Interactive Marketing

I recently had the pleasure of reviewing my daughter's mid-year report card for her sophomore year.  A pleasure because it was all A's, even with AP classes that will earn her college credits.  Yes, I am boastful, but can you blame me?  With these A’s in mind, I got to thinking about where else an array of A’s makes me happy. It’s in 1:1 marketing...  [yep, no kidding!]

As a seasoned marketing practitioner who's been in the trenches for years, using marketing automation solutions to plan, execute, and measure my multi-channel campaigns, I can appreciate the value of at least 5 A's -- i.e., Audience, Activity, Account, Asset, and Analysis.  Each offers a unique benefit to the marketer, with a whole that is even greater than the sum of its parts.  The A’s, and importantly, the marketer’s ability to record, document and associate them with specific marketing initiative(s) is critical to a marketer’s success! Here’s a couple of big reasons you should demand the A’s from your multi-channel campaign management solution:

·         Accountability (I’m sticking with A’s!) – Marketers can focus on the present (i.e., flawless marketing campaign execution) with applications that automate and/or support the creation of campaign information like audience contact history, funding account, brand assets used, post-campaign analyses, etc. that are "must-haves" to calculate ROI.   

Additionally, marketers can go beyond the campaign-centric use of the A’s to look across campaign, across time – i.e., longitudinal tracking and measurement. Marketers can easily assess aggregate-level spend and ROI, or other meaningful metrics (e.g., retention versus acquisition spend, Brand A versus Brand B marketing ROI comparisons, etc.)

 

·         Advancement (no comment on the A…) Marketing is indeed a mix of science and art. Science gives us the data, i.e., the facts that we transform into information and insight, which then fuels the “art” of marketing.  Marketers infuse a bit of art by adding their experience and creativity [to insights] to produce implications that convert into meaningful marketing actions and decisions. Without the A’s marketers cannot generate the learnings they need to refine and advance future marketing initiatives for greater ROI nor can they advance their individual experience and expertise in the practice of 1:1 marketing.
 

I hope that I have accomplished two things with this post: 1) redeemed myself by showing that my report card intro was not so "far fetched;" and 2) imparted some valuable information about why marketers need a multi-channel campaign management solution that easily supports our marketing A's.  Let me know if I did either! :o)

In an earlier blog I briefly described how data mining and RFM analysis can help marketers be more efficient (read...  increased marketing ROI!). Data mining and RFM can significantly help with all direct marketing efforts (multichannel campaign management efforts using direct mail, email and call center) and some interactive marketing efforts as well.  So, why aren't all companies using it today?  Well, typically it comes down to a lack of data and/or data mining expertise.  Even if you don't have data mining expertise, YOU can benefit from data mining by using a consultant.  With that in mind, let's tackle the first problem -- collecting and developing the data that is useful for data mining.

The most important data to collect for data mining include:

• Transaction data - For every sale, you at least need to know the product and the amount and date of the purchase.
   
• Past campaign response data - For every campaign you've run, you need to identify who responded and who didn't.  You may need to use direct and indirect response attribution.
   
• Geo-demographic data - This is optional, but you may want to append your customer file/database with consumer overlay data from companies like Acxiom.
   
• Lifestyle data - This is also an optional append of indicators of socio-economic lifestyle that are developed by companies like Claritas.

All of the above data may or may not exist in the same data source.  Some companies have a single holistic view of the customer in a database and some don't.  If you don't, you'll have to make sure all data sources that contain customer data have the same customer ID/key.  That way, all of the needed data can be brought together for data mining.

How much data do you need for data mining?  You'll hear many different answers, but I like to have at least 15,000 customer records to have confidence in my results.

Once you have the data, you need to massage it to get it ready to be "baked" by your data mining application.  Some data mining applications will automatically do this for you.  It's like a bread machine where you put in all the ingredients -- they automatically get mixed, the bread rises, bakes, and is ready for consumption!  Some notable companies that do this include KXEN, SAS, and SPSS.  Even if you take the automated approach, it's helpful to understand what kinds of things are done to the data prior to model building.

Preparation includes:

• Missing data analysis. What fields have missing values? Should you fill in the missing values? If so, what values do you use? Should the field be used at all?
   
