The Digital Gateway

Session 5

Monitoring and Measuring Digital

Campaigns

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this session, students should be able to;

• Explain the purpose of measurement for digital

campaigns

• Demonstrate an understanding of the application of the

procedures used for measuring and monitoring digital

campaigns

2

The Performance Measurement

Process

3

What do we want to

achieve?

What is happening?

Why is it happening?

What should we do about

it?

Goal setting

Performance

Measurement

Performance

Diagnosis

Corrective

action Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012

The Purpose of Measuring Digital

Campaigns

• To measure marketing productivity

• To examine product, promotion, place, price decisions

• To examine return on marketing investment (ROMI)

• To evaluate customer satisfaction and involvement

• To measure market share and forecast demand

• To examine visitor trends

• To measure digital influence

Collecting Information About Website

Visitors Web server log files

• Every time the website receives a request for a source (a file) it

stores details of that request on server access logs

• Server log file will typically contain information on:

– IP address of the user’s PC

– Time stamp showing the date and time of the request

– Status code showing the result of the request

– The URL of the referring page

– Browser type, language, operating system

Page-tagging and hosted solutions

– Tagging requires placing small piece of code on every page of

the site needing to be tracked

– If a visitor requests any page, code sends information to chosen

analytics provider.

5 5

Why Web Analytics?

• In order to do business effectively on the Web, an organisation needs

to continually refine and optimize its digital marketing strategy, site

navigation, and page content.

• An organisation needs to understand its performance - Web analytics

provides the tools for gathering this information and to benchmark the

effects.

• Web analytics are tools - they cannot tell you why visitors behave the

way they do or which improvements should be made.

• Organisations will often need to employ multiple tools to gain

additional insight as to “why.”

– Voice-of-customer tools (surveys, customer ratings, and feedback)

– Offsite analytics measurement (blog comments, social network mentions,

and sentiment).

Google Analytics

• Google Analytics is a tool

which allows you to see

where and how traffic comes

to your website.

• An organisation can view

and learn a huge amount of

information about their

website, such as referring

traffic and keywords

searched to land on the site.

Web Analytics Basics: Data Capture

• Data on site visitors’ behaviour is collected click by click as

visitors view pages or interact with forms

• The set of pages and events that a visitor experienced on the

site is tied together by the analytics solution into a ‘visit’ or

‘session’ – assist marketers with reporting on visitors paths

and conversion funnels.

• Cookies are used to identify returning and unique visitors -

also enables reporting on delayed conversions

• Registered user names can assist with the issues around

the use of cookies – ensure clicks can be tracked, no matter

what computer is used.

Basic Website KPIs

• There are some basic website KPIs, which are useful

staring place for measuring web traffic and digital

campaigns

1. Visits/Unique visits

2. Bounce rate

3. Page views & Page/Visit

4. Average time on site

5. Percentage of new visits

Digital Campaign Measurement

Step 0.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Step 4.

Step 5.

Step 6.

Volume = Unique visitors /

Reach (%)

Quality = Conversion rate

Cost = Cost per Click (CPC)

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Campaign ROI

Branding metrics

Lifetime value

Measures used for assessing success of digital campaigns

Sophis

tication

10 Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012

Measuring Conversions

• Communications objectives can be stated and measured in

terms of conversion marketing

• Conversions will outline the success of the traffic quality in

terms of whether visitors are within the target audience for the

site and whether visitors convert to onsite outcomes.

Reach of website

Website Visitors

Lead generated

Number of required outcomes

Attraction efficiency

Site conversion efficiency

Lead conversion efficiency

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Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2012

KPIs in Social Media Measurement

• Distribution - what social media

channels are being used, how can

people reach the oraganisation, are

they visible?

– Followers

– Fans

– Number of mentions

– Reach

– Social bookmarks (SumbleUpon,

Delicious)

– Inbound links

– Blog subscribers

• Interaction - how likely are

followers going to engage, spread

the message and interact with

each other?

– Retweets

– Forward to a friend

– Social media sharing

– Comments

– Like or rate something

– Reviews

– Contributors and active contributors

– Pageviews

– Unique visitors

– Traffic from social networking sites

– Time spent on site

– Response time

KPIs in Social Media Measurement

• Influence - how do attitudes change

due to the social media activities?

– Share of conversation vs

competitors

– Net Promoter

– Satisfaction

– Sentiment positive, neutral or

negative

– Number of brand evangelists

• Action and ROI - sales and other real world

results from social media?

– Conversions

– Sales revenue

– Registered users

– Issues resolved and resolution rate

– Number of leads (per day, week, month)

– Cost of lead or sale

– Lead conversion rate

– Revenue (per follower, lead, customer)

– Lifetime value of customers

– Support cost (per customer in social

channels)

– Share of repeat customers (from social

media vs other channels)

– Transaction value per customer

– Money in the bank, net profit, etc

Measuring Social Media: Analysing

Sentiment • Sentiment analysis looks at comments and suggestions left on social

media sites such as blogs and social networks.

