Econsultancy Online Marketing Masterclass liveblogging summary – Nov 2009

Great to be at the sixth year of this Econsultancy event - I was there at the start. speaking at the first couple of events, but today speakers are exclusively client-side experiences which is fine by me, I can relax.

As always the talks are structured around the famous Econsultancy Wheel which is a good model for developing a digital strategy:

Customer acquisition session

ACQUIRE 1: Social media, viral marketing, creativity...
Andy Hobsbawm and James Alexander, Founders, Green Thing

Great description of developing business. From a digital perspective, my takeaway was developing a social media distribution strategy, i.e.

1. Post blog post or offer on site.

2. Syndicate to primary networks manually so personal, e.g. Facebook, Twitter

3. Automate distribution to less popular social networks and popular video sites where relevant  via Tube Mogul

ACQUIRE 2 : Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Julian Sambles, Head of Audience Development, Telegraph Media Group

Julian's angle was principles of SEO are easy if you follow the guides (like my best practice guide!), but the challenge in a large organisation is getting the audience to change behaviour in content owners, in this case journalists.

It's an interesting case since The Telegraph has been very successful online, partly through Julian's SEO efforts - growing by 1 million uniques per month and currently 30 million per month - displacing The Guardian.

This has been achieved through

• Strategic focus on SEO in editorial - seen as "hygiene factor" - "SEO is core of everything we do"
• Journalists weeks online course including copyrighting and use of video
• Integrated editorial floor e.g. head of sport multiplatform - delivering across print, web, email, mobile
• Improve distribution of content through social networks
• SEO considered in all new builds
• Content management system is right for SEO

"There's no CMS that fulfills everything you ever want, it's all about compromise, it's about understanding your workflow and optimise and much as you can within the constraints of the technology".

Educating content owners is key, in this case journalists, key point Julian makes to staff - for journalists it's all about the front page, but for the website there are a lot more people deep-linking arriving on site. Every page counts.

Core concept is Don't optimise  for Google, but the people behind Google, e.g. watching TV, current issues, what will they type, consider longer keyword phrases. So use phrases in headline, sub-heads copy, which people search for.  [This is why I have pushed the concept of Keyphrases not Keywords for measuring and targeting SEO for years]

Need to educate that traditional print headlines such as "Gotcha", "Payback time" don't work online for SEO so need to change - reminded me of the classic this boring headline is written for google.  But of course need to avoid the other extreme of keyword stuffing.

ACQUIRE 3: Display advertising and multi-channel acquisition marketing
Russell Gould, Consultant (former E-commerce Director, Thomas Cook)

Russell's themes were need to:

1. Integrate customer journey analysis to understand behaviour

2. Use media synergy of display + search + video to get media-multiplier affect.

3. Re-target individual through integrating web visits data with ad network

Avoid being myopic - just focusing on SEO

Telescope rather than microscope - start with understanding customer behaviour, i.e. top-down top

Lot's of great examples of media synergy - Display plus search, YouTube plus display - will have to download the deck for these.

How to optimise marketing mix:

1. Digital is transparent - mine the data to take the right decisions. Test, Learn, Refine. We still don't do enough of this in Digital

2. Understand the customer search path - which keywords, which websites (intermediaries), which entry points, which content consumed, create unique id to follow across multiple visits (even at home and work computer).

[I would add create key segments for these to aggregate up].

For example, segments of:

Cruise holiday or beach holiday within last 7 days, went into late deals. Can then display across Ad networks to that customer - so behavioural retargeting examples.

3. Minimise wastage, e.g. phrases, sites that don't work.

4. Optimise offline - how do you integrate with TV and print?

Managing and attributing multichannel parts of the organisation

Russell's final points were:

1. Customer value should reside in one location - PnL in one place otherwise competition between online and offline - store, phone.

2. Staff should be renumerated no only on new sales, but customer value and customer retention. E.g. if staff collect email address and then that person goes on to buy online, store staff get credited.

