Datalicious Blog - Data Driven Marketing

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.

Gigya info-graphic on the different social network identities people are using to sign-in online

The guys at Gigya created a great info-graphic showing what accounts and online identities people are using to sign-in online.

The most popular social identities are Facebook, Google, Yahoo, and Twitter, but popularity differs by user segments and website categories. Users are most likely to log on to entertainment sites via Facebook, but Twitter for news sites, etc. 

Given the data that is available to companies if their users subscribe using one of their social online identities you wonder why there's still normal subscription processes being used, especially as the social identities probably have better data quality anyway (i.e. you want Facebook to have your real/main email address).

GetResponse study on impact of social sharing features in emails shows 30% increase in CTRs

GetResponse just released an interesting new study on the impact of social media sharing options in email.
 
Among other topics the study investigated if social emails improve click-through rates and found that if you let readers share your email messages on their social pages, they’ll generate on average 30% higher click-through rates. The click-through rates also varied by social network with Twitter and Facebook leading the field.
 
Download the full report here

New Syncapse empirical research on Facebook fan value, additional product spend and brand loyalty

"A fan base is a self-segmented group of highly valuable customers."

After all the buzz about the value of a Facebook fan, Syncapse just released the first proper empirical review on this topic which I encourage everyone to read (and it's free anyway). Especially the figures on average additional product spending by brand are pretty interesting (see below chart).

Summary of key findings
  • Fans spend an additional $71.84 on average compared to non-fans
  • Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand
  • Fans are 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a product
Many brands overcomplicate their measurement requirements by tracking dozens of independent variables. Many oversimplify by trying to apply a single number concept of value, and far too many fail to quantify ROI in such a way as to convince a CFO of the merit of increasing or shifting investment towards Facebook marketing. [...] This study will examine the five leading contributors to Facebook fan value. (1) Product Spending (2) Brand Loyalty, (3) Propensity to Recommend, (4) Brand Affinity and (5) Earned Media Value.
Download the full Syncapse research report here

Flowtown identifies social profiles, demographics and influencers from customers email addresses

I just came across this new service called Flowtown which is pretty interesting. 
 
The platform lets you upload your contact's email addresses for which it then returns the respective social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Flickr and StumleUpon. And if all you have is an email address, the service can also give you a name, age, gender, occupation and location. But the best part is the integration with Klout, a service that determines a person's influence level based on Twitter and basically identifies your most influential contacts for you. 
 
Have a look at the below chart, which shows the statistics for all my 1,800 contacts compared to the 50 identified influencers. Not surprisingly, but still interesting to see is that the influencers are definitely much more likely to have a social profile online across multiple networks and that all Twitter influencers also have a Facebook and LinkedIn account.
Visit the official Flowtown website or watch the below demo video to find out more.
 

E*Trade: Omniture SiteCatalyst implementation review including media attribution and optimisation

Challenge

To quantify the impact of offline and online media spend on new customer acquisition, along with the construction of a reporting and analytics framework to continually optimise media budget allocation using a better understanding of customer vs. non-customer navigational paths. 

Solution

Major review and upgrade of the existing Omniture SiteCatalyst deployment to build a data collection foundation that could properly address the core business KPIs. A controlled display exposure test was used to quantify the incremental conversion uplift from online display advertising and to determine the real media cost per acquisition. In addition, a website entry survey was used to further analyse the impact of existing brand equity and offline media activity on online channels, specifically navigational search and direct to site visits. It was particularly important to look at the differences between customers and non-customers.

Results

E*Trade now has the ability to report on and de-duplicate conversions across all paid and non-paid media channels as well as to clearly differentiate between customers and non-customers. The marketing team can now not only optimise the company's media mix for maximum acquisition efficiency but also use the data to develop a smoother customer experience and media attribution model. The developed reporting and analytics framework provides the client with the ability to analyse a range of core KPI's on an ongoing basis, putting the business in an excellent strategic position moving forward.

Testimonials

"E*Trade Australia was originally looking for a provider who could help us optimise our media spend and Datalicious brought with them best practice analytics to demonstrate the true value of our marketing dollars. Since then, they have become a critical business partner in their support of our Omniture analytics implementation. They've provided great insights which have driven key business decisions." Trang Young, Senior Internet Marketing Manager, E*Trade Australia

 

Visible Measures: Video analytics service launched benchmarking and seeded vs. viral comparison

The online video monitoring service Visible Measures has just released some interesting new features but unfortunately they're only visible for paying customers.
 
