And That Brings Us To Today

Over the last five years products in the online marketing space, especially Web analytics products, have gotten a whole lot better and the users are becoming much more knowledgeable. Today marketing users are demanding whole solutions and ease of use.  However, paradoxically, most organizations are using only a fraction of the impressive capabilities these products offer. True, the products collect ALL the data, and have all the answers. The users, it seems, just don’t have all the questions! I rarely speak with an organization that uses more than 10% of the product capability. I have spoken to thousands in the decade.  Most of them seem content using a fraction of the potential. Yet, some vendors just keep heaping on capability.

While we are all making moderated headway, there is the siren song of more power now and a rush to the seduction of more graphics, dimensions and  more data segmentable in real time. Some users fall prey. Pretty pictures rendered on expensive closed systems that offer dramatic “fly over” capabilities are very valuable for a few high end analysts, and are very well suited as BI (business intelligence) tools, but not for the majority of marketing people. Just as we crossed the chasm and made the marketing beachhead, it seems few vendors are selling to the marketing user any more. The vendors have coined new terms, and the old web analytics firms now ply the trade of customer intelligence, and business optimization, instead of plain marketing management. Many vendors seem to be losing sight of the buyer. One of the reasons I came to Unica is that we know our center, who we sell to, and why, and the mission hasn’t changed much since its founding over a decade ago. And that has impressed me.

Cool as it seems, most marketing people need action, not animated renderings of data with endless drill down reports. We need to run campaigns, online and off-line. We need to segment lists for direct mail and for email and then print and manage those lists. We need to correlate site visitor behavior with leads and optimize campaigns both for online and off-line conversations and back again. We need to test and repeat.  We need to manage and plan our work, and it needs to integrated with other enterprise systems, and easy to use. We need drag and drop interfaces, a range of deployment solutions from On Demand to on premises, and corresponding professional services. But mostly we need action, and for that we need to get the data in and out of the systems so that those other applications can make it happen. And we need to do it without IT involvement whenever possible.

Indeed, the rate of change is staggering. How are either vendors or users able to keep pace?  During this month-long blog I will attempt to put my decade of living in this changing environment into some perspective. I will explore topics like the evolving role of a “marketing person” (hint, there’s no such thing as a marketing person).  I hope to provide color and comment on this “vendor morphing” that I mentioned above, and on some of the general challenges that we’re all facing including a discussion of topics like, what IS Customer Intelligence? Is “Cross Channel” the same as multi channel? And my personal favorite, the Real Time Myth.  We will touch on the latest and greatest news, with a piece I’m calling, "Will the real Web 2.0 application please stand up?" Or, have you ever thought about "event-based tracking" and the question that I hear too often, "is the page view dead?"

Change is the only constant. Some thrive on solving these challenges and I consider myself one of them. Thus, we’ll also examine my main theme, analytics and action and I’ll offer some perspective on the future of our sector (note my new home for clues).  Since I have a “day job” I’ll try to post at least once a week so check back.  Between my postings my colleague, another experienced Web analytics vet, Steve O’Brien, will provide his color commentary. We’d like to have your feedback.

Comments

[Phil Kemelor]

Rand - an intriguing post...so, ok, if analytics is enterprise level software, why as you put it "do it without IT involvement whenever possible"? This position would seem to drive a wedge between two groups that actually need to work together to enable successful implementation...really no different than successful implementation of other enterprise software, such as business process mgt, change management, etc. I find it interesting that analytic vendors have become so focused on marketers who are traditionally technophobic, when to succeed, analytics requires buy-in and cooperation from IT or development resources at some level. Referring to your earlier blog about how things were 10 years ago, is it possible that the pendulum has swung too far over to the marketing side of the fence? Analytics success doesn't occur unless there's cooperation among IT and marketing. What do you think?

[Ramsey Fahel]

Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.

The proposed recent "Do not mail" is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?

I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!

The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today's [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today's merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer's right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.

To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”

We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.

http://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html

Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel

[Eric DePaul]

I agree with the comment that end users only use a fraction of Marketing software capabilities. I believe it is an issue of product rollout in organizations. Organizations spend a lot of time and money on implementation and then do not follow up on training for end users. Classes are given but with the amount of information that is being taught in a short period of time, the end user forgets how to use the capabilities when they need it. End users end up having to train themselves to use functions of the software packages that they need. I know when I've used such packages, I end up asking IT personnel a lot of questions to learn how to use the packages and be able to populate the data I need. This enables me to use the packages by myself later on. I don't see others at my organization doing this, but instead asking the IT personnel to populate the data for them. They end up never really using the new systems.

[Rand Schulman]

The key word is "whenever" possible. In this changing environment everyone's job role changes a bit. Content workers are becoming content engineers. Everyone will need to work with content management systems, like we use email and dtp systems. It's a bit dialectical; yes. Nevertheless, ASPs have allowed the business owners to get it up, much more rapidly. Marketers need to become less technobhobic in a social Darwinian-sense. Use it or lose it. Up or out says Mr. McKinsey.