1. Let's discuss Omniture Test&Target – I associate Test with Offermatica and Target with TouchClarity, two companies and technologies that Omniture acquired separately.  Why do they fit together so cohesively?

The capabilities that TouchClarity and Offermatica delivered separately didn’t really overlap and are even more powerful when used together. People often think of basic A/B testing as being on one end of the online optimization spectrum and fully automated one-to-one predictive targeting as being on the other. But in between are a variety of other capabilities like geo targeting, targeting to marketer-defined behavioral segments, multivariate testing, and automated champion-challenger tests. Marketers can benefit from all these capabilities and, with Test&Target, can use them together to truly change the game for their business. You may learn from a one-to-one campaign on your home page that a particular behavior is predictive. Well, you might then target the segment of visitors that hasthepredictive characteristic in a landing page campaign. At the same time, you might be running a multivariate test (MVT) on your registration page and an A/B test on calls to action throughout your site. Test&Target averages about 14 active tests or campaigns per customer at any time, which is a testament to the impact of putting marketers in control, enabling them to try ideas quickly, and automating key parts of the optimization process.

2. Our customers are often interested in A/B testing the impact of customer reviews and other user-generated content.  What are the key considerations and test design factors to keep in mind when planning this type of test? What types of impact should customers look for, beyond the obvious like conversion?

Every test will have a specific goal and will be associated with a success metric. A company’s initial tests typically focus on conversion rate or revenue per visitor, but more sophisticated tests also consider metrics like registrations, cart abandonment rate, newsletter sign-ups, and participation in a site’s community. With product reviews, a key event is always review contribution. But whether people page through reviews as a result of your test is also important since it reflects meaningful engagement with the content.

In addition to thinking about success events, marketers should also consider visitor segments when creating their tests. Different types of visitors will respond differently to your alternatives. What matters to the person who frequently contributes to reviews might not matter at all to someone who only reads reviews, which of course suggests that I need to target different experiences and content to different types of visitors. We published an interesting case study from CNET related to this concept. On their mp3.com site, they relocated an artist photo widget to the top of the page for visitors who had previously interacted with that widget in its original, below-the-fold location. They saw a double-digit increase in engagement for those customers. And, the best part of the story is how quickly they turned a simple idea into an effective test using Test&Target. It took less than an hour to create the visitor segments, design the test, and launch it. Nobody from IT was even involved.

With product reviews, there are a lot of opportunities for testing and targeting beyond the product detail page. How can I use product review information in gift registries? Do star ratings in the cart reduce abandonments? Do I get more reviews when I target a homepage review solicitation to past purchasers?

3. The possibilities of behavioral targeting based on social engagement are virtually limitless – how should companies leverage the behavior of writing a review, asking a question about a product, or simply using reviews (sorting, searching, etc.)?

When people interact with UGC, they’re telling you something about what is relevant to them. Marketers can use these signals to target more and more relevant experiences. Of course, they’ll need to use testing to evaluate their efforts because people’s interests change – what was effective last year, last month, or last week might be less effective today. Companies using Test&Target to capitalize on this opportunity have developed a culture of optimization that embraces the ongoing and iterative nature of testing and targeting. Marketers are empowered to make site changes without waiting for IT, can try new ideas quickly, and can use predictive models that respond instantly to changes in interests. Gone are the days when you had to write one MRD to put up a new promotional banner and another MRD to pull it down a week later.

4. How are Test&Target customers using testing & targeting off site, beginning with an online advertisement, to set off a chain of dynamic experiences that result in a purchase on the site?  Can you walk through a real scenario?

Your customers don’t interact with only a single page, and you don’t engage with them only on your site. Optimizing customer experiences across all interactions from the point of acquisition, through the conversion, and in your retention efforts is very powerful. We worked with Bantam Press a few months ago on a campaign to promote a book called SuperCrunchers. One test involved serving different display ads for the book on NYTimes.com and reinforcing those ads on-site after the click. When ads were reinforced on-site, results were dramatically higher than when the on-site experience was unrelated to the ad. And, after the best banner creative for click-through was determined, different types of on-site reinforcement were evaluated. We’re also seeing an increase in email testing and in testing combinations of email and on-site elements. For most companies, even a small increase in conversion off email can have a substantial impact. But testing email in the traditional, serial manner can be slow and inconclusive. With Test&Target, a single email template can be used to evaluate different content – one list of recipients, one email template, many email versions, and a clear winner delivered automatically at open time.

5. How can Test&Target be used to define and analyze different customer personas?  For example, many of our clients have “super reviewers” that have written hundreds of reviews, but many consumers may write only a single review.  There are various types in between.  How can Test&Target help to identify those types?

