Companies Need to Make Better Use of Analytics - eMarketer

Knowing where your web traffic is coming from, and how visitors spend their time on your site are unbelievably revealing statistics. I'd go so far as to suggest that if you have a website and you don't have an analytics package of some sort, you're wasting your time and money. It's the equivalent of dropping 50 cents into the newspaper stand, yet still reading the paper through the glass window. You're making the investment, but not getting the full story.

Setting up an analytics script is not expensive, and is even more useful and effective when combined with small-scale advertising campaigns through Google's AdWords (or other similar services). And for the record, I think that the first response in the chart is below is crap. As I mentioned above, setting up an analytics package is not expensive, and it's not that time consuming (most companies should be able to parse the data in about one man-hour per week). The next four reasons are much more likely to be the actual reasons that most companies don't have an online measurement strategy. To be clear, I'm not questioning eMarketer's statistics, I'm questioning the reasoning of the respondents.

Have a website that isn't hooked up to an analytics package yet? Are you looking to refine the view of your customer base and figure out how to more effectively market your business? Need someone to talk with who can answer questions? If so, we're happy to help. Give us a call at (719) 355-3579 or drop us a line at info@ideavise.com.

Thanks for reading.

—Jason @ Ideavise

via emarketer.com

Email Marketing Isn't Dead... So Use It!

Much has been said about the demise of email thanks to some of the new social networking tools that we now have at our disposal. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. have changed the game of connecting customers to companies. But what of email? Is it no longer valid? Has it been passed over by quicker, "tidier" methods of communcation?

Not according to a study published by eMarketer using data from sites StrongMail and ShareThis. According to the study:

A study of sharing activity across the ShareThis network in October 2009 also revealed that e-mail was the top channel for distributing content to friends, with 46.4% of all shares. About one-third of shares went to Facebook and less than 6% were tweeted.

Overall, Twitter did post the highest click-through rate in both studies quoted. But email came back swinging with higher page counts after click-through.

So how can you and I apply this to our businesses?

1. Make sure that you have an email marketing strategy for your business. If you're short on time/bandwidth, don't fret—it doesn't need to be a weekly investment. Shoot for sending out an email once per quarter. Recap important news, and give your customers an opportunity to engage with the brand. Launch a contest, ask for feedback, announce a promotion specifically targeted to customers on your email list. The end goal is to make them feel like they have the inside track on what's happening with your brand.
2. Email marketing is just one component of a well-rounded online strategy. As are Twitter, Facebook and the myriad of other social networking opportunities out there. Go ahead, start a Facebook fan page. But don't rely on it solely to carry your online marketing efforts. And just as Facebook shouldn't be your only online marketing effort, you shouldn't rely on direct email marketing to carry your voice by itself.

If you have questions on how to implement an email marketing strategy (hint: it's much easier than you think), drop us a line using the email address above or the comments box below. We've designed and implemented many successful emarketing campaigns, and can help you avoid the pitfalls that many people face when they're just starting out.

Thanks for reading!

—Jason @ Ideavise

Why Worry About Design?

Companies which hold design to be a core business virtue performed better financially. Here's a quote from the article over at BusinessWeek.com:

[Two fellows from] Northeastern University's School of Business, have conducted research in conjunction with DMI, the Design Management Institute, on the financial performance of design since the mid-1990s. They evaluated financial performance by using traditional financial ratios, such as return on assets and net cash flow to sales, for the sample period. They found that firms rated as having good design were stronger on virtually all financial measures from a practical and managerial perspective, as well as from a statistical perspective.

The full article can be found here.