Collaboration makes for smarter marketing

by Marketing ON 19 August 2010

I want to talk about collaboration – collaboration within our work place to facilitate fast and effective marketing strategies. Why do I want to bring this up? Because ‘marketing effectiveness’ has been repeatedly held up as an all-important goal in 2010 and I wonder just how many of us have made headway with it.

It’s quite a broad term, ‘marketing effectiveness’, but I believe one of the main contexts it’s used in is, when we’re discussing data analysis and how we can use this information to enhance our efforts. What has this got to do with collaboration? Well, what many struggle with is getting all the relevant people within a business on the same page in terms of why they’re gathering website data, the type of information they’re gathering, when they’re collecting it, who has access to it and how it’s to be used. Incongruent ideas about data collection and its purpose typically lead to inaction and therefore ‘marketing ineffectiveness’, which is why I want to talk about collaboration…

Data is meaningless unless you can create thoughtful action, based on its analysis. As marketers, we need this data but more importantly we need to analyse it and develop new ideas and strategies from it. We can only do this however, if the person who collects and analyses the data shares this information in real-time with the marketing department. Similarly, the marketing department needs to share the insights and conclusions drawn with the data collection team so they can ensure the right data is being monitored, and the right kind of analysis conducted. Additionally, it’s important that senior management and/or business owners understand (at a high level) how this data feeds into changing marketing strategies and tactics, and importantly, how it supports the case for budget and resource increases. You see, data collation is imperative but collaboration and communication about this data is critical if it’s to provide any value to your organisation.

I’d like to quickly offer another example of how collaboration can help us achieve the holy grail that is ‘marketing effectiveness’. On average, a customer might experience 5.5 touches from your business before they convert. This might involve an email campaign, a direct mail leaflet, a billboard, a newspaper article, a link from a blog or an organic search. Typically, there might be more than one department or person involved in the distribution of these marketing materials. Even more typical is a situation whereby these people and departments aren’t talking to each other and sharing information about their campaigns on a regular basis. Therefore, when it comes to tracking leads and attributing value to the different tactics, it can get a little competitive.

Depending on the kind of model you use, your business might attribute value to the first touch that ultimately leads to a sale. Or, perhaps you attribute it to the last touch before a customer converted. Either way, your approach is wrong because it doesn’t accurately represent how the sale came about. There are likely to have been multiple touches before the deal was sewn up, therefore your data collection and analysis procedures need to reflect this collaboration of marketing tools and tactics. It’s the only way the business will truly understand how to achieve marketing effectiveness across the entire organisation.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Getting website visitors to return

by Marketing ON 29 July 2010

A typical online new visitor conversion rate is somewhere around 4-5% (source: Coremetrics Benchmark™ for Retail Q2 2010). Whilst that is interesting, the flip side is that it shows that 95% of new visitors to your websites do not convert/buy.

Regardless of why they left (which is a different discussion), once they have gone, your job is to find ways to get them back. If their questions are all answered on someone else’s website before you can get them back, then you will lose them altogether.

Tactics for Increasing Return Visitors:

There are two key tactics which good online marketers are using in parallel to increase the chance of dragging a prospect back to their website so that their conversion rate is improved.

The tactic to use depends very much whether you know the visitor’s email address or not.

Tactic 1: email

If you know the visitor’s email address, then reaching out with a contact email, personalised and including a relevant special offer (either about the product/service they were looking at or a relevant cross sell offer), will get you back in front of the visitor. Note: sending them your normal weekly email ‘product specials’ blast is not good enough – if you want to get them back, you must be personal and give them a good reason to come back.

The trick with these sorts of emails is to find a way to automate the process – you don’t have the time/resources to be doing these manually. There are many good email service providers who can help with this.

Tactic 2: behavioural targeting

But what happens if you don’t know their email address but you still want to lure them back to your website? That’s where behavioural targeting comes in to play.

Assuming you are already doing online marketing campaigns (banner ads etc) on websites where your prospects are likely to visit, you can improve your chance of success by putting in place an agreement with your advertising network or content owner to drive the best advert to your prospect.

For example, let’s say you sell shoes online. Someone comes to your website and browses for shoes and looks at your current special offer (the winter sale – 20% off shoes) and then leaves without buying. Later on, the next day or even next week, they go to one of the websites where you are advertising. If your advertising network could know that this person had been to your website and had shown interest in the winter sale, they could pop your ad with the special offer on shoes in front of the prospect.

