InsightIQ Blog
Stay informed by reading current blog entries from our Quaero experts. Learn more about industry trends, gain insight into recent client successes, get up to date on company happenings and get to know us — and our opinions — even better.
Showing Blogs: 326–350 of 431
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Online Analytics in Action - The online data provides the value and it is time to let it loose
Posted on: 7/31/09Continue ReadingIn another post 'Netflix: What were they thinking?' I summarized how Netflix used online data, a prize and the analytic community to increase revenue.
In this blog I would like to focus on the biggest barrier in turning online behaviors into actionable and optimized customer interactions throughout all channels. Let's start by breaking down the components of online analytics:
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An Eye on Consistent Cross-Channel Messaging
Posted on: 7/27/09Continue ReadingFor this post, I really wanted to bring up a topic that may be obvious to some, but a distant thought for others: consistent, unified messaging across all channels.
In today's market, it seems like there’s a new interactive channel or medium popping up every year from advanced web targeting to SMS to social media. However, many companies are not embracing the new touchpoints and in turn fail to deliver a consistent message to each and every channel that they utilize.
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Good Data Hygiene Never Goes Out of Style
Posted on: 7/22/09Continue Reading"Data hygiene - the art of keeping a direct mail database clean and up-to-date - could prove to be the most irritating buzzword of 2001. But, it could be key to the success of direct mail printers."
-"Data hygiene to be your 2001 buzzword," Printing World, January 8, 2001So, what is data hygiene? The term "data hygiene" simply refers to a set of procedures for keeping a name-and-address database in good shape. This usually involves:
- Ensuring the database doesn't contain duplicate records (thus, the terms "dedupe" and "merge-purge").
- Maintaining the addresses in the U.S. Postal Service's standard format to ensure "deliverability" (by "scrubbing" and "parsing," which are other industry terms).
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Digital vs Direct Marketing
Posted on: 7/20/09Continue ReadingIn my previous blog, I had written about how digital marketing spend will increase in 2009 and beyond. So how does this affect marketing organizations? This blog is part one of a two-part series on the divide between Digital and direct marketing and what are tactics to bridge the gap.
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Captain Stan and the art of maintaining a positive customer experience in rough waters
Posted on: 7/16/09Continue ReadingOn a recent vacation to South Florida, my friend and I decided to take a half-day fishing charter out on the high seas. Through a little research, we found Capt. Stan of Weedline Fishing Charters in North Palm Beach.
Capt. Stan has a great reputation as an experienced fisherman and charter captain. The photos on his web site show happy customers proudly holding up their catch. As the day approached, we looked forward to sunny skies, calm waters and a great fishing experience. One thing we hadn't anticipated was what was waiting for us.... 25 knot winds and three to five foot ocean swells.
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Top 5 iPhone Apps
Posted on: 7/15/09Continue ReadingLess than three months ago, the way I work changed drastically. I didn't learn a time management technique, or take a class to learn a new skill set. I got an iPhone and work will never be the same again. While many iPhone apps exist for entertainment, there are plenty that will help you work more efficiently and truly define what it means to be "working remote". Here is a list of my top 5 (free) iPhone apps:
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Will hard times spur innovation?
Posted on: 7/13/09Continue ReadingBased on what I observe with many of our clients these days, particularly the ones that are hurting the most, I wonder if "hard times bring forth innovation". Clients in multiple industries seem more open to considering new ways of doing things, perhaps because the same old same old is simply not working anymore Or is it perhaps because they are so desperate, they will try anything? Actually, having spent some time with senior marketing executives as well as general managers, I think the smart ones see an opportunity to actually use these hard times to execute on ideas they have had for some time - so it may be a case of not letting a crisis go to waste.
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Monetizing Online Content
Posted on: 7/10/09Continue ReadingOnline content providers have always been challenged to find new ways to increase brand traffic, monetize their content and lure advertisers. And while we are still in the midst of a recession, the news for online content providers is not all bad. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that US online consumers will spend $4.7B on entertainment content in 2009 alone (Who Pays for Online Content, by Sarah Rotman Epps).
Figuring out the monetization model and actually executing it can be difficult, though. Should you adopt a "free-mium" model, one in which willing consumers subscribe to premium content while others receive the base service and are subject to ads? What about a pay-as-you-go model? Or an advertiser-subsidized model? Each is difficult to implement on its own, but applying more than one model to support the needs of a varied audience can be highly complex and costly.
