Data Points of the Day
- 59%: U.S. marketers planning to increase spending on social media display ads in next 12 months (eMarketer)
- 27%: smartphone users who also consume news on a tablet (Pew Research Center)
- 3 million: number of new iPads Apple sold in first three weeks after launch (Apple)
April Fools’ Resolutions for Analytics
Anybody can play a practical joke for April Fools’ Day, but we think it’s better to think about “New Year’s Resolutions” for springtime. What’s it mean for digital analytics pros? Here are top tips for foolishly good improvements to your analytics and digital marketing efforts:
- Do some spring cleaning: Now’s a great time to dust off your data governance policies, and make sure all your page tags are up to date. It’s also a good time to polish up your reports and make sure they are all rationalized, spiffed up and not bloated with too many secondary or low-value metrics. That’s how to make sure business executives actually read them and, ultimately, embrace your analytics program.
- Simplify: Instead of making another investment in the latest, greatest technology (there will always be faster, more powerful packages coming on the market), make sure you’re getting the most out of the systems you already have. And if you have a big budget burning a hole in your pocket, you may want to consider expanding your team and investing in more people and analysts, as opposed to just more technology. (This also reminds us how golf is like analytics.)
- Keep testing and keep learning: Web analytics and digital marketing are constantly evolving, which is part of the fun, but also a huge challenge. The best way to try and keep up – and maybe the only way – is to continuously test and learn. For some companies, that may mean deploying new creative assets or offers for an online ad campaign, while others may want to take their first steps into social media. And if you need to restart your testing program, here’s our “refresher course” – perfect for spring.
- Plan your analytics “journey”: Even as the Internet reaches young adulthood, we still encounter many companies who aren’t sure where to start with Web analytics or how to track their efforts in social media and mobile marketing. We designed our Magellan Mapping solution as a “strategic roadmap” for companies and executives that need to set a clear course – whether it’s a first step into analytics, a major technology upgrade, or the need to build the right team.
- Feel the love: Ah, spring, the season of love – you can just feel it in the air! Digital marketers and CRM pros must learn to love their customers and prospects. That means making the right offers and tailoring services, but also balancing customer needs and preferences with the business need to drive more revenue and leverage the data you’ve collected. For instance, don’t confuse spamming with selling!
- Don’t be foolish about data collection and privacy: Users and regulators are paying more attention to data collection and privacy. So companies must know what data they’re collecting and be open about it. This is a good time to make sure you’ve got solid privacy and security capabilities in place to protect your analytics data. There are some tag management systems on the market today that have robust privacy management capabilities if you are in a heavily regulated and scrutinized industry.
It may be April Fools’ Day, but these big ideas and small steps are no joke in terms of helping you grow the value of your digital marketing and analytics programs.
Tips On How Your Business Can Build Its Digital Self
Last week, I, along with many of my Infinitive Analytics colleagues, attended the Adobe Digital Marketing Conference. The three-day event provided digital marketers and analysts a forum to network and share their experiences within the quickly-evolving field of online marketing and reporting.
One of the main themes of the conference was what they called “Your Digital Self” – how we as individual consumers use the many different social media platforms to navigate the world around us. But there is now also a bigger push by businesses to capitalize on the shift to social and fully embrace the likes, follows, +1s, and pins. Continue reading
CMOs Must Love Data
So says this report.
Thanks to an explosion of data from social-media platforms, call centers, transactions, loyalty programs, registries and more, CMOs who want a seat at the table will have to harness customer data and leverage it – or risk being relegated to chief promotions officer.
As much as we love data (like all analytics pros), there is the risk of loving data too much and drowning in it:
The challenge for CMOs, said Dave Frankland, an analyst with Forrester, is to integrate that data and mine insights to “distinguish signal from noise.”
