'Net Features : analytics

Brands on Knotice for Complete Customer Profiles

Amberly Dressler — Fri, 17 May 2013 18:15:00 GMT

Creating coordinated brand experiences that extend across digital channels and device types can help companies better engage customers through consistency, helpfulness and value, according to Patti Renner, director of marketing at Knotice whose company recently announced an expanded relationship with Fender Musical Instruments.

Fender is using the Knotice platform to unite its campaign data and customer information. This relationship will allow Fender to inform highly tailored content across email, mobile, display, SMS and on their website. They will also be able to have a complete view of the customer across device types. Below, Renner offers an in-depth explanation of why this is important for all brands and the challenges that businesses face when creating complete customer profiles on their own.

How can unifying data and getting a complete customer profile help in a brand’s marketing efforts?

Patti Renner: Today’s customers are always connected, always looking for information and messages on whatever screen is handy at the moment. They could be browsing your site on an iPad, looking up information about your product on their mobile device or making a purchase on their PC. It doesn’t matter where they are or what device they’re using – they simply expect a consistent, relevant, enjoyable experience across channels. Connecting the channels across device types requires data management where the customer preferences and activity is stored within individual data profiles that can be automatically updated and appended as things happen.

Unfortunately, some marketers don’t think in terms of providing a cohesive consumer experience regardless of devices they use. They view each consumer by channel, focusing on their email audience as separate from their website visitors, separate from their online display views.

Having all their data unified within a universal profile management system, brands have the ability to connect the digital dots with each consumer, allowing them to provide a truly useful, relevant experience to each person as individuals. Here’s how a profile-based data management works. Let’s use Joe as an example. With proper data management, the brand knows Joe has opened their last 3 emails on a tablet, searched for the address of their nearest retail location on his iPhone, saw 4 ads for a blue sweater, then clicked on the sweater section of their website from his PC. Now, that brand can send Joe tablet-optimized emails, let him know when his favorite sweaters go on sale, and serve him with the content that interests him. The ability to cater to the interests of the custom based on available first-party data makes the brand experience better for Joe since he gets what he wants faster, and it also provides increase efficiency and a higher likelihood of conversion for the brand. Unifying your data makes this possible. Instead of pushing random offers to Joe, they’re now able to serve him with the information and products that best suit his needs.

What challenges are there for a company to try and do this on its own?

In most organizations, customer data lives siloed in separate systems or it’s difficult to access due to internal departmental hurdles. Trying to integrate customer data into a single system with just your IT team can be a real challenge as important data can fall through the cracks (or not integrate properly) when attempting to combine into a single system. If a company is able to get all its data into one place, it then faces the challenge of being able to create those unique customer profiles to wrap all that data around, with automation in place so the data profiles update and append as new information is received. On top of this is usability and actionability of the data so you can use it to inform content going out (so Joe sees sweaters and Mary sees the item she left in the shopping cart last week). You also want to be able to inform advanced analytics, so you send and spend smarter. There also is the issue of having a storage environment large enough for you to collect and quickly access all the information you’re taking it.

Working with a data management partner takes the stress of the organization by seamlessly uniting all that data, storing it safely in a powerful Big Data profile-based environment, which can then be easily used to inform messaging, content and analytics. For instance, our system has email, website, SMS and display options already built into the platform seamlessly. Everything can be simultaneously fueled by the same data environment, which makes response and relevance faster and simpler compared to pieced-together DIY integrations. We also offer analytics dashboards so you can better monitor what’s going on and make adjustments to help shorten the sales cycle. While you might be able to integrate a few points on your own, your time and money may be better spent working with a professional data management platform provider to get there faster.

For more information, visit www.knotice.com.

Content Marketing Analytics Available at Informly

Allison Howen — Fri, 03 May 2013 15:47:00 GMT

A new analytics service from Informly is helping small business owners and bloggers optimize their content production.

The Content Marketing Analytics service expands on Informly’s analytics dashboard that was launched last year for small businesses. The service aims to help users build their audience and create content that generates leads.

