The Potential of Web Analytics and Why We Love Cookies

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

I don’t often have the need to read about — let alone want to celebrate — an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) regulation change. Thank goodness there are more interesting things in life.  But last month was an exception.

In case you missed it, federal agencies conducting social marketing and public education campaigns with a web component now have an improved opportunity to analyze how their campaigns are working.  Thanks to the OMB, Federal websites can deploy “persistent cookies.”

Not to be confused with the insatiable Cookie Monster within us all, “persistent cookies” are actually pieces of text that are stored by a web browser on your computer’s hard-drive.  Software can synthesize this information about your computer’s web activity and that of other computers.  By tracking cookies, collectively, across all computers, we can assess how a marketing campaign is working digitally and determine how to improve our marketing efforts.

Web analytics is a term used to describe just that: the measurement and analysis of digital channels (websites, social media and email) for the purpose of understanding and improving an organization’s online user experience.  It is, nowadays, an online marketing best practice, compulsory for commercial marketers. It should be equally important for federal and social marketing campaigns.

While commercial marketers worry about how they fill their online shopping carts, Federal agencies and social marketing campaigns have an even bigger worry.  They need to worry about their progress in moving people towards behavior change: a long and complicated journey. Relative to the shopping cart, there may be many more “clicks” along the path of building awareness, changing attitudes and generating action.  It’s good to know what’s happening along the way, address what works and doesn’t work and make sure that every visitor is at least a little closer to your behavior goal, not frustrated by a failed website visit or disappointing experience.

More specifically, if you are a Federal agency using web components as part of a social marketing and public service campaign, what exactly might you learn with web analytics?   Here’s a just a short sampling:

· You can track the trend in overall penetration of a social marketing campaign.  Top-line web analytics metrics like website visits are a proxy for the reach of a campaign (especially one that consistently mentions web addresses in the creative).

· You can learn what parts of the website are getting used, how they work to further engage people or result in them leaving the site.  Web analytic reports show common entry and exit pages (where people start and end their visits) and the navigation paths in between.

· You can figure out which media or outreach channels are working for you by driving traffic to the website and ranking their effectiveness. Web analytics helps you to compare visits and conversions from, say, social media versus email, and within the social media channel Facebook versus Twitter. (You can even track offline efforts that use vanity URLs to drive viewers to the website.)

· You can find out how to improve visitors’ experiences and drive them beyond the home page into key areas of the site.  For example, the web analytics technique “split testing” (where different visitors are shown slightly different content) can compare the impact of specific messages and improve landing pages.

As a case in point, Noral used our public health client’s web analytics data to measure the number of monthly visits before the campaign, then compared subsequent efforts against that baseline.  The software’s reports also helped us choose — based on metrics like bounce rate, time per visit, and pages per visit — the best landing pages for web surfers who encountered the campaign online via its syndication feed (RSS), social media profiles, and search engine marketing (SEM).  To validate the campaign’s investment in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, we performed custom analysis of web analytics data to confirm that visitors enticed by search engine ads were engaging with website content as hoped.

If you’re not using web analytics, the OMB has given the green light.   A good first place to start is by checking out your options for web analytics software, such as Google Analytics, WebTrends Analytics OnDemand, and Omniture SiteCatalyst.  But after you‘ve read all you can about cookies (and had a few  to digest), check out Noral’s web capabilities and our GSA contract to deliver web-based marketing services to Federal clients.

Posted in Government, Health Marketing, Marketing, Sectors, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Media, Uncategorized, Web, Websites | 1 Comment »

On Judging the Effectiveness of the Effies

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Most in advertising are familiar with the Effie’s.  It’s a brand that stands above all others.  Because it is an awards programs that assesses how well brands are built.  How successfully marketing and advertising objectives are met.  How effectively results are achieved.

Noral is proud to be a member of the N.Y. Chapter of the American Marketing Association in large part because of our tremendous respect for this brand and its leadership under Mary Lee Keane.  This year I was pleased to be asked to participate in the final round of judging the submissions.

Here are just a few observations.

1) It’s no easy job being a judge. The overall impression was the incredible strength of each submission.  Consider that anyone writing a case believes they have a strong story to tell and that those are then carefully culled, and then winnowed down, for a final round of judging the best of the best.  There is so much to be gained in reading these cases. It’s also a pleasure to see just how smart marketing and advertising can be.

