A recent article by eMarketer called "The Data Dump" echoes a recurring refrain: we have more information available than ever, but getting the right information at the right time is getting harder all the time.
Arguably, the irony of this is most exasperating in online marketing. The ability to measure prospects and customers at every touchpoint they have with your organization on the web is breathtaking in its potential -- yet painfully overwhelming when you're buried under stacks of web analytics that have dubious relationship to your marketing goals. What do all these click patterns mean?!
This is an issue that we're quite passionate about here. One of our goals with post-click marketing is to help firms distill the "key moments" during a prospect's response to an online advertisement and map those results to concrete business metrics. Segmentation is a big one: clearly categorizing which customer segments are responding to which marketing messages. Simple but effective heuristics for grading respondents is another: the A bucket, the B bucket, and the C bucket.
For example, if I'm running an e-detailing path for a new pharmaceutical, I want to know which marketing initiatives are resonating best with doctors and which are resonating best with consumers. Where are my "A" leads coming from versus my "C" leads -- whether they're ranked by interest, geography, or other qualifying criteria. I want to know what my conversion rate is for qualified leads and how that translates into my cost-per-acquisition (CPA). I want that information at my fingertips, up-to-date, without having to slog through a bunch of spreadsheets or 50-page PDFs.
That's our mission with post-click marketing management software.
If you're frustrated with the cacophony of online marketing data, talk to us about the business information you are really trying to get at, and let's see if we can make that happen. Technology should make this easier, not harder.
- Scott Brinker