Category benchmarking: Trends now automatically benchmarks campaigns against all relevant categories for demographics and distribution. For example, you can see how demographics for Evian's Live Young compare to beverage industry averages as well as campaigns using animation, humor, and music.

Seeded vs. viral Breakdowns: You can now see how much much activity for each campaign was the result of brand-driven video placements (i.e. seeded) and how much was the result of community-driven video placements (i.e. viral). Understanding the seeded vs. viral breakdown of an online video campaign is critical to understanding its overall performance.

For more information or a free account visit the official website.

Diagram: Integrated campaign flow and simplified metrics framework across multiple channels

How many times have you talked about a truly integrated campaign but lacked a diagram and metrics framework to properly explain and measure the interaction between channels? We recently designed the below campaign flow and simplified metrics framework for one of our clients to explain the interaction between the various different paid and organic channels, websites, social networks, retail outlets and CRM. 
 
Unfortunately we can't share the actual campaign results but the impact was amazing. The traffic levels increased significantly during the campaign and for the first time rivalled historic peaks from previous Christmas periods mid year. However, the integration of the analytics framework into the campaign planning process from the very beginning ensured that tracking best practice was followed and a maximum amount of data could be collected across all channels. Best of all, if the below framework is used across all campaigns they start to become comparable and a benchmark emerges but that requires a lot fo discipline on all sides.
 
But let me explain a little more about our thinking behind the metrics framework. First of all, we renamed the 'awareness' stage to 'reach' because those metrics are a lot less debatable for all channels (i.e. we know how many people search for something or were exposed to a banner but not really how many people actually become aware of a message). As metrics on 'interest' and 'desire' are actually hard to differentiate in the standard AIDA(S) formula we combined them into a single 'engagement' category (i.e. everything after a non-bounce and before an actual conversion). The 'action' metrics category stayed the same, it simply contains all the conversion data on actions we wanted people to take but doesn't have to be limited to sales of course. Finally, 'loyalty' is a hard one to measure at the best of times and pretty fluid so we renamed that stage to '+buzz' which stands for positive buzz or people talking about the company in favourable terms which is of course far from being loyal but we would argue it's easier to measure and one would be pretty hard to achieve without the other.
 
Anyway, what do you think? Please feel free to comment and help us to improve the model and maybe even share some actual metrics you measure at the different stages.

     
Click here to download:
diagram_integrated_campaign_me.zip (219 KB)

New integration: Use Omniture SearchCenter to manage and optimise Facebook media buys

This is an interesting new integration, something one would have expected to happend between one of the big search engines and Facebook but Omniture clearly stole them the show on this one, nice one Omniture! 

Omniture and Facebook announced that they will provide online marketers with solutions to optimize Facebook as a marketing channel. This partnership builds on the Facebook analytics and Facebook application analytics capabilities Omniture announced last year.

As the industry moves beyond marketing that 'interrupts' the consumer's online experience, companies are increasingly seeking ways to join the conversation and have more relevant interactions with their customers. This alliance can help companies more easily integrate Facebook as a marketing channel in order to connect to and have relevant conversations with Facebook's more than 400 million active users.

Omniture customers can now utilize Omniture SearchCenter Plus, which is the combination of the company's search engine marketing management application with new functionality for purchasing Facebook Ads. Omniture customers can now more easily ramp their ad spend on Facebook and compare Facebook ad campaign metrics alongside other media channels.

Marketers see the opportunity to build and reward customer loyalty on Facebook. To help in these efforts, Omniture customers can now generate reports specifically designed to understand ad effectiveness for some of the unique elements of Facebook such as Facebook Pages and applications.

Contact us at insights@datalicious.com if you would like to find out more or enable this integration for your company.

Read the full story here on MarketWatch 
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/omniture-and-facebook-join-forces-to-optimize-social-media-for-marketers-2010-03-03

Sneak preview of Visible Measures new social video campaign tracking tool

This new social campaign measurement tool looks quite interesting, I especially like the overview for each video including reach, comments and ratings.

Check out their publicly available charts below on the top 10 ad campaigns and dig a little deeper in the help section if you want to find out about their methodology (the detail is pretty thin though).

Top 10 advertising campaigns

Help section on methodology and definitions