Many marketers wonder if email will remain relevant in a social media driven world.  A recent comScore, study, called "U.S. Digital Year in Review," looked at trends and rankings in U.S. Internet activity.  The bottom line is that email usage among teenagers age 12-17 declined 59 percent in 2010, and declined by 18 percent among the age group 18-25. The only increase was among users age 55 and older where email usage increase during 2010.

This has lead to three conclusions: 

While social media usage has been increasing, email remains an important tool for ecommerce marketers..

1. Social media uses email. For every Facebook wall post or new Twitter follower, an email is sent to notify the user of updates. The world of social media would not have the stickiness it does without these constant reminders flooding our inboxes, driving us back to those sites. Asking a consumer to log into several different sites on a daily basis to check updates is a large commitment. Many rely on their inbox as their one-stop notification center to help manage the clutter.
2. Business communications depend on email. Most online transactions require users to enter their email address, and users expect to receive timely notifications afterwards. Businesses and consumers use email to communicate, not only promotional offers and newsletters, but also electronic versions of bank statements and order confirmations.
3. Consumers react differently to social media. Social media is social. It's a vehicle to stay in contact with friends, family and professional colleagues. For consumers, it can be a vehicle to voice opinions and make requests. Many businesses that use social media have found that consumers request coupons or deals that will directly benefit them.

In conclusion, a large percentage of consumers depend on email. Most of them also use social media regularly. Marketers will continue to use email as a communication channel. By using both, social and e mail, marketers enhance their brand, effectively communicate across a message spectrum and grow their sales.

Attribution is the process of linking the desired marketing outcome or activity to a promotional effort or efforts.  For example, directly linking a customer’s purchase to a banner ad.  Or even more complexly, seeing the ad off line via a catalog or print ad, searching for the site on Google…seeing the paid advertising… then going to the site.   

In the world of multi-channel marketing, correctly understanding and attributing the real source driving the purchase is no easy task at best.  At worst, it can contribute to channel over or under performance and spend and may mask your true ROI. 

 There are many reasons this problem exists, they include:

•  Data tracked in different tools and stored in different places

• Integration of click and customer identified data (PII)

• Tracking across channels

• Budget restrictions

• Analytical tool and people limitations

The heart of solving the allocation issue is to create an integrated customer data resource.  This links together all of the data sources in both your on and off line customer engagement.  This creates a single way to track and understand customer behavior.  It allows you to develop multi-channel allocation models, instead of a more limited one channel to action model.

Next week I will discuss how to transform a integrated data resource into a customer intelligence capability. 

There are several skills and capabilities that any marketer needs to create successful multi-channel marketing programs.   The three most important are: 

•  Touch-point customer attribution –in off line channels, it’s easy since you most always have PII (personally identifying information) available from DM, 800, etc.  On line is another story.  For example, how does off line advertising drive search, banner and CSE’s.  The best definition of Attribution I have seen, a process of using business rules and models to allocate credit to any marketing communication, across all channels and touch-points, which leads to a desired action such as a sale or lead or engagement.

• Customer intelligence workbench –This is a resource that integrates all relevant data from all sources and channels that enables analysis that drives marketing decisions for multi-channel and cross-channel engagement.  The workbench is a complex resource that combines off and on-line data, off and on line performance and generates analysis that drives execution such as loyalty, acquisition, retention, engagement, etc.

• Customer Engagement Execution – is the process of executing marketing strategies that engage customers across all channels that you and the customer choose to engage.  There is a slippery slope here.  Most execution systems such as campaign management, e mail, social media, etc, do not interact and integrate.  The Holy Grail is to create one system which will do it all.

Over the next several weeks I am going to discuss each of the three areas in much greater detail.  I look forward to your comments and suggestions.

As we start to think about a time in the near future called “post-recession”, a good customer detective must also think about how the post-recession consumer will behave differently.  How will consumers prioritize spending and will different groups such as boomers behave differently. 