“A lot of our customers are embracing content marketing and producing regular blog posts on their sites. They all use Google Analytics but it doesn’t really give them the actionable information they need,” said Dan Norris, founder of Informly. “For example they are trying to build and engage an audience but Analytics doesn’t tell them who their audience is. Informly tells them exactly who is converting on their site, what content they consumed and lists their site, Klout score and social profiles to enable them to connect further."

In addition to the people-tracking features, Informly connects to users’ blogs, brings in all of their posts and displays key stats such as views, tweets, likes, backlinks, conversions and more. Users can also sort by any of these metrics to find the posts that are having the most impact. However, Norris notes that onsite analytics is not Informly’s only offering.

“We built Informly originally as an aggregator that showed customers stats from a whole bunch of different places such as MailChimp, Xero etc,” said Norris. “These features are still available so content marketers and bloggers can get their onsite stats right alongside other charts like financial metrics, rank tracking and more. They can even get a daily HTML email that includes all of the charts directly in their emails with no attachments.”

Google Rolls out Real-Time Widgets in Analytics Dashboard

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:50:00 GMT

Google announced it has expanded the functionality of its Dashboards feature and is now providing access to four new real-time widgets in Google Analytics.

GA users can select from one of four widgets – a counter, a timeline, a geomap and a table.

The counter widget enables users to show specific metrics (like active visitors), group the visitors by dimension, and set a filter (a feature available to all the widgets).

The timeline widget is a little different in that users can select to track a specific metric but then must choose a time period (30 minutes or the last 60 seconds).

The geomap real-time widget is where it gets really interesting. Users select the metric, and then choose whether to show the data on the country or the city level – they can also select a specific region.

The real-time table widget is also interesting in that after selecting the metric to track, the user can add multiple dimensions to display.

Real-time Events Now in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Google's real-time reports are one of the far more engaging reporting features for digital marketers as they can provide immediate insights into the performance of campaigns. But now the Google Analytics feature iss even better thanks to greater support for Events.

Say for example that you want to track specific interactions on a page (or website) such as a link click and do so independently of pagevies. Google Analytics newly enhanced real-time reports not only shows the top events as they occur but provides the ability to filter on particular event categories (from link clicks to downloads). The depth of these intelligence reports could prove quite useful to both marketers and website managers. For example, say some news event occurs and there is an increase in a pageviews for an article/post that was previously written. In this scenario, the website manager might want to highlight the content in some manner on the homepage and the marketer may want to redistribute it through social media channels. As Google suggested, having access to this level of data is akin to being about to pour fuel on the social media fire.

Google introduced three other features worthy of note, including reports to understand whether real-time traffic is from desktops, tablets or mobile, create shortcuts to favorite real-time segments, and the ability to compare real-time filtered data again overall real-time data.

Below is a screenshot of the Realtime Events Report in Google Analytics

Google Universal Analytics – What to Know

Administrator — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:10:00 GMT

Google has officially released its Universal Analytics offering to the digital masses. While unlikely that there will be a virtual stampede to use the enhanced platform (at least right away), doing so could certainly position your enterprise for success in the future. The reason? You’ll know more (way more) about your users and the performance of your digital properties than with the classic version.

Launched in beta back in October 2012, Google’s Universal Analytics release enables firms to import their own datasets into its analytics system in order to understand how customers interact with a business across many devices (including mobile, tablets and PC’s) – and touch points (search, advertising, etc.). Why is this important? More control over the type and depth of information collected leads to more refined (and better) analysis. Ultimately that provides a more complete vision of the marketing funnel.

Universal Analytics exposes configuration options in the administration panel that were accessible previously only to developers through an API. Now, pretty much any user can customize and control reporting of traffic from organic search sources, have better handling of session and campaign timeouts, exclude referrals and search terms as needed, and even implement a broad range of custom dimensions and metrics (the new tracking code also works on subdomains).

Essentially, the Universal Analytics platform introduces a new set of features that change the way data is collected and ultimately organized. In addition to a name change for the actual tracking snippet – from ga.js to analytics.js – Google also reduced the number of cookies (from four to one) and extended the life of the tracking cookie to two years.

The offering has apparently been well received by some big brands. PriceGrabber VP of Marketing Rojeh Ananesian (in a video in Google’s official post – included below) discussed how using Universal Analytics help server users better by providing them with “more relevant content and shopping results.”