• Outlier detection. Is “33 children in a household” extreme? Probably — and consequently this value should be adjusted to perhaps the average or maximum number of children in your customer’s households.
   
• Transformations and standardizations. When various fields have vastly different ranges (e.g., number of children per household and income), it’s often helpful to standardize or normalize your data to get better results. It’s also useful to transform data to get better predictive relationships. For instance, it’s common to transform monetary variables by using their natural logs.
   
• Binning Data. Binning continuous variables is an approach that can help with noisy data. It is also required by some data mining algorithms.

I'd love to hear your questions or comments if you have a few moments over the Holidays. 

My best to you and your family!
Jim

Forrester's recently published study on Interactive Marketing (email, social, dialog, banner, etc.) reveals 68% of survey respondents expect to achieve increased email marketing effectiveness over the next three years.  Furthermore, survey respondents also indicated they would increase interactive marketing budgets by 60% by shifting funding away from traditional channels: direct mail (40%), Newspapers (35%) and Magazines (28%).  The picture that is emerging here is one where marketers have high expectations on interactive marketing and expect to focus less on traditional channels.  A lot will be riding on this reallocation of marketing budget -- so what will marketers have to do right to fulfill their hopes and expectations?  This particular blog will address best practices that must be followed by email marketers.  Future blogs will address social and dialog marketing in detail.

I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I can handle more emails coming into my professional and personal inboxes.  I get so many from the same companies that I don't even open them -- not even when they come from companies I opted into.  Companies that email too frequently create so much "white-noise" that it affects their open rates as well as the open rates for other companies.   In addition to white-noise emails, I also get many others that made me think -- "why did I even get this?...I don't smoke, so why am i offered a smart smoker trial?"..."I have only rented mystery and adventure movies from you, so why are you telling me about The Lion King release?"  You experience the same things and feel the same way too.  So, what can email marketers do to ensure success and rise above the noise and mediocrity we see everyday?  It takes only three things -- relevancy, segmentation and testing.  These three tactics are the key building blocks to optimizing your email marketing efforts.

Relevancy - A blog I posted a couple of weeks ago spoke to email relevancy -- that it's about personalizing the email, segmenting your audience and testing your content (copy, images, subject lines, etc).

Segmentation - Your audience will differ by demographics, personality, shopping habits, geography, etc.  Simple segmentations where different messages are sent to each segment can deliver huge marketing ROI.  A recent Marketing Experiments webinar offered a case study on American Greetings.com (AG).  AG's goal for their email campaign was to increase individual Ecard purchases as well as Annual Subscriptions.  They created two segments -- Segment A contained customers that purchased humorous Ecards in the past, while Segment B contained customers that purchased traditional Ecards.  Each segment got an email that spoke to their interests based on this past purchase behavior.  This simple use of segmentation resulted in a 70% improvement in conversion rates when compared to a control group -- that's HUGE!   Just imagine what more sophisticated segmentation schemes might produce!

Frequency - Ok, so I have a real issue with this particular topic.  I  can't begin to tell you how much junk I get in my inbox.  I don't even open emails from some marketers and yet I still get an email every day from them -- please do some analysis on open rates and realize, I'm just not into Chocolate Covered Strawberries -- OK?!  Oh yes, back to the informational part of my message...  The same webinar by Marketing Experiments (I suggest you Google them!) provided another case study on a very large anonymous Ecommerce company.  They segmented their customers into seven segments.  Each segment got a different number of emails over a 60 day period.  At the extremes, one segment got an email every other day, while the other got an email every 15 days.  During the webinar, the audience was polled to see what they thought the optimal number of emails would be.  They chose 3-4 per month based on their own experiences and readings.  Well, the actual results were quite surprising.  Their test showed that customers that received emails every two days produced 3X the revenue of the segments that got 2-4 emails per month.  In fact, there was a significant positive correlation across all segments based on the number of emails they received (see below graph).



You would think this is illogical.  Most email marketers believe we face the tradeoff shown below -- that there will be an increase in revenues at first, but then we'll experience more unsubscribes or non-opens as the frequency increases.