Some new patterns seem clear:

•  Consumers will do a better job of searching for information before they make decisions about products and services….the more a marketer can do to make it easily found the better.
• Marketers will need to get closer to consumers through multi and cross-channel engagement
• Marketers need to stress value and quality in addition to price
• In order to get a customer’s loyalty, marketers will have to engage better than the competition
• Consumers want positive content and communications

There is a lot of information available every day on how the US economy and consumers have been hurt by the recession and much speculation about the consumer mindset.  What are your thoughts?

A Customer Detective literally works for a marketer to track down and understand who their customers are.  A customer detective starts with DATA, lots and lots of data.  Not just any data, mind you….actionable data!  But we are not quite to actionable data yet.

I start by observing who buys their stuff…how frequently and for how much.  I observe by literally watching customers and by analyzing the data….who, why, how and when and how much.  I then enhance that data with third party data to create complex segmentations or clusters by customer value.  Then I can start to build a process of understanding how to engage and communicate with best customers and look alike prospects.  Now we are talking actionable data! 

In today’s marketing world, it is all about multi and cross-channel implementation of the right message and content with the goal of engaging the customer at the right time and getting her to l buy my clients products.  This is a customer detective in action.

For example, today I finished a project adding third party on and off-line media data to customer purchase behavior and created a segmentation by cluster and customer value.  The result is a fine tuned media plan implementing web and cable buys by real customer purchase data.  Gotta Love it!

The perfect storm in my case is the convergence of three studies.  First, I looked through an extensive study by Ofcom on UK media consumption patterns.  The most interesting part was about simultaneous media usage by age groups.  They found significant difference in device usage (TV, Radio, Mobile, Music Center, Land Line and Handheld) and usage of multiple devices or convergence of media types at the same time.  The second study was by Nielson.   It looked at simultaneous use of TV & Internet, and its frequency.  50 percent of the panel engaged in simultaneous use of PC and TV daily and time spent multi-tasking has grown nearly 20 percent year-to-year. This media convergence behavior has changed significantly in even the last year and doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

The third study was a panel of one.  I have observed my 16 year old, sitting in front of the TV, using Facebook on his laptop to engage with friends and listen/watch to Youtube videos in a separate browser window…..all at the same time.  If that is not multi-tasking and convergence, I don’t know what is!

Neilson had the following takeaways:

•  Marketers should coordinate on-line and TV buys

• The focus of the user seems to be on the internet content, not the TV

• The content watched on the internet is not connected to the TV content

• This trend is to be expected in younger age groups, but it is spreading into older groups as well.

Recently, I conducted a study for a retailer looking at how to plan media by cluster segment integrating on-line and off-line viewing patterns.  Now it seems the next step is to look at the convergence of content and viewing behavior to drive media consumption.

In the on-line and off-line world, marketers create content (products and services) and then provide distribution to users or buyers.  For on-line content providers, the cost of distribution is very low compared with off-line.  It also goes without saying that marketing costs are lower in the on-line world.  McKinsey UK recently looked at the idea of surplus or balance of content creation versus payment for the content and compared on-line to off-line.  It was their conclusion that there is a lot of potential revenue left on the table.

This got me thinking about new or improved models of revenue generation in the on-line ecosystem.  Currently, on-line revenue generation models include fee for service and third party advertising on their site and of course payment for products and services. 

Third party advertising creates a dilemma for marketers.  How much is too much…this includes pop-ups, banners and third party content.  When will content users say it is too much noise, and is there an opportunity to create a “premium” level of content with limited or no intrusive marketing efforts?  In the premium area of delivery, the balance of revenue changes between advertising and content usage fees.  This is the heart of the McKinsey articles thrust.

Thus, in the future, we will all be looking at ways to jigger the balance of revenue to content.  Examples include:

•  Raise the fees for current content delivery.  A lot of thought needs to be given to price elasticity.

• More and more advertising on site.  Just how much will content users put up with?

