eMetrics & Google Tag Manager Announcement

Earlier this week, Alex and I attended the eMetrics Summit in Boston. We came back on Tuesday night, so this blog post is hot off the press. This particular conference was exciting for many reasons, and in this post, I will provide a summary of what made this event so interesting, exciting and fun at the same time.

1. Data Rules – data can and should drive your business strategy

Every speaker and keynote presenter focused on one common theme – data drives results. Although this seems self-explanatory, it is quite difficult to build an organization that leverages data to its fullest potential. Most of the organizations know that data is valuable but fail to accurately put it to work. Jim Sterne, Founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit said that “while all e-business managers clearly recognize the tremendous value of e-customer analytics, most lack the staff, technical resources, and expertise to harness and put to effective use the flood of raw data produced by their Web systems” (EMetrics:  Business metrics for the new economy.) Most of the presentations talked about addressing these challenges. Here is my summary and a very consolidated way for how to do it in your organization:

1. 1. Create a cross-departmental team to define marketing goals, objectives and KPIs.
   2. Commit resources.
   3. Define all areas where data is being collected.
   4. Create a process for accurate data gathering.
   5. Select the right tools to help you gather this data.
   6. Analyze your data and turn it into insights.
   7. Adjust and improve.

2. Return on Customer Satisfaction

On Monday morning Eric Feinberg took the stage. Eric is a Senior Director of Mobile, Media & Entertainment at ForeSee. Eric’s presentation focused on leveraging data to drive consumer satisfaction. Once of the items to keep in mind is the number of online places where your brand can touch a customer – store, call center, internet, mobile, social media, website, email, etc. It is not just web analytics, it is customer analytics, and we should work on harnessing this data to improve customer experience. Here is a great slide from his presentation.

Here are also a couple of metrics to keep in mind. The stats are taken from the ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index:

1. 1. 68% of satsifed shoppers are more likely to buy from the same retailer online in the future.
   2. 67% of satisfied shoppers are more likely to recommend your brand.
   3. 48% of satisfied shoppers are more likely to buy offline.

It is very important to think about overall satisfaction of your customer across all channels and platforms. Satisfaction determines what consumers do next and therefore can have a direct financial impact on your business.

3. Mobile – if you ignore it, you are already behind. 

I was lucky to attend a great break out session by Rachel Pasqua, VP Mobile at iCorssing. Here is one slide from her presentation that clearly summarizes why mobile is important.

It is important to note that 44% of searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms were mobile. According to Google Study in 2011, 19% of users would have a negative overall perception of a company if they were dissatisfied with the performance of its website on a mobile device. If you would like to learn more about mobile marketing, attend our next free class 10 Strategies to Drive Mobile Marketing and Analytics.

4. Winning great prizes at the conferences is always fun. 

Here is Alex, who just won a helicopter.

5. Introducing Google Tag Manager

On Monday, Laura Holmes from Google made a very important announcement introducing Google Tag Manager – a smarter way to tag your site. Google Tag Manager allows you add, delete and update your website tags, easily and for free at any time without troubling the IT department. In Fact, as Platinum Sponsors, Google had a booth at the conference where they explained Google Tag Manager to everyone who was interested.

Google also gave out colorful notebooks to all the attendees.

Google packed Google Tag Manager with lots of great tools to take the pain out of tagging. Here are a few of my favorite tools:

1. 1. Version history
   2. Debug console
   3. Preview mode
   4. Smart caching

If you would like to learn more about Google Tag Manager, and how it can help your business, please send me an email. We are one of the Google Tag Manager Specialists and are listed on the GTM site.

Blog post written by Michael Loban