Online Personalization: Issue Is With People Not Technology

Today I came across an article by Isaac Weisberg, titled Unintended Consequences of Targeting: Less Information, Less Serendipity – Part I. In this article Isaac argues that online personalization limits the exposure of information to the individuals. I agree that current personalization practices are very limited though it is more of an issue with the marketers engaged in personalization than with the technology. ( Note: Retargeting, Behavioral Targeting, on-site recommendations, customized emails etc. are all different forms of personalization). So it is not Personalization that limits the flow of information but it is the people engaged in Personalization.

The purpose of personalization is to provide information that is relevant to an individual and in order to do so you will eliminate a lot of information that the person is not likely to be interested in. However that does not mean that the person cannot be exposed to new information with the personalization.

The issue is that most of the marketers engaged in personalization (targeting) do not exploit the full potential of personalization and limit themselves to basic targeting. I highlighted one such issues in my post 5 Questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign.

Personalization does not mean that you have to limit yourself to the same product or even the category. User’s behavior gives you a clue on what he/she likes. Use that to figure out complimentary items that you might be able to promote and even items that don’t make sense together but you have seen patterns from sales data that tell you that they might go together. E.g. particular pair of shoes is bought by lots of moms, so maybe kids’ shoes might make sense to promote to a user who has shown interest in those shoes. Isn’t that flow of information to the user?
I once worked with a client who used two mutually exclusive behaviors (people who read financial news and view international weather) to promote a totally unrelated product (high end international travel) with a great success.

So, yes exposing people to new information while doing personalization is quite possible as long as marketers doing the personalization are willing to use their creativity and move beyond their comfort zone.

Questions? Comments?

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No One Wants To Be Targeted But...

Yesterday I came across an article on eMarketer that showed that Behavioral Targeting brings clear benefits to publishers.

However when consumers are asked about Behavioral Targeting or data collections by websites they seem to dislike it.

It is clear from the first chart that behavioral targeting is working for everybody i.e. publishers, advertisers and consumers. If it were not working for consumers then publishers would not charge premium for it and advertisers would not pay premium for it.

So why are consumers so concerned? 

As I have stated before the biggest issue seems to the lack of consumer education and the perception of behavioral targeting.

Anybody will get concerned if you tell them that the websites are collecting too much personal information about them. The issue here is how the question is framed and the context it is posed in. If asked in a different way the responses would be different than shown in the chart above.

Let’s see how the answer will differ based on the questions asked. What do you think the answer will be to the following questions?

1. Do you like to be targeted?
2. Do you like that the websites collect a lot of personal data about you?

I think it will be something like “Hell No, I don’t like it”
Now, let’s frame the questions in another way:

1. Do you like to save you money on things you buy online? I am sure the answer will change from Hell No, to Yes.
2. Will it be ok if we understand your online behavior so that we provide you better offers?.... Sure
3. Understanding your behavior will require us to keep track of stuff you are buying and browsing. Are you ok with that?…. Sure or Maybe
4. We might also use your gender, age range etc. also to make sure you receive the right offers and message. You already have provided this to us and there is no need for any further action from you. Will that be ok? …Sure go ahead or maybe will be the answer.

Net results “No one wants to be targeted but they want the benefits” and seems like that value proposition is not clear to the consumers, the word "Targeting" gets them very concerned.

Solution

In addition to my "5 Steps to Successful Behavioral Targeting", here is what I think should happen

1. Behavioral Targeting should be renamed with a more consumer focused name. Marketers understand “Behavioral Targeting” but this name sounds too negative for consumers.
2. Educate consumers about online advertising and how using behavioral attributes helps consumers.

What do you think?

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Optizent - Convert any page into a personalized landing page for your organic search engine traffic

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Clop.in - URL Shortener with Analytics

The Web’s New Gold Mine: Personalizing Your Online Experience

Past weekend, WSJ published a story titled Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets on online tracking and advertising (behavioral targeting). It appears to me that the author of this article is either confused between malware and cookies is or she is just doing what she is supposed to do to sell the story i.e. using words that instill fear in people.

The article projects any tracking, business and advertisers do to serve relevant ads or personalize the users experience on web, as malicious. Businesses have been trying to understand consumer preferences and then make personalized recommendations ever since the humans existed. We do it offline all the time. So how is online tracking for the same purpose malicious?

My dad used to run his clothing store in India, way before internet existed. He used to gather all the information (in his brain) about consumers browsing and purchase behavior to make personalized recommendation to existing customers and new customers. He used all that information to determine what products, colors, sizes, quantities etc. to stock. He knew almost all of the existing customers by their name and what they preferred. Was that spying? Nope. Customer loved it.

If someone can understand me and provide me exactly what I want then why won’t I like it? If they miss the mark well then I have a choice of not paying attention to them.

Do you know that Visa, MasterCard and American express have more information about you than any cookie or advertising company has? Your super market collects your information and tries to guess about what you might buy next. Have you ever got a coupon from an automated coupon dispenser when you check out from your local super market? Well do you know that it is based on your current and past purchases, you zip code etc? Do you ever worry about that or happily walk away with the coupon? Why is the fuss about online tracking for the same purpose? Don’t you love personalized recommendations from Netflix or Amazon?

In my opinion advertisers/publishers/network should invest in consumer education and make tracking and targeting more transparent and articles like this should help with the education instead of branding all tracking as bad.

Comments?

Follow the Shopper

Shoppers, via their online and offline actions, provide a ton of information to the marketers. Smart marketers can and should leverage this information to understand shoppers motivations and needs to create a better relationship with the shoppers and ultimately make more money for their organizations.

Every customer touch point is a goldmine of data. It starts from the keywords that shoppers use to arrive to your site, the links that they click on to get to your site (and the sites they visited before they came to your site), clicks on emails, clicks on banners, every click and every action on your site, purchases etc.. All these actions by the shopper provides you with the information that you can use to follow the shoppers.

What does following the shopper mean?

In simple terms, following the shopper (visitor) essentially means using the shoppers behavioral data to understand the shoppers’ needs and then serving them with personalized ads/messages/offers , wherever you see them online, to bring them back to you site to buy from you. (This concept goes beyond online though).

Following the shopper has several other names such as Behavioral Targeting, Retargeting, Remarketing etc.

Who is following the shoppers?

