations like mouse-over-to-expand and auto-expand versus conservative approaches like click-to-expand.
• Measure how individual features within a rich media ad correlate to conversions so you can promote more of what works.

More here...

Performance Marketing & Creative

In my industry, there is and has been a conflicted view of how metrics driven performance marketing effects the creative process. It's too restrictive, too limiting, what about the brand experience?... And yet, as Norman Guadagno, a colleague from a sister company Zaaz said in a recent post:

"When used properly, performance marketing doesn't serve as a threat to designers, usability experts, or anyone else in the organization. It provides the foundation of a holistic business strategy that leaves designers free to be creative, usability experts open to shape the experience and ultimately allows the company as a whole to monitor Web initiatives and make well-executed adjustments that benefit all parties. Performance marketing allows everyone to bring their "A game" to the table and clearly see the results of their efforts. "

Measuring Engagement

In a new version of its Marketing Lab 2 (ML2), WebTrends is joining the race to find more meaningful data to measure engagement. This follows announcements by Nielsen//NetRatings who recently introduced a metric based on time spent while ComScore said last week that it would separate heavy from medium and light Internet users.

This new version of the ML2 product allows the parsing of visitor-level data, to assign points for certain user behaviors which then can accrue to tabulate engagement using a WebTrends Score. On and offline data can me combined to give a fuller picture over time.

Interesting. More here...

After The Click at ad:tech

I am at ad:tech today (Wednesday, August 1st) presenting After the Click, our approach to online marketing with my colleague Shane Atchison from Zaaz. We will cover the new laws of relationship marketing on the web and demonstrate how the currency of interactions has definitively moved from eyeballs to dollars. I will post a synopsis of our presentation afterwards, meanwhile, the critical strategies for success that we will discuss are:

1. Decide what you want to achieve and identify the key performance indicators
2. Monetize and prioritize your desired behaviors
3. Measure what matters and those things you can impact
4. Focus on the key conversion points on your site

You Can Only Measure What you Can Measure

The DMA has just released its report on "The Integration of DM and Brand" and unsurprisingly, brand and mass marketers are increasingly using direct techniques as part of their campaigns. Over half (56%) of respondents to the DMA survey used one or more direct marketing channels in conjunction with their brand awareness advertising.
"We began this report with the hypothesis that brand and direct marketers would differ substantially in their responses," Peter Johnson of the DMA said. "But when we analyzed the data, we discovered that, for those marketers with more experience, the differences have faded away. Marketing experts are combining direct techniques into brand advertising — and in all media, too." ."

Learning From Yahoo Answers

Using an approach similar to that of the popular Yahoo Answers (I use it almost constantly and am amazed by the quality of responses I get), Bazaarvoice has launched its new Ask & Answer product. The moderated service uses the power of social search to keep visitors on a site rather that researching a question elsewhere - or to have them come back to check on the status of a question they posed. Customers who leave an email address will be informed that their question has been answered. The service sits alongside more conventional product information and allows visitors to ask specific questions such as, "Will this plant grow in Texas?" and to get answers from other customers with direct experience. Sounds like an interesting way to increase the pitiful commerce sites conversion rates of around 2.6%...

Optimisation at ad:tech

I was lucky enough to have been invited on a panel with some really bright people from companies as diverse as Google, CBS and GM Planworks - the whole moderated by an equally bright Laurel Touby from MediaBistro.

We had some lively discussion around innovation in the online world, about optimisation in all of its forms (see below) and about the limits of optimisation (are there any?). We discussed listening as a core form of optimisation and why having the customer at the center of your planning will always lead to the right result.

We briefly discussed the changing role of the ad agency, and the question was asked - is Google becoming an agency - Frankly I believe that with the acquisition of DoubleClick and the creative assets of that company, then they really could. One area we didn't get to was the future role of Ebay in media buying.... For another day....

The 'O' Word

I am at ad:tech this week and will be part of a panel discussion on "Strategic Media Planning: Optimizing Performance in a Rapidly Expanding Ecosystem" on Wednesday of this week. In preparing for the panel, I started considering what optimization (the most overused word of 2007 so far) actually means. I found 8 different activities referred to as optimisation:

• Contact optimisation
• Site optimisation
• Search engine optimisation
• Bid management
• Behavioural targeting
• Ad serving
• Interaction management
• Web interaction optimisation...

Quite a number of variations on a theme, and in my experience, using just one has limited effectiveness...

Don't Tell Me, I Know...

The New Scientist reports that Xerox has submitted a patent application for a analytic tool which it says it can determine demographic information such as your age, sex and perhaps even your income by analysing the pattern of pages you choose to access on the web and comparing them to a database of surfing patterns from other users with a known background. Perfect for presenting relevant content to "anonymous" browsers...

Obviously, this form of predictive demographics will work only if different people don't use the same browser profile. More here.

Optimization

I have just spent 2 days at the Forrester Marketing Forum on Customer Centricity. The common theme throughout 90% of the presentations and exhibitors was optimisation of one form or another. Unsurprising when you consider that in the latest iteration of Forrester's “Marketing Technology Adoption Survey.” The number one area of marketing investment in 2007 from this Forrester survey was for “Web interaction optimization”. The concept is both simple and powerful - use any information, you have, can predict or can elicit from a visitor to determine the most relevant and engaging content to display to that visitor.

