InsightIQ Blog

Recently I was on a keynote panel at the National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM).  In response to a question from the audience, one of my co-panelists pooh-poohed the value of web analytics.  He referred to it as just a fancy reporting mechanism for web activity with little relevance for marketing.  I was a little surprised by the comment and was itching to make a rebuttal, but the moderator chose to take the conversation in a different direction.  "Web analytics" is one of those terms that tends to be thrown around casually by folks seeking to impress others and can mean different things to different people (and mean nothing to most people).

We are all familiar with the typical social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but some companies are bringing social media in-house and reaping enormous dividends.  While shopping for some outdoor gear, I came across Backcountry.com and discovered a whole community of customers who were actively participating in the e-commerce site.  Almost every item I viewed on the site had a collection of reviews, comments, Q&A and customer-submitted photos.  Before purchasing a shirt, I was debating which size to get and decided to post a question to the "Product Wall" about whether it runs large or small.  Within an hour, I received an answer, not from a Backcountry.com employee, but from a fellow customer on the site who had purchased the shirt a week before.  Add to cart, checkout.

The tough economic climate has significantly impaired marketing budgets.  Although the economy and budgets may be bouncing back, Marketing professionals are still being asked to do much more with less and prove that marketing is working. In this tough environment, it would behoove marketers to think of agile marketing rather than the traditional approaches they have employed in the past.

I recently started to look for a new set of golf clubs. As I traversed through all of the manufacturer websites, golf magazines, golf club reviews, golfing blogs, Twitter, and numerous Google searches, I realized that shopping for something has become more and more difficult. In fact, the complexity of making a purchase decision has by far surpassed the actual act of paying for and receiving the golf clubs. 

Unlike in 1985, when shopping and buying where one in the same and most often happened in one store with one sales person, 2010 is much different. Shopping and Buying are 2 very distinct processes that a consumer goes through, both of which need to be supported and nurtured. 

Ty Amad-Talylor, founder and CEO of FanFeedr (a real-time personalized sports feed), made the rounds last week with an article he wrote about the rise of prestige as an online monetization model.  Another damning article about the value of today's CPM, making the case to replace the ad model with alternate payment platforms based on some sense of social hierarchy.  But in reality, new mechanisms such as this also create yet another way to place relative value on a user that will ultimately translate into back into ad $.

Recently, we had interesting conversation with the senior executive in charge of customer service at a major client of ours.  This client uses our Precision email product to communicate with their customers on service issues, such as outages, delivery, scheduling of service calls, etc.

Most marketers typically have mountains of data at their fingertips but often struggle to translate the stream of reports in their in-box to actionable outcomes for their business.  These reports often reflect the competing interests of internal stakeholders.  That's why when overhauling your measurement system we think it's critical to start by focusing the organization on one critical business metric.... one that marketing, sales, finance, and customer service can rally around.  This might be a customer value or share of wallet metric, something each member of the organization feels it can move the needle on. Your entire framework should cascade from this clear corporate priority.

Buzz, Google's first true venture into the social media ecosystem has the feel of something familiar but also brings something very new that is loaded with potential. Though I am not going to walk through the in's and out's of what Buzz is (others have that covered), I will share something that happened to me while using it the other day that ultimately was my Google Buzz Aha! Moment. What happened was not planned. I didn't have to figure out how to do it. I just did it...without thinking....like a real, seamless, on-line conversation should be. 

In a recent blog, my colleague Roman Lenzen discussed concepts on how to optimize offers in both inbound and outbound channels. It was a great blog and I wanted to expand on the critical components that one should consider while building the offer optimization framework:

If you've been to the site before, you've probably noticed that we've made a few changes recently.  Some are fairly obvious; others, which are far more subtle, are designed to improve your experience, making it easier to find what you're looking for.  The new Quaero Web site now:

At a keynote panel at the National Center of Database Marketing (NCDM), I made a comment that customer marketing was eclipsing brand marketing as the core of marketing's mission in many companies.  That sparked a lively discussion among the panelists.  As is to be expected among panelists at a database marketing conference, there was general agreement that this was the case.  But is it, really?  Does brand marketing still matter?  Of course, it does!

You may already have robust analytics that predict value, churn, bad debt & future customer interests.  You may also have a robust customer database that may be used to glean additional insights and make the analytics actionable.  That's great, but how do you determine which offer a customer should receive in all inbound and outbound channels (CSR, Web, direct mail,..)? 

Stayed at a hotel recently?  Each time I have I’ve noticed that the staff seem to be extra attentive, and my assumption is that it’s related to today’s extremely competitive market. Unfortunately, the extra attention has not always had the desired result.

Google recently announced the integration of real time data into their web search results page.  Real time data includes Twitter feeds, news updates, blog posts, even craigslist ads displayed up to the minute with the traditional search results.  Google has also reportedly partnered with Facebook and MySpace to incorporate other forms of real time data such as status updates into their search results.  How these changes will impact the marketing landscape will be an interesting question in the near future.

