It’s with great excitement that I announce Chris Corman, our President & CEO, will be appearing live on Online Marketing with RSS Ray Wednesday June 10th at 6pm EST.  This will be Chris’ first radio interview since coming on board in April earlier this year.

There are four basic points Chris plans to discuss

Maximizing existing traffic’s conversions
Emphasis and focus is always placed on driving traffic to websites.  Conversion rates average anywhere from 1-5% depending on industry and variables, but little attention is ever placed on reinvesting in the traffic that’s already visiting your site.  The reality is, you’ve put time, money and effort into your existing traffic base and only a low percentage of them are converting.  And that’s where Sitebrand enters the equation, helping maximize your traffic investments.

Testing messaging with your audience
Chris’ background in web analytics and measurement becomes very apparent when talking about testing and rightfully so.  Testing is a big component to Sitebrand personalization and subsequent success.  Identifying the need for personalization is one thing, but evaluating messages, understanding what works and what doesn’t is highly critical towards ongoing success.  Chris has some great ideas about testing – this will be a great piece for listeners to hear.

Personalization’s universal appeal
The e-Commerce world offers an incredible number of solutions that work towards improvements, efficiencies and increased revenue.  But unlike personalization, many of these solutions appeal to certain audiences and have limited uses.  The beauty of personalization is its universal use – personalized messages and content appeals to any and every visitor.  It has a tremendous impact on revenue and bottom line and as well on customer experience.

Bringing marketing back to marketers
As the internet continues to grow, so does it’s sophistication and technical requirements.  Marketer’s still have great ideas and ways to improve, but these plans are usually met with technical concerns and questions like “Can we do that?” and “Do we have the resources for this?”  Sitebrand’s intuitive interface makes even the most complicated segmentation rule easy to execute in minutes.  This might be one of Chris’ favorite aspect’s of Sitebrand’s Segment&Serve.

Again – don’t forget to lookout for Chris’ Sitebrand radio debut next Wednesday at 6pm EST.  Click here for more information about the show (note: click the upper left hand image for the live radio feed).

Let us know if you want to add anything to Chris’ discussion list – see you then!

It’s been some time good reader, so happy end of January. We’re one month closer to summer.

I realize times are tough right now – budgets are cut shorter than Barack Obama’s hair, company headcount is shrinking faster than Nortel’s stock and general uncertainty is causing big-time havoc on anyone looking at long term planning. See, I’ve caught up with my news and current events (see my last blog to fully understand…).

In e-Commerce, we talk a lot about first time visitors – the big unknown. There’s a huge focus on this segment and while no one has completely cracked the code, there are dozens of best practices out there with proven and repeatable results. Jim Cain, Sitebrand’s resident super analyst wrote a great whitepaper on this very subject last year.

So, cool. First time visitors are the elusive catch, the big seg (sounded cooler than segment). And so it should be – generally it makes up about 70 per cent of total traffic or more. But today, I wanted to look a little closer at return visitors. That’s approximately the other 30 per cent of your traffic and while significantly smaller than first time visitors, it’s still an important segment and could act as a more profitable one long term. All repeat visitors were once first time visitors, right? I know what you’re thinking: “How profound of you, Kevin”. Thanks for the feedback.

But think about it. You’ve already invested in driving these visitors to your site once. Maybe they bought something. Maybe they saved their cart. Maybe they looked around on your site for twice the regular average. Who knows, but for some reason, they are back. Which brings the question: what are you doing for these visitors and how do your marketing strategies look for returning visitors?

From a search marketing standpoint, you’ve done your job. They are back and on your site – again! Are you messaging targeted content to return visitors? Are you segmenting your return visitors based on if they purchased anything during their last visit? Are you A/Bing content to this segment? Do you want to create a unique customer experience? Are you able to create real-time campaigns based on click-path navigations and behaviors during that specific session?

You could be.

Enter plug: This Wednesday afternoon, I’ll be hosting a webinar geared towards this exact topic with 5 best practices to boot. Here’s the skinny: 29 minute webinar with me (rad Sitebrand Sales Engineer), on return visitors and how you could be improving conversions. And it’s free. Register now.

I can plug my own webinar on our official blog, right? Like, that’s not a faux pas, is it? I hope not. But more so, I hope to see you there – 2pm EST sharp.

I would first like to say thank you to all of those I had the pleasure of meeting while attending the Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas. It was a great show with plenty of vendors, learning seminars and certain people claiming to do exactly what Sitebrand does! It’s always entertaining and enlightening to visit certain booths and listen to the unexperienced pitch man claim; “We can do that”. So you mean to tell me that you can help convert my SEO spends and engage my customers throughout their visit all in real time?….”Of course, and we’ll even take your kids to daycare for you”. It never ceases to amaze…just where do they find these people, and more importantly how do they manage to keep a straight face while making their pitch to me? Nevertheless, it was a great show.

I would like to share a simple concept within Sitebrand’s new Segment&Serve tool that has many of our customers “double taking” their analytic reports. This ‘concept’ that I’m going to discuss is being employed by Sitebrand customers with the efforts of helping to increase their conversion on three simple letters known as ‘S.E.O’.

It’s no secret that SEO is used with the aim of achieving a higher organic search listing and thus increasing volume of targeted traffic from search engines. This is all peachy, but after spending time and money on increasing your SEO you finally have the attention of online shoppers and slowly but surely they all begin to visit your site based on exactly what their looking for. I’m sure your boss is quite happy with all the great work you’ve done, now that you’ve increased your site traffic and shoppers are coming in on specific keywords. One question;”Why are your bounce rates so high and your conversion rate based on these specific keywords is so low?” Looks like the boss isn’t too pleased anymore!