So, what is the disparity between the experience of the webinar audience and the results of this study?  Well, we are simply seeing that each company has a unique customer base and a unique relationship with them.  You can't just assume your optimal frequency should be what is best "on average" or for a specific company they read about.  It means that every company must do segmentation and testing to determine the right frequency for their unique audience.

Caveats? -- there is always one or more:

1) Tell your ESP that you'll be doing experiments and they may see greater volume than normal.  After all, you don't want to be blacklisted.

2) Also look at open rates and unsubscribes during your testing.  The anonymous email marketer in the 2nd case study saw no correlation between frequency, and open rates or unsubscribes per email sent.  But your experience may be different.  Remember, an unsubscribe doesn't just effect revenue from a given campaign, but it also erases expected/future customer lifetime value.

Anonymous to known is a key concept inside of interactive marketing in the BtoB world.  The basic approach is that once a person becomes "known" to you on your web site via a form entry, you want to collect their previously anonymous behavior with their newly created contact record. 

The value is clear, the first time someone fills out a form on your site is almost always not the first time they have spent time with your on-line content.  What they were reading, how long they were reading it, can all be valuable information pulled into the marketing process from the first contact forward.  It is the basis by which you can remain relevant in your next set of email marketing communications, landing pages, or micro-sites.  No longer should you be limited in your response based on the few fields you actually collect on the form itself.

Too often, our web analytics products are holding hostage all this valuable information.  Its' use is limited to basic web and traffic reports.  However, using today's marketing software, you can now make this web data actionable at an individual, contact level.  This will greatly expand the options for your campaigns and increase the probability you remain relevant to your prospects, and ultimately, improve your conversion rates.

More and more, I'm getting emails that are all images.  Many email clients and personal settings make these types of emails just plain uncompelling to open.  Here is an example of one I just got from a large retailer. 

It's obvious the sender is not embracing email marketing best practices.  Note the fact that my personal settings are blocking the image downloads -- a typical setting for many people.  Also note that many of the ALT-text comments (a good practice that is often overlooked) aren't obvious or are hidden.  This retailer may have the best microsite pages personalized for a visit.  But, if I'm not drawn-in by this message, I'll never see them.

So, how do email and interactive marketers develop rich image-based emails that are flexible enough to increase open and click-through rates?  Best email marketing practices should include:

1) Use some plain or HTML text in the body of the email so recipients that are blocking images get more of a sense of the message -- one which is deeper than the Subject Line.

2) Use captions under the pictures for the same reason stated above.

3) Use ALT-text descriptions so a text explanation of the image/offer is available.

4) Put a text-based link on the top of the page that offers a web page version of the email.

4) Consider using personalized emails where just a couple of content blocks and images will appear based on customer attributes and stated preferences/interests.  See the examples below.
 
The email to the left renders information specific to a fictitious "high value"  bank customer about a Personal Financial Plan.  

















The email to the left here has an identical look (standardizing the brand) and some similar content and links to other information, but it presents an offer on a 2nd Free Account to a "Low Value Customer."  Both emails were created from the same single template (developed in Aprimo's email marketing solution) but rendered differently based on customer attributes.

Relevant content that is not "image laden" may keep more email recipients from universally blocking all email images, thus helping everyone in the email marketing space.

Getting the prospect to open and click on a link are the first two hurdles.  Using personalized Microsite Pages (covered in a forthcoming post) to increase conversion rates is the next.

Welcome to these pages. I'm Tim Charlesworth, part of the Aprimo team based in Australia. With this Blog, I'm dipping a toe in the waters of interactive marketing through social media, and will be sharing my thoughts and experiences as we build the market presence of Aprimo here in the Asian timezones.

Aprimo has a broad solution footprint so you'll be able to read some lessons learnt from a variety of projects here, everything from marketing planning, workflow and digital asset management through to email marketing, personalised microsites and automatic lead distribution.

Google's search engine marketing tools can be used by nearly anyone with Marketing in their job title. Many interactive marketers have known this for a long time. But, it's my bet that not all marketers are up on Google's search tools.  Email marketing, for example, can benefit from some of the free tools Google offers.

When planning an email campaign, Google's Keyword Tool can help email marketers pick the right words for the content of an email, and especially the email title. Of course, other email marketing tools should be included, but let's take a look at Google SEO tools to see how they might be used with email marketing .

