'Net Features : engagement

Facebook Engagement Grows by… 896%?

Allison Howen — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:04:00 GMT

Regardless of claims that Facebook is now forcing Brand Page owners to pay for exposure, engagement rates on the world's most popular social network seem to be soaring.

In fact, Adobe’s Q3 2012 Global Digital Advertising Update reveals that fans’ engagement with brands on Facebook, which includes likes, comments and shares, grew by 896 percent year over year. Adobe concludes that this growth is the result of Facebook’s Timeline redesign as well as new acquisition and engagement metrics and more effective social marketing by brands.

An additional factor that is undoubtedly influencing fan engagement rates on Facebook is mobile. According to the study, mobile users now account for nearly a quarter of all Facebook engagement, which is a four-fold increase from the period prior to the Timeline change.

However, despite this study, Facebook’s Timeline feature has been controversial, to say the least. Aside from the general public’s typical moans and groans about getting accustomed to the new design, many Page owners have complained that their content doesn’t reach as much of their fan base as it previously did – unless, of course, they promote their posts. This means that brands actually need to pay to have more of their existing fans see their content, unlike the pre-Timeline era when brand content was sent to every fan’s newsfeed – for free.

Has Timeline affected your brand’s engagement rates on Facebook? Has promoting your posts led to a positive ROI for your brand? Let us know in the comments section below.

Petco Explores Customer Sentiment with LivePerson's LP Insights

Administrator — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 14:36:00 GMT

Real-time engagement and analytics solutions are certainly all the rage these days among enterprise marketers, but who are these platforms really designed for and how do they work? With so many variations on engagement-focused software solutions (some are focused on conversion others on gathering data), an example is always welcome.

Leading pet specialty retailer Petco is using LivePerson’s LP Insights to gain intelligence on customer sentiment and using it influence their customer service online and in-store. The recently launched LP Insights from LivePerson (NASDAQ: LPSN) provides a text analytics solution (making sense of words and behaviors) that turns “voice of customer” data into insights that can influence a range of management initiatives across an enterprise. For example, Petco can analyze chat transcript data as well as survey results, analytics, emails, call transcripts and social media to help their enterprise enhance products, processes and policies.

“By using LP Insights, we were able to 'connect the dots' between multiple sources of customer data and discover key areas for improvement," said Erin Smith, Petco's Director of Customer Care. "The LP Insights tool has revealed critical trends that we didn't even expect to find, helping us ensure we're providing products and services of the highest quality for our customers. Whether it's in one channel or another, your customers are speaking, and it's our job to hear what they're saying. LP Insights helps us to do that."

In addition to using LivePerson’s LP Insights platform to gather business insights, enterprises can also use it to gather information from their chat programs directly, data from individual agents, as well as to create a social media listening platform to explore how customers perceive their brand and how social media is influencing their success.

"One of the main challenges companies face today is the ability to gain a 360-degree view of customer sentiment," said Rob LoCascio, CEO and Founder, LivePerson. "Early adopters of LP Insights, which include several leading brands, are discovering valuable opportunities to make immediate improvements in their product, service, and conversion strategies. LP Insights enables our customers to use the power of intelligence to make more meaningful connections with their customers."

Dashboard view of LivePerson's LP Insights

Social Engagement Requires Near Constant Activity

Mike Phillips — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Social analytics company Visibli released some interesting findings about social media "stickiness" that might change how you interact with social platforms.

According to their study of 200 million Facebook users and their "likes" and comments behavior, the average Facebook post lasts about 80 minutes before losing relevance. About 50 percent of these interactions take place within 80 minutes of posting, while 80 percent takes place within 7 hours and 95 percent within 22 hours. In other words, post early and post often for the highest level of engagement. However, if one post is particularly important to a branding effort, leaving it up longer will result in more engagement for that post -- a new post will quickly move the first post to the irrelevant pile.

Engagement is even more rapid for Twitter posts, which is to be expected. Twitter posts receive 95 percent of their re-tweets within the first hour of posting, according to Visibli CEO Saif Ajani.

While this would point to constant posting as a recipe for success, brands need to be aware of their own audiences. Too many posts or tweets can result in disengagment, too. The only way to know for sure is to pay attention to levels of interaction. Facebook makes available analytics regarding interaction for every post and brand page and, using various Twitter tools, businesses can monitor interactions such as clicks and retweets, as well as whether or not fans are "unfollowing" them.