Pretty much all the major eTailers follow the shoppers (read my posts on Behavioral Targeting to see how widespread this is).

eCommerce giants have been following the shoppers for years using some combination of in-house solutions and 3rd party solutions. Recently they have also tapped into cookie exchanges to reach shoppers who have never been to their site.( More on cookie exchanges in future post).

Can small retailers with limited budget do this?

Yes they can. Until recently small eTailers did not have the know-how or the money to engage in such activities. But that has changed now, Google has came to the rescue of small/medium retailers with Adword remarketing. More and more small/medium companies are now “Following the Shoppers”.

Sounds good, right? But wait before you jump into it.

Remember, Remarketing is not easy and there are privacy concerns. You should think and plan before you leap into remarketing because if it is not done right then you can make your customer uneasy and risk losing them forever. (see my post titled 5 Questions to Ask before Starting a Retargeting Campaign).

Where can I learn more?

Well you can start on this blog and shoot me any questions you might have. Tomorrow, I am going to be moderating a panel at OMMA Behavioral in San Francisco on this very subject.

If you read this in time (before the panel) send me the questions that you would like answered and I will ask the panelists. The panelists include:

• Michael Andrew, Director, Search and Analytics, Mediasmith
• Michael Blais, Manager, Interactive Marketing, eBay
• Chris Duskin, Director, Product Management, Omniture, An Adobe Company
• Scott Jensen, Interactive Marketing Director, Extra Space Storage
• Matt Karasick, Sr. Director of Product Management & Marketing, Advertising Decision Solutions, Akamai
• Thomas Knoll, Community Architect, Zappos

So go ahead and email me your questions or tweet your questions to @anilbatra

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Segmentation and Personas Part 1

The Web is all about choices and Analytics is all about understanding the choices by analyzing the behavior patterns:

Who are my right customers? Why do they make the choices that they do? What opportunities are worth chasing? What features will provide the most value? What is the best time-to-market, and most important which customers are most important.

While it’s difficult to make ALL the right choices, one has to make most of them right for the campaign, site, or product to succeed.

Enter Personas

This is a must have tool for marketers for helping them make the right choices. Personas is essentially a technique for capturing the important learning(s) from analyzing users and customers and identifying and understanding the different types of people who use the site.

It is a description of an imaginary but very plausible user that “personifies” these traits. The three key traits which personas help identify are:
Behavior, Attitudes, Goals.

How can Personas Help

• Rallying – Personas can help you build a common vision. If you look at any website, there is so much information that most marketers look at it at an aggregate level. There are literally thousands of details about a user (think pathing, content affinity, referring sources, tools usage, yada yada yada). An analyst, can’t possibly measure or conclude key behavior traits by analyzing these data points. Personas can help group these types at a high level and provide a human face to the types of people.
• Testing and Optimization – As a side benefit, you can test specific creative tactics on these personas. Messaging for the Net Generation (Gen Y) would be different than the messaging for Gen X (Baby Busters) . If you can identify the key behavior traits by type then you can build a test plan around it to drive conversions on the site.
• Targeting – Anil is one of the great thinkers around the topic of One on One personalization. His entries on Behavioral Targeting are a delight to read. Imagine, armed with “statistically significant” behavior data (or traits) you can proactively market or provide content to drive usage and ultimately convert the user. That’s the ultimate promise and the holy grail of marketing isn’t it?

Are there any cons or pitfalls

There are obviously things to watch out for. The biggest ones are prioritization and validation:

As a practitioner I have seen that a lot of research, thought, and homework done in building personas. Usually Strategy gets involved along with Product/Brand Owners and Senior members of the client and is handed down to executors.

What is important to understand is that your website is not for everyone. People will come to your site, tease you, perform competitive shopping, look for products, research about products etc.

It’s not okay to say that your website is for everyone. If you think that way you are deluding yourself. This is extremely difficult for most marketers to grasp. I try hard to explain to my clients is to focus your efforts or release or a landing page on a single persona. It doesn’t mean that the website or landing page will not be useful or usable by others, but if you gradually build the user experience around each type or user profile you will ultimately do a great job in attracting the highest quality users to your site. That’s the promise of Qualitative surveys and Quantitative analysis.

Another pitfall I have seen is that teams create personas based on their "assumptions" which usually comes from the Highest Paid Person In the Organization (HIPPO). In my mind this is guesswork and not based on any analysis; the right thing to do here is to take time to analyze your web data, interview/take time to talk to real users and verify if these personality types or personas really exist.

So are you using or thinking about personas for your website? Does your agency recommend taking the approach? Share it with us.

Next time we will talk about different techniques both qualitative and quantitative to measure personas.

Thoughts? Comments?

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This is a guest post from my friend and ex-coworker Kanishka Surana. Kanishka is currently the Head of Web Analytics for Ogilvy. He runs Ogilvy's Web Analytics group in North America, he has been in the Web Analytics space since 2002 and has worked in London, Seattle, Greece, Seattle, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and most recently in New York.
Before that Kanishka worked at Gerson Lehrman Group a pioneer in proprietary research space. Kanishka and his wife Mini live in New Jersey.
This is first of a series of posts that Kanishka will be doing on this blog.

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5 Questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign

Retargeting or Remarketing is way to put your ad in front of the people who have been to your site before and are likely to respond to you ads and offers.

Retargeting via Google Adwords

Retargeting is not new, I have been writing about it since 2006 and working in this area since 2003. Recently, Google Remarketing, via adwords, has brought retargeting to the masses. Though, in my opinion, Google has not done a good job in educating advertiser on how to effectively engage in retargeting. To start with, Google says, you should retarget every visitor who came to your site. That is a wrong approach and I highly discourage it. As you read through this post , you will know my reasoning behind it. You have to understand remarketing to effectively use it. I am listing 5 questions that you should ask before you put that JavaScript code to start remarketing.

5 questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign

1. What is the purpose of this retargeting campaign?
   This is first question you should always ask. Also ask, Why are we doing this? What is the purpose of retargeting? As you answer this question, you will automatically start to answer some of the questions listed below.
   
2. Who are your target customers?
   Remarketing to all of you visitors, in most cases, not a good idea. If you are a portal, news site, have daily updates then it might (maybe) make sense to remarket anybody and everybody who visited your site. For most of the sites it doesn’t make sense to retarget everybody. Think about this, why would you want to target me with an ad to sell TV when I recently bought a TV from your site?
   
