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So far we have some video blogs up there from the recent Emetrics conferences in San Francisco and London. Over time we will be adding to that with discussions and video seminars on various topics to do with digital marketing and predictive analytics, or even digital marketing predictive analytics!

Here’s a sample which is Neil catching up with Avinash Kaushik towards the end of Emetrics San Francisco 2008.

When asked how many web analytics tool they were using within their business over 50% of people said they were using two systems or more. Quite often the scenario was that a company was using a paid-for tool and then were using Google Analytics as well. Relatively few organisations were using Google Analytic exclusively. This is a trend that I have observed as well, an organisation has a system from one of the major vendors and then also deploys Google Analytics “to see what it is like” because it’s free. This result throws up some interesting questions like: “is this a good idea or not?”. One the one hand you can argue that since it’s not costing anything, then what’s the problem? Maybe Google Analytics does some things better than the system that you already have in place. On the other hand software like Google Analytics might be free to buy but it’s not free to implement (that takes time and effort) nor is it free to maintain (that takes time and effort too). Given that many organisations find it challenging to properly implement and configure one web analytics tool, does it make sense to try and manage two?

The other thing that struck me about this is that two systems will inevitably been giving different results. So which one do you believe? There’s a saying that a man with two watches can never tell the time. I can understand organisation wanting to try out different tools but at the end of the day I feel its best to stick with one and make sure that it’s giving you what you need.

There was some good news from this report about the adoption of other tools, particularly Voice of the Customer tools. Over 60% of organisations said that they looked at customer survey data. I think that if this survey had been done a couple of years ago the number would have been a lot lower. It’s good to see that businesses are beginning to realise that you can’t measure the effectiveness of the digital marketing strategy just by looking at data that comes out of a web analytics tools and that you need other data, particularly customer insight data to fully understand what is going on.

There are some worrying signs from the report. Organisations admit that they are still often not tying up their data collection strategy to their business objectives and relatively few said that they were definitely getting actionable insights from their web analytics. Quite a number thought that a lot of the data they had wasn’t particularly useful for decision making purposes and the clue to the reasons why came when you looked at the resourcing of their web analytics programme. 45% of respondents didn’t have a dedicated web analyst and when you look at where the money is being spent, the biggest chunk is usually on the technology rather than the resources to extract the value from the technology. So it’s hardly surprising that organisations are finding they are struggling to get insight from their web analytic programme that leads to better decision making.

The signs from the report suggest that there is progress being made in the UK but more vision is required at the right levels of organisations to tie their business strategy and the measurement strategy together. Reasons often cited as being a major barrier to having an effective online measurement strategy included lack of coordination, lack of senior level buy-in, budget and resources rather than problems with the technologies. And I think that if there is a difference between what is happening over here on this side of the Atlantic to what is happening in the US, it is probably more to do with those factors than anything else. For those of you in the UK and the rest of Europe, it’s worth taking a look at the report and seeing how you benchmark.

First of all there is the need to get the basics right. This means getting the right numbers right and having Key Performance Indicators that are aligned the business goals and that are strategic, action able, easy to understand and based on valid data. Once this has been done businesses can start to optimise their digital marketing processes but must ensure that they are organisationally ready to do this. I’ve talked before in this column about the need for organisations to have “the ability to execute”. There is no point generating all the insight required for optimisation if you can’t do anything about it. Finally there is the need for “customer centricity”, which means getting beyond the “one size fits all” approach to digital marketing and developing an understanding of your customer segments and the role that digital channels play within the relationship between them and your brand.

The comforting thing for me was to see some of the themes reinforced by other speakers from big brands in the UK and Europe. Julian Brewer from Barclays Bank talked about the journey they had been on from “Activity Counting” through to “Customer Intimacy” and how now they wanted to deploy their web analytics fare more operationally to move towards the concept of Customer Tailoring.

Dell talked about their Voice of Customer programme which not only included the organisational-wide deployment of a customer satisfaction tool but also the work that they are now beginning to do in monitoring and understanding the impact of social media and “Web 2.0″ activity on their brand. Angus Crombie from Dell explained why Dell felt they needed “better listening skills” and that comment reminded me that it’s not just about having the “Voice of the Customer” but actually listening to it. Another interesting aspect of the talk from Dell was the work that they had done to try and measure the impact that their Voice of the Customer programme had had on the business in terms of Return on Investment. Understanding and quantifying the ROI on the investment in measurement systems and analytics is a notoriously difficult thing to do. However Dell estimated that there had been a very short payback on the investments that they had made.

As at in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, I took the opportunity to catch up on the latest thinking and discussions around the social media space. Listening to the various contributors in a panel session on the subject made me think that the discussions around social media analytics is sort of where the debate around web analytics was five years ago. There is a lot of discussion around the technology of data capture and reporting and the accuracy of measurement. There is also the obvious need to start to develop some standards in this particular part of the industry so that people know what these measurements are and how they are defined. I know this is something that the Web Analytics Association is beginning to address and it is definitely needed.