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Optimizing Customer Opt-Ins; Preparing for Customer Interaction via SMS/Text Messaging
Posted on: 7/8/09Continue ReadingSMS/text messaging is no longer a communication channel reserved for teenage gossip and abbreviated conversations. Text messaging is proving to be an extremely valuable marketing channel and helping an increasing number of companies turn customer interactions into revenue generating transactions.
As companies attempt to augment their current customer communication strategies to fully leverage the hottest customer communication channel available, they're quickly recognizing there's a good deal of preparation that needs to take place prior to sending out the first message.
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Display Advertising Effectiveness - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 7/6/09Continue Reading- The Silent Click: Building Brands Online (Online Publishers Association) -- A new study commissioned by the OPA and comScore suggests that online display advertising is more effective at creating incremental lift than previously thought. According to the press release announcing the study, "For consumers exposed to brand display ad campaigns, the research found that:
- One in five conduct related searches and one in three visit the brands’ sites
- Users spent over 50% more time than the average visitor to these sites and consumed more pages
- Users spent about 10% more money online overall, and significantly more on product categories related to the advertised brands
- Higher income audiences visited the advertisers sites"
- The Silent Click: Building Brands Online (Online Publishers Association) -- A new study commissioned by the OPA and comScore suggests that online display advertising is more effective at creating incremental lift than previously thought. According to the press release announcing the study, "For consumers exposed to brand display ad campaigns, the research found that:
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Control Groups in Marketing - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 7/6/09Continue Reading- Control Group Series (Jim Novo) -- Jim explains why marketers should use control groups in their campaigns.
- Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research (Campbell & Stanley) -- The book that any serious campaign designer should consult before launching a new marketing campaign. Defines and explains pre-experimental designs, pretest-posttest control group design, Solomon four-group design, posttest-only control group design, etc.
- Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference (Shadish, Cook, and Campbell) -- In-depth book for hard-core marketers. Will help you understand how to design valid experiments, and how to draw valid conclusions from them.
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Does Customer Value Really Matter?
Posted on: 7/6/09Continue ReadingUpon my arrival home from a recent business trip, I was greeted with three different catalogs from the same well-known outdoor clothing and apparel company. While each catalog focused on a slightly different area of interest what really got me thinking was simply the volume of catalogs I received in this instance coupled with the fact that I receive catalogs from this same retailer every two or three weeks year-round. My first thought involved the production and mailing costs this retailer must be incurring in sending me catalogs as frequently as they do.
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Impact of Web Site Performance on Your Bottom Line - Four Essential Links
Posted on: 7/1/09Continue ReadingThe most recent O'Reilly Velocity conference included a number of presentations that proved beyond reasonable doubt that web site performance can have a direct impact on a company's bottom line. Steve Souders, conference co-chair, identified some of the best presentations in his most recent post. Open the links below to watch the presentation videos (or slides):
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Online Analytics in Action - Netflix Competition: Now it’s time to pay up
Posted on: 7/1/09Continue ReadingSee a previous post for a summary of the competition - 'Netflix: What were they thinking?
It seems that after 3 years a team has won the prize. The winning solution was submitted on June 26th, and still must be verified, but all indications are that this solution has broken through a barrier many thought unattainable. The winning solution predicts customers' movie interests 10%+ better than Netflix's internal system. That does not sounds like much (10%) but given that Netflix had already squeezed about as much information out of their data as possible, and additional data sources could not be used in the competition, this was a colossal task.
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Attribution Marketing - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/30/09Continue Reading- Attribution Management (ClearSaleing) -- ClearSaleing has developed a very interesting technology platform focused on helping companies understand the path that customers follow before making a purchase.
- A Framework For Multicampaign Attribution Measurement (Forrester - $) -- John Lovett presents a framework for quantifying marketing attribution.
- Call to Action: Let's Define Standards for Online Marketing Attribution (shop.org) -- Anne Ashbey would like to form a group that will develop best practices for online marketing measurement.
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Behavioral Targeting - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/29/09Continue Reading- Making ads more interesting (Google) -- Three months ago Google announced the launch of their version of behavioral targeting. It's called "interest-based advertising". Three important features of Google's approach are: transparency, choice, and control. Don't miss the Google Ads Preferences Manager, which willl show you the interest categories associated with your browser.
- Behavioral Targeting Legislation Hearings (DMNews) -- The US Congress is holding hearings to evaluate whether behavioral targeting ought to be regulated.
- Onsite Behavioral Targeting (Amadesa) -- Amadesa's behavioral targeting engine illustrates the current state of the art in online behavioral targeting for anonymous visitors.