The anonymous visitor profile in Test&Target is completely open to the marketer who can capture the behaviors associated with different personas. As a marketer, I may have special incentives or offers for people who have contributed over a hundred reviews. I can use the Test&Target profile to store the number of reviews written for each user and then target my incentive only to people who are in my “super user” segment. I might also tell the segment of users who have written 50-75 reviews about the benefits of becoming a “super reviewer”. Combining the Test&Target profile with SiteCatalyst or Omniture Discover, which gives you real-time insight into segments that matter, becomes very powerful. It allows you to easily and quickly act on your analytics and deliver relevance.

We are exhibiting at the Omniture Summit in Utah this week, and I'm amazed at how significant this event has become for the online industry.  There are over 2,000 people here making this event almost as large as Shop.org's Annual Summit in Las Vegas (disclosure: I serve on the Board of Directors at Shop.org), and Seth Godin just spoke.  Lance Armstrong spoke last night, and I had tears in my eyes after hearing his story (and not just because I am an Austinite).  I also heard that the Coremetrics Summit last week was strong (we were an exhibitor) but, unfortunately, could not attend.  Being a founder of the Web analytics space (as the founder of Coremetrics), I'm really impressed to see how much that industry has grown.  I hope to grow Bazaarvoice into just as large of a company, and we are well on our way to meeting that (current) goal.

1. User-generated content and word of mouth marketing provide a new opportunity for analytics solutions to demonstrate value.  What are the unique challenges of UGC and WOM?

I’m a big fan of John Hagel’s blog “Edgeperspectives.”  Some of the concepts he advances are particularly pertinent here, especially with respect to companies’ need to “adapt or perish…”  The world of UGC and WOM is really about collaborative marketing – embracing your customers’ perception that THEY own your relationship with them.  This is a significant hurdle for traditional marketers to overcome.

There is no “I” in adapt.  Conventional marketing attempts to:

• Intercept: target and expose customers to your message wherever you can find them
• Inhibit: make it as difficult as possible for the customer to compare your product or service offering with any other options
• Isolate: enter into a direct relationship with the customer and, wherever possible , remove all third parties from the relationship

There are “A’s” however.

• Attract: create incentives for people to seek you out
• Assist: one of the most powerful ways to attract people is to be as helpful and engaging with them as possible
• Affiliate: mobilize third parties, including other customers, to become even more helpful to the people you interact with
• Analyze: as you are embarking on these new strategies it’s critical to have a compass.  Analytics provides the critical insight needed into what’s working, what isn’t and where to optimize.

2. Put yourself in the shoes of the VP of eCommerce at a retailer that uses both Bazaarvoice and Omniture.  What would be your top priorities, with respect to our solutions, and why?  What KPIs should Bazaarvoice clients be monitoring regularly?

I would first ensure that our respective technologies are integrated via Omniture Genesis so that the business has clear visibility into strategy performance. There are many areas that one could focus their time, but if I were the VP of eCommerce, the two optimization priorities I’d focus on from the word “Go!” are:

Popularity Optimization: Identify the contributors as well as the UGC that attracts the largest audience.  The KPIs to keep a close eye on here include: number of views, repeat frequency and time spent on the site.

Influence Optimization: Popularity is great, but it’s also good to understand the influence that specific contributors and content have on driving success.  KPIs for the eCommerce VP here should be order participation, and revenue participation.  What they may quickly learn is that one contributor’s reviews are more popular, but may generate fewer orders and revenue than a less popular contributor. They should craft strategies to better leverage influential contributors.

3. Bazaarvoice is an accredited and featured Omniture Genesis partner.  Why is Genesis so important to Omniture’s strategy?  What new developments will we see in 2008?

First, we are proud to have Bazaarvoice as an Accredited Genesis Application Partner.  This is no small distinction as the requirements for accreditation are robust.  Genesis Accreditation is not a simplistic logo swap program like others peddle.  There has been serious joint engineering effort, testing and validation between our companies before accreditation is ever awarded.

Genesis is critical to Omniture’s strategy of creating the platform for online business optimization.  We do what we do very well, as do our partners.  Genesis allows customers to integrate multiple marketing technologies into an ecosystem that is made fundamentally smarter by Omniture’s best in class analytics.

With respect to Omniture and Bazaarvoice joint customers, Genesis enables them to quickly and easily integrate our respective technologies through an elegant “plug-and-play” interface that’s designed for marketers – not a complex IT tool kit.  The value of this integrated ecosystem increases exponentially as our customers integrate with more technology providers via Genesis.

