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Posts from Data & Analytics

News from Molecular’s Data & Analytics practice.

September 15

3 ways to justify spending on social networks

To demonstrate social network success, savvy brand marketers must identify what success means, and then understand how it can be tracked.

To justify spending and ensure budget for future projects, it is crucial that marketers can demonstrably prove the success of a given campaign. As the economy sputters, and the struggle for budget becomes increasingly more challenging, it becomes even more important. While the majority of digital marketing can provide highly quantifiable results, social media can prove challenging. These networks are nebulous webs of people friending one another and sharing select information, and they frequently can’t be measured in clickthroughs or conversions. This article will explore how to create a metrics program to track the success of a campaign, using examples from major brands to illustrate different approaches.

1. Determine what to measure
The first step is determining what to measure. Start by considering why social media is being used in a particular campaign, and then look for ways to measure the results. It is important to set the campaign up for success. Don’t track data that is hard to gather, but do set your sights on the low-hanging fruit that will yield meaningful results. For example, many sites offer a tool enabling users to post content to their Facebook or MySpace pages. By using a tool such as Omniture, it is possible to track the frequency with which users are posting, and which networks they are using. By tracking this information, meaningful insights into the resonance and value of material on the site can be gauged.

2. Take advantage of existing tools
Social networking sites recognize that they live or die by their user base, and they understand that advertisers on these sites want specific insights into who they are talking to and how the message is being received. By using Facebook’s sophisticated tool kit, it is possible to track specifically who is engaging, and what they are doing there.

Even if the numbers aren’t hard, it is still possible to use social networking to track brand perception and better service the consumer. Twitter is a platform where users post 140 character updates on what they are doing, either through a mobile interface or via the web. Unlike Facebook or MySpace, it’s not a forum for emailing or playing games and, as such, provides fewer hooks to a brand marketer seeking to promote a message unless they have a decent amount of followers. Yet, there are ways to integrate the platform onto the site (take a look at the Betty Crocker clip below, as an example). Using tools like TweetScan, it is possible to see how frequently the brand name is being referenced on the site, and to react to any kind of coverage.

3. Track how social networking impacts other channels
Tracking the number of daily users is a no-brainer, but mapping in-network interaction to external behaviors becomes much harder. There are, however, a few ways to skin the cat, given creativity and tenacity. If a brand creates its own social network, using a pre-existing platform such as Ning, in conjunction with metrics tools, it’s possible to track entry and exit points on the site. If a clear destination has been identified as a project goal, it’s possible to drive the user there and track the volume. If a social networking campaign launches, look outside the web to see if there is a correlation between sales and the viral growth on the networks. Bacon Salt, a purveyor of foods, launched on Facebook and MySpace. Within a few days, it had sold out of product.

Conclusion
Social networking is more than just a profile page on Facebook. The power of the consumer’s voice can be harnessed in multiple ways, to serve many goals. The information can be incredibly valuable to judge the value of content, track user opinion, and propagate a brand message.

But in order to demonstrate success, the savvy brand marketer will create a thorough metrics campaign to measure the effort. The first key step is to identify what success means, and then understand how it can be tracked successfully.

Take advantage of the tools provided by the networks that are out there, see how the brand is fairing, and what can be done to get involved with the conversation. Try to track how the social networking campaign impacts other channels. Even if the numbers are not rock solid, there can be definite trends.

posted to: Data & Analytics, Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Industry Trends, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

July 17

Flickr – Most Popular Cameras

by Ricardo Salema

Thought this was a very interesting statistic even though it is not very surprising. The most popular camera on Flickr these days is being challenged by the simple photo abilities on the iPhone. I am sure it is a reflection of many things including mobility, and even audience type. It does in the end become the most versatile tool for capturing life’s moments and Flickr may be more popular now with casual photo enthusiasts and not serious hobbyists or pros.

Lot of other great information here as well. Check it out when you get a chance - http://www.flickr.com/cameras/

posted to: Creative, Data & Analytics, Experience Design, Industry Trends, Mobile, Technology, Web 2.0 & Social Media | No Comments »

June 1

Molecular Inc. Further Strengthens Data & Analytics Practice, Taps Sardinha to Lead Practice Group

by Anne Curtin

Isobar Interactive Agency Sees Data-Driven Insight and Measurement Taking Center Stage in 2009 and Beyond

Molecular has appointed Kevin Sardinha to lead its Data & Analytics Practice. He will lead the multi-disciplinary team of experts focused on driving data-led principles and practices in all aspects of the firm’s client work. Kevin moves into this role from his position as a Senior Strategist within Molecular’s Strategy team, where he led engagements for adidas, Nikon, Reebok and The Hartford.

“The ability to gather and act on intelligent customer data often spells the difference between success and failure in the online channel,” said Howard Kogan, president of Molecular. “We have always placed a strong emphasis on creating programs with data and analytics capabilities ‘built-in’, and we’re committed to investing more in this area to ensure we remain at the top of our industry for data-fueled, results-oriented interactive solutions.”

The Data & Analytics team helps Molecular clients optimize the value of their customer relationships by integrating and analyzing key data across all channels to deliver relevant and actionable insight. Its experts take clients from the creation of a performance measurement strategy, through the technical implementation of the project roadmap and finally to the delivery of insights and recommendations that drive value to the business and its constituents. Companies including Reebok, adidas, Nikon and The Hartford have been beneficiaries of the practice’s expertise. Reebok now has an integrated measurement platform that allows it to track and optimize its online campaign investments across cost-per-click, e-mail, search, and referral sites, as well as track key performance indicators regarding consumer behavior and brand recognition across multiple geographic regions.