That’s easier said than done, of course. Continue reading
What Have You Done for Me Lately? (Apple Edition)
According to this report, “what have you done for me lately” syndrome may soon strike Apple, as the iPhone 4S model loses some of its luster. Research firm Gartner says Apple’s 24% share of the smartphone market in 4Q 2010 will be a peak as the overall smartphone sales volume would grow only 7% this year, as opposed to 11% this year. Overall market growth will dip to 39%, down from 58%.
On the other hand, Apple sold 156 million iOS devices in 2011, including iPads and iPhones. That’s more, in one year, than the total number of Macs (122 million) the company has sold in 28 years. The frenzy around the new (and unnumbered) iPad suggests there are more eye-popping sales figures to come.
This recent comScore report highlights the U.S. smartphone market as of January 2012, and provides further context:
- There are 101.5 million smartphone subscribers in the U.S.
- Samsung tops the handset market, with 25.4% share (vs. 12.8% for Apple).
- Android is the top mobile OS, with 48.6% (vs. 29.5% for Apple’s iOS).
Metric of the Day: Electronic Gross Rating Point
According to Marc Pritchard, who oversees global marketing for P&G, the world’s top advertiser, a new metric to measure social media and digital marketing ROI will “revolutionize the industry:”
“what we’re working on an industry basis, is to define EGRPs [electronic gross rating point, a measure of audience reach]. You can look at what an impression from Google, or Facebook or Twitter is actually worth. Once we get that, we will start to get a common platform measurement…that the [Association of National Advertisers] is working on. We’re pushing them to go faster.”
Rock Your Analytics
I played a gig with the band recently, which got me thinking about how rock and roll and digital analytics are alike. You see, I’ve been playing in an oldies group with my buddies since high school (more than 35 years ago). The Manhatten Brothers, as we’ve always been known, specialize in the hits of the 1950s (rock and roll 1.0, you might say). We play benefits and other events and, over time, we’ve evolved our sound (and haircuts!), adding some Blues Brothers and the occasional Top 40 hit thrown in. Being in a band has been great fun and hugely rewarding; we’re talking about decades of shared experiences, friendship, and (of course) – governance, which has been critical to our success.
The Manhatten Brothers, 1978
Yes, governance. Hear me out and you’ll see what I mean.
After tons of gigs over the years, you’d think the Manhatten Brothers could just roll up to the venue, set up the equipment and lay down a perfect performance every time. The truth is, we can’t. We still need to practice. We still need to run through all our songs, confirming keys, parts and tempos. Continue reading
Oprah vs. Nielsen
Oprah Winfrey made analytics news recently when she tweeted her fans to encourage those with a Nielsen box to tune into her OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network). Those boxes are used to measure viewership, but such encouragement is a strict Nielsen no-no. Oprah duly apologized soon after the company requested she remove the tweet.
This is an intriguing situation for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it seems a stretch that Oprah – who owns her own network – wouldn’t know basic Nielsen policies. Continue reading
Friend Your Lighter? Social Media Dos & Don’ts
We had the feeling social media may have reached some sort of tipping point when we saw the new Facebook lighters on the counter of our favorite local drug store. We half expected them to have an embedded app that posted to Facebook whenever you flicked a flame or a small panel that showed all status updates, but, sadly, the lighter lacked true integration capabilities.
While the desire for every company to be social is understandable (and mainly a good thing), mindless bandwagon jumping is not the way to go. We still see too many companies slapping up a quickie Facebook presence without thinking through what they want to achieve or how social channels can improve performance, especially in marketing, sales and customer service. Continue reading
To Mobile App or To Mobile Web?
That is the question increasingly faced by digital marketers seeking to connect to the 114 million U.S. consumers who will access the Mobile Web this year. Research suggests that the answer is (like so many other things in digital media), “It depends.” What type of consumer are you trying to reach? And what are they doing via the mobile Web — shopping, searching, gaming, connecting socially?
Of course, it’s worth remembering that:
you don’t have to have either to advertise—even if an advertiser doesn’t have an app or a mobile website, they can still have a mobile landing page.”
See our previous takes on the “mobilization of music” and mobile analytics standards.
