Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

New ClickTale segmented heat maps show mouse data for prospects vs. existing customers

ClickTale launched two new heat maps feature today that are worth mentioning.

The Segmented Heap Maps (see screen shot below) allow analysts to show mouse movement, mouse click and page scrolling data for different segments to analyse differences in behaviour. The segmentation options include customer status, conversion status, media channels and any other custom segmentation variables such as age, gender or location but I especially like the fact that we'll now be able to analyse website usage for new prospects vs. existing customers separately.

Ultra Scale Heat Maps on the other hand allow analysts to show aggregate mouse data from up to 100,000 visitors in one single image enabling usability testing on a super large scale compared to standard eye tracking methods.

"With an 84-88% correlation between our Mouse Move Heatmaps and expensive eye-tracking studies, website owners can now conduct incredibly accurate usability studies on a massive scale, and at a fraction of the cost."

ADMA survey reveals lack of web analytics data usage in media attribution and single customer view

Over the past few months the ADMA Data & Analytics Council conducted an online survey to establish how evolved the direct marketing industry in Australia really is in terms of data and analytics. 

Key findings of the survey included

  • Although 62% of respondents said that they tie sales data back to campaigns and media channels driving them, 59% admitted that they were not actually using web analytics which is interesting given the increased importance of online channels in driving sales.
  • A similar trend emerged when asking marketers about whether they had a single customer view. A surprisingly large amount of respondents (44%) said they had a single customer view but interestingly only 41% of those companies were incorporating web analytics data into their single view. Given the growing amount of online customer touch points this raises the questions how complete these single customer views really are.

Although the survey was only a quick and dirty exercise I think the results are quite interesting and the council is now considering to extend and refine the survey to shed some more light on the highlighted issues above.

Please subscribe to the ADMA Councils blog if you would like to hear about research like this in the future or email councils@adma.com.au if you would like to help shape similar future initiatives.

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New TED video from David McCandless on the power and beauty of effective data visualisation

This is a must watch video for all data fans, it includes a few cool data visualisation examples. David also talks about data being the new oil and tries to coin the new phrase of "data being the new soil" (i.e. insights and innovation spring from it), great idea I think but it comes across as a bit wanky. Anyway, awesome examples and great video!

Adobe mobile commerce survey shows marketers plan to use combination of mobile sites and apps

Adobe just published the results of their latest Mobile Commerce Survey which include a few interesting nuggets for all marketers who are thinking about going mobile in some form or another.

Key findings of the survey include

  • Mobile websites are the predominant presence of businesses in the mobile channel not downloadable application. More than 80% of respondents were planning or have already deployed a mobile commerce website versus 8% with a downloadable application-only strategy.
  • Marketers identified four key areas of execution for their mobile strategy: 1) promotions, 2) commerce, 3) product information display, and 4) branding. Promotions emerged as the top strategic element, followed by online commerce.
  • Rich, full-screen image zoom and videos are the most effective ways to browse or display products, according to a majority of the respondents. Grid viewing of thumbnails is deemed most effective for browsing multiple product images.
  • Overall, visual merchandising features are deployed by less than one-third of the respondents. However, as many as 81% of the respondents indicated they are planning to deploy those features, suggesting richer mobile experiences will be created over the coming months. 

The below chart qualifies the above somewhat as it shows that many marketers (50%) actually embraced a combined mobile website and downloadable mobile application strategy. Very few (8%) had a strategy based solely on mobile downloadable applications (i.e. without a mobile website). Only 3% had an iPhone application-only strategy, while 1% had a combined iPhone/iPad-only strategy.

If you were wondering how your mobile websites or applications are stacking up you might be interested in the below chart which shows the percentage of online traffic used by each mobile website/application. Of all mobile traffic, mobile websites drew the most traffic; mobile applications’ traffic across the various platforms collectively lagged the mobile website traffic, ranging as low as 1% to as high as 8% of the total traffic.

Formstack online form builder that also integrates with Google Analytics to track form conversions

We've had a few clients now that were looking for an easy online form builder that also lets you integrate with Google Analytics to track your form conversions and and I think we've finally found one in Formstack.

There seems to be quite a few of these tools out there but the main problem with most of them is the fact that although they provided a simple user interface to build forms without any HTML knowledge they don't allow you to add custom code to your form pages which prevents people from adding the necessary Google tracking scripts. At best you might be able to track that a form was started but not if it was actually finished so there's no way to track actual leads or calculate a form conversion rate (and that's probably crucial for most forms).

Anyway, have a look at Formstack, it's an easy to use tool that lets you build all sorts of online forms from contact forms over surveys to order forms and integrate them with a wide range of other platforms such as SalesForce, Highrise, FreshBooks, Mailchimp and Paypal.

