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Integrating corporate and Web data can spur success.
by Rob Tuttle
The Web is an important channel for businesses to use to understand and reach current and potential customers. Though most companies already have reporting and analysis processes in place to track their Web presence and Web site data, few organizations can access and analyze an integrated set of Web and offline business data. This lack of integration creates a potentially vast gap that can keep one side of the business from knowing what the other side is doing.
Ignoring the gap could prove perilous. Research shows that while other channels are declining in these difficult economic times, the Web channel is growing rapidly and expanding to include cell phones, other mobile devices, and social media sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.
Rich resource, unrealized potential
According to a 2009 Econsultancy study sponsored by the Web analytics company Speed-Trap: “Not only has the online channel become mainstream. Indeed, as the economic conditions worsen, for many organizations it is the online business that is bucking the trend in declining sales and delivering increasing corporate value.”
Organizations are attracted to the Web because it is a:
- Lower-cost channel for marketing promotions and e-commerce sales
- More convenient and timely way for consumers to interact
- Fertile field for testing the effectiveness of new designs and marketing messages because changes can be made quickly and easily, and the results are often immediate
- Simpler medium to track and measure than other, more traditional channels
Despite the Web’s obvious value, research shows few organizations have access to combined online and offline data. “Web analytics data is one of the few pieces of customer data that direct marketers have not yet integrated into their customer databases,” according to the October 2008 report “Q&A: Five Web Analytics Answers Direct Marketers Must Know” by Forrester Research. “This is a missed opportunity for most direct marketers: Web analytics data helps marketers deepen their understanding of customers and campaigns, as well as identify relevant content for future campaigns.”
So, why does the gap persist between online and offline channels despite the overwhelming volume of useful information offered by each? The problem isn’t that companies don’t recognize the value of integrated data. It’s that getting online data into the warehouse in a timely manner—in a form in which it can be combined and analyzed—has been extremely difficult.
Incompatible formats and the need for complex, laborious transfer processes have made attempting integration impractical for most organizations. Besides, the cost of storing and processing the enormous amounts of data generated by the Web has been too high for most businesses to attempt it.
An integrated answer
Technology has finally caught up with need in this area, making it possible to economically transfer valuable Web data—accumulated from users’ browsers, social media sites, third-party Web sites and through a direct link to Web analytics vendors—into the data warehouse in near real time to gain a 360-degree view of customer behaviors. Additionally, recent advances in technology make storing and analyzing large volumes of Web data both affordable and practical.
Cross-channel data enables organizations to improve their communication and boost marketing results:
- Online behavior data can inform offline channels. Information about where visitors are browsing on a Web site or what search words they use can aid direct marketing campaigns and call center operations.
- Offline data can inform online channels. Customer demographics and offline purchase information can enable companies to better and more easily personalize Web site promotions for individual users and help generate better results from ads placed on third-party Web sites.
- Integrated online and offline data can help identify opportunities for optimizing or reducing overall marketing spend.
Only by analyzing integrated online and offline behavior can a business gain a total view of its customers and avoid costly marketing mistakes such as spending too much on the wrong channel or targeting customers for products they have already purchased or no longer want.
Rob Tuttle is director of Solutions Marketing and program manager responsible for Teradata Integrated Web Intelligence
Photography by Shutterstock