   
   
   
   Trying to sell ice to the Eskimo?  Try it. You'll be sorry. To be effective, you should segment your visitor base and understand their needs. For example, by targeting the shopping card abandoner you have a better chance of conversion. By targeting those who have already downloaded a whitepaper, you have better chance of selling your free trial. The message (ad) you will put in front of these visitors will speak to their needs and hence will be more attractive than a generic message. Which leads to our third question.
   
3. What will be your message?
   If you know the purpose and audience segment for the campaign then it is much easier to write your message (ad copy). Your ad copy has to be effective to drive people to take action. Make it right. Say you want to target all the people who downloaded a whitepaper on A/B Testing but did not sign up for free trial then your message can be “You know A/B Testing leads to higher conversions. Get started with a Free trial of xyz tool”. Alternatively, if you are trying to remarket to all the visitors who came to your site, reviewed few page and left without downloading the whitepaper then your message should drive them to download the whitepaper. Remember, one message does not fit all. Message has to resonate with the segment that you are targeting.
   
4. Where will the visitors land?
   You have identified why you want to engage in remarketing and who you are targeting, now you have to make you sure that when customers arrive on your site they get the relevant information and clear call to action on the page they land. Sending visitors to an appropriate landing page is critical for the success of remarketing .
   
5. How will you know you are successful in remarketing?
   You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Define your KPIs so that you can measure the effectiveness of remarketing. Properly defined success measures will also allow you to take necessary actions (test and fine tune ad copy, message or even the segments) to ensure you achieve your goals.
   

Google Remarketing Gone Wild.

Recently I came across two examples of remarketing where, in my opinion, the thought was given to the first 2 questions. I have an example to share with you. A while ago I visited Lyris newsletter template download page via a newsletter link. I gave my email address and downloaded the templates. Since I am done downloading, I don’t have a need to download them again.

However, the remarketing campaign keeps remarketing to me with a message inviting me to download the whitepaper (see below). If they have something new to offer then I might go back. If they have to offer the next logical step in moving me towards the sales, I might pay attention to it but I am not going to go back again to download the same templates that I downloaded few days ago. Seriously! Do not waste your impressions on me. If increasing brand awareness is the goal of this campaign then they should have a different message in the ad copy.

(Note: Currently there is a limitation in Google Adword retargeting which makes it harder to segment and target that segment only. If you are interested in segmenting and targeting then send me an email and I will provide you a solution that will help you target efficiently.) 

Sidebar: Below are some of the ways you can use remarketing

• Cart Abandonment – Target visitors who have abandoned the shopping cart to bring them back to the site and complete the purchase. This is the most widely used and talked about use of remarketing.
• Next Steps towards Conversion - Target visitors who took some prelim steps but did not complete the next steps towards purchase. E.g. Target the visitors who downloaded a whitepaper but have not come back to sign up for free trial.
• Cross Sell/New Products – Target past customer with an up sell or cross sell. If a visitor bought a shirt recently maybe it is time to show them an ad for a tie that will go well with that shirt.
• Brand Awareness – Remarket to people who have visited your site in past. Remarketing can put your brand right in front of them to further build brand awareness. Though this one is difficult to measure.

Thoughts/ Comments? Are you doing remarketing?

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Why is Google really rolling out Google Analytics opt-out plug-in?

Last week I wrote about a browser plug-in that will allow people to opt-out of the Google Analytics cookie. The release of this plug-in seems to be a proactive step towards another announcement.

Eric Peterson, on his blog, voiced his opinion on why Google is rolling out this plug-in. I think Eric has a point in his post about Google trying to make a push into Federal Government web sites and this roll out is a check-box to satisfy the needs of privacy advocates.

However, I am still not entirely clear on what Google will get if it can’t use all the data that it will collect on Federal Government website? It won’t be able to use in any way…well maybe at an aggregate level to compete with the likes of ComScore. So what do I think the reason is?

Behavioral Targeting

I think the real answer to Google Analytics’ rolling out Opt-out is “Behavioral Targeting”.
Google Analytics is deployed on thousands of websites and collects a wealth of data. However, so far this data is used by individual sites to optimize their ad spend and improve the site for customers while improving the websites impact on the bottom line. Google has not really used that data much other than providing benchmarking reports in Google Analytics. I think the time has come for Google to start using Google Analytics data to make more money.

Google Analytics Data Sharing

Remember, in 2006 Google Analytics started asking GA accounts to opt-in/opt-out of data sharing. As I wrote in my blog post on Google Analytics Data Sharing, “data sharing” was a step towards using Google Analytics data for behavioral targeting. This opt-out plug-in seems to be a next step in that direction.

Limited functionality of Adwords Remarketing

Last week Google Adwords announced the roll-out of “Remarketing” feature that will allow advertisers to remarket to the visitors (cookies) who came to their sites but left without taking the desired action i.e. without converting (this is also called Retargeting, a form of Behavioral Targeting). For this feature to work, Adwords advertisers will have to put a small script and identify the people (cookies) whom they want to target.
The functionality to identify the segment that you want to retarget seems to be very limited in Adwords.

Google Analytics role in enhancing Adwords Remarketing

Now imagine, you can create complex segment in Google Analytics and then use Adwords to target the visitors who fall in that segment. Won’t that be nice? Well that can’t happen unless you use Google Analytics. Here is an example to make this clear:
I want to target visitors who viewed more than 3 products and looked at the contact us page and then left without converting (or it could be more complex than this).
This is a segment that I won’t be able to create easily in Adwords without some coding on my pages. Using Google Analytics, advanced segment functionality this is a piece of cake. I create my segment then use Adwords to remarket to visitors who fall in that segment. Won’t that be more powerful? I think that’s where the money is.

Other Behavioral Targeting Scenarios with Google Analytics

Let’s take a hypothetical example to see how this will work.

Say I write a blog on luxury cars. I use Google Analytics as my web analytics tool (it is free, so why not). I don’t have real business model but I use Adsense ads to make some extra money. Since my blog is really popular I get lot of traffic. My blog reader are those who have interest in luxury cars because that’s all I write about.

