Learn How the Webtrends and Teradata Integration Solution Paints the Whole Picture

There is little doubt of how highly critical the importance of integrating online and enterprise data is. It is necessary to analyze both types of data in order to get the whole picture in a customer’s buying habits and satisfaction, and to improve conversion rates. Knowing when a customer connects with sales staff, knowing which direct mailings and catalogs the customer received, and knowing if the customer is chatting in social networks about the company or its products – all of these are tiny pieces to the whole picture. Unifying this information helps a company fine-tune their marketing strategies, reduce their marketing costs, and helps gives the customer a more personalized shopping experience and an incentive to purchase again.

This is a marvelous idea in theory, but very challenging to achieve in practice. Unless, that is, a company is using Webtrends’ enriched online data and Teradata’s Integrated Web Intelligence (IWI) solution, a partnership that is part of Webtrends’ Open Exchange program.

On December 2, 2009, in a live, interactive webinar, guest speaker John Lovett, a Senior Analyst for Forrester Research, Inc., will discuss why bringing online and enterprise data together is crucial. Next, Webtrends and Teradata will demonstrate their collaborated efforts solution of integrating online and enterprise data, and then will facilitate a question and answer session at the end.

Sign up today for the Integrating Online and Enterprise Data webinar and learn more about Webtrends’ enriched online data and Teradata’s Integrated Web Intelligence (IWI) solution for painting the whole picture to your customer’s purchasing experience.

Integrating Online and Enterprise Data Webinar
December 2, 2009
10am PDT / 1pm EDT

This past week I joined a panel of retail experts at the ExactTarget Connections ’09: Success is By Design and spoke on behalf of our mutual customer Motorcycles USA (MUSA), ranked #223 in the Internet Retailer’s Top 500. They’re a pure-play ecommerce business selling motorcycle gear, apparel and accessories here in Oregon.  In order to successfully continue to grow their revenue year over year during a down market in the motorcycle industry and our overall tough economic conditions, MUSA has focused on dedicated customer relationship management, including exclusive promotions and highly focused email campaigns which is their leading customer touch point. As a customer of both Webtrends Analytics and ExactTarget SBS, MUSA was eager to produce highly targeted product recommendations for specific website visitor segments.

MUSA’s initial work focused on scrubbing their list and doing a lot of A/B Testing. Using ExactTarget’s deliverability and email open rate reporting, together with Webtrends’ conversion reporting, they saw double the open rates and triple the click-through rates.

To take another step forward in the evolution of this behavioral retargeting initiative, customer project sponsor Erick Barney, VP of Marketing, worked closely with both Webtrends and partner ExactTarget as well as solutions integrator ACR Analytics to integrate ExactTarget and Webtrends Analytics.  MUSA studied detailed email subscriber click behavior via ExactTarget and onsite conversion behavior using Webtrends’ campaign and conversion reporting.

Recent behavorial retargeting campaigns focused on segmenting the subscriber list by products viewed during website visits, and products that were placed into the shopping process but abandoned. Using that datastream, customer segments received dynamically generated relevant offers in a special “Your Picks” section. Conversion rates were greatly improved – for example, within the group that received offers on products they’d abandoned – the email conversion rate over doubled the normal rate. Additional significant improvements were seen by looking at the merchandising space effectiveness. These two statistics are relevant to email marketers in all types of businesses, not strictly ecommerce companies. And what’s great is this was done with Webtrends Analytics and ExactTarget – products that MUSA was already running. Additional products were not required like some other marketplace analytics solutions would.

MUSA will continue to maximize their use of email and analytics via the Webtrends-ExactTarget integration to drive three levels of retargeting: static remarketing emails based on website visitor data, dynamic remarketing campaigns with varied offers by visitor, and at the deepest level, move to 1:1 product merchandising efforts such as this one based on interest, shopping behavior and related recommendations. For this third category, leveraging Webtrends Warehouse and integrating yet a third datastream of CRM information together with website activity and campaign response data, other segmentation options can be taken into consideration such as products owned and geography.

Learn more about behavioral retargeting for email and banner campaigns on our Open Exchange site. Do you have a story, question or comment? Please let us know!

One of the fantastic parts of my job at Webtrends is having the opportunity to work with our partners via the Webtrends Open Exchange .  We want to combine the strength of our platform with the strength of our partner’s to provide real solutions.

Many of you saw our press release about integrating with WebSphere Portal earlier this year. Webtrends services a significant portion of the WebSphere Portal install base and have for many years.  I would credit the flexibility of both solutions for making that so.  Ever since the initial release in 2001, WebSphere Portal has become one of the main enterprise web portal software platforms of choice.  The Java platform is easy to deploy and maintain for all types of organizations. My team has worked with WebSphere Portal customers to implement JavaScript based data collection and log file based methods.

