Dave Chaffey explains why relevant and effective online messages rely on audience segmentation
In light of the rapidly growing number of digital channels competing for our attention, the question of how to measure and achieve online engagement is becoming more pressing. So it is a promising sign that digital marketing bloggers have been buzzing lately about opportunities to gauge engagement for different types of online business. Research analysts and commentators have defined frameworks, indices and measures to help marketers assess their engagement effectiveness.
The need for segmentation
The need to differentiate between customer segments has not been properly addresses in the discussions around online engagement. These segments can be assessed online through web analytics, transaction history and/or email marketing responses. A more granular approach to assessing customer engagement is more actionable and therefore more powerful.
For customer acquisition, it is useful to breakdown online engagement by the source or referrer of the visitor. For example, how engaged are visitor segments for different digital channels such as paid and natural search, affiliates and display ads? You can also drill down further to see engagement for different search terms.
The latest versions of web analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Visual Sciences make segmentation much more straightforward. You can use measures such as bounce rate, duration on site or the number of conversion goals achieved for each referrer. This is a great way of assessing the quality of traffic and to refine promotional tactics.
Focusing on search behaviour and touch points
You should also review engagement with a brand through search behaviour. This will fluctuate according to the success of different marketing campaigns, but you should look for long-term and seasonal trends compared to competitors using audience research tools such as Hitwise which can be used to compare online engagement between brands. Within your own analytics you can assess number of searches including:
- URL search
- Brand name searches
- Brand plus product searches
A bigger challenge going forward is measuring engagement across multiple touch points through online acquisition; in other words, assessing the contribution of different digital channels such as paid search, display ads and affiliates. Many media agencies or in-house teams are developing their own solutions because the tools of the analytics companies are not appropriate.
Engagement through retention can be a struggle since analytics data sets are not usually integrated with customer profile or response data – although analytics tools such as Core Metrics do have this capability. Some are solving this problem through integrating data into a data warehouse which combines web analytics data, customer profiles, customer satisfaction, customer advocacy as well as campaign response and transactional data. For larger organisations, the data warehousing approach is increasingly used as a way to obtain a holistic view of customer engagement and then to use a right-touching approach to deliver customised messages.
Siloed systems have complicated data integration
But this requires a tremendous amount of system and data integration. With email marketing, for instance, software has to be developed to trigger a personalised email when a new customer is added to the database and then to close the loop by adding response data back into the data warehouse. Similarly, with personalised web pages the data warehouse must be integrated with the content management system to serve customised messages in personalised containers across a site. Then, the number of views and clicks on this personalised message must be tracked at a customer level and finally added back to the customer database.
I believe this situation has developed because of the siloed systems created for managing web interactions – from content management systems, email broadcast systems, site visitor data collection systems and web analytics systems. There have been many mergers and acquisitions between vendors, but retro-integrating siloed systems often leads to a disintegrated tool.
The problem is compounded since we are still no closer to a standardisation of formats for tagging or exchanging web analytics or email response data (other than the standard web log file data) or APIs to share data between applications. This means that changing the system used to assess engagement is a major project.
Right-touching is not straightforward – but it's crucial
A similar situation exists with most email marketing packages – it would be valuable to use the reporting systems to assess how engaged different customer segments are with the email channel and how this varies for traditional profile demographics. It is amazing how few email marketing broadcast and reporting packages allow you to easily see the responsiveness of different segments measured as open/clicks/leads/purchases. While you can see variations in engagement by creating different segments and different broadcasts, there will still be sub-segments that require examination.
So, it is imperative to consider your online engagement strategy. How well are you measuring engagement of different online audiences? How effectively do you close the loop by using this data to deliver more relevant communications? Creating the data and software infrastructure to achieve right-touching will certainly not be straightforward. But for those who can execute a plan to implement the right infrastructure this can give an excellent opportunity to deliver much more relevant online messaging.
Dave Chaffey is a member of the cScape Customer Engagement Unit and director of Marketing Insights Limited. Dave has been recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 "gurus" worldwide who "have shaped the future of Marketing". The author of specialist E-consultancy best practice guides on E-marketing tactics like SEO and PPC, Dave has also written a number of best-selling books, including Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice, currently in its third edition.
http://www.davechaffey.com/