CRM | analytics

Judah Phillips wrote a post last week laying out why the answer to the question, “Is web analytics hard or easy?” is a resounding “it depends.” It depends, he wrote, on what tools are being used, on how the site being analyzed is built, on the company’s requirements/expectations for analytics, on the skillset of the team doing the analytics, and, finally, on the robustness of the data management processes in place.

One of the comments on the blog came from John Grono of GAP Research, who, while agreeing with the post, pointed out:

You refer to this as “web analytics”. I also know that this is what the common parlance is, but truth be known it is actually “website analytics”. “web” is a truncation of “world wide web” which is the aggregation of billions of websites. These tools do not analyse the “web”, but merely individual nominated “websites” that collectively make up the “web”. I know this is semantics … but we as an industry should get it right.

It’s a valid point. Traditionally, “web analytics” has referred to the analysis of activity that occurs on a company’s web site, rather than on the web as a whole. Increasingly, though, companies are realizing that this is an unduly narrow view:

Search engine marketers (SEO and SEM) have, for years, used various keyword research tools to try to determine what words their target customers are using explicitly off-site in a search engine (although the goal of this research has been to use that information to bring these potential customers onto the company’s site)
Integration with a company’s CRM and/or marketing automation system — to combine information about a customer’s on-site activity with information about their offline interactions with the company — has been kicked around as a must-do for several years; the major web analytics vendors have made substantial headway in this area over the past few years
Of late, analysts and vendors have started looking into the impact of social media and how actions that customers and prospects take online, but not on the company’s web site, play a role in the buying process and generate analyzable data in the process

The “traditional” web analytics vendors (Omniture, Webtrends, and the like) were, I think, a little late realizing that social media monitoring and measurement was going to turn into a big deal. To their credit, they were just getting to the point where their platforms were opening up enough that CRM and data warehouse integration was practical. I don’t have inside information, but my speculation is that they viewed social media monitoring more as an extension of traditional marketing and media research companies that as an adjacency to their core business that they should consider exploring themselves. In some sense, they were right, as Nielsen, J.D. Power and Associates (through acquisition), Dow Jones, and TNS Media Group all rolled out social media monitoring platforms or services fairly early on. But, the door was also opened for a number of upstarts: Biz360, Radian6, Alterian/Techrigy/SM2, Crimson Hexagon, and others whom I’m sure I’ve left off this quick list. The traditional web analytics vendors have since come to the party through partnerships — leveraging the same integration APIs and capabilities that they developed to integrate with their customers’ internal systems to integrate with these so-called listening platforms.

Somewhat fortuitously, a minor hashtag snafu hit Twitter in late July when #wa, which had settled in as the hashtag of choice for web analytics tweets was overrun by a spate of tweets about Washington state. Eric Peterson started a thread to kick around alternatives, and the community settled on #measure, which Eric documented on his blog. I like the change for two reasons (notwithstanding those five precious characters that were lost in the process):

As Eric pointed out, measurement is the foundation of analysis — I agree!
“Web analytics,” which really means “website analytics,” is too narrow for what analysts need to be doing

I had a brief chat with a co-worker on the subject last week, and he told me that he has increasingly been thinking of his work as “digital analytics” rather than “web analytics,” which I liked as well.

It occurred to me that we’re really now facing two fundamental dimensions when it comes to where our customers (and potential customers) are interacting with our brand:

Online or offline — our website, our competitors’ websites, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter are all examples of where relevant digital (online) activities occur, while phone calls, tradeshows, user conferences, and peer discussions are all examples of analog (offline) activities
On-site or off-site — this is a bit of a misnomer, but I haven’t figured out the right words yet. But, it really means that customers can interact with the company directly, or, they can have interactions with the company’s brand through non-company channels

Pictorially, it looks something like this:

I’ve filled in the boxes with broad descriptions of what sort of tools/systems actually collect the data from interactions that happen in each space. My claim is that any analyst who is expecting to deliver meaningful insight for his company needs to understand all four of these quadrants and know how to detect relevant signals that are occuring in them.

What do you think?

There’s an interesting piece over at SearchCRM with three experts’ predictions for 2009. The first expert — Bill Band of Forrester Research — had an intriguing list of six trends he expects to see in 2009 in CRM suites. The three that really jumped out at me (the bold text is Band’s label, and everything else is my description and observations):

Trend 1: The emergence of the Social Consumer — okay, sure, you’d have to have had your head buried in a backhoe-assisted hole in the sand to have missed that social media is a big deal. My sister went from telling me a year ago that instant messaging was too intrusive…to being an active user and advocate on Twitter — using it effectively and with success in her role as a manager at a nonprofit. That’s anecdote 1 of 20 that I could rattle off without thinking, and I’m sure you could, too. Web 2.0 is getting steadily adopted by, well, everyone eventually, just like Web 1.0 did. Band’s point, though, is that CRM suites “will be looking to enrich the customer experience through community-based interactions, and architecting solutions that are flexible and foster strong intra-organization and customer collaboration.” That’s an intriguing thought. CRM tie-ins to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and the like? It’s a recipe for disaster if the capabilities are developed, sold, and put to use with a Web 1.0 mentality. Pulling this sort of thing off effectively is going to require some nuance, both on the part of the CRM suite providers and their customers. Should be interesting.
Trend 3: The requirement to fully cost-justify CRM investments — Band boils this down to four questions that every business case will have to answer, and he indicates that his contacts are telling him that every CRM investment will need a rock-solid financial case built for it given the economic environment. I wonder. Certainly, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be out spending money frivolously, but, then, I wouldn’t really expect that to be happening in a robust economic environment, either. What I’ve seen happen time and again is that a company gets along with spreadsheets, a seasoned sales force, and relationships that have been built up over years to drive the business. Then, one day, they realize that they need to actually do some marketing and actually put some processes around how they do demand generation and demand management. Someone does a back-of-the-napkin calculation as to just how much money they’re leaving on the table, and it becomes pretty clear that they need to bring in some talent, some process, and some systems to realize that value. For the companies that have already made it over that hurdle, they tend to have the information they need to see where they are falling short and to articulate — even in the absence of guaranteed immediate financial returns — the value of further investment. For companies that have a strong cash position, downturns are a good opportunity to grow their market share by selectively investing…and CRM enhancements can be a relatively low-cost investment that can pay real dividends down the road.
Trend 5: The need to get more value from customer information — well, this is the one that actually hits the closest to my current bailiwick. Band nails it when he says “the right approach to customer data management is elusive.” His point, though, is that companies are going to have to get smarter about how they manage and use customer information. No doubt. I don’t see this nut truly getting cracked in 2009 — more and more companies are starting to realize they need to invest in master data management (MDM) and customer data integration (CDI). That’s easier said than done. For one thing…see Trend 3 above — no company tackles this issue until they’ve painted themselves into a corner that will require a hefty price tag to get out of. There are a handful of different approaches for getting out of that corner. All of them have there pros and cons. None of them are conceptually difficult to understand. ALL of them are wayyyyyy more involved to implement successfully. I’m struggling to envision any sort of step function change in the world of CRM on that front in 2009.

It will be interesting to look back in a year and see which of these areas really did see seismic shifts. I’m staying tuned!

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Tag: CRM

2009 Predictions for CRM (not mine — Forrester's)