When we first began the integration project, we did a review of challenges that portal users might face when trying to implement analytics reporting.  The items that bubbled to the top were:

• Uncertainty regarding best practices for deploying code.
• Inability to deploy code quickly, with low development costs
• Difficultly creating business ready, actionable reporting, without long design cycles
• Ability to analyze the log files that WSP produces

In short, people need a repeatable solution that is easy to implement, creating immediate business value.  Based on this feedback, we worked with IBM to create a better way to implement both solutions together using the SmartSource Data Collector JavaScript methodology and another for just reporting on log files.

Let’s talk about the JavaScript version first:

• So exactly how much development is required? Very little.  The solution requires JSP and JavaScript code that is plug and play.  The code required is contained in the solution.  All your developer needs to do is apply it to your WebSphere Portal themes.
• How rich is the data? Using this methodology we can collect data on pages, portlets, site navigation (using the site breadcrumbs), users by name, document tracking and all of the standard reports you expect out of Webtrends Analytics.  This also includes creating user readable versions of URLs for customer not using site mappings to simply the URL strings.  An example of this might be changing a URL like: http://www.ibm.com/wps/portal/!ut/p/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy to http://www.ibm.com/My Website/The Main Area/News and Views/, which is much easier to read and analyze.

Now, the Site Analyzer log file solution (Webtrends Software customer only):

• So exactly how much development is required? None.  You simply need to analyze the Site Analyzer log files WebSphere Portal creates.
• How rich is the data? The log files offer different but powerful data.  You can report on authenticated users, pages, portlets, administrative commands, page customizer and user management.

When can I get this and how much does it cost? The solution is available now.  You can take the white paper and start your implementation right away.  Best of all, this solution is completely free to use.  However, if you’d like assistance or need custom work Webtrends Solution Services can help you to find the right fit for you.

Download the Implementation Whitepaper

All of these reports, they are available using the classic Webtrends interface, the sleek new Analytics 9 interface or can be pulled directly using our REST API.  The API supports JSON, XML, Excel, etc.  This data can be pulled directly into a WebSphere Portlet in a matter of minutes.

Webtrends will be at the IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2009 October 12 -15 2009 held this year in San Diego, California.  I’m happy to say I’ll be discussing this solution in more depth October 13^th.  The Webtrends team will be at Booth #18 during the event providing demos, discussing the WebSphere Portal platform and our partnership with IBM.  Come by and say hi.  I’d love to meet every one of you.

Keep in mind this white paper is just one step in this integration.  Webtrends continues to work with the WebSphere Portal team to optimize ease of deployment and reporting.  If you’re excited about the project now, just wait.

See you in San Diego!

I am very pleased to announce the launch of a market-leading data collection capability for Webtrends. The addition of this API to our capabilities is another example of why Webtrends is the most powerful, open and elegant solution in the industry.

Keeping with our commitment to gather your feedback and deliver the most relevant of tools, we are making this new capability available in Beta for all of our customers and partners to use now.  Please help us help you by getting involved today. Push the limits! Get creative! Then let us know where we can improve on the capabilities. We will continue to evolve the API. Anything that connects to the internet is fair game.

As you, our customers, continue to expand your online presence beyond your web sites, it is our responsibility to grow our own measurement capabilities ahead of your evolving needs. Our data collection API is a critical addition to your arsenal of tools for collecting new data. The primary purpose for the API is to track behavior across various media that access the internet where traditional site tagging isn’t possible or an optimal fit.

Interested in more details? A full overview is available on our Developer Network. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions, comments, or to explore opportunities to leverage this exciting new capability.

There are so many reasons to celebrate Webtrends Marketing Warehouse availability On Premise.  We’ve had a lot of success with our On Demand version over the last couple of years and wanted to better serve some unmet market needs with an On Premise version.  Here are just a few of the market needs that this product addresses.

• You choose: data mart or data warehouse – Our Marketing Warehouse product can be used in several ways to meet your organization’s needs.  You can use Marketing Warehouse as a data mart of online data to feed your enterprise data warehouse to benefit your organization as a whole.  You can also use it as your data warehouse for all you online data for your marketers.  Best of all, you can use it both ways!
• Deep integration – On Premise offers organizations ultimate flexibility in how they use their online data.  Having direct access to enriched online data means that the sky is the limit in how you want to integrate that data with other data and other marketing applications.  The goal is to drive insight to fuel actions with your customers and prospects.
• Ultimate control of the data – Whether its for privacy purposes, regulatory compliance, or  simply direct access to the data, having this level of control of this data behind your firewall is a huge benefit to many businesses.

Along with Marketing Warehouse, Webtrends Score is now available in On Premise as well.