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The best thought-out Marketing ROI can still leave you empty handed
Posted on: 6/29/09Continue ReadingI was talking to a senior client last week who heads up Global Customer Intelligence for Fortune 50 company whose sales come mostly from other businesses, although they do have a substantial consumer business as well. We were discussing the challenge of proving the Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI), particularly in this challenging environment. He said he had gone to his CEO with a well planned business case for a revamp of their website, which does a fair amount of ecommerce but is also a showcase for their capabilities. The CEO listened patiently to the pitch, bought into the ROI estimate but then said "Just one of our sales people can get me more revenues than this by working a little harder at one or two of our major accounts. Why should I bother investing money in the web site when I can get a lot more bang for my buck elsewhere?"
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Loyalty Marketing Insights - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/26/09Continue Reading- There is no "P" in loyalty (Bill Hanifin) -- Bill Hanifin stresses the importance of understanding that loyal customers are not necessarily profitable customers. In other words, starting a loyalty program without having an understanding of customer profitability could hurt your bottom line.
- State of the Loyalty Industry (Michael Hemsey - PDF) -- Key quote: "Loyalty programs are an investment, not a cost center, and they should generate a positive return."
- Analyzing Customers, Best Buy Decides Not All Are Welcome (WSJ) -- Best Buy found out back in 2004 that many of its most loyal customers were hurting its profits. Understanding the relationship between loyalty and profitability led Best Buy to roll out a controversial "angel-devil" strategy. One can only wonder if a similar strategy could have saved Circuit City.
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Data Quality - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/24/09Continue Reading- Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools (Gartner) -- A good starting point if you want to become familiar with the main vendors in the data quality space.
- Surprising Value of Data Profiling (Kimball - PDF) -- Ralph Kimball provides a concise explanation about the value of data profiling, one of the essential components of a data quality initiative.
- 7 Sources of Poor Data Quality (Melissa DATA) -- William Mcnight identifies seven sources of data quality issues:
- Entry quality
- Process quality
- Identification quality
- Integration quality
- Usage quality
- Aging quality
- Organizational quality
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Retaining HTML Email's Visual Integrity Across Email Clients
Posted on: 6/24/09Continue ReadingMany times when sending out bulk emails we all might have noticed that the appearance of email creative is not consistent across email clients. Some emails may look good in Yahoo or AOL whereas the same email content may not appear properly in Outlook or Gmail. The reason is different email programs render HTML differently. They may display table, style, background formatting and other HTML elements in slightly divergent ways. Hence it becomes quite challenging to prepare email creative in such a way that it holds visual exactness across email clients.
In the following sections we discuss several critical best practices that address this challenge in email design.
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Call Tracking for Marketing Campaigns - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/23/09Continue ReadingTracking campaign performance accurately across multiple channels is one of the holy grails of marketing organizations. The links below illustrate how you can use Google Analytics to measure performance for voice-based campaigns.
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Customer Segmentation Best Practices - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/23/09Continue Reading- Customer Segmentation Done Right (Alice Dragoon - CIO) -- If customer needs don't align neatly with your segmentation criteria, your customer segmentation initiative could end up becoming an exercise in futility.
- 4 Challenges in Customer Segmentation (Mohan Sawhney) -- Mohan lists four key issues to consider:
- Scope of segmentation
- Inbound versus outbound use of segmentation
- Refresh cycle and stability of segmentation
- Segmentation for multiple audiences
- Best Practices in Customer Segmentation (Julie Schwartz) -- Best practices and recommendations focused on the technology services industry. Brief case studies. Free for ITSMA members.
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A Recent Campaign Response Attribution Success Story
Posted on: 6/23/09Continue ReadingRecently I had the opportunity to work with one of our clients on a campaign response attribution project. The client is a hosted solution customer using a popular campaign planning and execution tool with a focus on direct mail catalog distribution across North America. A savvy campaign management team builds complex campaigns with intricate segments at both the business and contact level. Campaign responses arrive in the database in the form of catalog orders generated by the direct mail campaign.
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Rewards Program Best Practices - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/19/09Continue ReadingImplementing a membership rewards program is challenging both from a business as well as from a technology perspective. The links below should help you think through the issues and obstacles that must be overcome in order to become successful at loyalty marketing.
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Collaborative Filtering at Netflix - Three Essential Links
Posted on: 6/18/09Continue ReadingThe Netflix prize has drawn significant attention to the emergent field of collaborative filtering. The links below provide rich details about the challenge and the prize.