Heatmaps - It’s Getting Hot in Here

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:50:00 GMT

Leveraging Heat Maps for Optimal Customer Experience, Better Design and Deeper Engagement

The benefits of using, analyzing and understanding heat maps are numerous. The data gathered can offer proof as to where visitors do and do not click, provide useful information when designing and redesigning landing pages, help determine optimal advertisement placement, minimize shopping cart abandonment, maximize conversions of online forms and predict how visitors will use your site in the future.

There’s not much heat maps can’t reveal, really. We just need to know what to look for then plan accordingly.

In the case of a traditional heat map, the brighter the color the more clicks (and attention) a specific area is receiving — that much we readily know (see image A below).

That is effective, as it shows the degree to which people are interacting with live elements on a website and how a design and site structure can be improved by understanding what elements users are truly interested in, as opposed to those areas where users only consider clicking.

But heat maps alone do not show us all of the information needed for true optimization, as they tend only to track clicks on links. We can do much more.

Coupling heat map data with more detailed analytics lets us track and visualize mouse movement and page or mouse clicks that are not links (non-clickable elements).

In essence, we get a deeper understanding of how users are experiencing a page as a whole, not just where they click. Now we’re cooking.

For example, how helpful would it be to know if users are hovering over links (often called hover time), and how often? If that information were available we might be able to determine how compelling the anchor text of certain links are, even if users did not actually click them, and how they might be improved.

We can also determine the time from when a page loads until a user clicks a certain link. This is helpful in determining if the placement we’ve chosen for a specific design element is optimal or if it should be brought into greater focus (above the fold, for example) to increase the number of clicks.

What heat map analytics can show with great clarity is not just how well a Web design, its layout and structure are performing in terms of clicks but also help us make modifications based on seemingly unrelated information, such as the referrer (see Image C). For example, review the highest volume entry pages by comparing the best and worst performing pages.

Then use heat maps to determine the relationship between the top referrer of those pages and clicks and lack of clicks. Once the worst offenders are found, multiple variables and landing page approaches based on the source of traffic can be tested.

Reviewing the activity of visitors from different referral sources is but one of the ways heat maps can be used. Clicktale, for example, offers statistics to its users based on existing customers versus new visitors, and customers who made a purchase versus those who did not.

“We can segment by absolutely anything. For example, age, gender, location or compare specifics such as bachelors in their 30’s versus mothers versus teenagers,” says Clicktale’s Director of Marketing and Communication, Shmuli Goldberg. “Clicktale provides information on what content a customer really cares about, as well as finds bugs and usability issues that stop or delay revenue.”

Analyzing data provided through heat maps can be cumbersome but keep these points in mind during analysis and when drafting suggestions and recommendations:

• Areas that receive few clicks could be removed. If users don’t find them important they may be more of a distraction than providing help. If you’re hesitant to leave sections empty, simply replace them with something entirely different to see if that leads to more interest on the part of users.

• While identifying areas that receive the most attention is useful, particularly for those responsible for optimizing content, observing the areas after they click to those destinations is perhaps even more useful. For example if users do not click anywhere after arriving on a page they may have hit a dead end. Try to turn those endings into new beginning by offering content suggestions or product recommendations.

The job of a Web designer — or anyone responsible for optimizing the user experience — is to maximize interest in the site and its products or content while maintaining usability.

The challenge is to balance aesthetics with function. To achieve this you must give website visitors a direction; guiding them where you want them to go. Too many options, however, and it is easy to confuse and frustrate users. Not enough information or choices, on the other hand, could mislead website visitors.

In the end, understand that no website is perfect. While pairing heat maps with analytics is useful, making website changes does not guarantee that all of your problems will be solved. Be sure to test, test, and retest after making any improvements and modifications to determine how those changes improved or worsened the user experience.

Rating Content from Social Graph Data

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:33:00 GMT

Site search and “engagement tool” provider Lijit Networks announced it has been granted a patent for rating content based on social graph data.

The patent covers methods and systems that query a mathematical model of a trust network of interconnected individuals and return a subjective rating of content associated with those individuals. Lijit’s network search technology, which is covered by the patent, is used on over 15,000 publisher websites.