2) The recession has had an impact on all of us. And it was evident in every case. Though it’s not really fair to say every Strategic Challenge was the same, but there was definitely a unifying theme: everyone was jogging to stay in place, to hold on during the tough economic times of the past year.

3) Digital marketing is mandatory. And this year, the cases may have gone a step even further.  It was almost as if every campaign felt that it “had” to have a digital component or else risk their “effectiveness.”   Some managed to do so strategically; others, just tactically.

4) Integrated marketing has evolved. Last year at the awards dinner, I marveled at the video presentations and how much harder it had become to quickly convey what made the campaign so amazing.  It’s become harder to capture the winning campaign’s most dramatic element, no longer the big-production TV commercial or the impressive print ads, necessarily.  It’s just a little harder to show the impact of word-of-mouth or social media campaigns …. except when you look at the results.

5) It’s fun to hear other people talk. Don’t we all get bored with listening to ourselves talk sometimes? It’s a pleasure to interact with key people in the business and hear their reactions and thoughts.  In fact, I wish I could bring a few to my office for an occasional opinion or two.

The gold standard, the cream of the crop, the cat’s meow, or the bee’s knees.  Whatever you call it, the bottom line is that the Effies are effective: effective in stimulating dialogue, highlighting what works, and refining a definition of marketing and advertising effectiveness against which we can all strive.

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Posted in Integrated Marketing, Marketing, Web | No Comments »

Noral and Constant Contact: An Email Marketing Tale with a Surprise Ending

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

This past year Noral chose Constant Contact to fulfill an email marketing goal.  Our plan had been to share the results of our proprietary National Media Survey with other nonprofits, government agencies and companies desiring to influence behaviors for social change.  By doing so, we joined Constant Contact’s rather large and impressive roster of 350,000 small business clients.

With such a huge choice of clients to recognize, you can imagine our surprise to find that Constant Contact had chosen Noral’s experience to illustrate the uses and benefits of their services.  We’re always seeking to learn from “best practices” in the field so that we can continue to provide the very best services to our clients.  So it was a nice surprise to have someone point to Noral as having been a “best practice” ourselves.

We’ve always believed in the importance of sharing information and disseminating our research learning in the hopes that the entire public service sector may benefit from it.  Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) play a vital role in the U.S. in terms of helping to foster and drive positive change in attitudes and behaviors.  The problem is, more PSA’s are produced in any year than can get visibility.  By speaking to Media Directors about their needs, practices and perspectives, we strive to help nonprofits and other public service agencies spend ad dollars as wisely and cost-effectively as possible.

But the information isn’t of any value if it sits on our data files!

So this is truly an email marketing story with a blast of an ending!  We were happy to send our emails out to get useful information into the hands of decision makers. But what a nice surprise to receive an email, in return, with an invitation from Constant Contact to be cited in their press release.

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NORAL’S EXCITING NEW GSA CONTRACT: AN OPPORTUNITY TO HELP GOVERNMENT REACH SMALL BUSINESS GOAL!

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

As a small, woman-owned business with a proven track record of success, we are thrilled to be on the GSA Schedule.  We all know there are many advantages as a GSA contract holder.   For one, Noral will now be able to bid on projects often closed to us in the past.

And we have lots to offer.  We aim to tackle the needs and initiatives of Federal clients with a fresh and insightful perspective.

Too often the same firms are bidding for another Federal contract offering the same cookie-cutter “answers.”  This has to be frustrating.  And why shouldn’t it be?  No two marketing problems are ever the same.  That’s why every effort Noral embarks upon starts from the ground up, building a new, client-centered and integrated social marketing program that will end in solid results.

We drive behavior change, always tough to prove in today’s marketing world.  And Noral’s clients are beyond happy.  Just see what they have to say:  click here.

When it comes to small businesses set-asides, Noral has the big company experience and capability in a small business classification.  And, as an added bonus, we can help Federal agencies meet their small business set-asides.

For more information about Noral’s GSA Contracts, click here.

To read the latest press release, click here.

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Posted in Government, Marketing, Research, Social Marketing, Web | No Comments »