The future of media reporting. Part 2 – customer communication

By: Garry Lee | January 12th, 2009

In the first part of discussing media reporting we talked about how ‘last click wins’ was coming to an end and more complex and intelligent models would be used in the future. I’d like now to focus on moving past reporting and actually using the data to provide action and benefit, namely through communication with the customer or prospect.

Simple question – if you capture how a user arrives at your site would you not want to use that information to tailor communications with them?

Clearly the answer is yes and the truth is the information exists and you should be doing it, but so many companies haven’t got to that stage yet.

I’m a great believer in starting simple and building from there, so let’s look at a very simple example of how easy it is to exploit this information.

Company A sells car insurance.They have a very clever little CRM program that targets people who request a quote but do not buy a policy, by triggering an email 2 days after a quote was received but no purchase made.

Now imagine if you know Person X first arrived on the site using the term ‘accelerated no claims bonus’. In that action Person X has actually told you one of their key buying reasons. For you to not use this information would be madness. If you send them a generic creative listing the benefits of your business but not highlighting in particular the details of your no claims bonus you have missed a fantastic opportunity to complete the sale.

OK, so search isn’t the only method and not all channels will give you such detailed information but basic principles should allow you to segment and target customers, for example:

Affiliates / Aggregators = Creative highlighting benefits, in particular cost benefits
Brand terms = Emphasises the brand and its qualities – you know us and can trust us!
Cheap search terms = Cost, cost and cost again, the creative should mention nothing else. 10% online discount, FREE delivery, one night FREE – you get the picture
Display = Again, brand qualities and benefits will be the key on this creative

Now let’s look at how we can take this further and start affecting the rest of the business beyond the web. A classic example (i.e. simple!) is getting this information over to your call centre people and enabling them to have more information about the people they are talking to. As successful as the web is as a channel, many companies are still using the call centres to convert many leads or drive up sells and being able to give these people information about a prospects behaviour could be vital in convincing them to convert. Just look at our first example; if you know someone is interested in the no claims area then ensure this is at the forefront of what you discuss with them.

So, as you can see it’s very easy to start taking this brave new world of media information and start affecting results across the entire business.

In the final parts we’ll discuss:

Search – As one channel that already recognises the importance of interaction between its various elements (natural, paid, brand etc…) we’ll go into more detail about how a new media model can improve search optimisation
Attribution models – The ultimate goal of a true model for the future is to attribute sales based upon recency, relevance and interaction – paying the channel accordingly

In the meantime, if you want to understand more about how you can implement and start exploiting this new data, please drop me an email at blog@redeye.com