The breadth of your ability to do this is a function of your advertising network and how many appropriate properties they can serve your ads to. Done properly, you can have your banner or ad in front of partially qualified prospects on many, many properties as they surf the net. Your chance of re-engaging them is significantly improved.

The summary of this story is that many of today’s advanced online marketers have solid remarketing and re-acquisition tactics in place to drag prospects back, time and time again. Maybe you could have a look at this for your business.

Youve got she-mail

by Marketing ON 22 July 2010

Background

Online marketers at L’Occitane En Provence have used email for years to help build excitement about campaigns and entice customers with free shipping and gift-with-purchase offers. Its approach is similar to many retailers who market online and in brick-and-mortar stores; email is a vital sales and communication tool.

As much as possible, the marketing team at L’Occitane recreates the experiential environment of its boutiques in their email campaigns. They refer to these campaigns as ‘windows’ because of their close alignment with boutique windows and in-store displays, which are updated every three weeks.

However, bringing the in-store experience online is a complex task. Capturing the essence of an in-store display takes clever marketing creativity and many resources, while the process for deciding which sales and offers to promote requires rigorous debate and strategic thinking.

Like many marketers, the L’Occitane team had to be careful that it didn’t overwhelm email recipients with too many offers even though it knew it had great bargains and gifts available.

In addition to this challenge, the staff recognised that many consumers today suffer from email overload – increasing email frequency was reaching a point of diminishing returns. Customer engagement through email was declining. The L’Occitane marketing team knew it had to urgently change its email marketing ways.

Client: L’Occitane
Agencies: Coremetrics and e-Dialog

Objectives

For more than 30 years, the fields of Provence and the traditions and techniques of this unspoiled land have been the secret and inspiration behind L’Occitane beauty products. L’Occitane has drawn inspiration from Mediterranean art de vivre and traditional Provencal techniques to create natural beauty products devoted to wellbeing. The company markets its products through boutiques in more than 70 countries, as well as through its usa.loccitane.com website.

L’Occitane marketers faced the challenge of increasing the relevance of email through smarter, more effective segmentation and thorough testing of content and offers.
They needed a solution that would identify behavioural trends among new and existing customers so they could better understand exactly who would be interested in the current main product offer and how they could capitalise on the many secondary in-store offers available. The team also wanted to better understand the evolving shopping habits of their customer base so that its marketing tactics could stay one step ahead.

The end game for L’Occitane was to boost sales and increase customer retention and loyalty. With all the advances in marketing tools today, the team felt sure there was a solution that could help it deliver more targeted email campaigns that matched individual customers’ preferences. The team set about researching the many marketing products and software available, keeping in mind the specific email campaign objectives.

Strategy

After rigorous investigation and research, L’Occitane sought the assistance of online and email marketing services from Coremetrics and e-Dialog. The two solutions come together to enable the marketing team to segment and target customers with high precision. The solutions would allow the team to take a bird’s-eye-view of all email campaigns to see exactly how consumer behaviours and interaction with the company is changing, and whether marketing tactics (new and old) are staying relevant.

With heightened knowledge and data that clearly indicate customer trends and preferences, the L’Occitane team found itself in a position to set new email campaign KPIs around open rates, revenue per email, unique click rates and conversion rates. It was the first time that the team was setting goals and benchmarks for campaigns that were meaningful and that itknew were achievable.

After some discussion and brainstorming, the marketing team then implemented a new email marketing approach.

Execution

As soon as the new solution was implemented, L’Occitane marketers were amazed to see how much behavioural data they now had about every customer. They could browse individual profiles of people’s entire relationship with the online store, looking at important information about products browsed, carted, reviewed and purchased.

Using this newfound knowledge, L’Occitane embarked on an initial campaign called ‘L’Occitane’s Immortelle’, which saw marketers create a segment comprising visitors who recently purchased, carted or browsed products online from its Immortelle skincare line.

They then compared the results of this segment against those of a control group (which hadn’t shown any interest in Immortelle products) using a message containing identical creative and subject line. This was the ideal way for L’Occitane to test the power of the new solution and the new customer information they had at their fingertips.