Now imagine Google asks me to pool my visitors’ information, collected in Google Analytics, into a pool that they can use for advertising purposes. They tell me that by doing so I will be able to make some more money from my visitors even when the visitors have left my site. Hmm… free money. Sure :)

How will Google use that data?

Google will identify the visitors who come to my blog, read articles, write comments, come often etc. They will then put the visitors (cookies) who fulfill certain criteria (as defined by Google or the Advertiser) in a segment called “Luxury Car Enthusiast”. They will pool my data with other similar sites or similar pages on other sites to create a bigger pool than my site has to offer. Google now has a set of cookies who are interested in luxury cars.

BMW creates a campaign in Adwords to reach “Luxury Car Enthusiasts”. They are willing to play 2X-3X CPC or CPM to reach this target.

A visitor, who left my site (A) and lands on a site (B) that, has nothing to do with luxury cars. Google can identify that visitor because that visitor is in the pool of cookies that belong to “Luxury Car Enthusiasts” segment. Google shows this visitor an ad from BMW on Site B. Visitor sees the ad that matches his/her interest and the advertiser reaches their target.

Note: This all is a speculation by me and I have no official information.

Win-Win Situation

• BMW finds its target
• Google gets more money for the same ad slot.
• Publisher of the ad makes more money.
• Sites, which pool their visitors in this segment, get a cut.

What does GA Plug-in has to do with all this?

Behavioral Targeting has been under scrutiny for a long time and there is a big uproar about tracking people. Privacy advocates want an easy way for people to opt-out of Behavioral targeting and this plug-in seems to be a proactive step in that direction.

What do you think?

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Google Adwords Remarketing: Behavioral Targeting

This week Google Adwords announced that it is rolling out a feature called "Remarketing". This feature is essentially "Retargeting" which I described in my blog post Retargeting 101

How does it work?

You visit a site, look at some products, maybe add some of the products to the shopping cart but then decide not to buy them because you need some more time to think about it. You close your browser and are done with that site. Few minutes later you go back to your computer and browse to another site, say a news site. As the page of that site loads so does an Ad that is from the site that you visited yesterday (where you looked at some products but did not buy). For Google Remarketing to work, the news site will need to be a part of Google content network.

So far Google used to show Adsense ads based on the content of the page but now it will start showing ads that match the interest of the person viewing the page (as identified by a cookie and retargeted by a marketer).

Example

Neel visited Netflix. He looked at the site but decided that he is not going to become a member at that time. He went back to his work and completely forgot about Netflix, maybe because he got a movie from Redbox.

Few minutes later he gets back on his computer and browses to a site to read about Indian Food Recipe. This site happens to be a part of Google content network. Even though the content that Neel is reading has nothing to do with the movies, Google’s remarketing shows him a Netflix ad.

What is happening behind the scene?

Note: This is a hypothetical example and I am not sure if Netflix is really participating in the Google Adwords Remarketing.

Netflix, which participates (let's assume) in Google Adwords decides to remarket to people who had visited Netflix in past but did not sign up for the service. Netflix decides to use Google Adwords new "Remarketing" feature for this remarketing.

Netflix sets up a remarketing campaign in Google Adwords. Netflix puts a JavaScript from Google Adwords on its pages to identify those people (audience) whom it wants to remarket i.e. people who came to the site but did not sign up for the service. This JavaScript lets Google know which cookies belong to the audience segment that Netflix wants to target. When Google comes across a person (cookie), who belongs to the audience segment that Netflix wants to remarket, on its content network, it will show them a Netflix ad (remarketing ad) instead of an ad that matches the content of the page the person is on.

I speculated this in 2007

In 2007, I speculated that Google will roll out something along these lines. I highly encourage you to read the following blog post as I think there is more to come from Google on Remarketing and Behavioral Targeting.

• Google and Behavioral Targeting
• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II
• Google Analytics Data Sharing

And some more Google related posts: All about Google

Comment? Questions?

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Online Privacy - Consumer Education is Missing

During 2007-2008 I wrote a lot about online privacy on this blog. Most of the online privacy discussion at that time revolved around online targeting based on tracking users online behaviors also knows as behavioral targeting.

It amazes my how many privacy advocates and senators are concerned about anonymous online tracking and behaviorally targeted ads based on peoples click behavior when the consumers are voluntarily giving all the private information on social media sites.

Last week Google Analytics announced a plug-in that will let users opt-out of Google Analytics. Really...is web analytics tracking detrimental to visitors' privacy? Google Analytics collects click stream data anonymously. It does not know who you are, it identifies you via a cookie and tracks what pages were viewed by that cookie, what buttons were clicked by cookie etc. This data is then used by individual sites using the tool (Google Analytics) to understand the behavior of their visitors and optimize the experience both for the user and their business. Where is the privacy threat in all this?

Proliferation of the services like Facebook, Twitter and location based services like Gowalla and Foursquare have enabled people to share their personal information with their "friends". Users of these services are willingly giving a lot of personal information. Information, that can be used by others ("friends"), in so many harmful ways. But is general consumer aware of such harms? Why isn't that the most important issue?

The real threat to privacy is the lack of education about the online information sharing. We are the ones who are voluntarily revealing a ton of information, which is far more harmful than anonymous click stream behavior. Using Facebook, twitter and Foursquare you can pretty much know what a person likes, dislikes, who the family members are, what time they leave the house, what time they arrive at work, where do they spend their day, afternoon, evening, what they wear, etc. That to me should be more concerning than anonymous web analytics tracking and the ads that are targeted based on a users click behavior.

Most of the consumers don't even know how all the little personal information they are leaving on social media sites could harm them. I have not seen any public service ads warning me about the downside of using such services. Shouldn't there be those ads warning people, both offline and online?

In my opinion governmental agencies, privacy advocates and marketers should focus their attention on consumer education. Educate them about various tracking methods, implications of information sharing on social media sites etc. No matter how strict the online tracking & targeting rules are you won't be able to avoid privacy leaks unless the end consumer is educated about the implications.

What do you think?

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7 Ways Of Handling 404 Error Messages

Last week I wrote about 404 errors and how to track them in your web analytics tool. In this post I am going to look at how various sites are dealing with 404 error messages and provide your 7 ways of handling 404 pages on your site.

