A recent MediaPost research brief revealed some interesting findings about the potential for in-bar marketing. The Arbitron Bar Media Report claims that younger individuals (age 21-34) who frequent bars tend to belong to a difficult demographic to reach via traditional marketing channels because of their increased use of newer consumer media technologies like TiVo and streaming online content.

Obviously, this demographic is not every company's target customer, but has potential nonetheless. The difficulty many businesses would have with this, technique, however, is tracking campaign performance and the resulting conversions. But, behavioral targeting technology allows for relevant marketing execution and effective measurement.

For companies using this tactic, it would be important to look at the multi-channel metrics for marketing campaigns across different regions where they've implemented this approach via digital signage, experiential marketing, video, etc. A comprehensive marketing database allows marketers to easily create a segment for analysis in terms of sales performance among current customers who fit the target demographic in each region.

In the newest release of our product, JuiceMetrIQs, we've implemented additional functions for better customer segmentation and segment analysis! We're continuing to work with our clients and strategic partners to develop the tools they need to increase customer retention, analyze their customer data, and subsequently create better targeted behavioral marketing.

JuiceMetrIQs users can now compare sales, acquisition, and customer demographic data from different segments side by side, making it easier to identify segment activity in relation to total sales.


Additionally we've re-introduced the data chart builder where users can create charts based on the type of data, segment, and date range displayed.


We've also included functions within our email marketing message reporting that allows users to create segments from link click activity, unifying customer purchase history with marketing interactions. This on-demand segmentation can then be used with our segment comparison tool to easily see how sales, acquistion, and demographics differs between customers who click on different links.

In terms of email conversion tracking, on top of tracking the sales revenue received from individuals sent an email, we now plot anticipated sales numbers (based on sales from the previous 6 weeks) so our clients can see how their email generated sales are performing in the context of expected sales levels.



It probably needs a little updating now, but for more information, check out our demo. 

By John Faris from the Red Door Interactive Biz Blog

On May 6th, Red Door hosted a panel discussion on Customer Lifetime Value that included a number of industry experts.

Red Door Interactive President, Reid Carr started the session with a quick introduction of the panel and the topic at hand. He pointed out that acquisition and conversion strategies often dominate the focus of Web marketers at the expense of retention and extension strategies. This leads to a lost opportunity for engaging with your customers and creating long-term value instead of one-off conversions.

At that point, the panel discussion kicked-off with speakers, Rick Enrico of Juice Media, Susan Tull of BlueHornet, and Katelyn Himes of La Quinta Hotels. Instead of providing a transcript of the entire session question-by-question, I’ll just summarize the main points made by each individual during the Q&A.

Rick Enrico proclaimed that the future of marketing lies in automated one-to-one communication with customers through multiple touch points. By leveraging data from marketing channels such as mobile, social, search, and email; companies can segment their users by behavior/interaction/analytics and then generate content that is hyper-relevant to each segment. Companies should use segmentation and relevancy to replace “batch and blast” in their marketing communications. Moreover, companies should move towards a pull marketing strategy in which they give customers a choice about how they interact with the brand. One customer may want to be contacted by mobile text message when a specific product is available, while another may want to be contacted by email when the company is offering special promotions. By giving customers the option to choose the content and the medium, companies will generate better customer lifetime value.

Susan Tull focused on email communications and started by pointing out that marketers have been talking about automated one-to-one marketing communications for ten years, but that now the tools are available to implement it effectively. Marketers need to get started with segmentation and one-to-one marketing now or they will be left behind. Companies should take a “crawl, walk, run” approach so they aren’t intimidated about acting now. You can worry more about advanced strategies when they get further into the process. One easy strategy to get started with is email link segmentation. Look at what links people are clicking on in your emails and segment those people into groups based on their behavior. Then follow-up with those various groups with relevant messaging based on the links they originally clicked on.

Susan stressed that the first thirty days after someone opts in to email is typically the best/most profitable time to engage with them. The rest of the panelists nodded in agreement. Companies should send a series of messages during that period to encourage the customer to engage with the brand and/or make purchases. With regards to analyzing results, many marketers are mistakenly judging the value of a campaign by looking at one-off transactions when they should really be looking at customer lifetime value.

