WPP, Omniture form strategic partnership

With an eye toward providing clients with more-effective insights across digital and traditional media channels, media holding company WPP Group and Web analytics solutions provider Omniture have entered a strategic partnership.

The pact includes WPP making a $25 million investment in Omniture and integrating many of WPP’s marketing technologies and information products into Omniture’s platform.

“In the current economic environment and as clients continue to experiment with and develop their online budgets, the need for better analysis, measurability and focus on return on investment is more important than ever,” said Sir Martin Sorrell, group chief executive at WPP, in a statement. “This partnership will help our many mutual clients meet these objectives by equipping WPP agencies – across all geographies and disciplines – with the capabilities and tools needed to customize and deploy Omniture solutions in the most efficient and effective ways.”

The two companies will collaborate on technology development, on sharing data and information and in consulting services. The partnership will focus on providing marketing executives with the consumer insights they need to increase revenue and profit returns from online marketing and to optimize overall marketing expenditures.
WPP companies involved in this partnership include G2, OgilvyOne, RMG, Wunderman, These Days, Enfatico, specialist agencies Schematic, VML and ZAAZ, Group M, 24/7 Real Media, Kantar and Bridge Worldwide.

Source: www.wpp.com

Web Analytics Wednesday in Antwerp @ These Days – Recap

On Wednesday 21 January 2009 These Days organized, together with Michaël Notté, WAA Country Manager Belgium, the first Web Analytics Wednesday in Antwerp. It was a great a great success and hopefully the start of a very active web analytics community in Belgium.

74 people subscribed for the event, and about 50 showed up at the These Days offices. The majority of the attendees were agencies and consultants, 3 vendors showed up (Google, Nedstat and Unica) and only a small part were practioners.

The evening started with an introduction of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) by Michaël. His first public appearance in his role as WAA Country Manager.
Although the WAA already exists since 2003, only about 8 participants were member. But after Michaël explained what the WAA is all about – providing quality education, developing standards and best practices, conducting research and advocating for issues that advance the industry – no doubt more people will take up a membership asap.

The intro of the WAA was followed by an open discussion with the present webanalytics enthusiasts to outline the future of webanalytics community in Belgium. The topics discussed included…

Looking for marketing ROI, choose Email

The 2009 lookout about investments in marketing is not good as many firms cut their marketing budgets left and right.Instead of taking an axe to your marketing budget, consider first how your budget allocation and move some resources to digital marketing activities that yield a higher ROI.

One such cost-efficient, high-ROI marketing activity is email marketing.

• In fact, a 2008 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) study found that email’s ROI in 2008 was $45.06 for every dollar spent on it.
• In addition, a 2008 retailer survey by shop.org found that email marketing has the second-lowest cost per order (CPO) of any online marketing method. The email marketing CPO of $6.85 beat paid Web search, which yielded a $19.33 CPO.

Email Is Underutilized

Despite its low cost and high ROI, email marketing still accounts for a small fraction of most marketing budgets and sometimes is not used at all as a marketing medium.

• According to a 2008 Forrester study, only 48% of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have been using email for four years or longer. But now they’re beginning to embrace it with gusto.
• Those already doing email marketing for a relatively low cost could increase the amount of time and energy they put into their email marketing to increase ROI.This means striving to improve your content, offers, and making use of segmentation or real-time optimization features that you may not be using.

For example, Elastic™, an e-mail marketing service by These Days,  enables you to segment your email lists by demographic or other criteria (e.g., city, preference). In addition, it enables you to send out triggered emails based on various criteria, including set intervals from the day the user subscribes to your list (sometimes called “drip marketing”) and date-based triggers, such as a special-offer email sent on someone’s birthday.

Conclusion

• Email marketing is a bright spot in marketing that has high ROI and excellent metrics.
• High-ROI marketing efforts are always a good idea, but they are especially valuable in times like these, when the economy is soft.
• Keeping email marketing as a vital component of your larger strategy should help keep your overall marketing ROI healthy.

Web analytics funding biggest hurdle in 2009

The Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced the results of its 2009 Industry Outlook Survey of over 650 marketing and analytics professionals. The survey results uncover unique insights about the major issues, challenges and investments in web analytics in 2009.

• While over 40 percent of respondents see funding as the biggest challenge in 2009, the investment outlook is positive.
• Over 96 percent of respondents indicated that they plan to increase or maintain current spending on web analytics in 2009.
• According to the survey, the budget increases will primarily be used to boost web analytics training.
• Roughly 81 percent of respondents plan to invest in consulting and staffing to help make the most out of their existing analytics tools and take action on the data they provide to improve web site performance and boost ROI from online marketing campaigns.
• Also, over 41 percent indicated they will be investing in add-on tools such as behavioral targeting and paid search.

• Over 65 percent of respondents indicated revealed a demand to have business decisions driven by analytics.

Other top priorities:

• Best practices implementation
• KPI development
• Process development
• Getting executive management awareness and support on web analytics

The Industry Outlook survey was deployed to both WAA members and non-members, and survey respondents represented a wide range of job functions from the US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Online marketers and analysts from a variety of industries formed the majority of more than 650 participants.

The full results are available for free download on www.webanalyticsassociation.org.