The best way to handle the 404 error messages is to not have any by properly setting redirects in case of a redesign, proper sitemaps etc. But despite your best efforts there will be cases when your visitors will get the 404 errors so you just have to be prepared. This post will show you how other sites are doing it so that you can decide what will work for you.

I looked at few of the top converting online retailers and few others random sites to see how they are handling 404 error messages.

Here is what I found

1. Schwan.com
   
   
   
   
   Schwan.com, the site with the best conversion rate, notifies the visitors that the page does not exist and then provides a link back to the home page. It also keeps the top navigation intact on the 404 page so that the visitors can easily navigate to the other pages on the site.
   
2. FTD.com
   
   
   
   
   FTD.com, does a nice job of providing products recommendations to the visitors on the 404 custom error page. It also shows the top and left navigation on the error page for easy navigation.
   
3. Proflowers.com
   
   
   
   
   Proflowers redirects the visitors to the home page of the site. In some cases it displays a message notifying the visitors that the page was not found but in other cases it just redirects the visitors to the home page. Lack of an error message might confuse the visitors who intended to go to a particular page and not the page they were redirected to (home page).
   
4. Coca-cola.com
   
   
   
   
   Coke adds little humor on the 404 error message page. You can’t avoid reading the page.
   
5. Microsoft
   
   
   
   
   Microsoft makes an attempt to understand where the user intended to go. It parses out the “Not found” url and then runs the internal site search to show relevant results. Good attempt by Microsoft on Microsoft.com, however I did not see the similar attempts at Bing or MSN sites.
   
6. Google
   
   
   
   
   
   The company that tries to understand user intents on it’s search engine makes no attempt to understand what the visitor is trying to do. It could have used something like “Did you mean…..” but it does not.
   
7. WebTrends
   
   
   
   
   Webtrends does a nice job of providing a site map on the 404 error page. Omniture does similar thing on their 404 error page.
   
8. Adobe
   
   
   
   
   Adobe even asks the visitors to send them feedback on the broken link. Like many other site it provides several links back to other content on the site.
   
9. RedEnvelope
   
   
   
   
   RedEnvelope goes one step further and provides an error message, product recommendations and a 10% off coupon for the inconvenience that a missing page might have caused.
   Go ahead and try it and get 10% off on RedEnvelope.com.
   

I also checked Roamans, QVC and Coldwater Creek, few of the other sites listed in the top conversion rate list and did not find any custom error pages.

7 ways of handling 404 error messages

Let’s recap and look at the various ways you can handle 404 error messages.

1. Redirect the visitors to the home page. Make sure it is clear to the visitors that the page was not found and so they are being redirected to the home page. (Proflowers.com)
2. Have a basic custom error page that notifies the visitors that the page was not found and then provides a link back to the home page. Make sure you have your navigational elements on the page. (Schwan.com).
3. Add humor in your 404 message just like coca-cola.com.
4. Show the sitemap (links to various sections and pages on the page for easy navigation. (WebTrends)
5. Make products recommendations. Recommendation could be targeted based on what you know about the visitors (past purchases, current browsing behavior etc.) or simply show the best sellers list. (FTD.com)
6. Interpret what a visitor might be looking for and show the possible results/links. You can use the internal search similar to what Microsoft does. (You have to be very careful with this solution as there is always a possibility of misinterpretation).
7. Provide a coupon for instant conversion. (RedEnvelop)

Do you have any other example to share? Send them to me.

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Are You Wasting Your Advertising?

I hope you have heard the famous words of John Wanamaker "I know half of my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."

Today the phrase should be something like “Half my Advertising is wasted because I do not advertise responsibly” or “Half of my advertising is wasted; I can stop that but I fail to use the data”.

Yes that is correct. We have an abundance of data today to help us save the wastage. There is no shortage of tools that will collect all sorts of data. Yet many marketers fail to act responsibly and use this data to stop advertising waste and also save customers from unwanted ads.

Here are some examples that will show you what I mean

• Newsletter – Nordstrom - In my blog post on email and relevance, I showed an example of an email from Nordstrom that had irrelevant offers. As result of this, not only did Nordstrom waste time, effort and money but also lost a subscriber. Advertising was wasted.
  
• Newsletter – Drugstors.com – Same as Nordstrom. Not only did Drugstore lose a subscriber, but a high profile marketing guru “Seth Godin” wrote about this on his blog. Adverting was wasted and resulted in negative publicity.
  
• Paid Search – I searched for ‘iPhone Charger” on Google and saw an ad from “Walmart” titled “iPhone”.
  
  
  
  
  
  I could take one of the following two actions
  
  1. Ignore this ad as it does not have relevant copy, which results in lower CTR on the ad and hence higher CPC that Walmart will end up paying in future. (Google punishes you if you don’t have high performing ads).
  2. I click on it and Walmart pays for the click.
  I chose to click on the ad and landed on a page that showed me results for “ipod” instead of “iPhone chargers”. Wow!!! What a mismatch. Net result: My time was wasted with irrelevant results, Walmart wasted its money by paying for click that did not generate any value. Advertising was wasted.
  
  
  
  
  Here is another example: Search Pay Per Click Tip : A Simple Way to Increase Profit.
  
• Offline Advertising – Netflix recently sent me two snail mail pieces on the same day.
  
  1. Offer to join Netflix and get first month free – Great, I like it, I think I should join Netflix. Wait…I am already a member and receive my movies from them all the time. So should I cancel my subscription and join again to avail this offer? Netflix is known for movie recommendations it makes to its customer based on their past history. Can’t they tie their database to see who is already a member so that they don’t send junk mail to that subscriber? Advertising was wasted.
  2. Offer to recommend Netflix to my friends – They have done it several times now. I have never referred any of my friends as most of them are already subscriber plus who has time to save a print coupon and give it to a friend. The web is full of coupons and they can get it from there. Netflix should have looked at my referral history, I have never referred anybody. Stop sending junk mail and avoid wastage.
• Display Advertising – We all know the web is full of irrelevant ads. An example is an ad from Air Linus of NYTimes.com for flights from New York to Ireland. I think this works for those who are in New York, but not for me. I live in Seattle. Just because I am browsing NYTimes.com does not mean I live in New York or interested in going to Ireland. Advertising waste could have been avoided by just checking my Geo location. Money Wasted. Advertising was wasted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Are you advertising responsibly? Are you using data to make sure you are not wasting your adverting?