Aprimo/Omniture presentation slides on data driven marketing and effective cross channel targeting

Below are the slides from our recent presentation at the Aprimo/Adobe/Omniture breakfast seminar in Melbourne/Sydney on smart data driven marketing and how effective cross channel targeting can help increase campaign response rates. Thanks again to everyone who came to the event and please let me know your comments and thoughts, always keen to get your feedback.

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Datalicious presenting at Aprimo & Omniture breakfast seminar next week on effective targeting

If you want to know how to increase campaign response rates through effective targeting and you missed my recent ADMA Forum presentation you might be interested in the Aprimo/Adobe/Omniture breakfast seminars next Wednesday and Thursday in Sydney and Melbourne.

Your customers are interacting with you across a variety of channels and are pretty much telling you what they're interested in but are you actually collecting and acting on that information? Reality is that most companies are still operating their different tracking and communication platforms in relative isolation which leads to an inconsistent and irrelevant experience for prospects and customers.

I mean, who here hasn't clicked on a banner or search ad at some stage that directed you to a landing page that wasn't really related to the initial message that got you interested? Same with some of the email updates you're probably subscribed to, right? 

If you want to understand how your data can help you deliver a more relevant online experience and to get some thought starters then register for one of the breakfast seminars next week and I would be surprised if you would walk away without at least one idea to follow up on.

Melbourne breakfast seminar
When: Wednesday, 18th August, 8 am breakfast, 8.30-10 am seminar
Where: Hilton on the Park Melbourne, 192 Wellington Parade
Register here http://bit.ly/d5XIFo

Sydney breakfast seminar
When: Thursday, 19th August, 8 am breakfast, 8.30-10 am seminar
Where: Hilton Sydney, 488 George Street
Register here http://bit.ly/d6vJB5

Trada marketplace: Outsource your SEM and have multiple search experts compete for your $$$

I just had a chat with the guys from Trada and wanted to share some of my insights with you as I think this could be a very interesting way of managing search for advertisers and even some agencies.

Trada is basically a marketplace that allows search experts from around the world to compete against each other on search campaigns. Instead of one or two search experts optimising a campaign in the standard agency model you now have multiple resources optimising an account all trying to outdo each other. More brains is always good and I think it's definitely a cool idea but there's pros and cons.

The model itself is quite attractive as it allows you to set a target CPC or CPA and the search experts only get paid if they can do better than that target, i.e. they can keep the difference between the real cost and the target you set them so there's a clear incentive. You can brief and communicate with the search experts that have decided to work on your account and change the target CPC or CPA daily if you want, but you have to commit to a minium monthly spend of USD 3,000 and an optimisation period of 3 months which is only fair I think.

Now here comes the catch, you cannot import existing accounts into Trada but have to create new ones for Google, Bing and Yahoo through the Trada platform which means you will use your quality score for existing campaigns. This might be a big deal for some people and less for others, I think it's not the end of the world but definitely has to be considered. Also, the search experts don't compete per keyword but on an ad group level which has potential for overlap and I'm not entirely sure what happens if one of the guys decides to stop working on an ad group or entire account. Finally, the way the model is set-up it leads to an initial burst of optimisation and set-up of ad groups similar to a normal agency relationship which peters off after a while when the search experts are looking to cash in on their initial time investment. That's not a bad thing, it's just normal and means even if you decide to give Trada a go you will have to keep in mind that you are working with humans that have to be managed and motivated, how you do that is up to you.

All in all, I think the Trada platform is pretty cool and I can only recommend to look into it and decide for yourself if it might help you business or agency, watching the below video might be a good start. I definitely see potential for small to medium size businesses to get access to some top international search optimisation talent and for agencies to basically grow their capacity over night.

Forrester Wave on listening platforms vs. Owyang's Altimeter report on social marketing analytics

Forrester have just released their latest Wave report on listening platforms which you can download from Converseon for free. However, looking at the matrix below I have to say I'm not entirely sure how well it was researched as some key players are plain missing. 

If social media monitoring is an area of importance for your company I would strongly recommend to also review Jeremy Owyang's Altimeter report on Social Marketing Analytics.
Comparing the below Altimeter chart to Forrester's above, it does seem that Jeremy was a little more thorough. In addition to a vendor list, the Altimeter report also contains some very useful thoughts on how to approach a social media monitoring strategy in general.

Roy Morgan research showing Australian internet consumption increasing for Gen Y/Z and mobile

The below chart shows that although Australians as a whole still spend more time viewing television than consuming other media, Generation Y and Z are now at a level that is comparable to television. The amount of time spent per week on the Internet has in fact increased by 71% over the past 5 years compared to a decline of 4% for television.
Roy Morgan also found that an estimated 13% of Australians (2.25 million) have participated in some type of online activity using their mobile phone in an average four week period, up from 8% in 2008. The top 5 mobile phone internet activities participated in by Australians 14+ years old are: Email (5%), Social networking (5%), General browsing/surfing (4%), Weather (3%) and Instant Messaging (2%).