As practice lead, Kevin brings more than 12 years of management consulting experience that spans the financial services, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, and government industries. Prior to Molecular, he was a Senior Business Analyst within Keane’s Architectural Service group. Previously, Kevin held several strategic and business analyst roles at companies such as One to One Interactive and Exchange Solutions. During his time at Exchange Solutions, he focused on developing customer management strategies and economic models for financial service clients such as Fifth Third Bank, State Street Bank, Sovereign Bank, Huntington Bank and TD Bank Financial Group.

posted to: Data & Analytics, Molecular News | No Comments »

May 11

Metric of the Month May: Using Content Management Systems for Data and Analytics

by Charudatta Wad

Intro to Post Click performance tagging:
Post Click performance measures the actions a user takes after entering a site via paid placement such as a banner ad or paid search term. Evaluating the connection between user behavior and which ads or ad locations (such as a particular partner site) helps optimize ongoing marketing by assigning value to those visitors. We can determine value by setting up measurement campaigns surrounding those click-through visitors, watching their drop-out rates and comparing them to successful conversion. Post Click measurement allows effective performance evaluation on individual ad campaigns.

Post Click performance tagging usually involves adding an image to your page. This image (1×1 pixel) uses the SRC attribute, a descriptor telling a visitor’s browser where to retrieve a file, to collect information about the users arriving to the site through an online advertisement. This is typically done by adding a string of campaign-specific identifiers in the space after the URL left for setting variable values (the stuff after the “?” in your browser’s location bar).

However, if there are numerous campaigns running through different timelines on your website, adding (and removing) the image code from the site is very tedious. The effort is exponential if the website is still under development and requires you to back up the production release code, add the image tracking code to each page and re-deploy!! The less dynamic your Post Click tagging scheme, the greater the effort to keep it current.

A great work around to the constant extra work to keep things current during deployments and post development is to use your content management system to store the tags (the image SRC and its URL variables) and use a general library to add an image node to the corresponding page document if a tag is configured to appear on that page. This elegant solution eliminates the need for re-deployment every time new tags are added.

Anatomy of the image tag:
Post Click performance image code looks similar to this, in which we have a simple conversion funnel of visitors landing on index.html and successfully converting once they have visited StoreFront.html:

In index.html:
<img style=”border: 0pt none; height: 1px; width: 1px;” src=”serverName&tagId=31354″ alt=”" />

In StoreFront.html
<img style=”border: 0pt none ; height: 1px; width: 1px;” src=”serverName&tagId=24395″/>

If you look closely only the tagId changes for each page and the rest of the image properties remain the same.

Content Management solution:
1) Using the CMS to store the tag Id. There are two ways this can be achieved:

a. Creating a page attribute (call it analyticsTagId) and assign it the tagId: This is better from the point of view of performance. It is however a bit more difficult to manage; the content owner has to remove the tags when the campaign is over. There is no central place to view all the current tags.

b. Create a separate CMS page, which maintains a Map of pages and their tagIds: This takes a bit of performance hit (which can be overcome by caching) and presents one central place to manage all of your tags.

Once the CMS has the tags, the business objects in the code will need to check for a tag on a given page and call a JavaScript function if that tag exists.

2) Write a JavaScript function that takes tagId as a parameter and adds an Image to the DOM. Using JQuery, this function can look like this:

function AddTags(tagId){

if(tagId!=”null”)

{

var source;

if(document.location.protocol == “http:”){

source = document.location.protocol +”//adserver &tagID=”+tagId;

}else{

source = document.location.protocol +”//adserver&tagID=”+tagId;

}

//create the image node and append it to body
$(‘<img/>’).css({height: ’1px’,width:’1px’,border:0}).attr(‘src’,source).appendTo(‘body’);
}
}

That’s it!

This will give you a very strong and adaptive framework to add/remove your Post Click performance campaign codes from your website without actually deploying your code.

Notes:
1) If your ad serving code is in an iframe format, it will still follow the same steps,but instead of creating an image node, create a div and place your iframe in it.

Sample js code:
function createIframeTag(src){

var axel = Math.random()+"";

var a = axel * 10000000000000;


 src = src.replace("RAND", a);
 
 $('<div/>').attr('id', 'tagDiv').appendTo('body');
 $("#tagDiv").html('<IFRAME SRC='+document.location.protocol+src+' WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 FRAMEBORDER=0></IFRAME>');
}

2) If there are more than one parameters that differ in two instances of an image code, use a dummy separator in the CMS (ex: @@) and then use js to replace it.
3) This framework is very well suited for web analytics code. The page attribute will now contain the name of the page, any special event that needs to be recorded, segmentation details and so on.

posted to: Content Management, Data & Analytics, Molecular News, metric of the month | No Comments »

April 22

Google Analytics APIs Launched

by Charudatta Wad

Google announced the launch of its Google Analytics Data Export APIs (beta) today. It was anticipated for a long time. Analytics API is a Google data API (same as Google calender API). APIs currently support Java and JavaScript (details on the Google Analytics Blog).

So what does this mean to Google analytics users?

You can access Google Analytics on your desktop (using Adobe AIR or Google Desktop). Desktop reporting is one such application.
You can access specific reports on your iphone or Android powered phones. Few other cool applications can be found here.

The most important impact is that you can mash-up your data. You can marry your web analytics data with your offline data (Sales, CRM), create custom dashboards or new visualizations. Web analytics reports can be combined with data from other sources to create even more accurate predictive models and study online-offline user behaviours. You can now track your multi-channel campaigns more effectively.

Other web analytics vendors (like Omniture) already provide this functionality but Google Analytics is the first big player to do it for free (a lot of $$$ savings). Piwik (open source web analytics solution) enables you to own your analytcs data by hosting it in-house, but with these new APIs, you can save yourself the hassle of maintaining the analytics server and import the data.

posted to: Data & Analytics, Digital Strategy | No Comments »