Katelyn Himes gave the in-house marketer’s perspective on customer retention and value. Companies should leverage behavioral data to further engage with their target market. For example, La Quinta saw their email response rates nearly double when they segmented respondents and non-respondents and sent a special follow-up message to each group. Marketer can also see great value when they create event-triggered email campaigns. Event-triggered emails tend to be more relevant to the user and may increase their patience and receptiveness in receiving other promotional offers via email. By analyzing and segmenting users based on recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM), companies can be more strategic with who they market to and how they market to them. Lastly, Katelyn stated that companies should treat their customers like a spouse. Give them a chance to provide feedback, listen to their feedback, and take the necessary actions to create a happy long-term relationship.

In the end, the whole panel agreed that customer perception is reality, and that testing is crucial to any marketing efforts that a company undertakes.

By Rick Enrico

--Find out how to collect and analyze the cross-company data needed for effective marketing programs without the struggle of working with IT.--

Marketers who look for ways to work better with their IT counterparts will find ample references and suggestions from any search engine; the cyber world is littered with "how-to" papers and thought pieces. With all this information readily available, one would think the business units could easily find common ground.

Think again.

Reality shows us that the opposite is true, and for understandable reasons. While marketing relies heavily on corporate and internet networks to conduct one-to-one lead generation, branding campaign and customer service initiatives, IT departments are usually knee-deep with other mission-critical support requirements, particularly in operations and finance. These disparate pain-points invariably lead to conflict in priorities that, in today's world of shrinking budgets and staff, will not resolve itself simply by instituting a "Can't we all just get along" executive order.

Instead, successful organizations are deploying third-party web-based systems to enable marketers to search disassociated customer databases to build customer profiles and update segments in real-time; all without creating IT work requests in the process. These platforms streamline the marketing process by enabling companies to store customer interaction data -- such as sales transactions, demographics, website data and email addresses -- and segment that information to build relevant targeted marketing campaigns. Customer data is housed in a single warehouse that is tied to a concise central reporting dashboard. 

This real-time information empowers marketers to plan and execute stand-alone or comprehensive cross-channel marketing programs that can include email, direct mail, online video, voicemail, surveys, live chat and lead management. The results include higher conversion rates as well as increased customer satisfaction and client retention.

Here's an example. A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an email campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business. Doing this effectively meant knowing what the customers had previously purchased, and thus required integration between the company's loyalty and POS databases with an email marketing system. The company leveraged an on-demand, marketing intelligence platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial email messages without tying up the IT department's resources in the process. The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy. The result: The retailer witnessed a 150-percent uplift in email marketing ROI from that one campaign.

What's more, the marketing department was able to quickly combine POS and web data on its own within the technology platform to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer's website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.

Steps to integation

To get started, marketers must first evaluate if such a system would be of benefit to them. Start by identifying all the areas that customer data is currently held within an organization. The outcome may surprise some. In addition to a central CRM system, accounting systems, e-commerce and product marketing departments typically have other customer data not captured anywhere else.
 
Once all the proverbial stones have been overturned, organizations should consider all the marketing initiatives they do, such as direct mail, online, advertising and in-store promotions. Companies that maintain more than two customer data houses and conduct at least three distinctly different marketing promotion campaigns throughout a given business year would benefit greatly from a marketing intelligence platform.

If a more in-depth analysis of market dynamics, messaging and tactics is required, companies may consider hiring an outsourced research firm. There are numerous ones to choose from of all shapes, sizes and fee structures. Wikipedia offers links to several of them here.

When evaluating web-based intelligence platforms, marketers need to ask the following questions:

• Can the system hyper-segment data from various sources based on customer behaviors and preferences?
• Can the system "Mash Up" this data into a central dashboard for up-to-date reports and analyses?
• Does the system integrate with email marketing platforms, thereby allowing companies to plan, execute and analyze such campaigns in one click?
• Does the system automatically push updates and new versions without interrupting operations or requiring in-house IT support?

Today, marketers are in greater need for data-driven business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting that they can leverage to create dynamic and relevant promotion campaigns. The introduction of web-based systems helps define the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization while still keeping marketing and IT departments out of each other's hair.

A recent report performed by the CMO council reveals some staggering results:  50% of over 450 marketers worldwide said they had only a fair, little or no knowledge of their customers.

The report focused on where and how “marketers are ‘operationalizing’ customer intelligence and insight to reduce customer churn, increase lifetime value, improve the customer experience, and increase the effectiveness and targeting of marketing spend."

While Web 2.0 is developing at a breakneck pace, marketing technology seems to be left behind (or at least its effective implementation). What’s great about Web 2.0’s is that it spreads user-generated content; its value comes from those who ultimately use it. Marketing departments need to tap into the proven success of this model: content succeeds when it’s based on the customers themselves, but right now the majority of companies seem to be missing out.