Analytics Get a Makeover with Visual.ly

Allison Howen — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:45:00 GMT

For some Web workers, sorting through analytics can be a dull, yet necessary, task. But a new tool from Visual.ly aims to change that.

The data visualization and infographic platform has launched a tool that provides users with a free visual traffic summary of their site’s performance. The tool leverages data from a user’s Google Analytics account to automatically create a custom infographic based on a site’s weekly performance. This infographic displays basic site analytics, such as pageviews, new and returning visitor data, social engagement, SEO stats and bounce rate.

The provided metrics are certainly not enough information for analytics professionals who need to dive deep into a site’s performance, however, the tool can be used to send a site snapshot around to other team members. By doing this, all colleagues within an organization can stay up-to-date with their site’s performance, and be aware of what metrics can be improved upon.

Get Pushy and Track Results

Allison Howen — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:00:00 GMT

Developers have been leveraging Parse to send a half billion push notifications per month to their application users, and now, the app development platform is launching an analytics solution to help its developers obtain insights into their messaging campaigns.

Following the launch of the Parse Push Console for advanced targeting and scheduling of notifications, Parse’s new solution, Push Analytics, enables developers to learn what happens to their messages after they are sent. In fact, the new SDKs allow users to track if their application was launched by a consumer tapping on a push notification, both in real-time and over time.

While existing push customers already have access to the number of users targeted per push as well as graphs that display an app’s pushes over time, the company states that these new tools expose even more detailed information and statistics per push. It is also important to note that the new analytics functionality is not only limited to push notifications, because it allows developers to monitor app opens from within the analytics dashboard too, even if their app isn’t using Parse Push.

Pinteresting Analytics

Allison Howen — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 18:20:00 GMT

You no longer have to wonder what products or content from your site is getting the most attention on Pinterest, because the image-based social network has finally unveiled an analytic solution.

The solution, which has been dubbed Pinterest Web Analytics, provides business owners who have verified websites with information about how many people have pinned content from their site, how many people have seen the pins and how many people visited their site from Pinterest. Moreover, the analytics displays the most repinned, most clicked and most recent pins, so that site owners can gain insights into what type of content is resonating with their Pinterest audience.

Before you can start diving deep into Pinterest analytics, however, you must first gain early access to Pinterest’s new look and have a verified website. Once these steps are done, you can go to the top right menu and click on “Analytics.”

The data from Pinterest's new analytics offering will help businesses measure the impact that the social network has on their brand, which leaves us wondering if the next step for this young social network will be to launch advertising options.

Ecommerce Analytics for InfusionSoft Users

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 18:30:00 GMT

Users of small business sales and marketing automation platform Infusionsoft now have access to a plugin that posts sales and transation data directly to Google Analytics and Google Adwords in real time.

The plugin, created by Flare Labs, enables retails to supply Google with data critical to analyzing performance and the optimizing return on advertising spend (ROAS).

Once installed, users will notice their sales data is pre-populated within the Ecommerce section of their Google Analytics account. Users can then see what traffic sources generate the most profitable sales. and which traffic funnels have low profitability, letting the user know which parts of their sales and marketing process needs optimization.

The same transaction data is posted to AdWords. Infusionsoft users can see which ads are generating the most sales, and more importantly, what ads are generating the biggest profits. Online businesses with over 30 transactions a month will also be able to use the Google AdWords Conversion Optimizer, which automatically adjusts ad settings to provide the highest possible return on investment of advertising dollars.

Curalate for Instagram: Analytics for Visual Social Platforms

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:30:00 GMT

Social media analytics are the hot sector right now among the digerati and big brands are jumping on the bandwagon in digital droves.

Zappos’ recent selection of Pinfluencer, for example, to help manage and analyze its promotional efforts on the network is sufficient proof for many that brands are finally starting to figure this whole "visual social media" thing out - at least in part. As many brands are quickly discovering, Pinterest is far from the only horse in the visual/social race. Facebook-owned Instagram is making moves and the savviest social media analytics providers are well aware of its potential to influence prospective and existing customers and users.

Case in point, visual analytics and marketing platform Curalate recently announced the availability of analytics and promotion solutions for Instagram, making it the first (if not only) vendor to bring analytics from Pinterest and Instagram analytics into one consolidated dashboard.

