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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
http://www.getresponse.com/learning-center/reports/social-sharing.html

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   email   facebook   getresponse   media   networks   research   sharing   social   study   trends   twitter  

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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
http://www.syncapse.com/media/syncapse-value-of-a-facebook-fan.pdf

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   facebook   fans   media   networks   reports   research   social   syncapse   value  

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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.

(download)

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Filed under  //   analytics   christian bartens   cookies   data   eff   panopticlick   privacy   research   unique visitors  

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Awesome new research: Measuring twitter user influence from Meeyoung Cha, Max Planck Institute

This is an awesome piece of social media research from Meeyoung Cha from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany, a must read for every marketer that takes social media seriously.
The paper makes three key observations based on the analysis of 2 billion follow links among 54 million users who produced a total of 1.7 billion tweets (pretty solid data, visit http://twitter.mpi-sws.org/ for a detailed description and the data sharing plan). 
  1. Popular users who have high indegree are not necessarily influential in terms of spawning retweets or mentions. 
  2. Most influential users can hold significant influence over a variety of topics
  3. Influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort such as limiting tweets to a single topic.
Below are a few extracts I found especially interesting, but I would recommend to also check out the Harvard Business Review interview with Cha and read the full research paper if you have the time. The project webpage is http://twitter.mpi-sws.org/ for a detailed description of the dataset and the data sharing plan. 
People have different levels of expertise on various subjects. When it comes to marketing, however, this fact is generally ignored. Marketing services actively search for potential influencers to promote various items. These influencers range from “cool” teenagers, local opinion lead- ers, all the way to popular public figures. However, the advertised items are often far outside the domain of expertise of these hired individuals. So how effective are these mar- keting strategies? Can a person’s influence in one area be transferred to other areas? The answer is yes.
Our study provides several findings that have direct implications in the design of social media and viral marketing: 1) Analysis of the three influence measures provides a better understanding of the different roles users play in social media. Indegree represents popularity of a user; retweets represent the content value of one’s tweets; and mentions represent the name value of a user. Hence, the top users based on the three measures have little overlap. 2) Our finding on how influence varies across topics could serve as a useful test for answering how effective adver- tisement in Twitter would be if one is to employ influential users. Our analysis shows that most influential users hold significant influence over a variety of topics. 3) Ordinary users can gain influence by focusing on a single topic and posting creative and insightful tweets that are perceived as valuable by others, as opposed to simply conversing with others.
The most followed users span a wide variety of public figures and news sources. They were news sources (CNN, New York Times), politicians (Barack Obama), athletes (Shaquille O’Neal), as well as celebrities like actors, writers, musicians, and models (Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears). As the list suggests, indegree measure is useful when we want to identify users who get lots of at- tention from their audience through one-on-one interactions, i.e., the audience is directly connected to influentials.
The most retweeted users were content aggregation services (Mashable, TwitterTips, TweetMeme), businessmen (Guy Kawasaki), and news sites (The New York Times, The Onion). They are trackers of trending topic and knowledge- able people in different fields, whom other users decide to retweet. Unlike indegree, retweets represent influence of a user beyond one’s one-to-one interaction domain; popular tweets could propagate multiple hops away from the source before they are retweeted throughout the network. Further- more, because of the tight connection between users as sug- gested in the triadic closure (Granovetter 1973), retweeting in a social network can serve as a powerful tool to reinforce a message—for instance, the probability of adopting an in- novation increases when not one but a group of users repeat the same message (Watts and Dodds 2007).
The most mentioned users were mostly celebrities. Ordinary users showed a great passion for celebrities, regularly posting messages to them or mentioning them, without nec- essarily retweeting their posts. This indicates that celebrities are often in the center of public attention and celebrity gossip is a popular activity among Twitter users.
Finally, we found that influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort. In order to gain and maintain influence, users need to keep great personal involvement.
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Filed under  //   christian bartens   influence   max planck   measuring   meeyong cha   research   studies   twitter   user  

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Dwell rate: New display advertising metrics and benchmark report from Eyeblaster

Eyeblaster just launched an interesting new report that shows a correlation between dwell time for interactive ads and  increased conversion rates

The connection is sort of obvious but nevertheless good to see some confirmation and wonder if we will see some more mini applications within display ads now comparable to Facebook apps.