We also got an insight into how media companies are using analytics these days from Channel 4 on this side of the Atlantic and from the New York Times on the other. Channel 4 talked about some of the challenges involved in terms of tying up web metrics with business metrics. New York Times showed us some of the work that they have been doing in cross-channel analytics, tying up web data with circulation data and understanding the impact of online activity on circulations sales and vice-versa.

Perhaps one of the more interesting presentations was in the work that Econsultancy (www.econsultancy.com) had been doing to understand how to measure the effects of online PR. Having been saying that companies should be looking to measure the effects of their online PR activities, they decided to put their money where their mouth was and carry out their own study. They set up an online PR campaign and measured to the best of their ability the impact of that campaign in monetary terms. What was interesting was whilst they saw a positive ROI from the online PR campaign itself, there was also an additional benefit from improved search engine optimisation performance.

All in all, having been to two Emetrics conferences in the past few weeks (San Francisco and London), I can’t say that there was a massive difference between the two in terms of the issues being talked about and discussed. Core themes revolve around the need to move to a more analytical framework, to develop the tight kind of analytics “eco-system”, the fact thata we need to listen more and the challenges of social media measurement. The scale and the emphasis may be different but the main issues were the same.

So what did I take out of the conference? One theme that came through was there was a lot more evidence of organisations using integrated measurement strategies than I have seen before. More organisations were showing how they use a wide array of tools and techniques to understand the effectiveness of their digital marketing programmes. Voice of the Customer methodologies such as onsite feedback and surveys are the norm, most people are using testing and experimentation approaches and the use data mining and predictive analytical techniques is on the increase. Text mining tools are being used on verbatim comments from onsite surveys to extract the core essence of what is being said.

The stage was set on the first day with a keynote presentation “Competing with Analytics” from author Tom Davenport. There were some interesting things that Davenport said that set the tone for the conference. “The planets are aligned for analytics” he said, meaning that all the necessary components for organisations to adopt and deploy analytical capabilities are being put in place: Data, Enterprise, Leadership, Targets and Analysts. “Using analysis is good, competing on analysis is better” summed up the need to be able to move from insight to action. There is no point knowing stuff if you don’t do anything about it. He described the five stages of an organisations analytics capability from being “Analytical impaired” at the low end of the scale to being “Analytical competitors” at the other end. Organisations such as Harrahs and Marriott ion the US and Tesco in the UK use analytics as a source of competitive advantage.

Another stand out presentation was from Tim Goudie from The Coca Cola Company. Tim described Coke’s journey from the early implementation of their web analytics platform through to the development of their whole measurement framework. Goudie told us that “Metrics are ridiculously political; there is no such thing as a neutral metric”. Once you begin to measure things, then your are likely to start to change behaviour.

Other sessions I attended confirmed my belief that measuring and understanding the impact of social media is still in its infancy. Metrics and measurement frameworks are still in development, debates still stage about the meanings of terms like “engagement” and so on. Fellow columnist Jason Burby reminded us that when it comes to social media measurement of the importance of defining what success looks like in terms of key behaviours and that whilst the activities may be different the underlying measurement processes are the same.

A great take out from the presentation by Ebay was the use of “home visits” to better understand the user experience. I have seen this technique used by consumer packaged goods companies where people from the company visit consumers in their own homes to see them, using their products in real life. This was the first time that I had heard of this approached being used by an internet company. Executives from Ebay would visit users in their homes to understand the context within which the site is being used, revealing more insight into what really goes on than a standard usability test would.

Jacob Nielsen though showed what you can get out of usability testing in the laboratory. He asserts from the many tests they’ve completed over the years that task completion rates are going up and stressed the value of using testing early on in the development process. Oh and by the way “most people tend to ignore junk on websites”.

So this industry is now more than just what comes out of a web analytics tool. It’s about having a range of tools and technologies embedded within strong business processes. As Avinash Kaushik told us it’s about “multiplicity, flexibility and agility”. The planets are indeed aligned for analytics.

But then it gets a bit trickier, the questions start piling up. Like:

• What would a European WAA look like?
• How would it be organised?
• How would it work (or not) along side the existing WAA?
• What kind of legal status would it take?
• How would it be funded?

And probably a whole lot more that I haven’t thought of yet.

I have to declare an interest here. As a Board member on the Web Analytics Association, my responsibility is for “International”. I think last year was the first year that a Director on the Board had responsibility for “International”, though there has always been an International Committee ably co-chaired by Vicky Brock and Steve Jackson. Vicky, Steve and others have done a great job over the years helping to get activity happening at the local level in markets around the world. When I came onto the Board a year ago I agreed with Steve and Vicky that our priorities should be to continue to expand our international reach and also to look for ways to deliver more value to our international members.

A year on, have we done as much as we would have liked? Probably not. We are all volunteers, doing this is our own time. Most of us run our own businesses but I’m amazed at the amount of time that people do put in around the world on a volunteer basis.