The updated platform enables brands to understand image popularity (and recency), consolidate conversations on both Pinterst and Instagram into one feed, create promotions on the two visual networks (and Facebook), share photos directly from within the platform's dashboard, and analyze performance of their Instagram campaigns as well. One of the more appealing features is the ability for brand users to differentiate between engagement on fan-posted and brand-posted images.

“Images drive emotions with an immediacy that no other medium offers. Brands are rapidly tapping into the power of imagery to connect with consumers and drive real business results,” said Apu Gupta, CEO and co-founder, Curalate. “By adding Instagram to our successful Pinterest solution we’re helping brands see the bigger picture. Curalate enables brands to engage audiences across networks based on what’s most relevant rather than what’s most recent.”

Screenshot of the Hashtag feature within Curalate which is used for tracking social promotions on Pinterest and now Instagram

Klipfolio Gets Connected with Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Klipfolio, a provider of an operational dashboard for real-time business information and key performance indicators, has added the Google Analytics data connector.

The data connector is used to provde non-technical users with the ability to retrieve data from their Google analytics account. In this case, it essentially ports all your custom analytics data directly to the Klipfolio app (which works for desktops, mobiles, tablets).

In its "simple mode," users are now able to select metrics, dimensions, and a time period to retrieve from the account, and in the "advanced mode" users with some familiarity with the Google Analytics API can craft more detailed queries.

"We've noticed a remarkable increase in the number of marketing agencies using Klipfolio Dashboard. This is because we are focused on operational and real-time data - this synergizes extremely well with marketing departments measuring campaign performance, web analytics, and SEO."

Conversational Marketing Requires Big Data

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:55:00 GMT

There is more pressure than ever for digital marketing departments to measure performance and optimize the total marketing mix. To do that you'll need access to some robust analytics of course; fortunately, there's no shortage of solutions to make this digital dream a reality.

Case in point, Neolane, which provides a conversational marketing platform, has released a new version of its marketing analytics product which it hopes will do just that. And it's doing it all with access to big (and better) data.

While there is no shortage of marketing paltforms which provide some level of data, what may make Neolane's updated solution potentially appealing is that it aims to empower marketers to optimize, excute and monitor their own campaigns without requiring a "Data Scientist or employing additional help from IT departments;" something which you're probably all too familiar with.

“With Neolane Marketing Analytics, we are offering unique data analysis features for marketers to address the emergence of Big Data and have a better understanding of their customers’ behavior,” stated Stephane Dehoche, president and CEO, Neolane.

“Most of our clients have dramatically increased their productivity and are now measuring their customers’ reactions in real-time. Marketers are therefore empowered to effectively use data and deliver personalized cross-channel experiences.”

Keyword Not Provided in Google Chrome Omnibox Searches

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:35:00 GMT

The keyword not provided issue has caused serious issues (some would say damage) for search engine optimization professionals and those responsible for performance analytics, particuarly when it comes to keyword level reporting. And the situation is only going to get worse.

When users are signed in to Google and use the Chrome address bar (the "omnibox") to conduct a query today, Chrome sends those searches over SSL - that's why many have seen their KNP data increasing over the past six months. Now however, or at least starting with Chrome 25 (currently in the Dev and Beta channels), Google will do the same thing for users who are not signed into Google. That means that searches from Chrome address bar will be unavailable (i.e. invisible) - that's right, keyword not provided.

Google introduced Encrypted Search in May 2010 and made encryption the default for signed-in users starting in October 2011. While it may be a good thing for end-users - faster speeds and all, it's causing quite a bit of disruption in the search marketing landscape.

ALSO READ:
- The Extent of Keyword Not Provided & Some Practical Solutions

Analytics - The Hiring Trend to Watch in 2013

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:00:00 GMT

One hiring priority that has quickly emerged over the past year is that of the data analyst.

According to a recently released Dice.com Hiring Survey, those familiar with analytics are the fourth largest talent pool (within the tech segment) that recruiters and hiring managers were interested in (preceded by Java/J2EE Developers, Mobile Developers, and .NET Developers and followed by Software developers).