I had the pleasure of having this exact conversation with a valued Sitebrand customer, and after understanding what goals they were trying to achieve, we were able to deploy a simple campaign based on ‘Natural Keyword Search’. Sitebrand’s Segment&Serve tool allows online vendors to build campaigns based on the ‘natural keywords’ that are being used by online shoppers to find, enter and shop on their site. Working concurrently with their SEO efforts, this Sitebrand campaign was able to present a relevant message based on the shoppers keyword search. In this case the shopper was entering the site on a specific product word, which the Sitebrand campaign recognized. Sitebrand was then able to display a campaign on that exact product page offering the customer a discount on that specific product as well as a small message about the history of that site. The result was a satisfied customer who was able to find the website of their desired product but also get validation on that sites reputation and score a deal. This is just one of the many segmentation rules that is available to Sitebrand customers, helping once again to present relevant messaging and help convert customers through discount messaging and reassurance.

Relevant messaging is always important, but I think I can speak on behalf of most online shoppers when I ask; “Who can say no to a good deal?”.

Alok Ahuja

‘The Road Less Travelled’

Per my Shop.org blog post a few weeks ago, I see an eCommerce market that is still getting ready to fully embrace personalization, but still focusing more on the plans behind inputs (traffic) and outputs (customer retention/upsells). 

Based on the recent analyst reports, thought leaders in the blogosphere, and topics covered at trade events however, web site optimization (of which personalization is a part) will be the number one focus of online business in the coming years.

With that in mind, I did a Google search this morning that was a total headscratcher.   Click here to see the results.

The fourth link down is a CNET article from 5 years ago explaining the failure of web personalization.

” Companies trying to get personal with their Web site visitors in hopes of increasing sales are wasting more money than they’re earning.”

The third link down is a blog post from over 4 years ago discussing the steps required to build an actionable plan around web personalization.  This blog was well written, insightful, and would work just as well today as it would have in 2004 (advances in technology notwithstanding).  That said, it discussed the concept of personalization in terms that imply everyone is doing it, something almost all current practitioners will disagree on.

This is my favorite quote from the piece:

“It’s a tired old yarn, but if you hope to implement a web personalization strategy, the first and most important step is to develop and mature your business goals and requirements”

Wasting Money? Tired old yarn?  How can the ‘next big thing’ in eCommerce have this kind of historical background?

I blame Google. (in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way)

If you look at the writing trends in 2004 about eMarketing, you see a fairly equal split between traffic generation and website optimization.  With the increased competition that emerged online in recent years, traffic generation became so important that it completely dominated.  The chart below is a Google Trends report for “PPC” vs “Personalization” to illustrate this point.

PPC is in blue, Personalization is in red

So…after a brief lapse, the hottest concept of 2003 is gearing up to be the hottest concept of 2009.  Everything old is new again. 

Now don’t get me wrong.  There have been some major changes in the personalization space in the last 5 years.  There are some great vendors out there to power different aspects of personalization (I know a great company called Sitebrand), and the analytics space has matured to the point where it is possible to reap great rewards from a properly executed personalization initiative.

This couldn’t be made any more evident by the following point:  The CNET article referenced above cites a Jupiter Research article from 2003 called “Beyond the Personalization Myth”.  Recent reports from Forrester and Aberdeen are of the opinion that this myth has become a profitable reality.

As a personalization analyst, I would like to welcome you back to the discussion about optimizing your website and growing your business.  We missed you.

Cheers,

Jim

With eCommerce competition at an all-time high, it’s an advantage to find the right balance of mass customer appeal (acquisition) and niche customer segmentation (retention and loyalty). According to Shop.Org’s State of Online Retailing report for 2008, online retailers allocate 53% of their marketing budgets to online customer acquisiton. But sadly only 21% of marketing dollars go to online customer retention and loyalty. As marketers, we should be embarrassed with such a split. Let me explain…

Just out of the gate is the MarketLive Performance Index: Building Loyalty in a Maturing Market. It’s a very insightful report that reminds us of the importance of customer value – especially as it relates to retention and loyalty.  It pulls together some amazing stats that can’t be ignored. I think one of the most interesting stats relates to the fact that more than 1/3 of online shoppers have been buying online for 7 years or more (Source: Forrester). So naturally, these shoppers have increased expectations that can only be achieved by websites that put some thought and investment into the online experience via relevant, personalized content/offers.

The significance of these loyal, savvy shoppers is two-fold to say the least:

1. With respect to loyalty, let’s first explore customer value. MarketLive compares the value of new vs. return vs. loyal customers. Loyal customers are by far the most valuable of the trio – they’re more engaged (more visits to carts and adding at double the rate of new buyers) and their avg order size is nearly 10% higher than new customers. It’s called cross-sell, up-sell baby and it’s an enticing segment worth maximizing.

2. With respect to being savvy shoppers, expectations are high and this segment demands nothing less than relevant, meaningful experiences that appeal to their quest for unique finds, time savings, cost savings, etc. Each of these appeals can be addressed through personalized content and response potential is well documented. From the MarketLive report, Forrester found ”that of the 54% of shoppers who perceived that offers had been tailored to their personal preferences, 77% found the recommendations useful and 34% made a purchase on those recommendations.”

Point 2 really answers part of the “HOW?” re point 1, don’t you think? Consider the facts. 

MarketLive qualifies a loyal shopper as someone who has made 3 purchases or more. With that in mind and the general state of web shopping (lots of pre-buying research and browsing time), I think it’s also fair to classify these loyal shoppers as savvy shoppers.

The other great way to tap into the loyalty segment is via email. Actually email can be segmented in virtually unlimited ways – depending on your database of course. For example, it might be worth segmenting lapsed customers with a win-back email. After all, they bought once and that means they might buy again…IF you message them appropriately with personalized, relevant offers – both online and in the inbox.