Have we made any progress? Yes, we have. We have a new structure in place on the International Committee that should allow us to expand without losing focus and coordination. We have expanded into new markets by appointing country managers in places such as France, Spain, Russia, Argentina and Brazil. We are looking at how we can expand our activities into Asia. We are working on the structures and processes which will enable us to better help volunteer activity on the ground.

Could we be doing more? Absolutely. And it is a real case of “many hands making light work”. We need people to step up to the plate and get involved. I know it can be frustrating that sometimes we don’t seem to react in real time but as I said before that as a volunteer organisation it can take time to have the meetings, make the calls, to come to the decisions.

So back to the question… Does Europe need its own WAA? The answer is still “probably” but, the reality is that at this moment in time I don’t know. There is no doubt that International representation is getting stronger within the WAA. In 2006 there were no European Directors on the Board, in 2007 there were two. In 2008 hopefully more! As someone who spent many years working in the European divisions of US companies, I am well aware of the frustrations that can cause! I do think though that the WAA is becoming more internationally orientated and this debate about a European WAA is a great one to have. For me the next step is to work out how we get to the point of decision. There’s a lot of work to be done finding out what’s the best thing to do and how best to do it. We’ll be kicking that process off in San Francisco next week. After that I am sure we will be looking for all the help we can get! If you’re interested in helping out with the International activities and development of the WAA, let me know.

Looking at the programme for Emetrics in San Francisco next month gives some clues as to how the market is developing anyway. The size of the conference has increased since last time with more tracks covering more areas. This shows how the industry is broadening and, to some extent, fragmenting into a number of separate sub-disciplines such as campaign optimization, search analytics and so on. Also there is an increased depth to the conference with more sessions in some of the tracks. Last October in Washington I gave one of three presentations in the “Advanced Analytics Track”. This year in San Francisco I will be giving one of nine sessions in the same track.

Certainly when comparing the conferences in the US with the ones in Europe they are poles apart when it comes to scale. The summit in London this year (which I’m involved in) is shorter and has fewer tracks. But is this a reflection of the “sophistication” of the UK and European markets or is it just a reflection of scale? I suspect that it has more to do with scale than it does to do with sophistication. There are some really interesting things being done in Europe by some really interesting people. There just aren’t as many of them over here, particularly when you look at it on a market by market basis.

However, scale can be a driver of progress. For example, I observed this when the market for multi-variate testing and experimentation really began to take off in the US two to three years ago. It was easy for US companies to justify the investment in these services and technologies because they could see the returns. It’s taken the UK market until now to show the same growth in adoption. I think the main reason for that is the potential returns on investments weren’t there for many organisations because their online businesses weren’t big enough, not because they didn’t “get it”.

So it will be interesting to see whether what is talked about at Emetrics in San Francisco next week in the presentations and the lobby bar conversations is radically different to the conversations that I will be having in London two weeks later. And if they are different why is that? Is it because the market development is at different levels or is because the markets are just different. I think this will help inform the debate as to whether we need a radically different approach to developing and growing the industry over here.

It would be great to catch up with as many of you as possible if you’re travelling to San Francisco as well next week. Next time I’ll be writing this column on my way home and be giving my perspective on the conference. Till then….

The web analytics space has many great bloggers, covering many different areas. Some are great on the technical side of explaining how to “do” web analytics, some cover industry developments and so on. I think it’s important to find some way to contribute to the debates without just adding to the noise. So, we’re going to give it another shot. John’s going to look at developments in the world of predictive analytics and data mining and I’m going to muse about digital marketing analytics and what’s happening here in Europe. We’ll be trying a few things out to see if they work, some will, some won’t, but that’s the name of the game. Stay tuned.

Please contact us if you would be interested in joining one of our courses or developping a customised in-house training session on predictive analytics.

Predictive Analytics - course outline

An Introduction to Data Mining and Predictive Analytics is a one day workshop covering the foundations of this innovation marketing analytics discipline. During the course of the day you will gain a thorough familiarisation with some of the key principles and methodologies of data mining and predictive analytics and learn how to apply them to common marketing problems such as:

• How can I predict campaign response?
• How do I segment my website visitors or customers?
• How can I anticipate possible customer defections?

In this one day interactive course we will cover the following topics:

Introduction:

• What is data mining and how is that different to predictive analytics?
• How organisations are currently using data mining and predictive analytics across their businesses and to solve particular marketing problems

Processes and implementation

• How to go about a data mining/predictive analytics project
• An overview of a standard industry process (CRISP-DM)

Methods and applications

• An overview of the main types of data mining and predictive analytics applications:
  • Forecasting
  • Segmentation
  • Classification
• An introduction to main methodologies such as:
  • Time-series forecasting
  • Regression analysis
  • Decision trees (CHAID, CART and so on)
  • Cluster analysis
  • Neural networks
• Case studies and examples of how these techniques are used and deployed in both online and offline marketing is areas such as:
  • Retention modelling
  • Conversion propensity modelling
  • Visitor segmentation

For more details and to register, click here.