But where do you go to get the education and training required to become a big data analytics master? There is currently a rather sizable gap in big data talent, but colleges and universities are indeed offering programs now – from Northwestern to Drexel, MIT and Stanford – so there likely won’t be a shortage for long.

Ideally, any program chosen will address data holistically and within a business context, including predictive (forecasting), descriptive (business intelligence and data mining), and prescriptive (optimization and simulation) data analysis.

Ex-Mobile Exec Tired of Reports, Starts IDInteract

Amberly Dressler — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 20:15:00 GMT

When IDInteract Founder, CEO and Chief Architect Matt Standish managed 1,769 applications, 25 petabytes of data and seven channels, as well as spent hundreds of millions of dollars to do so as a mobile executive at companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, Motorala, what did he get? A ton of reports.

Despite the countless resources at Standish’s disposal, he wasn’t able to take unstructured data and make it actionable. Using that data in a very relevant way to understand customer intent is one of the many reasons he founded IDInteract in January 2012, which he says was the right company at the right time.

Eleven months later, IDInteract launched its Demand Exchange platform, which integrates raw data from social sources, such as Facebook and Twitter with client mobile applications and proprietary CRM systems to help marketers identify and engage with highly qualified individuals and prospect clusters.

With predictive analytics and propensity-to-buy algorithms, Demand Exchange identifies consumers’ intent to make a purchase in real-time, enabling marketers to reach out with targeted offers via Facebook posts, direct messages, and personal tweets designed to meet individual demand.

“To fully enable digital marketing we need to shine a brighter light on customers by leveraging the ‘dark’ unused data from their social and mobile activity in addition to any useful CRM data,” said Standish. “Getting at dark data will help enterprises really understand what their customers and prospects need most, and satisfy that demand. The problem is how to collect, analyze and leverage all that data so it’s truly useful for driving meaningful customer interactions leading to revenue. With the launch of Demand Exchange, IDInteract ups the ante, flipping traditional supply-focused CRM on its head with a fully integrated offering leveraging multi-channel data to monetize consumer demand.”

One way Demand Exchange does this, is by providing businesses customer profiles. These profiles include the likelihood a customer will be a first-time purchaser or their potential for usell/cross-sell and win-back based on demand signals. Profiles also include the consumer’s privacy on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ (e.g. high, medium or low), as well as their persona mood (e.g. content). Additionally, businesses can see the person’s last social media updates, mobile phone number, number of mobile downloads and the list goes on.

Key features of the Demand Exchange platform include:

IDIntent – Sources data from social media channels, client mobile applications and CRM systems. By sourcing “dark” data from social media and mobile applications, Demand Exchange enables clients to tap into largely unused but highly valuable real-time information about what consumers are doing, considering and purchasing. This channel agnostic approach to data collection eliminates the need to invest in channel specific tools, and paints a more accurate picture of consumer demand for particular goods and services.
IDPersona – Consolidates multiple data points into singular contextual consumer views for individuals, groups, events and communities called “Personas.” Personas contain and continually update privacy, viral score, brand consideration, and historical and potential revenue contribution information. Consumer “demand signals” within Personas are analyzed using proprietary algorithms to determine real-time intent. Personas allow a marketer to sense shifts in market perception and understand the real-time demand curve for their company and its offerings.

IDAnalytics – Predictive analytics and propensity to buy algorithms are applied to Personas to determine the highest revenue potential prospects for each client. Using Visual Market Intelligence (the abstraction of raw data into easy to understand graphic formats) the Demand Exchange user interface presents this information to clients marketers can quickly focus on the most valuable prospects relative to their business objectives, leading to increased revenue and ROI.
IDOffer – Empowers marketers to manage a standing inventory of offers ranging from reference information, content links and promotions. IDOffer automatically recommends prospects for client interaction pre-aligned with available offers. This automation capability introduces efficiency to what is currently a labor-intensive and manual process.
Measurement & ROI – Continually measures, tracks and reports the status of customer interactions to help enterprise digital marketers measure campaign effectiveness and ROI.

IDInteract is working with a number of large companies, such as big retail stores, to pro sports teams, to subscription services. The company’s primary focus is large organizations, however, it does have a very automated system that small- and medium-sized businesses could get onboard with.