According to the report, a major obstacle for the companies surveyed is the unification of disparate customer repositories, resulting in the inability to garner adequate customer intelligence and insight.

The CMO Council believes that “investing in integrated systems that harvest customer insight is critical to driving both marketing and business performance.” Simply put, comprehensive marketing solutions should be designed to leverage customer data for the creation and delivery of relevant marketing that reduces customer churn and increases loyalty.

Here are the CMO Council’s key findings:

• Only 15 percent of marketers say their companies are doing an extremely good or effective job of integrating disparate customer data sources and repositories; 55 percent note there is room for improvement or a deficiency in this area.
• More than 31 percent of companies surveyed had customer churn rates of more than 10 percent and 32 percent reported turnover of five to 10 percent. In comparison, more than 62 percent said they desired or expected a churn level of less than five percent
• Respondents believe customer churn significantly impacts business performance through revenue loss (59.9 percent), reduced profitability (39.6 percent) and greater marketing and re-acquisition costs (36.3 percent)
• While churn is a big issue, nearly 67 percent of those surveyed say they have no system for re-activating dormant or lost customers, while just over half of respondents have a strategy for further penetrating or monetizing key account relationships.
• While more than 35 percent of respondents report that the CMO or marketing department (38.9 percent) has primary responsibility for the customer analytics function, they are not leveraging its value. Over 31 percent of those surveyed do no data mining at all and 63 percent are only doing moderate levels of data mining for intelligence and insight.
• The top six strategic applications of customer information by marketers include:
  • Up-selling and cross-selling
  • Segmenting and targeting
  • Driving retention, loyalty and promotional programs
  • Identifying new opportunities and unmet needs
  • Improving customer service
  • Shaping personalized and customized communications
• Key initiatives to increase customer retention include improving customer communications (65.2 percent); addressing complaints, problems and pain points (51.8 percent); and enhancing the customer experience (54.8 percent). Unfortunately, fewer marketers noted their companies’ willingness to modify business practices and policies to accommodate customer needs.

Read the original article: "Marketers are Flying Blind When It Comes to Leveraging Customer Data and Analytics, Reports the CMO Council."

Petco's goals for delivering relevant marketing is a major undertaking. The level of personalization they are trying to reach with their campaigns is what most other businesses should strive for. However, creating one part of the integrated marketing system, as the article states, required six months of dedicated development! That's a major investment that many companies just don't have the resources to make.

Consequently a company, Juice Media is addressing the ever growing demand for these types of integrated multi-channel marketing technology solutions. Part of the JuiceMetrIQs solution is its ability to connect and report across multiple points of sale and access all those records and information from a single application. It's all about having the ability to really know your customers and develop behavior based marketing.

Read the article except below to learn about the motivation behind Petco's big move, what it took to make it, and how they plan to use their new marketing technology for improved customer acquisition and retention.

The following is an excerpt from an the Internet Retailer article, "Do You Know Me?" , by Don Davis.

Data Silos

Many retailers would like to follow Petco’s lead, but find their efforts stymied because customer data is held separately by store, e-commerce and catalog/call center systems. Nonetheless, a growing number of multi-channel retailers are creating cross-channel data repositories, and using them to provide more relevant offers and improved customer service.

Driving these efforts are the growing numbers of multi-channel consumers who want to receive offers that matter to them. 64% of consumers said they went online to do research before making a purchase within the past three months, including 77% of those with incomes of $75,000 or more, according to a study by e-commerce vendor Sterling Commerce.

And the best thing a merchant can do to ensure repeat patronage is “provide special offers based on my prior purchases,” said 59% of respondents last year, in a survey by interactive marketing firm DoubleClick Performics and research and consulting firm The E-Tailing Group.

But technical and internal political issues prevent many retailers from sharing data across channels. While a survey last fall found 75% of retailers collect customer-specific data in stores and 45% online, the most common way that data is stored is separately by channel, an answer given by half of merchants responding, according to Retail Systems Research.

“They’re collecting a tremendous amount of information about customers, but haven’t figured out how to share that across channels yet,” says Brian Kilcourse, managing partner at the research firm.

Why? Lack of both time and senior-level support, suggests a study released in January by the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group. In that survey, the top two challenges to cross-channel integration were “time required to evaluate promising practices” and “difficulty in measuring return on investment,” each chosen by 84% of respondents. Close behind, at 83%, was “organizational culture does not support integration.”

Some have overcome the obstacles, such as Petco, which expected to complete this spring merging store and web data into a single customer data mart. Lazarchic says there are three main tasks: collect the customer data, gather it all in one database and then figure out how to use it.