The great health care debate this past summer could be a preview of what the future of marketing looks like.  How, you ask?  For some years now, the "mainstream" journalists who have been trained to fact check and present both sides of a story have been losing their voice to an ever growing multitude of  bloggers with extreme views , strong opinions and, in some cases, a disdain for facts and sober analysis.  This blogosphere, magnified by the echo chamber of 24/7 cable news channels, hungry for controversy and content, set the tone and the agenda for the shouting match that stood in for reasoned debate on the topic of healthcare, a subject of great concern for most Americans.  Professional journalists were caught by surprise and spent most of their time reacting to these controversies rather than reporting on the substance of health care reform.  Marketers have similarly embraced social networks as a way to generate word of mouth advertising, cross over tipping points, build fan bases and encourage consumers to generate their own content.   

As more and more organizations want to extend their reach using Digital marketing, the biggest challenge they face is "how to handle anonymous users". Most organizations rely on cookie mechanism for identifying visitors and as users are increasingly deleting their cookies, typically 75% of the visitor traffic is anonymous visitors or first time visitors. This implies that organizations must develop a data collection, segmentation and targeting strategy for anonymous online visitors.

What if not-for-profit organizations (NPO) thought more strategically and mirrored their marketing efforts to those of most for-profits in terms of customer relationship management?

Donors and volunteers are the lifeline of all nonprofit organizations. Yet few NPOs maintain a reliable database to extract such valuable information as age, gender, marital status, demographics, participation activity, etc. Information collected and stored by nonprofits most often pertains to fundraising events (eg. donations generated) and not the participants themselves.  Any information relating back to volunteers and donors are often limited and cannot be analyzed over a historic period because most not-for-profits haven't properly 'married' such data with the proper CRM tools (See 'Selecting Your Marketing Automation').  Although it would make this a different kind of love story, the same is true for NGOs. But for the sake of all that is wholesome, we will not digress.

Imagine if the American Heart Association decided to put all their research dollars into CPR techniques instead of healthy diet, exercise, genetics, and heart disease treatments?  

Recently I attended the Cable Television Marketing Association Summit in Denver.   CSG has tremendous clientele in this industry and provides a suite of CSR technology, billing platforms, and other integrated customer interaction services to some of the biggest players in cable.   My team here at Quaero provides Customer Intelligence applications to drive optimized analytics-driven marketing decisions for these companies.  

Last month, I was on a keynote panel at the National Center for Database Marketing (NCDM).  The topic of the panel was "Evolving from Database Marketing to Customer Intelligence" and the discussion largely centered around the evolution of marketing into a bi-directional communication mechanism with customers across multiple channels and the challenges that brings.  An audience member asked the question, "Is technology the gating factor that prevents or slows marketers from embracing these changes?"   The panel differed on their responses.   Some felt, yes, technology was indeed an impediment to doing this well.     I and at least one other panelist disagreed.   

Honda recently caught my attention with their new social media marketing campaign - "Everybody Knows Somebody Who Loves a Honda".  I found this particularly interesting because Honda is directing people to Facebook in order to participate in the experiment.  I could not recall another company of Honda's stature using a foremost social media platform for an official marketing campaign and customer engagement platform.  Interesting!

After visiting the page myself, I see that Honda has amassed an impressive network of 268,000 fans (as of Nov 2009).  Counting all of the fan's friends, this network reaches over 3.3 million Facebook users.

It's Friday night. If your household is like mine, this occurrence is synonymous with pizza and a movie, typically enjoyed in the comfort of our own home. Combining our infatuation with this magical combination of dough, tomato sauce, cheese and you-name-it in conjunction with the visual stimulation of a good flick somehow makes everything right.

Not too long ago, our pursuit of this objective involved a well-defined, perfectly timed-out process: order the pizza by phone, drive to the video rental store, select a movie, pickup the pizza, and return home with the spoils. But we live in a time of great change, when we constantly have to adapt, altering our routines to maintain, or even improve, the overall experience and perceived benefit.

AOL spins off from Time Warner while Comcast picks up NBC.... as they both look to re-brand and boost ad income.

In this tough economic climate, all companies are trying to improve their overall bottom lines. How can online and digital marketing help with this? In a recent study from summer 2009, most companies stated that the No. 1 conversion relevant to them was sales, with sign-ups and registrations a close second. What are the key tactics to improve overall conversion on site?

One of the most annoying aspects of the customer experience does not have to do with the shopping experience but with the communication experience.    A constant refrain we hear from customers across the board (whether in B2B or B2C situations) is that they get too many calls or emails but often do not hear when there is relevant news that they are truly interested in.  On the other hand, a surprising (and dismaying) number of marketers still measure their productivity by the sheer volume of outbound communications (email, direct mail, calls, touches, etc.) rather than by the quality or even the relevance. 

Naras and I are in the process of writing a book chapter for a project called Masters in Marketing.  Focused on strategic brand management, the book largely provides guidance for marketers looking to understand how to strengthen their brand in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.  We've been tasked with writing about the "focus of the CMO"...and as you'll come to see, we go slightly against the grain; while brand matters, the customer and his/her ecosystem matter more.

Below is the start of our work.  I'll publish more pieces as it evolves, but I certainly welcome your input as we build out this chapter.