• Instead of analysing just words, it identifies attitude towards a brand by

using variables such as context, tone,

emotion, among others.

• Sentiment can be monitored automatically

by software that relies on natural language

processing

• It offers organisations the ability to track

products, brands and people for example,

and determine whether they are viewed

positively or negatively on the web.

• A business can track: Flame detection (bad rant), New product

perception, Brand perception and Reputation management

Measuring Social Media: Analysing

Share of Voice (SoV) • In social media, share of voice refers to the

number of conversations about a brand vs.

its competitors.

• To measure share of voice in social media

amongst several competing brands, an organisation

would compare the number of articles, posts,

tweets, videos or images where its brand and

competitors are mentioned.

• Radian6 and Social Mention are social media tools

that can assist an organisation in tracking of all mentions

of conversations about the brand and its competitors‘

brands over a given time period.

• When looking at these mentions, an organisation should track those that have

positive, negative, or neutral sentiment – a weight can then be assigned to

categories and calculate the average sentiment and share of voice.

Measuring Email Campaigns

• Bounce rates

– Bounce e-mail is electronic

mail that is returned to the

sender because it cannot be

delivered

– A hard bounce is a

permanent failure – so email

address doesn’t exist, or has

been closed

– A soft bounce is when a

message is returned – for

example, the person may be

out of the office or the

mailbox is full

• Open rates - percentage of users

that opened compared to the number

sent

• Click through rates - the clicks from

email through to the landing page as

a percentage of those emails sent

(total and number of unique clicks)

• Open to click through rate – click-

throughs as a percentage of those

that opened

• Unsubscribe rate - percentage of

users unsubscribe

• Number of ‘actions’ – number of

sales, registrations, sign ups etc.

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Conversion Funnels

• Conversion funnels

– The path a customer takes from entering a site

through the checkout process and finally the end

goal being the purchase or signup confirmation

page.

– Conversion funnels can give a lot of valuable

information that can help increase time spent on

site, reduce bounce rates and improve conversions and

sales.

– Knowing how customers navigate through a site

can help determine what changes need to be made to

make it easier for a customer to purchase.

– A conversion funnel can tell an organisation where

customers exit most frequently.

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A/B Testing

• A/B Testing

– A technique for testing two or more versions of a page on a

website, and advert or email template

– Each version can be visually differentiated from the control

(original)

– The goal is to try a few versions and identify which version delivers

the desires outcome (for example, most conversions, click-

throughs etc).

– A/B testing are best at testing big changes to the layout or

templates, it’s relative simple to do and is the cheapest way to

start testing

Multivariate (MVT Testing)

• Multivariate (MVT Testing)

– A technique for testing changes to many different elements all at

the same time on one page to determine the optimal combination

for increasing conversion.

– An organisation identifies the components it sees as critical on a

web page and different versions of these components are

generated and then tested.

– The content on the page automatically changes for different

visitors and the effectiveness of each element and the combination

of elements is then measured

Monitoring Social Media: RSS &

Data Feeds • RSS feeds aggregate the content from various sites that a user has subscribed

to into one data feed that can be displayed in an inbox or desk top aggregator,

like Google Reader.

• Some RSS readers have social elements too - enabling content to be shared

with other friends as well as suggesting similar feeds that also reading these

sites use.

• RSS feeds are useful for monitoring blog activity, especially of key influencers for

the organisations brand or products/services.

• Feedburner is also an important social media monitoring tool.

– It ensures any RSS Feed will be compatible with most RSS Readers.

– It provides daily stats about an organisation’s subscribers and the interactions they

had with the feed which can be used an indicator of blog popularity.

– It tracks tracks subscribers, feed reader applications used to access a feed,

uncommon uses, including re-syndication and finally the reach (unique number of

people who view or click the feed content).

Monitoring Social Media: Sentiment

Analysis

• Sentiment analysis can be defined as the process that aims

to determine the attitude of a speaker or a writer with respect

to some topic.

• Automated sentiment analysis is the process of training a

computer to identify sentiment within content through Natural

Language Processing (NLP).

• Various sentiment measurement platforms employ different

techniques and statistical methodologies to evaluate

sentiment across the web.

Monitoring Social Media: Analysing

Social Media

An organisation can analyse social media content

by considering:

• Volume

• Share of voice

• Location

• By author

• Theme

Online Research

• Differences to Web Analytics:

– Web analytics involves mechanic observation and cannot

explain motivations

– Online research involves ‘Voice of the Customer’ (VOC) –

draw a distinction between analytics implemented to track

computer use and questions posed to real people.

• Defining characteristics:

– Live

– Connected in real time

– Little delay in data transfer

– Usually self completion

Bradley, 2010

Purposes of Online Research

• Usability Testing.