Results

The results of L’Occitane’s Immortelle campaign were impressive. Key performance indicators for the group that received the targeted email message were off the charts when compared with the control group. A highlight was that the conversion rate was 17 times higher and the revenue per email was 25 times higher than the control group.

During the Immortelle campaign, L’Occitane marketers also tested the effectiveness of offering customers a ‘gift-with-purchase’. Marketers created two versions of the email message for visitors with an affinity for the Immortelle skincare line. The content and subject lines were identical for the two groups except that one included a gift-with-purchase offer in the creative.

As the table below demonstrates, the revenue per email message is 1.5 times higher for the gift-with-purchase group. With this information, the marketers were able to calculate an incremental ROI and determine that the gift-with-purchase offer was a good investment for customers who have a clear product affinity.

Such significant, positive results have L’Occitane marketers convinced that the ability to segment and target customers more precisely is key to increasing the overall performance of the email channel. More personalised messages have also helped keep customer engagement high and drive repeat online purchases; a profound benefit has ensued as a result of simply taking a closer look at what customers are doing online.

Since implementing the new solution, L’Occitane marketers have been able to leverage secondary in-store promotions that previously would not have been included in online campaigns. By matching current offers with customer segments that have demonstrated product affinity, the marketing team has been able to add a whole new layer of email marketing effectiveness to its campaigns.

Where previously they might not have risked the time and resources on certain secondary offers, L’Occitane marketers are now using the secondary offer campaigns as key contributors to the bottom line.

Do you hear a Who?

by Marketing ON 24 June 2010

The 1954 book ‘Horton Hears a Who’ by Dr. Seuss tells the story of Horton the Elephant who, in the afternoon of May 15 while splashing in a pool, located in the Jungle of Nool, hears a small speck of dust talking to him. It turns out the speck of dust is actually a tiny planet, home to a city called ‘Who-ville’. ‘Who-ville’ is inhabited by microscopic-sized inhabitants, ‘Whos’, and led by a character known as the Mayor. His motto is, ‘a persons a person, no matter how small’ – I think we should take great lead from the Mayor’s motto and apply it to our online marketing.

Marketing is all about the ‘Whos’ – it’s about building and maintaining relationships (and sometimes breaking them) between a business and its customers. The customers are the ‘Whos’ of course, no matter how small they may be.

Many of us treat our ‘Whos’ more like ‘Whats’. We count them, we corral them, we segment them – but we don’t listen to them. They’re just numbers to us – 15,000 names on an email list or 42,000 hits on our web site. For these marketers, success is measured by an increase in activity of the ‘Whats’ – a better response rate to the email campaign, or a percentage increase in time spent on each page on our web site. But that is not effective in building relationships with them – rather it reminds me more of the opinions of ‘Vlad Vladikoff’, the ‘Wickersham Brothers’ and the ‘Sour Kangaroo’ in the book. We don’t believe they exist as people because we can’t see or hear them – so we don’t market to them as people.

But the ‘Whos’ do exist – behind every email address and every click on your web site there is a living, breathing person with their own special needs, likes and dislikes and opportunities for you to reach out and make a new friend for your company.

You need to make an effort to get to know them. Find out who they are. It’s not hard – they are all dying to tell you about themselves – every time they click on something on your site, fill out a form, watch a video, type something on your company’s Facebook page, or fail to respond to an email blast – every time they interact and/or choose not to interact with your company, they are telling you something about themselves. The trick is to listen.

Are you really listening to what your customers are telling you? I mean really listening, as if your relationship with them depends on it (it does you know!)? Are you developing the relationship by tracking and profiling your ‘Whos’ so that you can remember what they have previously told you, and so you can then give them what they want, when they want it? Or are you just counting them – treating them as ‘Whats’ instead of ‘Whos’?

At the end of ‘Horton Hears a Who’, all the ‘Whos’ get together and make a noise so loud that even Vlad, the Wickersham Brothers and the Sour Kangaroo could hear them. Of course, they all lived happily ever after.

Don’t wait until your ‘Whos’ gang up and tell you what they want through leaving your site, never to return again – start listening now. And always remember, ‘a persons a person, no matter how small’.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Analysis Paralysis?

by Marketing ON 11 June 2010

While some of us are still getting our heads around using basic web analytics services to count website hits and email click-throughs, the leaders in our field in Australia and around the world are using deep dive analytics to significantly up their marketing advantage. There is no longer a point of discussion about ‘analysis paralysis’ or deciding how much effort to put into it – if you are not deep diving into your online analytics numbers, you need to be (build a bridge – get over it – just do it!).