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7 Ways to Create Relevancy in Emails

People are bombarded with hundreds of email messages each day. However a majority of the emails end up in the trash because of their irrelevance to the recipients.

On Oct 30th, 2008 I write a blog post on relevancy and emails. To state my point I showed an example of an email that John Song received from Nordstrom. John, who had never purchased any women products from Nordstrom, was receiving emails promoting women products.

During our conversation John said that he was a big fan of Nordstrom and was ok with receiving and ignoring irrelevant emails but he wished that they would send him relevant products/offers though.

No matter how big a fan a person is of brand, eventually the patience runs out. Guess what happened recently? John got so tired of the irrelevant emails that he finally hit the small “unsubscribe” link on the email he recently received. Done. Gone. Here is what John wrote on his Facebook status (came via his Twitter update).

Companies work very hard to get people to come to their sites and then to subscribe to their emails. But it appears that not many of them work hard enough to keep these subscribers. Someone (subscriber) who took time to fill a form on the site to subscribe to the email is ready to open his wallet. It is the job of a business to help that person open that wallet and spend that hard earned cash. But it can only happen if the business sells the customer what a customer wants and not what the business needs or wants to sell. Unfortunately, most of the emails consumer get today contain the products that business wants to sell and not necessarily what a customer wants to buy. Below are 7 ways that you can use to create relevancy in your emails and standout from the crowd.


7 ways to create relevancy in the emails

• Browsing History - Use the subscriber’s onsite browsing history to find out what products he looked at but has not bought yet. This list should give you an idea of his interest. Based on this learning determine what products you should offer in your emails.
• Email Click Through - Use his past email click-though behavior to determine what peaks his interest. If a customer has shown interests in certain products/contents/offers in past then they are very likely to be interested in similar products/offers/content. Someone who only clicks on discounted is most likely to open an email that says so and also click on a product that is on discount. Use that information to target.
• Shopping Cart Abandonment - Use the shopping cart abandonment history to determine what products he is interested in. Use the time triggered email to encourage him to come back and finish the process. You can also send offers but be careful (check out Targeting Cart Abandonment by Email.
• Purchase History - Use his past purchase history to determine what he buys. Use not only online data but also offline, phone order and catalog order data. Make recommendations in the email based on past purchases. E.g. if you know that he buys blue shirts then recommend new blue shirts. Depending on what products your sell you might also send complementary items.
• Frequency and Recency - How often does the customer come to your site and when was the last time you saw him. Frequency and recency of visit is a strong indicator of a customer’s likelihood of buying from a site. The longer the customer takes to return to your site the more are the chances that you will loose him as a customer. Timing your email message can bring that customer back into buying mode. Use frequency and recency to determine if you need to send a coupon or some other promotion to bring the customer back to the site before it is too late.
• Help Them Help You – If you do feel you have to send something unrelated to persons interest (e.g. provide him an opportunity to see what else you sell maybe lure him into buying something he might not have considered) then send it along with something relevant to him. E.g. send discount on women apparel along with some discount for men stuff.
• No Email - If you don’t have anything relevant to send to a customer then please don’t send an email. As mentioned before people are bombarded with irrelevant emails every day, you need to stand out of the crowd and make your email count so don’t send any email if you don’t have anything to offer.

Hope these tips help. Email me if you need help finding the right analytics and email solution.

Questions? Comments?

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Individual Visitors Tracking v/s Aggregate Data

Should web analytics tool track visitors as unique individuals or at the aggregate level? John Squire, Chief Strategy Office of Coremetrics says that tracking at Individual level is the way to go and this is how his company is differentiating itself (from Google analytics). Brian Clifton, former heard of Google Analytics in EMEA, responded by saying that aggregation is the way to go.

In my opinion both of them are right. Which route to go really depends on what you want from the web analytics tool?

Aggregate Data

If you are new to web analytics or you just want to track and analyze the overall health of your website, aggregated data will work for you. If you want to know how your marketing efforts are performing in terms of driving traffic or online conversions than aggregate data will just work fine for you. If you want to know which pages of your site are bleeding and then conduct A/B testing or Multivariate testing to improve them then aggregate data will work for you.

Individual Visitor Tracking

However as companies mature in their use of web analytics data they will need individual level tracking.

A company which is ready to do personalization will need to understand each individual browsing/purchase behavior to put the right offers/products in front of her. That is not possible with aggregated data.

It sounds perfectly ok to know that 75% of visitors abandoned the shopping cart but won’t it be nice to know who those 75% are or a way to convert at least some of those 75%? This is where individual tracking will come in handy. If visitors, who abandoned the shopping cart, leave an email during the process then you can send them a targeted email based on how far along they were in the shopping process, what products they had looked at, what product they had in shopping cart, etc. You don’t need to analyze every single data point but you can have business rules that can trigger those emails. However, to do so you will need to track at individual level. Even if you don’t want to send an email if you know the cookie id of the visitors you can put a personalized offer in front of them when they return back to your site and this will require tracking at individual level.

Individual tracking also comes in handy when the sales people call the lead that they just got from the website. Knowing what the person, who filled the contact us form, did on the website could provide a lot of information to sales person who can then tailor their conversation based on this information.

There are several more scenarios where aggregate data just won’t work. You will need individual level tracking.


I agree that tracking individual has privacy implication that need be properly addressed before tracking each person. However privacy issues also exist when you anonymously track visitors at aggregate level and those need to be addressed too.

So should you choose a tool that aggregates the visitor data or the one that tracks them individually? It all depends on what you want to do with that data. If you need help in figuring out what tool will work best for you feel free to email me at batraonline at gmail.com

Comments/Questions?

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Retargeting 101

According to Wikipedia

Behavioral retargeting (also known as behavioral search retargeting, or simply, retargeting ) is a form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is delivered to consumers based on previous Internet actions that did not in the past result in a conversion.

How does it work?

You visit a site, look at some products, maybe add some of the products to the shopping cart but then decide not to buy them because you need some more time to think about it. You close your browser and are done for the day. Next morning you go back to your computer and browse to a news site. As the page of that site loads so does an Ad that is from the site that you visited yesterday (where you looked at some products but did not buy)


Example

Neel visited Sketcher’s site (They engage in retargeting - http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109038. He looked at few shoes, added one to his cart but then decided that he is going to look some more before he buys them. He was tired after long day so he decided to logoff from his computer and takes some rest.