Google's keyword tool will generate a robust list of keywords that give markerters insight to how often a a keyword is used in searches, the competitiveness of the word and how much the word would cost PPC marketers.  While not all of this data is relevant to the true email marketer, email titles can make or break an email marketing campaign. 

By knowing what terms relative to your email marketing strategy are popular among search engine users could help the email marketer pick the right words to attract the attention of their target market.

A common misconcpetion about pay per click (PPC) marketing and PPC advertising is that if you throw enough money at it, you can have a top paid search placement with search engines.  This is just not true.

PPC marketing requires marketers to utilize many of the same rules that are required for organic search engine optimation.  When creating a PPC campaign, here are three considerations any interactive marketer must keep in mind: bid amount, click through rate (CTR) and quality score.

Let's exmaine these three areas a little closer.

 

·         Bid amount does not necessarily ensure a high position.  A PPC advertiser can have the highest bid for a keyword, but the PPC ad may not rank well. Google will factor in CTR and Quality Score as well as Bid Amount to award a PPC search ranking.

·         CTR must be a certain rate, generally .05 percent, to even continue the campaign.  Google will disable PPC campaigns if the CTR falls much below .05 percent. The higher the CTR the better the chances for the top spot for your PPC ad.  Typically, the more focused the PPC ad, the better your CTR will be.  Of course, this is subjective as to the keyword and the PPC ad.

·         Quality Score: Google will assign a measurement  or grade to the overall campaign. The higher the Quality Score (from 0-10) the better chances your ad will appear in the No. 1 spot. To achieve a high quality score, the PPC ad should use the keyword at least once. And, the landing page should have considerable keyword density as well as content that directly relates to the what the PPC advertisement is selling.  For example, if your PPC ad is pushing an Email Marketing Webinar, your landing page should be focused on offering the Webinar.  Your density would go down if the Webinar is only a small part of the landing page.  If your landing page does not offer a Webinar at all, it is highly possible that Google would disable the PPC campaign, or, at the least, your quality score would be so low that your PPC would not show regardless of CTR and bid amount.

Keeping up with one area of online marketing can be a tall order. Trying to stay abreast with every facet of interactive marketing can seem like an impossible task for humans.

But it is being done by people just like us.

B2B marketers, like myself, seem to be slow to utilize some social media tactics like YouTube, but for a handful of B2B marketers the results of using social media advertising are well worth the effort.

One of my favorite B2B social media advertising videos on YouTube would have to be Mr. W, the story of windpower.

It would seem getting wide-spread appeal and putting a personality to an abstract concept like windpower would be nearly impossible, but German-based Epuron nailed it with this video.

Epuron gained international interest for this YouTube clip.  The video has has been watched nearly two million times. So, before you think YouTube is not a viable social media outlet for your B2B product, you might learn something from Mr. W.   



 

Once upon a time, we had marketing and we had marketing-related specialties like search engine marketing and online marketing. Not so much today. The division between offline and online marketing is becoming more and more blurred. After all, marketing needs to create demand and interest for a company's products and services, no matter what form it takes.

For a traditional marketer, online marketing can seem a little overwhelming, but it doesn't need to be. Marketers can find a Webinar or podcast for nearly any facet of the marketing world.

One of the marketing tactics nearest to me is search engine marketing. Network Solutions had become a great resource for everything Web related, from securing a domain name to browsing and watching its comprehensive listing of pre-recorded Webinars.  It's a great place to brush up on some lesser used skills or learn new ones.

Right now, the Network Solutions is offering free pre-recorded Search Engine Marketing Webinars on these topics:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)
3. Link Building Techniques
4. Effective Keyword Strategies
5. Search Marketing for Local Businesses
6. Constructing Optimized Web Pages
7. Blogging/Web 2.0 Strategies
8. SEO for Ecommerce Sites
9. Getting your Business Online 101

Even the most seasoned interactive marketer can learn something from this extensive list.