• New “premium and super-premium” fee based content areas.

• New ways of content delivery.   Ideas include social media, mobile and third parties.

The answer is innovation in how we deliver content in a multi-channel world and how we charge for it.  I don’t think the current balance to change dramatically in 2011, but I do expect to see very creative new ways to deliver and charge for content.

Thought I would repost this….Mashable recently listed 10 websites that they think will be big players in 2011.  They include:

• Kickstarter -a crowdfunding platform for creative content. 

• OpenLeaks-  an alternative to OpenLeaks, unlike WikiLeaks

• Klout- a source to gage social influence

• Hipmunk- for travel search

• Gilt Groupe- location-specific group buying deals, and full-priced retail

• Diaspora- an open source social network platform

• Quora- a social engagement platform

• Grooveshark- a music streaming

• Drupal- blogging capabilities

• Foursquare- the leader in location based offers

Check these sites out and let me know what you think!

Here is the post of the last four high level thoughts on web analytics for your business:

Focus on the Money Trail

Most effort on any given website is spent on content creation.  Ecommerce sites can benefit from an index value report that computes "how much revenue" has been attributed to a given page and content.  Through some simple drill down analysis you can focus on specific content types such as products, videos, blogs, interaction, etc.

Search Strategy

Search analysis focuses on acquisition of high value site visitors.  For a quick look, copy your terms into a cloud based mapping tool (Tag Clouds) and see a visualization of what terms rise to the top.  Your brand should dominate, but there should be other words are also prominent. I guarantee that the view will be insightful. 

Optimizing Campaigns

Outcomes that are important include revenue, reduced cost and increased customer satisfaction.  To optimize campaigns, you want to focus on the campaign detail for paid search, display, email, affiliates, etc.  The focus is on inefficient spending vs. opportunities for improvement weighted against the value of the customer acquired.

Creating an Intelligence Factory  

The web data analysis journey will find concrete and actionable insights.  Through the use of third party tools such as Webtrends, Coremetrics and Omiture, integrated with Google and social media tools, you can create a strong intelligence capability that will analyze both pre and post data streams to drive optimized marketing.  Another great new tool is Alternan’s Alchemy.  Alchemy links social, on-line channels with your marketing database and campaign development and management.

This week I will post several high level thoughts on web analytics for your business. In no particular order, we will look at:

• Evaluating the acquisition strategy
• Site visitor management
• Finding low hanging fruit
• Focus on the money trail
• Search strategy
• Campaign optimization
• Creating an intelligence factory

With this post, we will look at the first three and the final four later in the week.

Evaluating the acquisition strategy

The key acquisition is to have a balanced selection of acquisition channels.  This includes search, referring sites and direct response campaigns.  Best practices (rule of thumb) suggests that search could represent around 40% of traffic, another 25% from referring sites and 25% from direct traffic and another 10% from campaigns.  If your search balance is too high, you may be overexposed and if it is low, you are likely under spending.  You need to dig into the campaign analysis detail to understand strengths and weaknesses of each channel and how to recommend new or modified strategies.  I should note that some channels such as CSE’s and Affiliates are a grouping of many sites and need to be evaluated individually or in logical segments.

Site Visitors Management

This is all about understanding how strongly visitors are attached to your site. Most marketers have access to the Google Analytics visitor log which allows you to understand visitor behavior, including how often they visit, time on site and time per page, etc.  This includes recency of visit as well as frequency of visit.  Is this analysis consistent with the business goals?  This data can be segmented by content, campaign, source, etc.

Finding the Low Hanging Fruit

Marketers spend lots of money and time acquiring traffic.  So, spend time analyzing the top places where that money is being wasted and/or spend wisely. Most web analytics tool provide this analysis as a standard report. It will show analysis such as bounce rates, indexed against site average, for the top entry points to the website.  For example, high bounce rates could mean that you are attracting the wrong audience or you are not connecting with consumers when they come to your page.