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Don’t tell me about ‘hits’, tell me about my customers!

Monday, June 29, 2009
For many organisations the web-site is now fundamental to the operation and profitability of the business. In a market place awash with business intelligence on every part of the business, why is this brand new part of the business expected to be the poor relation when it comes to performance measurement? For many organisations the web-site is now fundamental to the operation and profitability of the business. In a market place awash with business intelligence on every part of the business, why is this brand new part of the business expected to be the poor relation when it comes to performance measurement?

Too many marketers are having to rely on scant information about the performance of the corporate web-site, presented in anonymous and broad generalisations. From this they are expected to rationalise their past, present and future activity and hence they are failing to tap into the wealth of information that the internet can provide. It may be considered useful to have an amalgamated view of the behaviour of a proportion of your customers, but why settle for this when detailed, individual views are at your fingertips?

Detailed, accurate information on your actual customers, not on them as a group, can satisfy many company needs. Marketers must know what their target consumers are doing when using arguably their sales channel with the most reach and profit potential. Website developers need to know that their links, pathways and technical processes are all operating to specification and the finance departments need to be reassured that the money spent on marketing and website development is achieving what it set out to do.

Giving a marketing department a good report once a month on the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns will allow them to make a few good decisions about next month’s marketing spend; use the same data to drive a pricing engine to give great offers to the customers you really want to acquire and less attractive prices to the high-risk clients you would prefer your competitors to own and you could make a few hundred thousand good decisions a month!


Are you being served?

Individual customer service guarantees a level of quality that ensures satisfaction and therefore repeat custom. Such a simple principle has not been missed in high street retail and bespoke outlets, to their measurable benefit. However, the misperception of the internet as an anonymous gateway to a global audience has meant that this crucial attention to and understanding of the needs of the target customer base has been lacking.

The internet cannot and should not be seen as a medium of mass effect only with no customisation or tailored service available. Just as a customer in a high street premises can be specifically targeted with clear and appropriate marketing and timely discount or related offers, so can any online visitor. The technology is available that permits proactive profiling of every visitor – whether they are previous registered customers returning to the site or not – and which allows targeted advertising and marketing to be deployed which is pertinent, well-timed and ensures satisfaction and sales.

The potential for the highest individual service is not limited to face to face encounters and since the online channel is arguably the one of widest reach, this ethos must be maintained throughout and exploited to its greatest advantage.


Be Brave

How do retailers know that their website matches what their customers want? How do they know what their customers want in the first place?

No marketing department has ESP and nobody knows what aspects of a customer’s online interaction are essential at any one time. Existing data capture technologies rely on adding “tags” to your site to capture the items of data you are going to “need” – but given that we just stated that without ESP we are not going to “know want we need” this tagging process becomes a matter of pure luck. So another approach is needed and the most obvious one is “if you gather everything, you don’t need to be lucky” and this is exactly Speed-Trap’s stance!

Until now, marketers have avoided gathering everything on the basis of there simply being too much data, and being under the misapprehension that it is so unmanageable that it cannot be handled to any effect.

Marketers instead need to grasp the nettle and appreciate that although a month’s worth of data from a popular consumer site might run to terabytes of information, the storage facility required is the size of a shoebox and available for a couple of hundred pounds. And the analytics required to filter and process the data into meaningful customer insight are more than adequate and readily available. Marketers have to be more open-minded when it comes to this ability and brave enough to implement it and take advantage of the data that is there.

The amount of information is nowhere near unmanageable and it is of such value that it cannot be ignored. If the correct technology is chosen and utilised, an e-retailer’s knowledge of his customers will literally explode overnight – motives, preferences, routes to and through the site, likes and dislikes are all recorded and are all critical for establishing not just how the site works, but how it is perceived by the online public.

After all, given that a detailed database can enable accurate, focused and select advertisements to be crafted and presented at exactly the right moment and even in real-time, can any marketer afford to cower away from such a golden opportunity to upsell to their customer base?