Recent research by Alterian indicates that direct marketers, across the board, are planning big increases in their use of e-mail (82%), personalized landing pages (47%), banner advertising (46%), web surveys (42%), microsites (35%), SMS (27%), and RSS feeds (26%). However, the same research indicates that many of the companies planning such increases are doing so with little or no analysis of results.
It's one thing to track and measure the impact of online marketing investments; it's very nature makes that easy. However, digging deeper to understand why the results were what they were, and what steps may be taken to improve future results, is just as important. Even more important is modeling desired results during the strategic planning phase of the campaign. Knowing exactly what should happen, and how it will occur, and then tracking and analyzing to see how close the predictive models were to reality is smart online marketing. It's truly managing investments wisely and ensuring future campaigns provide even better ROI.
Customer surveys can help in this regard, as can target audience insight research on needs, attitudes, and behaviors to really understand what content, functionality, and offers will be the most motivating. Also important is strategic planning to ensure any online campaign is fully integrated with offline marketing initiatives, as success of the entire marketing initiative often depends on the proper execution of each component.
Our motto has always been to do the job right the first time, because the results will matter, and you may not get a second chance.