Imagine our VP of eCommerce again – she launches a campaign that achieves 6% conversion.  Great she thinks!  Yawn.  What about the other 94%?!! How can she go after those that responded but didn’t convert and identify more revenue opportunity?  Through Genesis, the process to remarket to the 94% of non-converters with a targeted email are automated. This could include adding relevant product offers complete with Bazaarvoice ratings and reviews.

4. Our industry is data-driven to the extreme, but not all data is useful.  Too much of it can cloud and complicate decision-making, but it’s not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Can you share a few principles or best practices related to this challenge?

A real challenge for online marketers is to analyze hundreds of millions of behaviors fast enough to take action on them in real-time.  Traditionally, there has been a trade-off between speed and level of detail in their analysis.

Business success will depend greatly on access to timely, relevant information about online customers, campaign performance and emerging business trends. Online marketers need to be able to parse data into meaningful segments and scenarios to gain deeper insight into online customer engagement.  Omniture offers a solution called Discover that allows companies to explore this kind of granular data in real time.  But being able to measure data quickly can only help if you are looking at the right things.

Companies need to measure what matters most.  Too often they focus on popularity rather than on what is really producing revenue.  Does it really matter which Web page is most popular?  Shouldn’t we be measuring which pages and items are producing the most revenue?  A lot of statistics are nice to know, but don’t really help drive revenue.

5. A few years ago the big “policy discussion” in the web analytics industry was the frequency of cookie deletion, first-party vs. third-party, etc.  What is the next big policy discussion in your industry?

It happens every couple of months: a company is seen to be misusing customer information and we renew the debate about the need for increased customer privacy.  Facebook’s Beacon program recently brought privacy concerns to the forefront.  But, what it really boils down to is intention.  Is a company accumulating information to ultimately give the visitor a better experience, or is there an ulterior motive?

To the lay-person, the term “behavioral targeting” might mean something nefarious, but if you really think about it, this practice should always lead to a better user-experience.  Think of how much easier it would be to buy groceries if you could “configure” your very own shopping aisle!  You would walk in the store and go directly to your personalized aisle.  Your aisle would contain just the items and brands you wanted to purchase.  Now, combine this with your very own checker – someone to carry your groceries to your car- and you begin to approach what is possible with online marketing—catering to every visitors’ unique needs.

In today’s marketplace, customers demand relevancy. If what you’re trying to communicate doesn’t connect with them and their issues in a split second, you’ve lost them.  Web analytics is about providing customers with the best experience possible.

6. As with social commerce, there are many levels of sophistication among users of Web analytics solutions.  Can you give an example of a customer that is truly capitalizing on what is possible with the Omniture platform, both online and off?

It is especially difficult to get an accurate picture of the success of marketing campaigns for multi-channel retailers.  A company such as Borders, which operates more than 1,100 stores worldwide and is launching a new Web site, faces the challenge of understanding customer needs both online and in-store.

Borders.com uses Omniture’s SiteCatalyst to see how customers actually use the future site’s various features, including inventory search and reservation functions, marketing and sales promotions, and more. Borders will also use Omniture Discover to segment customer behavior based on criteria such as purchasing behavior and geographic location to personalize the online experience.  In addition, Borders will use Omniture to aggregate customer behavioral trends associated with its in-store kiosks, which will eventually be connected to their new Web platform.

Omniture is helping Borders understand how customers are using the piloted features on the beta site, such as the Magic Shelf™, a realistic looking, three-dimensional shelf of book, CD and DVD covers displayed as they would be in a store.  The Magic Shelf allows customers to quickly and easily view new releases, staff picks and “picked for you” titles, which are suggested selections based on the customer’s subjects of interest.

These Omniture solutions will allow Borders to accurately measure the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns while taking into account returns and other items that affect revenue.

In addition to Borders, we have a great automotive industry customer that is using Omniture to better determine the types of vehicles to ship to various regions of the U.S. and other countries based on the kinds of online vehicle configurations that customers are creating for themselves. Certain car models, features, colors and other criteria have a specific affinity for customers in one part of the country vs. another. This is a truly innovative way to use online data that effects offline business decisions and actions.

1. Email remains one of the highest ROI online marketing activities – it generates almost $60 of revenue per $1 spent (Direct Marketing Association).  With better analytics, content, and targeting, can email marketers expect even higher rates of return?  

Absolutely. The more that marketers use this channel responsibly the more effective it will become. No other channel provides this type of quantitative and qualitative data — leading marketers understand the inherent value of email marketing and recognize that its metrics provide the keys to delivering relevant communications. In addition to being a great channel by itself, email marketing combined with web analytics and advanced tools like Bazaarvoice enables marketers to identify customer purchase triggers and channel preferences.  Specifically, we’ve seen many clients attribute in-store traffic and revenue to an email campaign.  The direct effect that email has on the other channels is far greater than anyone ever anticipated.