That question popped into my head today, as I read over online media stats about the number of individuals with access to the web, Facebook users, Linkedin accounts, YouTube visitors, and other data points on social and community networks.  I've worked in advertising so I started to think about the similarities (as well as differences) between the seemingly ubiquitous online media channel and one of its venerable well-known mass media counterparts like TV.  I wondered what the online "reach" equivalent would be to TV's Gross Rating Points and Total Rating Points (GRPs and TRPs, respectively), and in particular, how the online metric could be calculated with an increasingly fragmented audience with dimensional behaviors that include commerical email message forwarding, member site comments and/or content creation, viewing, sharing, etc.  

To succeed today, marketers must master the new "mass media" channel.  Why and how?

To the first question of why:  It is a question worth answering -- or trying to answer because companies are increasingly focused on it and ramping up their online spend.  That means 1:1 Marketers, like me, need new ways to break through the online clutter to get noticed and engaged with individuals to attain our goals.  

As to how: We need marketing automation solutions that support a more holistic multi-channel campaign management approach that includes additional online communication vehicles and tactics, some of which support 1:1 interactions and some that do not [directly, that is].   Here's my wish list for a multi-channel campaign management solution that gives me more end-to-end functionality, with the ability to better harness the power and value of the online channel.  This is just a start and not all-inclusive: (Of note, it will never be all inclusive, because the market continues to evolve, and so must my tools!)

• Interactive Marketing Campaigns - Replace email blasts that don't work with campaigns that run continuously (24/7), serving up variable highly personalized content in the form of email messages, offers, inbound forms/surveys, microsites (PURLs), etc -- based on an individuals off and online behavior.
• Creative Control - Give Marketers an easy-to-use HTML designer that lets them create professional-quality marketing content for their online communication vehicles while protecting brand standards with templates and reusable content blocks.
• New Communication Devices (e.g., microsites, PURLs) - Reduce dependence on corporate web site team, and allow Marketers to create powerful "weblets" within a campaign to improve customer engagement outcomes
• Demand Generation - Provide controls to manage online marketing tactics or tools  that "sit outside" the 1:1 marketing campaign, but directly affect the outcomes such as search engine management, web analytics, web alerts, and banner ad management. 

With applications that enable and empower marketers to use a mix of 1:1 communications and online tactics marketers can execute and measure campaigns improve customer loyalty, increase your brand awareness, and accelerate time to inquiry or brand preference (e.g., visits to your web site, content downloads, agree to live chat, etc).  So...no, the internet is not truly a "mass media" channel, but it is the channel-of-choice so marketers need to expand their toolbox to include more than the traditional 1:1 tools.  Probably should think about an expandable toolbox...

As a child, I loved those wonderful childhood dot-to-dot books with pictures of puppies and other cute animals that kept me wondering what I'd end up with when I connected all the dots with my crayons?  Oh the anticipation...and the delight...when I guessed the animal before finishing the dots!  I'd finish and move onto painting it with watercolors!  But, alas, what happens when the dots are not correct, and do not connect properly?  I'll tell you -- aside from childhood disappointment, the watercolors leak out of the puppy image, as the gap in crayon that is supposed to contain it isn't there!  I've gotten over that.  It's a skill that plays well in B2B marketing...(you think it's stretch, but read on)
 
There's a lot of leaky sales pipelines that needs to be plugged!!  That is, their "dots" need to connected!  Puppy pictures are one thing, but missed revenue from lost leads is quite another!

I, like many Marketers, use lead management automation (LMA) platforms to nurture and qualify leads, which includes the use of demand generation and interactive marketing campaigns with "built in" lead scoring routines.  Marketers need to connect these "dots!"  Many still don't!  I know that there are many sources of "missed dot connections," but two stand out in my mind:

1) Multichannel Campaign Management solutions + SFA tools = LMA.  This seems to the "norm," as it takes advantage of the inherent functional strengths of each.  Too many firms underestimate or simply struggle with how best to integrate them to achieve a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  Data- or application-level integration?  It takes time and careful planning to define and develop a solution that meets the needs of the user and stakeholder communities while minimizing compromises that could eventually lead to leaks.