Caution…proud Product Manager ramblings below.

I wanted to recognize the achievements of the Webtrends team who worked tirelessly to bring this product to market.  From developers writing code, to QA folks testing it, to Services folks ready to implement and support it, to Marketing promoting it, to Sales folks selling it.  A personal thanks to all of you who worked so hard to bring this product to market because you’re passionate about helping businesses strive for excellence.

About two weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting with a couple of agencies on the West coast; the topic? Web Analytics.  The message I heard? 

Customers aren’t getting enough value out of their web analytics solution.

In addition to my meetings I had the opportunity to see Eric Peterson present at SearchFest 2009, put on by Portland’s own SEMpdx community.  In his presentation Eric introduced a “50/50” rule – essentially for every dollar you invest in web analytics technology you need to invest a dollar in people skills to effectively use the technology.  Whether the ratio is correct or not is surely not the point.

Web Analytics is a discipline – a discipline that requires defined processes and governance, skilled people, and a culture committed to on-going refinement of methodologies.  The technology should then support the discipline. So if you find yourself and your business saying that the value you’re getting for your web analytics solution can’t be justified by what you’re paying, stop paying!  Just stop paying.  Instead, invest the monies into your people and the processes that data can power. 

WebTrends held a webinar with Ian Ayres (author of Super Crunchers and Engage keynote speaker) last week and when Ian was asked what is the biggest obstacle to putting super crunching to practice he responded (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘The willingness to take action with the data and the executive signoff to do so.’ When, and only when, your people find themselves stifled by the limitations of a free offering … when they can clearly demonstrate substantial ROI from an enterprise solution, that will be the indicator your company is ready for the capital investment.  But until then, invest in your people.

To echo Eric’s words, web analytics is NOT easy.  To think or say otherwise is to propagate the problem. We will keep working hard at WebTrends to make web analytics easier and as I see it, the long term growth of this industry will always be bound to its people’s talents.

Hi folks.  My name is Jason Widup and I recently rejoined WebTrends with a colleague of mine (Brandon Ralls) to start a Digital Marketing Optimization practice within the WebTrends Client Services organization.  Some of you may remember both of us – I used to manage the Strategic Business Consulting practice at WebTrends from mid-2005 through mid-2006 and Brandon worked on my team during that time.  My first post is more like an article than a blog post.  I promise not all of my posts will be this long, but this topic is something that is near and dear to my heart.

Throughout my career in web analytics I have had the opportunity to work on web projects for some of the largest and most well-known websites in the world, and I’ve been able to do this from many different perspectives, including client-side, vendor-side, and advertising agency-side.  While I expected many of the websites to be slow in adopting some of the more advanced web analytics topics such as behavioral targeting, multivariate testing, and tagging, I didn’t expect for most of them to have the challenges with ongoing performance reporting and representation of data that they did.

These companies all struggled with most of the aspects related to putting together a dynamic and effective monthly report: extracting accurate data from their measurement tools, data organization and visualization, report formatting (including delivery vehicle), and analysis/insights/recommendations.  Most of them were decent with analysis; however, because everything else took so much longer than it should they didn’t have the proper amount of time to spend on analysis, so even that suffered.  Fortunately, the solution to this is relatively simple in explanation and not much more complex in execution: data quality, automation, and a consistent, accessible report format – what we call an Integrated Digital Marketing Scorecard.

At this point you’re probably making a decision as to whether or not you should read the rest of this article – so I’d like to give you a few reasons to continue reading.  While this topic has been written about and discussed quite a bit, I feel that it still has yet to sink in because I’m not seeing it take hold in the work that I do.  And while I don’t profess to be a true EXPERT at anything, I am an intelligent, logical, and creative thinker and like to think that I just get it (and I been practicing Web Analytics for 6 years).  And as previously noted, I’ve had the opportunity to do this type of work for lots of different websites from a multitude of perspectives – the most helpful being my time at a very large and well-known digital advertising agency.  Many of the lessons I learned I did while managing Measurement Operations at that agency.

To formally define the problem, analysts are spending a much larger % of their available time extracting and formatting report data and not enough time on the analysis, insights, and recommendations – where the true utility of the data comes into play as it is converted to decision-making information.  In my rough estimation analysts are spending about 75-80% of their time on the tactical reporting work and only about 25% of their time on the real analysis work.  In a perfect world this would be reversed – spending just 25% of their time on tactical work and 75% on analysis.

As mentioned, the solution that we have come up with to address these problems is what we call an Integrated Digital Marketing Scorecard (or IDMS).  “Integrated” because it is a single report that includes data from multiple data sources, “Digital Marketing” because it contains data from all online marketing and website measurement systems, and “Scorecard” because it is a visual display of key performance indicators on a single screen, providing user-driven comparison and progress metrics and used to make management decisions.

