OPINION MARK PATRON REDEYE
Data, data everywhere, but nowt beyond last click
The internet generates vast oceans of data that is potentially invaluable for marketers, yet how many actually swim beneath the surface to unearth the sunken treasure, asks Mark Patron?
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he internet generates oceans of data for marketers, but little of that data is used effectively. Online marketers skim the data surface in blissful ignorance of what is really going on underneath. For example, digital marketers are rarely able to look behind the last click to accurately allocate a sale. Different media are given credit for how they contribute to the last click rather than how they contribute to the overall sale. Media that consumers typically use early in the sales process, such as display advertising, are typically under reported, and those late in the sales process, such as search, are over reported. If you add up all the media there can be twice as much media, such as affiliates or aggregators, claiming sales compared to actual sales.
Data issues and wasted opportunities can be caused by things falling
through the cracks. Only a small proportion of online marketers run the most basic basket abandonment email programmes because their web analytics data is not integrated with their email data. In addition, measuring something as simple as customer engagement can be difficult. If we think of our own experience we generally engage online with brands we know through their emails as well as their website. Basic customer engagement measurement is not joined up.
Another issue is that we do not drill into online data deep enough. Rich
internal search data is not mined for its many treasures. User experience is not properly understood due to not looking at different segments. Different consumer types behave quite differently and yet we typically analyse them in one amorphous mass. We then develop a one size fits all, lowest common denominator website, which not surprisingly converts at a similar percentage to direct mail. This cannot be the best use of the most accountable and measurable media available. So why is data not used effectively online? Digital technology is fragmented and therefore data tends to reside in silos. There is little or no deduplication, and most data is simply thrown away. Just imagine if database marketers did that offline.
Most online data is cookie based. However cookies do not buy, people
do. Web analytics systems widely report on unique visitors without ever referencing real people. Google Analytics has over a million customers doing this. Unless you can appropriately target individuals no useful follow up marketing communications are possible. It’s a bit like a marketing database not including names and addresses. Offline a lot of effort has been put into creating a single customer view. Online this is not the case, although this is likely to change. At present a number of separate systems contain online data. Consumer data normally resides in the e-commerce system, the web analytics system and the email database. There are many types of data in these systems such as search, social, survey, email and customer data. It is not a lack of data that is the issue; it is what we do with it that is the issue. There are two primary types of data online, transactional and behavioural. Transactional data is about clicks and actions. Behavioural data
12 April 2010
www.dmarket.co.uk
is about pages viewed and intent. E-commerce systems obviously track transactional data such as sales. Web analytics systems track behavioural data. Display advertising systems use behavioural data to do behaviourial targeting. Email systems are mostly based on transactional data, with behavioural data just starting to be used. Behavioural data can be used to target basket abandonment and cross selling email. A number of email marketers already generate over half of their email revenues from behavioural data. So how do we improve the use of online data? Online marketers need to develop a data strategy to co-ordinate and make sense of all the different data sources and types of data. We need to organize how we use data in a more holistic and wholesome manner. We need to take more care of our online data. The industry has moved from simple KPI’s to
developing dashboards. Marketers are now developing scorecard methodologies to better manage the many sources of data with the ability to then drill down into specific issues. Online marketers are data rich, but insight poor. This will change. Making sense of online data is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. At present we have a number of different straws. We now need a hose and a plan. n
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