Few minutes later he gets back on his computer but before he goes and checks more shoes, an article about online privacy in an email catches his eyes so he clicks on the link to open the webpage to read that article. As he browses to that article on NYTimes.com, he sees an ad from sketchers on that same page. The page content has nothing to do with the shoes but the person reading it has. Sketchers is retargeting to bring back the visitor who had left the site (sketchers.com) without converting (purchasing). The main idea behind retargeting is to reinforce the brand message and bring the visitors back to the site so that visitor can convert and become customers.




Shopping at Sketchers.com



NYTimes Serves Sketchers Ad

How does it work technically?

When a visitor visits a site (sketchers in this case), the site (sketchers.com) runs a JavaScript from a 3rd party ad network or an ad exchange, which (the JavaScript)then drops a cookie on the visitor’s computer. This cookie is usually anonymous i.e. it contains an identifiers to identify the visitor (computer) but does not know any personally identifiable information such as name, phone, email etc. of the visitor. As the visitor browses the site this JavaScript can collect the information about visitors browsing behavior and then tie it back to the cookie. All an ad network (3rd party) knows that cookie id 123ABC67NBZ looked at some product, put them in shopping cart and then left without completing the purchase. Most likely, it does not know that cookie id 123ABC67NBZ belongs to Neel (some retargeting products now are tying PII information too but most of them are still anonymous).

If the visitor then browses to another sites on the internet (NYTimes.com in this case) which also has a relationship with that same ad network (the relationship between sites and ad network gets complex but that’s beyond the scope of this post) i.e. this other site also has a JavaScript from that same ad network on their pages then that JavaScript(on a page on NYTimes.com) can read the previously set cookie to identify the visitor. By reading the cookie, the Ad Network knows who this visitors (computer) is (anonymously) and what sites this visitor (computer) was on, what products he looked at and if he abandoned the shopping cart or not and then serve up an appropriate retargeting ad.


Related Post
Behavioral Targeting 101

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5 Questions To Ask When Choosing Behavioral Advertising Partners

At OMMA Global, this week, I attend a panel titled “Behavioral Advertising Partners: Choosing Wisely”. The panel was moderated by Brian Massey, of ClickZ and the panelists were

Joe Apprendi, Founder and CEO, Collective Media
Richard Frankel, President, Rocket Fuel Inc.
Jeff Hirsch, President & CEO, Audience Science (formerly Revenue Science)
Nancy Marzouk, VP Media Sales, x+1
Dave Zinman, VP and GM Display Advertising, Yahoo

Panelist were asked to come up with one question that the advertiser must ask before making a decision about which networks to use for their Behavioral Targeting campaigns. Here are the 5 questions that they came up with:

1. Where are my ads going to run?


2. How am I going to achieve my goals?


3. What data is going to be used for Targeting?


4. What is fundamentally different about what your company does as compared to other networks?


5. Why should I be spending my time with various networks, what do they do different?

It was clear that the onus is on the advertiser to dig in and get their questions answered.

I also suggest reading following two blog posts, which I wrote on this subject, before you start engaging in behavioral targeting.

• 5 Steps to Successful Behavioral Targeting


• 5 Step Process to Ease Privacy Concerns Regarding Behavioral Targeting .

You might also be interested in other Behavioral Targeting Posts.

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I am running for the WAA Board of Directors position and will appreciate your support and vote. To learn why you should vote for me please view my details at WAA Site. If you have any questions please feel to email me at batraonline@gmail.com.

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Google Officially Begins Behavioral Targeting

In March of 2007 I wrote that Google should enter behavioral targeting and I even predicted that it will. Guess what? On Wednesday (March 11, 2009) Google officially announced that it will start “Interest Based Advertising” (which is also called “Behavioral Targeting”). Google has tried Behavioral Targeting in past and started talking about ad personalization, but this is the first time it officially announced that it will start Behavioral Targeting.

In my post titled Google and Behavioral Targeting I wrote:

“I think it is a matter of time when Google start connecting the dots and announce it’s entry into Behavioral Targeting. They might call it something else but at the core it will be leveraging the visitors’ behavior all across the web to better target ad on its network.”

At this point I am not clear on where Google will collect this data from. I encourage you to read my blog post to see what sort of data Google can potentially use for Behavioral targeting.
Google’s large footprint (e.g. Google Search, Google Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, AdManager, Google Checkout, Blogger and list goes on) will surely draw privacy concerns with this announcement.

According to Informationweek.com:

“To counter potential criticism, Google has taken steps to offer some transparency into how it delivers ads and to give consumers some measure of choice, and control. It has, however, made one important choice for its users by forcing them to opt out of behavioral ads rather than inviting them to opt in.

Google provides information about how it serves ads through the Ads By Google link that accompanies Google ads. It also created a tool called the Ads Preference Manager, which allows users to "view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you." And it provides users with the option to opt out from the receiving the AdSense/DoubleClick cookies used to track user interests. “

The thing that really bugs me is that by default all the visitors (who visit any site that uses Google products such as adsense and maybe Google Analytics) and all the sites (publishers using Google products) are automatically opted-in to share their data with Google for targeting.
Visitors (like you and me) and publisher (like me - I use Google Analytics and Adsense and this blog is on blogger) will have to take an extra step to opt out. For visitors this opt-out will work via cookie and if they delete the cookie they will be opted back in. (See my post on How to Opt out of Behavioral Targeting Networks).

As I say in all my presentations on Behavioral Targeting - "It's a Targeted Targeted Targeted Targeted World". You will be Targeted.

Other blog post on this topic that you might be interested in:

• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II


• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part III – Google Buys Doubleclick

Comments? Questions?

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Upcoming Events and Conferences

The next few months are going to be busy with a few conferences. Below is the list of the conferences where I will be, starting with the most recent. I would love to meet with you if you are going to be at one of these conferences.