“This patent supports and protects some of the key intellectual property used in Lijit’s service offering,” said Todd Vernon, CEO and founder of Lijit Networks. “Lijit’s Custom Site Search allows people in the online world to leverage a social network of interconnected people to find products, services and information from sources with whom they have formed a trusted relationship.”

Marketers Slow to Socialize?

Mike Phillips — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:47:00 GMT

Alterian's 8th annual survey of 1,500 marketers, agencies, marketing service providers and systems integrators from around the world finds that less than one-third of them have a strong understanding of the conversations happening around their brand. Just 30% said they are "reporting regularly to management" while a 30% said "very little" or "none".

But most of those surveyed plan on increasing expenditures on social/digital marketing. In fact, just 4% of respondents said that budgets would decrease, while 75% said they will increase at least slightly.

With most social media and digital campaigns, the buzzword is "engagement". Yet, despite plans to increase budgets in this area, few businesses are actually focused on engaging consumers with their websites. The survey found that just 11% "personalize each visitor experience on the website" while a stunning 34% claim "The website's main focus is to serve as a corporate brochure" - ala 1999. Some 55% say their focus is "campaigns and offers to drive interaction on the website."

Email, on the other hand, seems to be the prevailing method of personalization. Almost three-quarters of respondents (72%) focus on creating a personalized customer experience through email. More than half of respondents (56%) at least segment audiences with different email messages. The second-most popular form of personalization is direct mail (58%), followed by the website (56%). Surprisingly, social media ranks fourth in personalization efforts with 53%. This, despite planned budget increases and a very low barrier to entry.

Of those surveyed, 77% said that their client's brand is at least somewhat at risk from not being as engaged with customers as it should be.

Read the full report here.

Barriers to Email Engagement

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:54:00 GMT

According to a survey released today by email marketing firm Listrak, retailers are missing critical opportunities to engage customers and drive sales.

The study revealed that retailers cite "communication overload" and "impersonal outreach" as the biggest barriers to customer engagement via email. The 80+ respondents nearly unanimously agreed (97%) that audience engagement is a critical priority, but revealed that they are underutilizing proven tactics and key touch points to engage consumers, including campaigns to proactively prompt repurchase of replenishable products and shopping cart abandonment strategies that keep existing customers buying.

Retailers on average reported using fewer than half of available key touch points (2.3 of 6), which include welcome messaging, confirmations, transactional, shopping cart abandonment, seasonal and post purchase campaigns - all of which can provide additional opportunities to sell, cross-sell and up-sell products to customers already engaged with a brand. "Retailers are overlooking crucial opportunities to further engage customers when they are most receptive to it,” said Ross Kramer, Listrak CEO. “Customers who leave items in a shopping cart before completing the purchase are prime for remarketing campaigns.”

The survey also revealed that the techniques most companies are using to measure engagement are outdated and lacking insight. That is, 82% of those polled measure campaign effectiveness only in terms of opens, clicks and email conversions. There is another way. Listrak suggested that retailers need to use business-driven (rather than behavior-focused) metrics to truly understand customer engagement levels and determine the actual sales impact of campaigns. This might include measuring the number of products purchased, revenue from those orders, and repeat purchases from those customers as these metrics are more closely tied to true ROI and customer lifetime value.

The survey showed that there has been an increase in the number of retailers who measure engagement based on customer value however. Specifically, 26.25% look at conversion rates, 16% use recency and frequency of purchases, and 8.25% measure the overall value of their customers to determine how engaged they are with their brand.

“By reaching customers at key touch points with relevant messages and using more advanced measurement criteria, retailers can cut through the clutter and overcome barriers to truly engage customers. That is how retailers will build brand loyalty and increase customer lifetime value,” adds Heather Bonura, Listrak Director, Brand Strategy.

Email to Non-Responsive Recipients Endangers Deliverability

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT

A new study from Return Path indicates that only 12.5% take steps to re-engage with lapsed subscribers.

A majority of the email marketers studied sent email at a steady, high frequency for a 19-month period, despite a lack of response from the subscriber (no opens, no clicks, no purchases). 11 of 40 online retailers studied (27%) stopped sending email to non-responsive subscribers but 10 of the companies stopped sending email without making any attempt to reengage the customer or specifically asking the customer whether or not they’d like to continue receiving emails.

