eCommerce Analytics

I apologize for the long absence from the blog. For one, I was forced to spend a lost week in Maui. Then, when I returned, the rest of the guys at Istobe and I showed our wares at the MIT Technology Review emTech convention last week. It was a great time for a first look at our new product but a bad time to write a blog.

Read Ignite’s first tradeshow exhibit: our product meets the public »

(Read the entire Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started series)

Yesterday we talked about one of the reasons it’s important to go into your customer analytics intitiative with a well defined goal and a solid plan.  So how do you put a plan together to achieve our customer analytics goal?

Read Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started (Part 3) »

I wanted to briefly build upon Doug’s posts about customer analytics over the past few days (see Customer Analytics: A Guide To Getting Started). I try to keep abreast of the latest research about customer analytics that gets published and, just this week, came across the new Aberdeen Group’s report on the subject (Customer Analytics: Segmentation Beyond Demographics). While I encourage you to read the whole report, I wanted to point out some of the info and metrics in the article that I found most compelling.

First, and most impressive, companies with full customer analytics implementations saw incredible gains across the board, including:

• 43% year over year increase in annual revenue
• 42% year over year increase in customer profitability
• 35% year over year increase in average order value
• 25% year over year increase in market share growth

And lest you think that only those companies that completely overhauled their systems saw improvements, companies that have started down the customer analytics path saw, on average, a 7% year over year increase in annual revenue and a 3% year over year increase in customer profitability. While these might seem like modest gains, companies without a customer analytics system in place actually saw a decrease in customer profitability year over year.

Second, best in class organizations are using a wider range of data in more ways than other organizations. What do I mean by this? Well, to begin with, they’re collecting more data about their customers -demographic and behavioral information from web analytics, crm, email marketing, and customer feedback tools, all of it stored in one easily accessible place. And, they’re making better use of this data through the creation of enhanced segmentation (meaning segmentation that uses more than just behavioral or demographic info to assign customer to groups) and more relevant indicator metrics (i.e. CLV) that better inform sales and marketing staff about their customers.

Lastly, the report highlights how important it is to invest in customer analytics now. With over half of all the companies the Aberdeen Group talked to for this report planning on increasing their spending budget for customer analytics in the next year (that number goes up to 60% for companies that are considered best in class), if you haven’t made an investment in a customer analytics yet, you simply can’t wait any longer or you’ll soon find yourself far behind competitors.

Luckily, Doug’s posts can walk you through the basics on getting started, but I wanted to make sure to point out some of the most recent information on how important it is to get up and running now.

(Read the entire Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started series)

In part 1 of Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started, we talked about defining the goal of your customer analytics initiative.  We’re now going to spend some time over the next few days talking about planning.  But first, I want to briefly give an example of why it’s critical to have a well defined goal and plan before deciding which type of tools you need.

Read Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started (Part 2) »

(Read the entire Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started series)

More and more companies are looking to implement customer analytics as a way to better understand purchasing behavior and squeeze more revenue out of their customers. And why not? Over the past few years, companies have been investing in collecting tons of data about their customers through their CRM, web analytics, and transactional systems. But how do you get started in customer analytics?

Read Customer Analytics: A Guide to Getting Started »

Tags: Personalized Email, segmentation, Targeted Email
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