For many multi-channel retailers, he says, identifying store shoppers is difficult because many transactions are anonymous. Petco has the advantage of a long-standing loyalty program called PALS that has signed up millions of customers with offers of discounts and rewards. When a PALS member makes a purchase, that information goes into the file for that customer.

For Petco, the toughest piece was creating the customer data mart, which took an internal team six months to complete, Lazarchic says. Each customer’s profile will include, besides online and offline transactions, information drawn from analytics provider Coremetrics Inc. about what the customer searched for and viewed at Petco.com. “Before we only knew what you purchased,” Lazarchic says. “With the Coremetrics data we’ll know your interest and intent.”

The customer profile has 150 or more data points. Petco not only tracks what type of pet a customer owns, but whether he buys premium or organic food, and which purchases he makes in store versus online.

It’s all aimed at making offers relevant. “If a customer buys 40-pound bags of dog food in the store because he doesn’t want to pay shipping charges, I want to keep marketing messages for store stuff store-specific,” Lazarchic says. “But if he’s buying three and a half pound bags of cat food online, I’ll send him online cat offers. I want to keep it specific by channel and pet type.”

-Alliance brings marketing intelligence platform to Asia-Pacific corporations-

San Diego - Thursday, March 13, 2008 - Juice Media Worldwide, a pioneer in on-demand marketing intelligence software and solutions, announced today its strategic partnership with Citrus, one of Australia's leading digital agencies.

The alliance offers Asia-Pacific corporations access to JuiceMetrIQs™, Juice Media's web-based marketing application designed to optimize campaign execution and measurement. JuiceMetrIQs™ facilitates the development, delivery, and performance analysis of highly-personalized marketing campaigns by connecting customer, marketing channel, and sales data within a single application.

"Executing an effective promotion campaign requires a wealth of relatable intelligence," said Peter Noble, CEO of Citrus. "JuiceMetrIQs™ provides information-rich data that enables marketers to improve their campaigns without retooling their entire department or increasing their demand on IT support."

JuiceMetrIQs™ provides marketing intelligence by combining sales and customer information with marketing communication interaction data. This empowers companies to create customized offline, online, and cross-promotion campaigns that target their intended audiences with pinpoint accuracy. As a result, marketers are able to raise levels of customer satisfaction, improve client retention, and lift conversion rates.

"In today's economy, businesses around the globe must focus even more on the relevancy of their promotion campaigns," said Rick Enrico, President and CEO of Juice Media.  "JuiceMetrIQs™ solves this distributed data dilemma by offering an easy-to-implement automated marketing platform for businesses that need improved cross-channel marketing reporting, efficiency and results. We’re proud of our ability to service Citrus’ customers in this regard."


About Citrus, Inc.:

Citrus is a leading Melbourne-based digital agency providing a full suite of interactive services including digital strategy, creative web design & development, user experience, branded eCommerce, relationship marketing, and analytics & optimisation.

Citrus works as a consultative business partner to some of Australia's leading brands including Sussan, Sportsgirl, Borders, STA Travel, Victoria Racing Club (VRC), and Babcock & Brown Communities. A deep dive strategic approach allows Citrus to work intimately with clients' resulting in digital marketing initiatives that go back to the business a whole, and bring brands closer to their consumers.

For more information, please visit www.citrus.com.au

About Juice Media:

Based in San Diego California, Juice Media Worldwide develops JuiceMetrIQs™, a SaaS on-demand Marketing Intelligence platform.   The JuiceMetrIQs application automatically unifies distributed consumer data from multiple IT systems in real-time to enable marketers to deliver highly personalized one-to-one communications based on purchasing patterns and previous marketing interactions.  JuiceMetrIQs™ empowers marketers to deliver marketing messages to customers through the right channel, with the right content, at the right time.

For more information please visit http://www.juicemetriqs.com

By Rick Enrico
President and CEO
Juice Media Worldwide

Marketers who look for ways to work better with their IT counterparts will find ample references and suggestions from any search engine; the cyber world is littered with "how-to" papers and thought pieces.  With all this information readily available, one would think the businesses units could easily find common ground.

Think again.

Reality shows us that the opposite is true, and for understandable reasons.  While Marketing relies heavily on corporate and Internet networks to conduct one-to-one lead generation, branding campaign and customer service initiatives, IT departments are usually knee-deep with other mission-critical support requirements, particularly in operations and finance.  These disparate pain-points invariably lead to conflict in priorities that, in today's world of shrinking budgets and staff, will not resolve itself simply by instituting a "Can't we all just get along" executive order.