2) Lead Scoring.  There are still many B2B marketing organizations that focus heavily on demand generation and very little time on lead nurturing or scoring.  They still use blast email tactics, and hope they have a few nibbles (i.e., responses) for follow-up.  Problem here is that a lead score or historical information (e.g., past promotions, responses, and behaviors) is not factored into a current campaign.  So... it may not be picked up for a new campaign, or simply gets lost in the audience and does not advance because of misaligned messaging or offers.  Leaky lead qualification processes.

Is your LMA complete, like mine?  Or, are your lead nurturing picture missing some "dot" connections?  What can you do to fix it?

The recent change in the weather has me concerned. I am concerned on a couple levels un-Aprimo related...is my house ready for fall? Does my daughter have warm clothes at school? Aprimo speaking - I am VERY concerned with the change of the weather because it forces me to wonder about the fall dress code? Jean shorts, black socks and sandals was the summer fashion, so what will fall bring?? I figured that out today!

I have spotted my first Gen Con shirt and I am confident that there will be more to follow. I need one of these! Anyone care to send me one? Fashion aside, fall is a great time to be working at Aprimo.

Our public launch of Aprimo Marketing Studio is right around the corner in November - an innovative, interactive marketing dashboard that all marketers can be thankful for! We also have a newer version of our cornerstone marketing automation software on the horizon.

As we hit our fourth quarter, we are also taking our budgeting in stride because our marketing finances are under control - huge difference from past marketing gigs where I would be scrambling at this time to balance and reallocate and stretch funds until year end. Check out Jeff Chamberlain's blog for more on marketing finances. And, in the meantime send me your Gen Con shirts!! I need to update my fall wardrobe!

In high school, I wore Guess jeans to fit in. In college, I tried smoking to fit in. Fitting in here at Aprimo - different ball game - don't need to buy any clothes...already addressed THAT issue...smoking is certainly not necessary. Sure, I could paper my cube walls with Pac Man pictures or Super Mario Bros...or, I could learn to play Foosball. This seems to be the before work, lunchtime and after work past time in our breakroom. I am AWFUL at it! I blow off steam by turning the TV off to silence the advertsing and marketing attempts...I guess techies play games away from computer screens? Maybe. We're all similar - we shut off the clutter and complex in exchange for simplicity.

Can't the same hold true for your interactive marketing needs? My marketing buddies across the country seem to rely on a variety of point solutions to serve their online marketing needs. They are cluttering their marketing campaigns by relying on a whole host of services from different vendors - streamlining all of those needs into one dashboard option could get them back to the land of simplicity and reduce their choas.

There are options out there. There are dashboards that pull together social media advertising, banner ads, microsites, PPC marketing, blogging (I'm using it now) and more. Do some research and clear away your clutter...

It's lunchtime here...off to get schooled in Foosball!

A microsite is a mini-Web site that interactive marketers use to enhance the company's primary Web site. Often, a microsite has its own domain or subdomain.

Microsites are a great tool that allows other marketing professionals to obtain targeted leads for specific marketing campaigns.

Despite its small stature, a good rule of thumb to follow when developing a microsite is to develop and execute the microsite based on a comprehensive plan and execution strategy.

Post campaign analysis is a critical component of of any online property. Your execution strategy must contain a way to measure campaign results. Tools like Google Analytics or more robust offerings from Omniture need to be a part of the comprehensive plan.

Other planning tools that can go a long way in aligning your Web team with the marketing area requesting a microsite, is a site map. Visio is often used as a microsite tool to build a site map, but many other free Visio alternatives are available.

As with any marketing project, don't rush the microsite, as the targeted content and approach a microsite offers, can be a great way to boost ROI in marketing.



 

It's probably happened to almost all of us.  Broken links on the Web site.  They are a nuisance and can cost you leads or conversions.  However, I'm not talking about just any link, I'm talking about a research note you licensed and are offering on your website.  We use this a lot.  Prospects are very interested in the research and opinion pieces provided by the popular research firms.  In addition, it usually provides an unbiased opinion that supports the value propositions of our products.  Consequently, we often offer these pieces for download on our website or in our marketing campaigns in exchange for some information about a prospect.  They are a popular tool for online marketing.

The challenge is knowing when these digital assets expire.  That's where the digital asset libray in our marketing automation software takes over.  We can store the research note in the library and mark an expiration date.  That way we get notified when our license for the research note is about to expire and can pull it off our website or out of our marketing campaigns before it is unavailable.  This keeps us from looking like we don't know what we're doing with our own interactive marketing actions.