For most marketers today, site-level analysis just does not provide enough information to build and reshape dynamic marketing campaigns. Our forward thinking peers are integrating data and analysis across multiple sources and every single marketing campaign. From banner ad response rates and offline customer data, to mobile web activity and social media networks, the smart ones are gaining ground by taking a much richer, more insightful view of each marketing channel and the data each one presents.

While site-level analysis is better than no analysis at all, I’d like to point out that it can quickly paralyse your marketing efforts after a very short time. The opposite of ‘analysis paralysis’ is ‘marketing by guesswork’.

When we’re starting out with web analytics, we’re very focused on site-level analysis. We typically implement a basic solution that counts our website visits, tells us which hits were repeat visitors versus new visitors, and how people came to arrive at our site in an isolated event. We then use this data to better understand who it is that’s creating site traffic and whether they’re new or returning visitors. We might also make some assumptions about how our marketing campaigns played a role in attracting some of those new visitors by comparing dates for a campaign with website hits and traffic. But that’s about it.

From here on in you’ll need much more detailed data to safely make a connection between your marketing efforts and site activity, online conversions and lead generation. And let’s face it; drawing a solid correlation between marketing campaigns and conversions is what our marketing lives are all about.

To further illustrate my point, I’d like to highlight that pure site-level analysis doesn’t provide you with the marketing campaign detail. You’ll need to understand things like:

Which messages resonated with customer segment A in our latest email campaign?
Did we get the timing right for sending out that new cart abandonment email reminder?
How did the banner ads work with the social media campaign tactics to generate those new leads?
Are we wasting our time with those enews adverts? They don’t generate sales on our site but those same people are then coming back to our site at a later date and making enquiries and purchases, so maybe it is providing value?

I could go on and on with many more questions to demonstrate just how useful in-depth and integrated data is to your role as a marketer but I think that you get the message. Site-level analysis is a great place to start but keep in mind that your peers are taking the next step (and adopting a long-term view) with their customer intelligence strategies – isn’t it time you did too?

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Ignorance is not bliss

by Marketing ON 20 May 2010

As a marketing manager (we do most of our stuff online) I have a budget to look after and my main goal is to maximise the return from my marketing investments. I have lots of tactical choices available – banner ads, search, print, emails, newsletter sponsorship, social media and so forth. To decide where to allocate my hard-earned budget, I generally look to the history of my various campaigns and spend more where I know I will get a better return.

The hidden problem for marketers is that many of the measurement tools being used to determine campaign outcomes are totally bogus and so the results being used to determine future marketing investments are false. Truly, you could be operating in a vacuum of blissful ignorance and not even know it!

Most of todays online web analytics tools, including Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends and Yahoo Analytics default to what is known as last click attribution – that is, they count the value of the conversion (sale, booking event etc) towards the last marketing activity that happened. Last Click attribution is good for measuring conversion events but will not tell you which campaign brought the customer to you in the first place – for that you would measure the First Click. And what about the other campaigns along the way that influenced the conversion? How do you measure these and make sure they get some credit as well?

The key takeaway is that depending on the attribution model you are using, your return on investment (ROI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) may vary dramatically, and may lead you to make different (and possibly very wrong) decisions about how to best optimise your marketing efforts.

Whilst there are some very advanced attribution techniques being deployed by some companies, the general consensus today is that an approach looking at First, Last and Average Click, side by side, is a sensible and achievable approach – and it can be done with minimal effort (and possibly a spreadsheet, if you must). Such an approach will show you which campaigns are working better for acquisition, influence and conversion – you can then weight the results to drive the campaign mix you are looking for.

A recommended action plan:

Find out which attribution model you are currently using,
Re-assess your current marketing program now that you know what your are really measuring,
Implement a First, Last and Average Click attribution model for your business,
Reconsider your mix strategy for acquisition, influence and conversion,
Make more informed and effective investment decisions,
Bask in the glory of knowing you have improved your marketing effectiveness, and
Spend your ‘Management By Objective’ bonus!