Instead, successful organizations are deploying third-party Web-based systems to enable marketers to search disassociated customer databases to build customer profiles and update segments in real-time; all without creating IT work requests in the process.  These platforms streamline the marketing process by allowing companies to store customer interaction data - such as sales transactions, demographics, Web site data and email addresses - and segment that information to build relevant targeted marketing campaigns. Customer data is housed in a single warehouse that is tied to a concise central reporting dashboard. 

This real-time information empowers marketers to plan and execute stand-alone or comprehensive cross channel marketing programs that can include email, direct mail, online video, voicemail, surveys, live chat and lead management. The results include higher conversion rates as well as increased customer satisfaction and client retention.

Here's an example.  A Midwest-based retailer wanted to create an e-mail campaign targeted to past purchasers in order to acquire repeat business.  Doing this effectively meant knowing what they had previously purchased, and thus required integration between their Loyalty and POS databases with an e-mail marketing system. The company leveraged an on-demand, marketing intelligence platform to facilitate the channel integrations and segment past purchasers who were opted in to receive commercial e-mail messages without tying up the IT department's resources in the process.  The retailer then executed a targeted campaign with pinpoint accuracy.  The result - the company witnessed a 150-percent uplift in e-mail marketing ROI from that one campaign.

What's more, the marketing department was able to quickly combine POS and Web data on their own within the technology platform to better understand customer behavior and deliver only the most relevant promotion campaigns to subscribers. Subsequently, the retailer's Website traffic increased by 40 percent within 60 days.

When evaluating Web-based intelligence platforms, marketers need to ask the following questions:

• Can the system hyper-segment data from various sources based on customer behaviors and preferences?
• Can the system "Mash Up" this data into a central dashboard for up-to-date reports and analyses?
• Does the system integrate with e-mail marketing platforms, thereby allowing companies to plan, execute and analyze such campaigns in one click?
• Does the system automatically push updates and new versions without interrupting operations or requiring in-house IT support?

Today, marketers are in greater need for data-driven business intelligence, hyper segmentation and behavioral targeting that they can leverage to create dynamic and relevant promotion campaigns.  The introduction of Web-based systems helps defines the aggregation, analytics and automation of customer interaction data to drive campaign optimization while still keeping marketing and IT departments out of each other's hair.

by David L. Smith

One of the major issues for Web media continues to be data. In the end, data is the thing that sets us apart. Because of interactivity, we have more information than any other medium. In fact, we have so much data, we’re drowning in it. Bob Ivins, now with comScore, first stated that trying to parse web data was “like taking a drink out of a firehose.” This was back when he was vice president, marketing, of I/PRO in the mid ‘90s. It was true then, and remains true today.

Given the size of the data cubes we have, it takes time to do everything. Simple reporting is a chore. Scheduled reporting is a good idea, but the adjustments that a media tracker or analyst must make to the data invariably necessitate exporting the waited-for report into a spreadsheet to make further refinements. The third-party ad-serving companies are lacking in dashboards and business rule capability that would help to automate reporting.

Given that this reporting takes so long, the time available to do real analysis of the data cube is sub-optimal. And, the reality is that it would take too long to crunch most of the data that folks want.
Enter the future in cloud computing. Wikipedia defines cloud computing as  “a computing paradigm shift in which computing is moved away from personal computersor an individual application server to a ‘cloud’ of computers. Users of the cloud only need to be concerned with the computing service being asked for, because the underlying details of how it is achieved are hidden. This method of distributed computings done by pooling computer resources and managing them via software (rather than by a human).

The services requested of a cloud are not limited to web applications, but may also include IT management tasks, such as requesting of systems, a software stack, or a specific web appliance.”
I love it. Paradigm shift is back. All due to something that sounds a lot like peer-to-peer computing applied to the enterprise. Could it be that the experimentation that went on with programs like Napster 1.0 will change the face of enterprise computing?

A recent article in Business Week counted IBM, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo at the forefront of cloud computing, which got me to thinking. Google buys DoubleClick (assuming the Europeans can clear their barriers on this). Microsoft buys aQuantive, which includes Atlas. All of a sudden the two top agency and advertiser third-party ad servers are associated with massive analytics crunching power like they’ve never had before. Rather than be afraid of the power that has been vested through Google and Microsoft owning so much data, let’s look at this from a positive side. We could soon have the capability to answer a lot of the questions we haven’t ever had the bandwidth to accomplish.
 
Time to think about what questions we really want to know the answers to.