To discover whether hardware or software is easy to operate. CAWI

can test website usability; CAMI can test the ease of use of handset;

ARS measures attitudes to a group demonstration of software

• Test online promotions

To test promotions appearing in the online medium. CAWI tests

awareness of web ads; CAMI tests mobile phone ads and ARS held

at a product launch tests attitudes at that event

• Test offline promotions

To test promotions appearing in a different medium. CAWI tests

television adverts; CAMI tests Point of Sale promotions in retail

outlets; ARS tests press adverts

Purposes of Online Research

• Recruitment

Recruiting respondents for different mode of research. CAWI used

to recruit focus groups; CAMI recruiting for telephone survey and

ARS recruiting for online survey

• Testing other elements of the marketing mix

CAWI/CAMI profiling users by collecting demographics; CAMI to

assess mobile phone satisfaction; ARS to test satisfaction with a

conference

Usability Studies

• Usability studies

– User research is the science of observing and monitoring how users

interact with everyday things, such as websites, software or hardware and

then drawing conclusions about how to improve those things.

– Studies can take place in a lab, using one-way mirrors and cameras (lab

usability) or within the users native environment (home, office etc).

– A user is asked to complete a task or set of tasks for a website – each of

these tasks will have a specified goal for effectiveness, efficiency and

satisfaction.

– Enables organisation’s to see how users really interact with the content

and navigation systems built, providing a plethora of qualitative data to

back up quantitative information collected through analytics.

– Recent growth of rapid usability tests utilising companies that offer quick,

low cost (or even free) usability testing of websites.

Panels

• Panels

– A set of individuals who are questioned, observed or report over

a period of time. Quantitative data is gathered and tracked over

longer period of time to measure changes.

– Often uses monitoring software installed on panel members

computers to measure their web activity - example

organisations: ComScore and Nielsen Netratings

Voice of the Customer

• Voice of the customer:

– “Web analytics is good at the ‘what’. It is not good at the ‘why’. The

‘why’ can only come from the customer” (Kaushik, A, 2010)

– Allows organisations to marry up findings from other web analytics

solutions and then make changes to improve performance and customer

satisfaction.

– VOC can be collected in the form of surveys, such as exit surveys, surveys

whilst on site, post-purchase surveys,

product reviews or polls

– VOC is one of the most important

pieces of information for any web

analyst as it provides the customer’s

opinion.

Benefits of Online Surveys

• Reduced costs – no interviewer costs or printing costs

• Fast delivery – questionnaires can be quickly designed, dispatched and analysed

• Easily personalised

• Immediate low-cost global reach

• Penetrating different target groups – such as business people who can be hard to reach via other means

• Can be completed at the respondents convenience

• Can ensure all elements of the survey are completed

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Limitations of Online Surveys

• Technology may not be supported by all browsers

• Problem of emails being ‘junked’ by ISPs – not all surveys will

reach potential participants

• Can be hard to validate who has responded to the survey –

anyone could be using the computer

• People remain suspicious of ‘spam’ and internet security

which could lead to lower response rates

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What is Netnography?

• Netnography (also called Webnography) is a qualitative research

solution and a branch of ethnography that analyses the free

behaviour of individuals on the Internet and uses online marketing

research techniques to provide useful insights

• Reasons why it can be helpful for marketers:

– Living on the Web - The internet is becoming a place where

people live a part of their lives.

– Cyberculture is increasingly a part of – and overlaps with –

offline culture. TV shows, music groups and entertainers get

audience response about their recent shows through online sites

and social media

Bradley, 2010

What is Netnography?

• Netnography can be use to:

– To capture real behaviour, not customers’ reports of their

perceived behaviour

– To reveal how customers view, internalise, talk about and shape

organisation’s products and services by influencing others

• It has two main advantages over online focus groups:

– Netnography examines “real world” conversations versus a

researcher-led conversation

– Netnography has lower time and monetary cost resulting from

the elimination of recruiting, participation incentives, and use of a

dedicated software platform to conduct the research.

Third Party Research & Offsite

Analytics • Data collection approach undertaken by third parties at regular intervals

with detailed results sold to organisations but headline data often free

to subscribers, e.g. eConsultancy, Hitwise

• Off-site analytics includes the measurement of a website’s potential or

opportunity audience, its visibility or its wider relevance to the web

community as it currently exists

• Panel data (ComScore and Nielsen Netratings) - this technique often

uses monitoring software installed on panel members computers to

measure their web activity.

• ISP data (Hitwise) - off-site visitor information is collected by

aggregating anonymous data provided by ISPs.

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Test Your Understanding

For an organisation you know well, identify three goals

that your organisation may have concerning their

website visitors and two tools they could use to measure

this activity.

Bibliography

• Chaffey, D and Ellis-Chadwick, F (2012) “Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation

and Practice”, Fifth Edition, Prentice Hall.

• Kaushik, A (2007) “Web Analytics. An Hour a Day”, Sibex, Wiley publishing

• Kaushik, A (2010) “Web Analytics 2.0”, Sibex, Wiley publishing.

• Web Analytics Association: http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/