Highlights of the report include
  • Ads with a high Dwell Rate are more likely to have a high Conversion Rate.
  • A new study by Microsoft, comScore and Eyeblaster shows Dwell’s effectiveness.
  • High Dwell triples brand related search, increases traffic by 69% and brand engagement.
  • Placements in which users spend ample time on the web page increase Dwell Rate.
  • Ads that are more visible over the publisher’s content have a higher Dwell Rate.
  • Combining video into creative increases Dwell Rate by 29% and doubles Dwell Time.
Download the full research report here.
http://bit.ly/benchmarkByEb

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Filed under  //   ads   advertising   christian bartens   conversion   display   dwell rate   eyeblaster   metrics   research   web analytics  

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Study and poll: Privacy regulations on behavioural targeting won't help consumers but harm companies

There's a new study from the think tank Technology Policy Institute which concludes that new online privacy measures won't help consumers but hinder online companies. 

"Regulation should be undertaken only if a market is not functioning properly and if the benefits of new measures outweigh their costs," states the 56-page report, "In Defense of Data." "Our analysis suggests that proposals to restrict the amount of information available would not yield net benefits for consumers." 

The paper pretty much reiterates known statements from a decade ago but it's a good summary anyway. Have a read and please comment on this post or at least participate in the poll, would love to know what you think about behavioural targeting online. 

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Filed under  //   behavioural   christian bartens   polls   privacy   research   study   targeting  

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McKinsey: Building an integrated end-to-end consumer experience to increase overall revenue

McKinsey has published a really great article outlining four ways to get more value from digital marketing, a must read for all marketers (worth subscribing for, it's free anyway).

Although the whole article is a good read, I specifically like the part on coordinating the consumer's end-to-end experience more. How many times does it happen that one part of a company doesn't know what the other is doing resulting in questions being asked multiple times as well as irrelevant messages being pushed out (my favourite example is HSBC sending me direct mail advertising their credit cards although they already rejected my application).
Whether by receiving marketing e-mails, searching for products online, or using mobile devices to find retail coupons, customers today continually interact with brands as they move closer to making purchasing decisions. Yet completely different parts of an organization manage most such contacts. Digital channels can unify that experience and prevent the leakage of opportunity. Across a range of B2C and B2B clients, we’ve seen companies accelerate revenue growth by tightening the coordination of the end-to-end experience (see below graph). These increases represent the cumulative impact of capturing more online traffic, engaging consumers effectively, raising sales conversion rates, and then deepening bonds with the brand after sales are made.

Although not the only options in this space, Omniture's Online Business Optimisation platform in combination with Aprimo's MarketingStudio could help coordinate the majority of the below customer experience outlined by McKinsey. Email us at insights@datalicious.com if you would like to find out how to enable this for your business.

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Filed under  //   article   christian bartens   consumer   end-to-end   experience   integrated   marketing   marketing automation   mckinsey   multi channel   research   services  

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Eyeblaster research: Share of display and search conversions by vertical

The debate around whether display influences search behaviour or not has been going on for a while but I don't think anyone really doubts the impact on search anymore, the question is how much. So it's nice to see some research on how this differs by vertical. The below Eyeblaster graph shows the share of search and display conversions by vertical

Interesting to see would be how the impact of display on search behaviour differs depending on the brand awareness in market for a particular brand. Datalicious client research indicates that the weaker the brand awareness in market for a particular brand, the stronger the impact of display advertising on search behaviour and conversions.

Request the full Eyeblaster report here

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Filed under  //   ads   branding   christian bartens   display   eyeblaster   research   search   sem  

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Copyblogger.com: Hard Data for Headlines that Spread on Twitter

Must read for whoever tries to use Twitter as a media channel. Check out the original article below, contains some amazing hints (but take with a grain of salt).

http://www.copyblogger.com/retweetable-headlines/

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Filed under  //   christian bartens   headlines   research   retweets   stats   tutorials   twitter   what works  
Posted by datalicious 

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Compare your display banner performance to the new global Eyeblaster benchmark report 2009

Finally someone provides benchmarks research on display banner performance again (after DoubleClick stopped it ages ago), thanks Eyeblaster!

Download the original report here
http://www.eyeblaster.com/Content.aspx?page=resource&id=80

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Filed under  //   2009   ads   banners   benchmark   christian bartens   click-through rates   display   eyeblaster   reports   research   rich media   video  

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