Analytics/ Metrics

A Rhode Island marketing company has gotten into some trouble far from home. The Kentucky Attorney General, Jack Conway, recently announced that the commonwealth had reached an agreement with Versatile Marketing Solutions regarding its violations of the Kentucky Do Not Call Act, charging the firm $20,000 in civil penalties.

According to the AG's release, the company had fun afoul of the telemarketing fraud statue and do-not-call law when, from December 2010 to November 2011, it pitched home alarm systems to Kentucky residents who had signed up for the Do-Not-Call List. The sales tactic involved a survey, the AG's office said, and resulted in nearly 60 complaints from people contacted by VMS.

"This agreement should send a clear message that there are consequences for failure to follow Kentucky's Do-Not-Call and telemarketing fraud statutes," Conway said. He added that the Office of Consumer Protection would continue working to protect "Kentucky families and consumers from businesses that try to operate outside of the law."

Other companies have also come under fire for violating marketing policies. The Verge reports that critics are claiming Google ignored its own paid advertising rules when it ran a "series of sponsored blog posts and video placements for Chrome."

A study conducted on behalf of the Pigeon Forge Department of Tourism in Tennessee revealed that the city's advertising needed to have more Bowling Green, Kentucky and Columbus, Ohio marketing components in 2011. That's because fewer tourists from those areas were coming to Pigeon Forge than other, closer areas, The Mountain Press reports. 

Rather than spend more money trying to convince residents to make the trek to Tennessee, the review suggested pulling Columbus and Bowling Green from the Spring Campaign and instead focusing efforts on Dayton, Ohio and the Greensboro-High Point area in Charlotte, North Carolina, the newspaper says.

In the "tier 1 cities" - which include Nashville, Lexington, Knoxville and other regions - and the "tier 2 areas" newspaper inserts, radio spots and television commercials will be aired, and the campaign will also have inserts in national newspapers and magazines, according to the news source.

Bohan Marketing CEO David Bohan, who offered the proposal at a City Commission meeting, was quoted by the news outlet as saying that the city and the state Department of Tourist Development will work together to draw more visitors and also slash costs of advertising.

Across the country, parks and cities are working to attract greater numbers of tourists. The News and Sentinel reports that officials in Mountwood Park are trying to promote the area's assets without the help of a marketing director.

Cleveland marketing agency Metrics Marketing Group recently released eye-tracking and facial-expression research to gain insight into how people read and respond to direct mail pieces.

"For today's direct mail marketers there is little opportunity to grab customer attention and stand out from the crowd. The print cycle is long, and competition is fierce, thus optimizing your creative prior to launch is imperative," Cathleen Zapata, vice president of research and customer experience at Metrics Marketing, said in a statement.

She added that having access to the research would help marketers input the findings as they design direct mail campaigns, which could "ultimately improve conversions."

Direct mail remains an effective means of appealing to consumers on a local level. A study from the Chief Marketing Officer Council released in October showed that many marketing companies struggle with local advertising, but those who are successful are using a combination of direct mail, in-store merchandising and other tactics to drive consumers to buy their goods and services.

That report indicated that by launching multichannel marketing campaigns, even national brands can present themselves as a community business and establish a local presence.  

Social media behemoth Twitter has recently unveiled a new way for advertising professionals and companies launching online marketing campaigns to measure the effectiveness of their efforts. 

The company said it would be rolling out Twitter Web Analytics to provide insight into how much website traffic comes from Twitter and the impact of integrating Twitter into a site. One of the other benefits is knowing how people on Twitter are sharing content from your website, the company said.

According to PC World, this new tool will be a great asset for businesses, as it can help them determine whether an online visitor found the website through Twitter, a search engine or some other source. This is useful, the source says, because companies will be able to launch "incentive and affiliate programs, which would have been impossible to implement in the past."

Businesses in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and elsewhere will likely welcome the new method of measuring web traffic. Ohio-based The OurPet's Company, which makes pet products, recently announced its new "spokescat" would be using social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and would also be featured in a commercial and the "Odor Independence Day" website.

WorkflowOne, a Dayton, Ohio-based marketing services provider, recently announced it would be offering a new software solution to help retailers track the effectiveness of their advertising and promotional efforts at the point of purchase.

The technology would allow retail merchants to cut down on the costs associated with creating these marketing efforts and reduce the time between creation and deployment, among other benefits, the company said.

"Today's retailers work hard to create an engaging environment for shoppers and one that will drive first time and repeat buyers," stated Thomas Rizzi, chief sales officer at WorkflowOne. He added that when POP materials are tailored to the local market, well-synced with other promotional tactics and displayed properly, they can "make a significant difference in whether or not shoppers take action."

According to WorkflowOne, the software can be particularly useful for retailers who have many locations scattered across a wide area and a wide variety of types of stores that differ when it comes to total size, number of windows or register space.