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

A job half done…

by Marketing ON 6 May 2010

Imagine you’re working in a department store in a large shopping centre. Each time a customer walks in, they must move to the counter and answer some questions before they can begin browsing:

What store did you come from?
How long will you spend here browsing?
Have you been into our store before?
What items will you look at and/or ultimately purchase?
How long do you usually like to spend in stores like ours?
Have you come in today because you received our mail outs?

I can hear you thinking, ‘How great would that be? Then we would know exactly what the customer was after and whether our mail outs were working!’ Never going to happen? Wrong!

Whilst we may never actually ask our customers these types of questions face-to-face in store, we can do this every day online. Unbelievably, recent reports show that a large majority of businesses still see web analytics as less important in relation to other functions within a business and yet it’s nearly as common as sliced bread these days to have some kind of solution in place to track website visitors. Major companies are using the technology, small businesses are jumping onboard and everyone’s talking about it. ‘What’s your bounce rate?’ or ‘What’s your average time spent on site?’ are nearly as common as ‘Was the shop busy today?’ or ‘How’s business been lately?’

Why is it that some businesses still don’t manage web analytics like it’s a crucial business tool, even though it can answer all those wonderfully insightful questions (and more) that I listed above? The answer is, I believe, that we’re doing step one right (appreciating the need for tools and processes for data collection, thus implementing a solution to capture and track our site visitors) but step two (allocating resources to take action on this data) can be a little daunting and therefore doesn’t get the attention it deserves or needs.

Imagine having the opportunity to ask your customers the above questions and then blocking your ears when they give you their answers. This is effectively what you’re doing by not allocating time and resources to understand, interpret and report on behavioural trends and outcomes derived from data collected online.

It’s not all bad news though. We are seeing the management of web analytics and the interpretation of that data jump a few rungs on the priority ladder. Evidence in recent reports show that web analytics management is shifting from the IT department into the hands of marketers, which is a great sign. It just seems that the next challenge is making sure you’re collecting the right data and then dedicating adequate resources and attention to it so you can take action in exactly the right way and at the perfect time.

“This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.”

Online retail declines in Q1 2010

by Marketing ON 23 April 2010

A Coremetrics study has found a slump in online retail sales for Q1 2010 as compared to Q4 2009, reportedly due to a quiet period following Christmas. The research found a near 10% leap in the final month of Q1 2010.

“The average order value also trended upwards in March, shooting to $180.95 from $168.23 in January. This is an increase of nearly 8% and is actually stronger than December 2009 figures when average order values were $171.89,” said Kevin Mackin, general manager of Coremetrics, Australia New Zealand.

The average number of items per order also trended up by 7.2% in March.

“The online retail sector delivered an encouraging performance over the course of the first quarter, which is fantastic news for local retailers… Though overall sales were down slightly for the quarter, the sector posted strong gains in March. Both average order values and items per order are trending solidly up, reflecting strong consumer confidence in the economy and perseverance from savvy online retailers. In particular, department stores and sports gear retailers have done an exceptional job of attracting consumers and delivering strong sales results,” added Mackin.

Dont like data? The online game isnt for you

by Marketing ON 7 April 2010

Getting stuck into data analysis for your website isnt everyones cup of tea but its plain as day now that using data to make marketing decisions is the only path to success.

So, unless youre willing to:

 convince yourself that you have a love for data that will stand the test of time, or
have someone else in your team equally capable and patient thats more willing to work with the figures and come up with insightful answers to all your marketing questions

…then youre going to get left behind.

A wise man once described the online world, Youre in the wrong place if you dont like data. Its a very data-intensive business. Ive just quoted Kent Anderson, president of Macys.com, a company thats turned its online presence into the ultimate source of all-things Macys for customers worldwide.

I raise this example because I believe Macys has achieved the multi-channel marketing ideal that many of us actively strive for. Whether youre a customer looking to make a payment on a store credit card or searching for a Macys store location, the website caters for everyone.

On top of this, Macys has been so successful at integrating online and offline marketing data that they can now actively influence sales in-store using clever online marketing tactics. Not bad huh?

The only way Macys (or anyone, for that matter) can do this though is by collecting the right data, which can then be used to pull together amazingly insightful analysis about customers and prospects. I believe however, that perhaps locally were a little data shy and feel overwhelmed at the thought of capturing more than the data basics such as website hits and click-throughs. The thought of gathering any more than this begs the question: how do I deal with this data quickly and effectively so that it can have a positive impact on my marketing teams efforts?