1. Do's & Don'ts for Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting & Interactive Marketing – San Francisco, CA March 9th
   Expanding on their Web Analytics Association webcast, this interactive panel session digs deeper into the proper methodology behind developing a comprehensive online marketing plan. Discussions include:
   
   
   • Techniques to build comprehensive online behaviour profiles
   
   
   • How to take action and target segments with relevant content
   
   
   • Extending analytics to target both online & offline
   
   
   This event begins at 8:30 with breakfast and runs until 12:00 noon. Space is limited, so reserve your seat at this complimentary event today. Register now
   


2. Market to Max – SDMA Conference, Seattle, March 11th
   Future of Web Analytics – Measuring in the Web 2.0 World - I will be moderating a panel to discuss the future of Web Analytics. With the growth of rich media applications, mobile browsing, and social sites, web analytics is more interesting and more confusing. Industry insiders will share their views on the future of web analytics in the web 2.0 world and beyond, plus opportunities and challenges of tracking in this frontier.
   


3. OMMA Hollywood, Hollywood, CA March 23-24th
   Defining Engagement: Moderated by Jim Sterne, this session is a must for any marketer that is preaching engagement. The term is often used and rarely defined, so let’s define it. We will debate the merits of view-through, action attribution, time spent, and other interactive measures to demonstrate how a campaign can be evaluated beyond clickthrough. How does a marketer truly measure performance of their efforts?
   


4. WebTrends Engage, Las Vegas, NV, April 7-9th
   WebTrends Enagage is WebTrends User conference. Plan for three days of interactive learning at WebTrends Engage 2009, filled with practical, solution-based ways to improve your digital marketing and get even more out of your WebTrends investment. If you are using webtrends or evaluating web analytics tools then you must attend this conference.
   


5. eMetrics San Jose, CA, May 4-7th
   eMetrics – Marketing Optimization Summit does not need any introduction. If you care about increasing your ROI on the web then you must attend this conference. You will find everything you need to know about web analytics and optimization at this conference. This conference is attended by the “Who’s Who” of Web Analytics and Optimization experts, and all web analytics vendors and experts from various industries. In this economy, if you only get approval to attend one conference then this is the one to attend. I will be speaking on “Advanced Behavioral Targeting”.
   
   Bonus: If you want to attend eMetrics in Toronto or San Jose, use Promotional Code: BATRA10 for a 10% discount. Why should you attend eMetrics Toronto? Here’s why in Jim Sterne’s words:
   "Sears, Bell, Travelocity, AdMonsters, Rogers, IAB, CBC, Quebecor, Shaw, Aeroplan, Tribal DDB, Overstock, Microsoft, Canoe and a whole bunch of really smart consultants and tool vendors all sharing how they optimize online marketing? What could be better?"

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WAA Webinar - 5 Do’s and Don’ts for Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting, & Interactive Marketing

I invite you to a Web Analytics Association's webinar on Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting and Interactive Marketing that I am doing on December 4th.

I will be joined by two very intelligent and highly respected personalities in web analytics and interactive marketing space, Gary Angel of Sephonic and Akin Arikan of Unica.

Gary Angles co-founded Semphonic and is president and chief technology officer. He’s responsible for leading Semphonic’s development of Web analytics and SEM decision making tools for web marketing professionals. Read Gary's blog at http://semphonic.blogs.com.

Akin Arikan is the author of Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success. He is also a Director of Product Marketing and Strategy at Unica Corporation, responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction with Unica's web analytics and Internet marketing solutions. Read Akin's blog at http://multichannelmetrics.com

Here is a brief description of the presentation

" 5 Do’s and Don’ts for Behavioral Segmentation, Targeting, & Interactive Marketing"
The saw to a carpenter is as vital as segmentation is to a web analyst. Without segmentation, reporting can hardly be called analytics. Behavioral segmentation lays the groundwork for behavioral targeting which automates the process of turning insights into action. Using both behavioral segmentation and automated targeting, the online marketer can truly begin to be interactive - driving a timely dialog between the customer and company which build on the individuals past and current online behaviors.
Please join me, Gary and Akin on December 4th at 12:00 Noon EST.

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Relevancy Matters in Email Marketing

Let's begin with a profile of a customer who received an email from a large retailer.

Name: John S
Site: MeetJohnSong.com
Gender: Male
Age Range: 40 -50
Relationship: Married
Location: Seattle, WA
Profession: Executive in an Interactive and Technology Company
Hobbies: Golf, Madden 09,
Shopping Habits: Shops at Nordstorms.com, mostly interested in shoes and have borught a lot of them from Nordstorm.com. Also buys shirts, trousers and other male clothing items. Loyal customer at Nordstrom.com and Nordstrom for many years. Has an account online and login quite often when browsing.

From what it sounds like he is a perfect customer for any male clothing items that Nordstorm wants to sell. He will be very keen to look at Nordstrom promotions. He has opted-in for an email from Nordstrom.

Last week, John and I were talking about e-retailers, targeting (in particular Behavioral Targeting), personalization and product recommendations online. During our discussion he said “you have to see an email that I received from Nordstorm”. He forwarded me the email which is shown below:




Now my questions to Nordstrom or other etailers who are sending similar emails is, “Why would you do that?” You have so much information on your customers (John in this case) why not use that information to power your emails?

John was not annoyed with Nordstrom for this email(he is a huge fan of Nordstrom. Good for the brand.) but he was disappointed. He would probably have bought something if Nordstrom had sent something relevant to him in that email.

Here is a customer waiting to convert and you are disappointing him with irrelevant emails? Why?

Don't you want happy customers who are ready to open their wallet and give you money? Don’t waste your and his time with irrelevant emails send them relevant emails.

Here are few ways to create relevancy in emails

1. Use his browsing history to look at what has been looking at but has not bought yet – Target the correct promotion
2. Use his past email click-though behavior to determine what might interest him
3. Use his checkout funnel abandonment history to determine what to send in an email
4. Use his past purchase history and make proper recommendations
5. Use the frequency and recency of his visits to the site to determine when to send him a coupon and type of promotion
6. If you do feel you have to send something unrelated to persons interest (e.g. provide him an opportunity to see what else you sell maybe lure him into buying something he might not have considered) then send it along with something relevant to him. E.g. send discount on women apparel along with some discount for men stuff
7. If you don’t have anything relevant to send then don’t send an email. Consumers are bombarded with irrelevant emails every day, you need to stand out and make your email count so don’t send anything irrelevant

Sending relevant emails is not rocket science. Most of the email tools/services have a way to send highly customized emails. You just have to explore them.

Do you have examples of irrelevant emails or relevant emails that you would like to share? Send them to me.

Comments? Questions?

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