“We were certainly surprised to see how these e-retailers were sending emails to a customer who was completely non-responsive,” said Stephanie Colleton, Director of Professional Services, Return Path. “We strongly recommend that email marketers, not just e-retailers, monitor their subscriber responses – opens, click-throughs and conversions – and adapt their campaigns to either slow down the emails to once per month or send a re-permission email to determine subscribers’ continued interest in receiving emails.”

The lesson is clear according to Return Path: when high-volume email marketers or publishers continue to send emails to non-responsive subscribers they risk endangering their overall email deliverability. When non-responsive subscribers receive a steady stream of emails, or in some cases an increased frequency of emails, they will often begin reporting those emails as spam driving up the marketer’s complaint rate.

Only five of the companies (12.5%) studied actually sent one or more win-back messages – messages designed to reengage subscribers and ultimately drive additional purchases. Bed, Bath & Beyond had the most complete email win-back strategy of the e-retailers studied. They identified the inactive subscribers in their file, decreased the frequency of emails to those subscribers over time (from seven emails per month down to a few more than five per month, and eventually to less than one). After one year of inactivity, they sent a clear, attractive win-back message with a discount offer for an item of the subscriber’s choosing. A week after that win-back campaign, they sent a re-permission email specifying a date when they would stop sending email unless they received subscriber permission. When they received no response to the re-permission email, they honored their commitment and stopped sending.

Three Highly Effective Home Pages: What We Can Learn

Mike Phillips — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:59:00 GMT

The website home page has gone through many transitions. We've seen the brochure-style page, the links-galore page and the Flash-frenzied page, to name a few. And, while many visitors come to sites through specific channels and hit specific landing pages, the home page is still a place to make your brand stand out. Let's have a look at three excellent home pages and examine how they are fulfilling the brand initiatives while providing real value to consumers.

You will notice that these pages are not only attractive but functional, too. They are built to show the brand, but all demonstrate their value to consumers beyond the product itself. They are engaging, sometimes entertaining and always focused on being a resource for consumers in order to create brand loyalty. These companies might have big budgets, but what they can teach us is applicable to all businesses, big and small.

Dominicks.com

(Dominicks is a local grocery store chain, and a subsidiary of Safeway.)

Locally Grown: There is a growing movement of purchasing produce from local farms and markets. This panel on the home page reinforces local ties to the community and guarantees fresh produce - or your money back. The section reinforces all points of consumer satisfaction, local business support and healthy eating.
Tonight's Dinner: This section changes daily, offering a new recipe for dinner every night. This is a true resource for a daily need.
Coupons, Email Savings and More: Everyone wants coupons and Dominick's delivers. You can get them in a variety of ways and, to the left, is the opportunity to find deals specific to your local store.

As a local business, Domincks.com does an excellent job of proving their value - local ties, daily recipe ideas, money-saving tactics and more. The page is resourceful without being chaotic and invites the user to explore.

SweetLeafTea.com

(Sweet Leaf Tea is an iced tea beverage popular with young, music-loving people.)

Sweet Leaf Sweet Spot Contest: Who doesn't like to win stuff? This contest invites users to enter to win a VIP trip to ACL or Lollapalooza (two major - and expensive - music festivals) by uploading photos of themselves. It's a perfect fit for consumers and the brand. These are young, engaged, tech-savvy people who are serious about music festivals (and likely short on cash) where Sweet Leaf has a major presence. An excellent example of online and offline brand synergy.
Sweet Leaf TV: Have you ever heard of a beverage with its own TV channel? No? Maybe it's worth a click to find out?
Fridge Photos: Includes more user-generated photos from music festivals and other events. Another opportunity for engagement and deeper site exploration.
The Product: Sweet Leaf has a very good product - so why not showcase it? The rotating, sweating bottles show off the variety of flavors in their icy-cold glory.

Sweet Leaf's home page shows its most important element - the product - upfront. It also shows that they know their audience by providing interaction, engagement and a chance for real-world value with the contest page. It's easy to start clicking around this site. Even when simply hovering your mouse over the top navigation, it makes a "pop" sound as if you just un-capped a fresh bottle of Sweet Leaf Tea.

FritoLay.com

(Frito Lay is a national snack food brand.)