Extend this concept to other areas such as licensed photography or artwork.  Sometimes there are stiff penalties associated with incorrect use of these materials.  Having access to this simple piece of information can save companies a significant amount of money and hassle.  Have you ever had issues with this?

Not that we needed any more data points, but Adobe's planned purchase of Omniture is further validation of the alignment of web analytics in the marketing process.  Interactive marketers already know that web analytics is a key technology to understand prospect and customer behavior and ultimately tie conversion events (lead quality, sales) back to the underlying acquisition and engagement strategies that drove the results.  Yes, the holy grail of closed-loop ROI reporting...

Aprimo Marketing Studio leverages the power of best-of-breed web analytics tools to fully integrate web analytics into the campaign planning and execution process.   Aprimo Marketing Studio can integrate into all web analytics tool but has a deep, API level integration with Omniture.

Omniture's web analytics system (Site Catalyst) and search marketing software (Search Center) are accessible directly from the Marketing Studio interface giving users access to the full functionality of these industry-leading online optimization technologies. 

I spoke with a gentleman this week challenged with finding different approaches to beef up his company's interactive marketing efforts.  He was searching for solutions - notice that is plural, "solutions" - to manage their different needs.  I shared with him that Aprimo has an integrated, interactive marketing solution that could manage all of their online marketing activities from search engine management to a dynamic web analytics system .  He said we had already begun to save him time!  He was even more excited when he discovered our software, Aprimo Marketing Studio, comes in an easy to deploy and attractively priced solution.  Are you looking to beef up your interactive marketing efforts or even just your social media marketing?  Visit us at Aprimo.com.  We would love to help.

As I had mentioned in my previous blog entitled: Interactive Marketing can Lead to Interpersonal Experiences; using on-line marketing tools like microsites, paid search and Live Chat can and will  make my offline marketing activities more effective. 

As my employer, Aprimo, a marketing automation software company, gets better at integrating our marketing; both online and offline, we are beginning to see a trend with those that are truly in the market for our products and those that are not ready to consider them.  This is a great thing for us because now our sales team knows with whom to spend time and with whom they need to nurture along. 

Perfect example - I had a guy from a really large company come out to our site and download a paper.  I called, we talked and he said, 'I'm just looking'.  Then 3 days later, while reviewing my Website Analytics Software I spied not just His company ISP but his location as well, telling me it was him.  So, I called him.  He tells me, no just looking but wanted to know how I knew.  I shared with him Aprimo's fully integrated marketing powerhouse software and he was truly amazed.  He asked me to not reach out to him and that he would reach out to me.  So, I put him in a lead nurturing campaign based on his activities and interests.  Intermittently we have been sending him information on certain aspects of marketing automation and every time he opens one, it flags our system to then send him something on the same line a few weeks later.   Well, I decided to call him at the end of last year and he said, "Perfect Timing" and to me...that just makes my day. 

This sort of thing, online marketing supporting offline efforts, is really paying off.  How have you driven success integrating these two seemingly different marketing initiatives?

I am a proud new parent of not just one, but two teenage girls.  Sixteen is their age and incredibly demanding is their rage.  Talk about changing your mind as often as you change your socks.  The worst is when I can't ever seem to find them - especially in this day and age of technology and multiple software applications - you think it would be a snap. 

What kills me, is the fact that they can't answer their phone, but they can text on the go, read blogs and post on facebook and twitter almost simultaneously.  They are truly the social media experts. Just think about what the savvy marketer is going to have to pull out of their interactive marketing bag to attract this group! Do you think the approach will be specifically online marketing?  I'm not sure about that. But what does scare me is the statistic I saw, 'online' that stated that in just nine months Facebook had one million new users, but it took the Television, 15 years to achieve the same thing.  Yikes!

Back to my daughters.  No, they can't remember to leave me a note on the counter telling me where they will be or leave me a voicemail so perhaps I need to go online and get a 'wall' that they can comment on, that way, I too, will become a social media socialite. 

How do you keep in touch with your kids?? Post it to my wall - ha!