Let’s look at each of the problems individually, as well as how they are addressed with the IDMS…

Extracting accurate data from their measurement tools

At one point not too long ago in my Web Analytics career I was managing the monthly reporting for nearly 15 separate websites, all of which wanted their report as close to the beginning of the month as possible.  Each of the sites had their own set of complexities and issues: tagging problems, custom report issues, communication breakdowns with clients, etc.  There always seemed to be some issue with some data point each month that meant I could not fully automate my data extracts because I had to scrub the data in some way.  This is where Data Quality comes in.  At the core of any good, automated reporting solution is high quality data.  It can sometimes take a good amount of money and/or resources and certainly process changes to achieve the quality of data needed to support this style of reporting, but from experience I can say that it will pay for itself in time saving and decision making support.

In this role I was so incredibly busy during the first few weeks of the month that I chose to only partially automate my data extractions and pull the remainder of the data manually.  I justified this by telling myself that it would actually take longer to automate the query for a data point than to pull it manually.  I also failed to consistently document how I would manually derive a certain data point and would need to reconstruct it and compare it to the previous month’s number to make sure I did it correctly.  This was incredibly time consuming.  This speaks to the second component of the solution, automation.  The bottom line is that if the calculation of a data point can be done fully automated, always do it.  It will save time and reduce the occurrences of errors compared to pulling the data manually.  When we build an IDMS for a client our goal is for there to be as few steps as possible each month to update the data and populate all charts and graphs.  In many cases we’re able to get this down to 4 steps: select a new month, click button to run queries, validate new data, click button to update tables/charts/graphs.

Data organization and visualization

Analysts struggle to find the best way to organize, visualize, and present the information in their reports.  It is very rare that I’m impressed when an analyst shows me a report they authored that they feel is one of their best pieces of work (by the way, don’t bring an example report to an interview unless it looks like something you would see on TV – you know who you are).  It amazes me the lack of attention to detail that is pervasive across the industry.  Presentation of the report can, in some cases, determine its success or failure.  If you have bad data to report, at least make sure it is presented professionally.

There are a few guidelines we follow when organizing and visualizing the data in an IDMS:

• Organize the data in a tabular or navigational format so that the user can page through different sets of data while remaining on the same screen.
• Group similar data points together into the different tabs and have them follow some type of logical progression (i.e. Acquire-Convert-Retain)
• Show a minimal amount of data on a screen, but allow the viewer to interact with the report to show historical data and compare it against more recent data.
• Only show one or two data points on a graph that are related – don’t overcomplicate it with 3 dimensions and multiple metrics, etc.

Report formatting (including delivery vehicle)

It can take a very long time to manually update all of the charts and graphs and screenshots necessary for a given report, we get around this by extending the automation to include updating the charts and graphs in the IDMS, not just run the queries.  Most people don’t fully understand the formatting capabilities of Excel but there are a lot of fancy things that can be done with formatting and interactivity – especially in Excel 2007.  Have you ever heard of the camera function?  If not, Google it and I’m sure you’ll find a great use for it.

Speaking of Excel 2007, that is our preferred vehicle for delivering monthly reports.  It supports the tabular navigation previously discussed, all historical data can be included within the file in hidden sheets, the Scorecard can be made to look like a polished web application, and most importantly, it’s in Excel – something that everyone has access to. Alternatively, tools like Excelcius can be used to build this same type of functionality but publish it as an interactive Flash object embedded within a PDF file.  I also love the idea of delivering these via the web, but that would require some web development because as of yet there is still not an available tool that I know of that can WYSIWYG a Scorecard.

There are quite a few other report formatting topics that I could discuss, but to keep this relatively readable I’ll add just one more that truly sets the IDMS apart from other solutions – specific real estate is set aside in the Scorecard for the analysts’ insights, observations, and recommendations.  This section updates when the viewer pages through the different tabs in the Scorecard so that it corresponds with the data they are viewing.  This is where data is turned into information that can drive decisions – without this analysis a report is not incredibly useful for obvious reasons.

The best way to approach writing the commentary is to first understand the business questions that need to be answered every month.  The questions shouldn’t simply be worded versions of KPIs like “How many visitors came to the site this month compared to next month?” – they should be business questions like “Which media tactics drove the highest engagement with product content?”  These are the questions that will be answered in the analysis section every month, supported by the KPIs and data in the Scorecard.

If you made it through this article, THANKS FOR READING.  I sincerely hope that it was worth the time you spent reading it.  If you’d like to chat further about this topic or see some screenshots of our Integrated Digital Marketing Scorecard, please feel free to reach out to me via email at Jason.Widup@WebTrends.com.  Happy Analyzing!

*originally posted on IQ Workforce