Well, the answers really quite simple. Technology makes this possible. Technology makes data collection and analysis simple, fast and actionable. And Ill refer to our friend Kent Anderson at Macys once more, The technologies coming out are very powerful and can be used to personalise the offer and continue down this path of developing a relationship and communicating with the customer, rather than talking at them.

To surmise, gathering the right data is critical to any business with a website. And using this data neednt be a daunting and frightful experience these days – the proof lies with the Macys of this world whove worked out which tools and information they need to make their lives easier.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.

Of the Sheepdog and Wolf

by Marketing ON 24 March 2010

 Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Marketania, there lived two most unlikely friends – a sheepdog and a wolf. Most evenings they would get together on the wind swept hills of Marketania and share stories of their adventures during the day, only occasionally straying on to the topic of most interest to them both but for different reasons: sheep. 

 One evening, after a particularly hard day’s work, they got together as usual but this night, the sheepdog over-indulged on his favourite beverage.The next morning he awoke feeling very sad and sorry for himself and could not quite face up to going to work. His great friend, the wolf, offered to take his position for the day and look after the sheep. You can guess what happened next…

 For it is in the nature of a sheepdog to herd and nurture the flock even at the peril of his own life and it is in the nature of the wolf to eat sheep – and you can’t beat nature. 

 So too this story can apply to marketing folks. It is in the nature of the marketer to build a trusting relationship with their agency. Marketers like to seek the advice and support of their agency wherever possible and to leverage the agency for as much value as they can get from them. Conversely, it is in the nature of the agency to own and control as much of the marketing spend by the company as possible and to maximise the revenue and margin for the agency. 

The question this raises is: “Does it make business sense to also let the agency measure the outcome of the joint effort?”   Some agencies embrace measurement, especially the advanced capabilities which come in the online world, and use it to drive stronger and better outcomes for their clients. Other agencies see measurement tools as a drain on the potential ad spend from a client and avoid it like the plague.

 Regardless of the approach, from a business viewpoint it cannot possibly make business sense to have the agency in control of the reporting. In all other aspects of business, in-house or independent measurement systems are in place for good reason. The accounting department uses auditors to keep them honest and avoid costly law suits. Production systems have separate quality control processes in place to maintain service quality. It is a precept of good business practice that the measurement system be independent of the process. 

 The moral of the story: keep your friends close but always remain cognizant of their underlying nature. It is not fair on them or you to put them in a position of conflict with their own nature. Sheep taste great, especially if you are a hungry wolf!  

 “This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.”

Do you want fries with that?

by Marketing ON 2 March 2010

The online equivalent of “Do you want fries with that?” is fast becoming “Customers who bought this, also bought ………”. But the science around this area, behavioural based merchandising, is a lot deeper than just adding a simple product recommendation based on what someone else has bought. How about recommendations like “Other customers also viewed” or “Other customers went on to purchase” – the whole idea is to make the most relevant offer to the right prospect at the right time.

The first thing is that you need to know the prospect. I mean really know them – the better you know them, the better chance you have of matching an offer to meet their needs. Marketing 101, yes? If all you know about them is that they have put shoes into the shopping cart, then the best you can probably do is recommend other shoes as an upsell or maybe some socks as a cross sell… But what if you knew that before they put shoes in the cart, they also looked at an expensive gold pendant and the last time they hit your site, they were looking at gold earrings and that they came to your site by searching for gold necklaces? Armed with the deeper knowledge of the customer you might conclude that the shoes were a short term impulse buy and that they are really in the market to spend a whole lot more money on something in gold – so the more appropriate recommendation would probably be alternate pendants or maybe earrings (or both).

Another consideration is where to put the recommendation. What a total waste of time and money it is to see sites going to the trouble of putting up recommendations and then positioning them below the fold, so the only way someone sees the recommendation is if they happen to scroll down the page. A recommendation needs to be in your face if it is to have the desired impact.