3. Need to implement an offline attribution model. For every online researcher who searches online at least one books offline - so need to attribute this, so can invest enough online.

CONVERT 1 : Optimising site conversion - the best tools and techniques
Craig Sullivan, Group eBusiness Customer Experience Manager, Belron® International (Autoglass etc.)

I have been following Craig's work for several years via Emetrics and UKNM and he certainly has more experience than most in conversion optimization following successful stints at John Lewis.com and LoveFILM. He also recently shared with me a fantastics one pager on "Holistic Optimisation", his topic today - so this will be another download the deck afterwards.

Here is his toolkit:

1. Review bounce rate including bounce index - normalise by page popularity. Segment by traffic source.

2. Ask customers - shout-outs for 4Q iPerceptions tool, SurveyGizmo, Kampyle and ClickTale.

See my compilation of website customer feedback tools and customer behaviour analysis tools.

3. Bail-out surveys - can be delivered by email (if collected) or when exit detected through time.

4. Usability testing - traditional focus groups.

5. Session capture. Reviewing individual customer journeys. Craig recommends Tealeaf "if you can afford it" or "Clicktale if on a budget" - says both "excellent".

6. Form optimisation and search analytics.

[I recommend this slideshare on form improvements]

7. Analytics - finding the gremlins in referrers, journeys and routes.

8. AB and multivariate testing. Biggest gains of all the techniques here after bounce rate analysis  - "all pages with a call-to-action", but especially focused landing pages.

Get's complex - TV Campaigns and male/female audience creative can make a large difference. Reviews segments in many different countries.

• Example of guided form journey at Autoglass.
• Male/female landing page example:

Good rule - Spend 5% of PPC on testing custom landing pages, then spend other 95%.

Button testing and copy changes were rated as being most important.

Great analogy - tune site to the perfect shop, e.g. clothes shops

9. Cross-channel tips - Use dynamic phone numbers

Wow, what a great, detailed presentation. A call-to-action in the panel:

"Stop Guessing, Start Testing"

CONVERT 3: Increasing conversion rates - tips on what works best
Louise Mullock, Head of Online Sales and Marketing, BSkyB / Sky.com

Louise covered 7 techniques:

1. Know your levers [one of my favourite analogies for CO]

A framework for conversion optimization. The business model and integration. Proposition is key for upsell and cross-sale. Model it - how will we reach sales targets. They use weekly conversion targets/reviews.

2. Setting up your team up for success.

Ask:

• Is there a conversion focus?
• Are they aware of their impact for conversion
• Are individuals targetted on conversion? [I liked this, it was across the board from marketers driving traffic, to designers, copywriters and IT (page download)].
• Can you isolate impact of changes on conversion?
• Do review/operational processes support conversion optimisation?

3. Understand the leaky pipe.

Not only the checkout process, but they have a high-level funnel [which many miss and liked their way of summarising this]:

A to B: Home page to category

B to C: Category to Product

C to D: Product to conversion

D to E: Checkout

4. Integration.

Referenced their microsites [which are conversion-pathways for specific audience needs without distractions] referred from offline media

• Offline tracking through campaign URLs
• Consistency in messaging - hierarchy consistent

This is a typical microsite example for HD TV:

5. Selling not telling.

Persuasion techniques [weren't covered in-depth].

6. Talk with your customers.

Through web-chat at different points in the customer journey - Louise was a big advocate of this when used in rules-based way, e.g. add-to-basket. Source of insight for conversion optimisation and problems on site.

7. The insights - Ideas - Innovation cycle.

They use an agile methodology to support continuous improvements:

"Conversion Optimisation is an ongoing process not a one-off activity".

A couple of interesting questions on panel which weren't covered in the talk to consider:

• Multiple visits / return visits - need to consider those or segment them separately and potentially deliver separate templates
• How do you gain value from the audience who don't convert
• Consider the role of advocates in conversion
• Use different phone numbers at different points in the funnel for tracking which pages are generating the queries.