Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

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!

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

Gigya and Compete report on increasing importance of social network referral traffic over Google

We all heard the news when Facebook overtook Google as the most popular website in the US in March this year according to Hitwise but now the guys at Gigya have released a research report based on Compete data that adds an interesting new perspective to this trend suggesting that social networks are becoming the next/new search.

Although Facebook has overaken Google as the most populate website, marketers were wondering if that would actually translate into increased traffic to their sites which according to the Gigya reports is exactly the case. The below chart clearly shows that referral traffic from social networks has become a major traffic source that rivals Google and marketers would be well advised to develop suitable strategies to address this trend.
A social revolution is dictating dramatic changes in how companies run their websites, and their business. With the advent of social feeds - a live stream of friends’ activity shared on social networks like Facebook and Twitter - consumers can more easily rely on trusted personal relationships to determine what’s worthwhile to read, watch, play and buy online. For many, the conclusion is startling; referral traffic is as significant from social networks as it is from search engines, making Social the next Search.

ADMA Forum presentation slides on Eliminating Waste and Increasing Relevance through Targeting

Below are the slides from our recent ADMA Forum presentation on Eliminating Waste and Increasing Relevance through Behavioral Targeting: An Introduction. Please let me know your comments and thoughts, keen to get your feedback.

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Digit-Tech analytics workshop: How to turn data into actionable insights (tech, processes, examples, etc)

Below are the slides from today's Digit-Tech analytics workshop on how to turn data into actionable insights.

The 3 hour session covered a wide range of data and analytics topics from technologies used to gather data over processes to generate insights to examples of how to tak action and involved several interactive exercises.

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What do you think? Anything you like or dislike in particular? We're always keen on feedback so please let us know your thoughts and leave a comment below, especially if you were a participant of the workshop.

Free ADMA Data & Analytics Council event with Peter Hanlon, Westpac executive and data evangelist

We're stoked to announce that the ADMA Data & Analytics Council is hosting a free event for data gurus (or marketers that want to become one) next week in Sydney.

Peter Hanlon, current Westpac Group Executive People & Transformation and previously responsible for all retail and business banking (and ongoing Westpac data evangelist) will share his personal experience on the importance of data for boosting marketing careers as well as business optimisation in general and of course there will be time for drinks and networking afterwards as well.

When: Next Wednesday, 26th of May 2010, 6.30-8.00 pm
Where: Westpac Place, 275 Kent Street, Sydney CBD

Please email councils@adma.com.au to register (the event is on the top floor so your name needs to be on the list to get in) and take our short pre-event survey on the current state of data and analytics in Australian direct marketing industry (we'll share the results at the event).

Tracking unique visitor without cookies by analysing browser configurations with over 84% accuracy

For all of you online analysts out there that are scared of cookie deletion rates, private browsing modes and increasingly restrictive privacy laws, there's hope!

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has an interesting project called Panopticlick that determines uniqueness of visitors without cookies by analysing the exact browser configuration of a person (i.e. version, fonts, plug-ins, etc). I just did the Panopticlick online browser uniqueness test and it seems that my browser configuration was unique among the so far tested 993,912 people. Go do the test now and help these guys increase their sample size.

EFF found that 84% of the configuration combinations were unique and identifiable, creating unique and identifiable browser "fingerprints." Browsers with Adobe Flash or Java plug-ins installed were 94% unique and trackable.
 
Of course the whole thing falls down if people use more than one browser or multiple computers and I'm one of these people (I'm actually running Safari, Chrome and Firefox at the same time sometimes which is sad, I know). Anyway, still a great idea if you ask me so check out the actual research paper below if you want to find out more or read the official press release.

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Research: Google Ad Planner data on website user demographics could be wrong by up to 20%

A quick analysis we did today revealed that Facebook user figures reported in the Google Ad Planner platform can differ by up to 20% from the actual Facebook data.
 
Most online marketer probably know the Google Ad Planner platform and love the data it provides but might have wondered how accurate the user figures and demographics actually are for each website. Well, Google is not exactly open when it comes to revealing its data sources or methodology but it occurred to us that the Facebook ad targeting service would provide a perfect sanity check, at least when it comes to user data on Facebook.com.
 
Summary of key findings
1. Total user numbers are very close
2. Google might have the genders wrong
3. User might not be as old as Google thinks
 
Although the Google data seems to be pretty accurate in terms of total user numbers by country when compared to actual Facebook data (numbers differ less than 0.05%), there seem to be significant differences when comparing user numbers by gender and age groups. 
The gender split between male and female users only seems to match in the US, whereas in Australia and the UK it is actually reversed, i.e. Google thinks there are more male users on Facebook than female users which according to Facebook data is exactly the other way around (user numbers differ by up to +/- 9% here). 
A similar pictures presents itself when looking at users by age group across Australia, the UK and US. Google seems to think that Facebook users are on average much older than they actually are across all three countries according to Facebook profile data (user numbers differ by up to +/- 19% here). 
Now don't get us wrong, we love the Google Ad Planner and the data it provides but we hope that this simple analysis will get more marketers to actively question the data they're looking at (and maybe even get Google to provide a little more transparency in the future).
 
You're welcome to repeat the experiment by extracting the data yourself from the below sites or just download the raw data we collected as well as the Tableau workbook we used to analyse and visualise the data.
 
Facebook ad targeting service
http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/
 
Google Ad Planner platform (now DoubleClick)
https://www.google.com/adplanner/planning/site_profile#siteDetails
 
 
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