Another valid point here, aside from the relevance factor, is that because email is so cost efficient, marketers aren’t as motivated to invest the same amount of analytical strategy into it as they do with catalogs or direct mail as they tend to carry higher costs for the marketers.  However, I do see more and more leading marketers becoming increasingly responsible with email and utilizing the tools available to develop highly relevant and response-driven marketing programs. These are the marketers who ultimately deepen customer loyalty and build positive brand equity.

2. As a best practice, Bazaarvoice recommends that our clients use email to capture customer word-of-mouth, often in the form of post-purchase review solicitation emails.  This essentially kickstarts a two-way conversation between our clients and their customers.  How do you see the brand-customer dialogue evolving over email and other messaging systems (SMS, etc.)?

We see post purchase reviews as yet another great way to engage your customer.  This type of campaign strategy not only benefits the organization but allows the marketer to show they value them by providing  an opportunity to evaluate the product or service.

This type of dialogue is evolving quickly, and we’ve seen very positive results with many of our large retailers that send post-review confirmation emails to all customers who have submitted a review.  We also have a number of clients planning to deploy post-purchase emails to recent buyers to solicit a product review. We promote this concept to many of the mutual clients we share with Bazaarvoice because it seems clear that there is a much higher long-term value to customers who are very engaged with their brands.  This, in turn, should result in better response to future emails and marketing campaigns.

3. Relevance is a constant focus for advertisers trying to reach consumers in an ad-saturated environment.  As part of Experian and through investments in tools like SiteClarity, what unique advantages does CheetahMail offer to drive increased relevance for your customers?  

Relevance is definitely the key, and one of the many advantages of being a part of Experian is the availability of rich data mining tools like Mosaic and TrueTouch for advanced consumer segmentation. Having access to the world’s largest data center and highly innovative data management tools coupled with the deep reporting capabilities of CheetahMail, ensures that our clients have the opportunity to send emails as individualized as their customers.

Additionally, web tools like SiteClarity give CheetahMail clients an advantage by allowing them to deploy web-based triggers (such as shopping cart abandonment messages) regardless of whether or not they’ve undergone a complete integration with a 3rd party web analytics provider.  The tags are very small and easy to set up so clients can choose to use them alone or with their existing analytics provider like Coremetrics or Omniture.

4. Our clients have seen remarkably higher email clickthroughs and conversions by marketing top-rated products and including compelling customer reviews in their email programs.  Any personal theories on why this works?

This works for the same reasons that running such reviews on-site should increase responsiveness – the credibility of the offer is enhanced by seeing actual ratings by other users.  The authenticity of reviews by consumers vs. marketing spin is incredibly powerful because these reviews put the power directly into the consumers’ hands. User reviews are one aspect of the overall social networking phenomenon we see everywhere now, and its power and uses are still being discovered.

5. As trust continues to rise in “someone like me”, consumers expect even more personalized and authentic content and offers.  UGC may play a leading role in this next wave of personalization.  What is CheetahMail’s strategy to support this trend?  

Our creative services team is examining different ways to include user ratings and reviews in email creative to test response levels. Several of our clients have taken the lead on this initiative and have already begun incorporating this level of authentic content. We are reviewing these programs very closely to identify commonalities in what works (and what doesn’t) in an effort to create strategy guides for our clients in this area. For example, does simply putting the number of stars a product or service receives fare better than including actual snippets of customer quotes? Is there a point at which too many reviewed items in one email dilutes overall effectiveness? We are still framing these questions and need more response data before we can accurately provide answers. 2008 will be a big year for these types of programs — testing standard “Marketing-speak” against versions of the same offers featuring more customer voices.

6. Can you share an example or two of well executed email campaigns that feature customer word of mouth or other “viral” content or offers?

A great example of this would be our client Bath & Body Works. For example, in mid-November we deployed one of their emails that featured “the sweetest, softest nap blanket on earth” – an actual description pulled from a Bazaarvoice review (see the first review listed). The email included the handle of the customer (“GRITS”, from Charleston, SC!) and an additional quote that highlighted some very compelling features of the product, followed by 5 red stars. In an analysis of one Bath & Body Works email campaign featuring ratings and review content, average order value increased more than 10%, session length jumped by 13%, and sales per visitor also saw an 11% increase. Since then, Bath & Body Works has continued to innovate with a variety of approaches featuring user-generated content.