My company has been a key player in this field for some time now (yes, optimization is an established direct/relationship marketing tactic) and we have developed a full program around it for our clients - After The Click...

More on Pay Per Action

Cost per impression, cost per click or cost per action - the one commonality is cost. And, like every cost there must be a counter-value. Advertisers (and not Google) are responsible for ensuring that that value is realised by making sure that the result of a visit to a site or a landing page is a profitable one. Start by segmenting your audience, making the landing page relevant by aligning the content of the page to the ad, banner, search result etc, test and optimise the different elements of the page and use metrics to listen carefully to what the consumers (visitors) are telling you. In the absence of this, the cost/value ratio will continue to be out of whack whatever the model.

Who Are You Talking To?

Understanding the demographic profile of your site's visitors is both an essential and pretty easy step in optimizing the value of your site. Microsoft's adCenter provides several tools that marketers will find useful. One of those tools will give you the demographic (sex and age) breakdown of your audience. Obviously the more visitors you have, the larger the sample and the more accurate the results. The image below represents the results of an adCenter demographics scan on my company's website....

Taguchi Testing A Far Cry From A/B

A/B testing is a staple of the direct marketing industry. Two versions of a direct mail piece are mailed to representative groups of the audience to see which version generates the most responses. The most successful is then mailed to the full mailing list. The assumption being that either version A or B is the best possible answer - it rarely is.
Genichi Taguchi developed a process to test several variables at the same time by carefully selecting different combinations so that the total test reveals which version of each variable is best. This approach is called multivariate testing. For example, if you want to test five versions of the offer and five versions of the copy on your mailing piece, you can use different combinations of each so that you can test all 25 combinations at the same time, getting your answers for both variables at once.
Multivariate testing software can select which version of each variable should be tested on each page and can boil down those billions of possibilities to a few dozen. After testing those few dozen, you can run a second multivariate test with a dozen versions, then get it down to three or four for the last wave before you decide the right variants for every variable.

Search Marketing & How to Waste Money Doing It.

1. Don’t get to know your visitor….

Use the data you already have and any other nuggets you can glean
Offers should be refined for specific customer segments, such as gender, referral source, keyword, new or return visitor, and any others that we can mine. Create personas to use as a guide. From the anonymous browser, to the identified customer, Artificial Intelligence modules can now detect the most promising prospects from their browsing behavior.

2. Don’t make a direct connection between search terms used and the very first page you show to the visitor…

Create relevant landing pages
For example, if a customer searches for a high yield savings account and click on a link, that link must take you to a page which specifically deals with that subject—not to a generic home page where the customer must find the product herself. With so many choices, customers most often will just move on. The market reality is that there is simply not enough affordable traffic to sustain business growth unless the marketer optimizes the landing page as well as the search terms.

Offers must be relevant based on insights and different scenario testing. Content must be relevant and meaningful. And, design must reflect the needs and expectations of the target audience. We are trying to establish a profitable relationship here and relevance is the father of engagement.

3. Don’t pay attention to the copy of your ad…

Be specific in your copy
Yahoo gives you 190 characters (including spaces) in your text ad. MSN adCenter gives you 140, while Google allows just 70. No pictures, no colors, no company logo... nothing, just a few words. It’s a small canvas, your words are fundamental, be very careful not to waste them on generalities. Studies have shown extraordinary variations in the effectiveness of different copy (see point 5).

4. Don’t measure what matters…

Decide on a short list of key success metrics and measure, measure
The web has a great strength in the availability of performance data – the amount of data available is also a weakness. Some of the leading web metrics packages offer more that 5,000 reports out of the box – you probably need 5. Watching how customers behave on your website, and using the information to drive structural, offer placement or editorial improvements, is integral to increasing conversion.

5. Don’t use what you learn to drive improvement (continuously)…

Test, optimize and test again
Test as many combinations of content variations as you can or want to and track any sequence of conversion behavior. Use A/B split or multivariate test campaigns to meet your conversion goals. According to a Stanford University study the following are the conversion components that should be tested and optimized (there are more): Headline, Offer, Lead, Benefits, Images, Look & Feel.

Landing page optimisation

appears to be the flavour of the month in many circles. And for good reason: If the banner, search or other online ad is your storefront then the landing page is the store – the product selection that you put before your potential client. First impressions are lasting impressions, that being said, the initial landing page is just the beginning of the on (and off) line customer journey. The subsequent pages which guide your visitor to the “success event” of your site – be that a purchase, a request for further information, registration etc are equally important. According to a Stanford University study the following are the key elements to optimize:

1. Headline
2. Offer
3. Lead
4. Benefits
5. Images
6. Look & Feel

Even minor improvements in these elements will positively influence conversions on your site. How will you know which ones? By testing of course! The direct marketers have long understood the need to test to eek out increases in responses to offers – the same skills need to be deployed online.