Part of the positioning decisions are also around the page you use. Different types of recommendations are known to work better on different pages. Here is a table listing some common page types, the preferred recommendation option and an estimate of the results you might expect with a strong online behavioural targeting engine:

Page	Recommendations	Percentage increase in sales
Home	Top Sellers	0.5%
Category	Top Sellers	1.3%
Product Listing	Top Sellers	9.0%
Individual Product	Others Also Viewed	6.0%
Individual Product	Others Also Bought	2.0%
Cart	Others Also Bought	1.0%
Cart	Others Also Viewed	0.2%
Order Confirmation	Others Also Bought	0.3%
Order Confirmation Email	Others Also Bought	0.1%

And then there are follow up recommendations. Using email to recommend a cross sell or to retarget customers who displayed a predetermined activity on your site. A recent study concluded that targeted emails with the right product recommendation had a conversion rate of 8% compared to 2-3% for broadcast emails… or using the recommendations across channels, say in the call centre or at POS… but that is a whole blog session in its own.

The bottom line is that bringing a scientific approach to the automation of online product recommendations is becoming a complex and specialist process, with smart businesses taking advantage of the seriously strong returns available from getting it right.

“This is my personal blog. The views expressed here are my own and do not represent those of my employer, Coremetrics.”

Making use of all that 2010 advice

by Marketing ON 19 February 2010

By now we’ve all read a million articles talking about important learnings from 2009, tips for a better 2010 and hot predictions for the year ahead, all of which offer really useful information and insight. So, perhaps you’re now at the stage of tweaking your marketing plan, bedding down new strategies and firming up budgets… a very invigorating (and daunting) time for marketers.

While deciding what the new marketing plan looks like, most of us will work with our teams to identify new strategies to try and successful tactics to hold fast to, in a bid to improve on our 2009 marketing efforts. There’s plenty of advice out there to leverage but what I think seems to be missing is a critical reminder to analyse what you achieved last year in light of where you want to take your business in 2010.

I think we’ll see improvement in the way marketers track results and draw conclusions that inform investment decisions this year but there’s still a long way to go before we see the majority of businesses benchmarking themselves against their peers and setting goals within such a context. We still tend to analyse our results such as website hits and email open rates in isolation, comparing figures from one month to the next. We set goals for the new year based on past improvement figures and still frequently use our ‘gut instinct’ when coming up with segmentation campaigns to engage different audiences in our mailing list. While these are all fairly good attempts at providing yourself with data on which to base your plan and budget, there’s a lot more you could be doing.

Find your yardstick

It’s critical nowadays for us to widen our view of the world. If we are to truly understand where we are and what we need to achieve with our plans we need to grasp how our figures and stats compare to our peers. For example, a steady increase of website hits is not enough if our figures are comparatively low with our competitors. Just because you’ve seen an average monthly improvement of 11% in website visitors throughout 2009 doesn’t mean you’re doing a great job of generating traffic, especially when your business attracts 10,000 less visitors per month than your nearest competitor.

Alternatively, you could be generating 5,000 more hits per month than your industry peers which is also extremely valuable insight, especially when it comes to conducting informed conversations with your work colleagues come budget time.

Although it can seem daunting at first, finding your yardstick is extremely valuable.

A better understanding of what’s what

In a typical month marketers might have a range of tactics and strategies on the go, from banner ads and emails to trade show booths. All of these are playing an important role in generating awareness and pushing people through your sales cycle.

But how are you attributing value to each of these tools? I’d say most of us are counting the click-throughs from the banner ads, the open rates to the emails and counting sales from the trade show. We then analyse the number of sales closed as a result of each tactic and draw conclusions about future investment. The problem with this is, when you scratch the surface of these statistics there’s a good possibility you’ll come up with a very different picture to what you originally thought.

Think about it, the average sale isn’t attributable to any one tactic and yet the above mentioned data collation strategy gives all the credit to the tactic that eventually closed the sale. The problem with this is that you miss out on the full marketing picture. Here you are thinking that the banner ads are driving most of your sales in March when really it was the combination of your email campaign and banner ads cleverly timed with your trade show participation that secured all the month’s sales.

When it comes to understanding exactly what’s working for your business you need a comprehensive overview of how your tactics come together to get customers over the line. It’s only once you have this level of insight that you can rest assured that your analysis, planning and goal setting for the year ahead is realistic and has the best chance possible at improving sales conversion.

To wrap up, I’d like to say that it’s never too late to embark on more sophisticated marketing measurement and even if 2010 is your first year of hard and fast data gathering, it will put you in good stead for 2011… which will be here before we know it.