Our Snacks, Your Health, Our Planet: You know about Frito Lay's snacks. But did you know they care about your health and our planet, too? This "replacement" for traditional site navigation does a great job of connecting the brand, the individual and the collective community conscience. From the outset, the consumer is put in a position of feeling like a healthy member of a community. Usually snack brands try to hide health information. Not here.
Our 100% Compostable Bag: Intriguing on its own, but click through and you can see video of an actual Sun Chips bag biodegrading over the course of a few weeks. Watching a brand's leading product disintegrate for the better of the environment is at once interesting, entertaining and innovative. It also removes a little guilt the next time I buy a bag. The only thing that would make this better is if the video clip played when you hit the home page, without the need to click through.
Click Here to See Where Your LAY'S Chips Were Made: I assume that they are made in a big factory somewhere. But I'm interested, especially considering the image of a farm in the background. Click through and you can interact with a bag of chips by entering your ZIP code and the code on the bag to see exactly how those potatoes arrived in your lunchbox. Who knew a bag of chips could be so personalized?

Frito Lay is a good example of a major brand appealing to an individual consumer. When you think of snack foods, health and environmentalism do not usually enter the equation. However, Frito Lay is looking to change that, providing eating tips and heavily promoting its "green" initiatives. They are effectively creating a feel-good community around the brand.

These examples highlight just a few elements that make a successful home page on today's consumer-focused Web. They each show off their product, provide some level of engagement beyond just the product itself, create a sense of community and provide real-world value. You will also notice that none of them are attempting to sell anything upfront. While landing pages are designed for conversion, home pages have come to be the "face" of a brand.

When a user visits your home page, either through a search or by direct type-in traffic, they are there to explore, to see what you have to offer. If we can provide value for our consumers right away - solve a problem, fulfill a need or even just entertain - then we can sell something to them down the road. In other words, the home page is all about lifetime customer value, not a quick sale.

Five Jaw Dropping Google Analytics Improvements

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:41:00 GMT

Google last week unveiled a stunning number of improvements to its Analytics service. I've been a hardcore GA user for a few years now, but I firmly believe that the many new features released make the platform much more enterprise-ready. Let's take a closer look at the enhancements now:

- Engagement Goals: GA users can now set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit, and define up to 20 goals per profile.

- Expanded Mobile Reporting: Now tracks traffic to mobile websites from all web-enabled devices (whether or not the device runs Javascript). Users will need to add a code snippet to their mobile websites (coming soon).

- Advanced Table Filtering: Filter rows in a table based on different metric conditions. For example, you will now be able to sort thousands of keywords to identify those with a high bounce rate.

- Multiple Custom Variables: GA users can now define and track visitors according to visitor attributes (member vs. non-member), session attributes (logged-in or not), and by page-level attributes.

- Analytics Intelligence: GA is providing automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods.

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Cost Per Twitter Lead?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:33:00 GMT

It is increasingly clear to many that marketing is becoming solely about engagement.

Pontiflex has a way for advertisers to build and grow lists of Twitter users using Cost-per-Lead (CPL) advertising. In addition to basic user information like name and email, Pontiflex's platform allows advertisers to capture Twitter handles of consumers who have opted-in to being contacted by the brand. Advertisers can then "follow" users on Twitter to better understand their concerns and also ask users to follow their brand to continue building the consumer/brand relationship. I initially thought I wouldn't be a fan, but I have to tell you that this might just have some merit.

Advertisers can currently run ad units through Pontiflex AdLeads on publishers like Boston.com, Monster.com, Orbitz.com and Babycenter.com. Using a form embedded inside the banner and direct response creative, users can choose to enter basic user information like first name, last name and Twitter handle. Users stay on the publisher's site during this process and their information is transmitted to the advertiser in real-time through Pontiflex's back end. Advertisers can then "follow" the user and reach out to them directly. Advertisers pay only for leads that have submitted their information.

"Marketing is moving from a one way monologue to a two way conversation," said Zephrin Lasker, CEO & Co-founder, Pontiflex. "Many advertisers have tried to incorporate Twitter into their marketing efforts but few have done so successfully. This gives brands a very easy starting point for building a group of people who want to engage with them on Twitter. With Pontiflex AdLeads, advertisers can now build a responsive community of users on Twitter, listen to what they are saying and respond in relevant ways."