Tracking advertising metrics can be useful for any business that wants to calculate its marketing return on investment.  

Data analytics company dunnhumbyUSA, which has offices in Cincinnati, Ohio, recently announced that it has partnered with media and market research business TRA to offer advertising agencies and other marketing-related organizations ways to measure their campaigns' effectiveness.

Stuart Aitken, CEO of dunnhumbyUSA, said in a statement that "companies experience success and build preference for their brand by putting the customer at the center of their business decisions."

He added that by pairing up with TRA, the two companies would be able to give their customers the "opportunity to deliver more relevant content, improving the customer experience and, at the same time, providing better ROI for advertisers." The companies plan to measure how purchase behavior corresponds to television viewing habits while also offering a means for noting how successful campaigns are and targeting the best areas of marketing spending.

As dunnhumby and TRA focus on television, one of the premier TV metrics companies, Nielsen, has set its sights on the web, AdWeek reports. The market research firm is getting ready to launch a service that it hopes will set the industry standard for measuring web metrics.  

Adobe recently announced the availability of web-based software solutions designed to aid companies in their online marketing plans. Many of the tools help organizations leverage the growing importance of social media in web marketing initiatives, which have become an integral aspect of branding and other business-critical operations.

Among the tools is an application designed to provide better options for companies looking to purchase advertisement space on popular social networking website Facebook. The solution includes an item providing optimum analytics information, which will allow companies to process information quickly and target specific demographics within the Facebook network. Furthermore, Adobe included solutions designed to boost marketing campaigns on smartphones and other mobile devices, which may prove invaluable as these items continue to become more pervasive in enterprise and consumer life.

“Our focus remains on meeting customer needs and driving innovation into the Adobe Online Marketing Suite,” Josh James, senior vice president and general manager of the Omniture business unit for Adobe, said. “The suite, now bolstered by the resources available through Adobe, continues to resonate with existing and new customers.”

Adobe has released other items in recent months to make its design tools more adaptable to needs of its users. It added the ability to support 3D animations to its popular web design tool Flash earlier this month.

Companies have always enjoyed newly available data that encourages efficiency within. However, according to a WebAdvantage.net blog, many companies have been reticent to implement a web analytics solution despite its ability to transform any website. Analytics is especially important for startup companies that rely solely on their website to generate revenue, whether through advertising or ecommerce sales.

Within any analytics solution, however, there is a lot of data that isn’t especially pertinent. Discovering which information is important is key to the success of a certain website. Many free solutions offer users countless data, but there is little help in terms of interpreting the information, which is ultimately the most important aspect of using any analytics solution, according to WebAdvantage.net.

Using an example from a company blog, the news provider reports some information can be deceiving for new users of analytics software. For instance, substantial traffic on a certain day may indicate success, however, if users aren’t spending substantial time on the website, then it’s unlikely the website can count on that person returning.

Using data from analytics tools is part of a broader development in marketing aimed at providing customers with exactly what they want. Combining analytics with social media campaigns is key to boosting brand visibility and luring report customers or readers.

With sites like YouTube popularizing online videos among consumers, businesses are also turning to this format to promote their products. For business owners looking to implement videomarketing into their advertising campaigns, a recent study from TubeMogul indicates that mid-length viral videos are the most effective.

According to the study, the completion rate for video ads between 30 and 90 seconds are the highest, with 32.2 percent of consumers watching them until the end, relays MediaPost. For shorter videos, the completion rate was 17 percent, and for longer ones, it was 23.4 percent.

TubeMogul also found that viral videos are more effective at capturing a consumer’s attention. "What people seem to be saying is: We don't like 15-second TV-style spots or longer branded content, but rather short, interesting viral clips," said David Burch, communications director at TubeMogul.

Online videos are growing in popularity in the United States. According to a recent study from comScore, more than 80 percent of U.S. internet users watched an online video in April. YouTube is still the most popular online video platform, though VEVO - launched in December 2009 - has been making gains on the site since its release.

While many website developers try to measure their success, companies shouldn't expect to unravel the complexities of human response to a website through metrics alone, according to a panel of experts who spoke on the subject at the Startup Lessons Learned conference.

Tech website Vator News reports that hundreds of people attended the event to learn strategies to build a company that focus on quick product releases, consistent measurement and constant learning.

Siqi Chen, the co-founder of game maker Serious Business, which was recently sold to Zynga, told the news provider that web developers should try to improve the way their website works, not the way the site looks.

Chen added that developers need to be able to use critical thinking that goes beyond metrics.

"Pre-launch of a product is a lot of qualitative measurements," says Chen. "That’s where design thinking comes in. Design is a process that you use to come to a good product. Metrics are what you use to make sure your design decisions are correct."

Another expert says that developers should also remember not to strain their efforts on too much home page design. Website users are increasingly looking for specific sites rather than a homepage, according to a recent report by CMS Wire.