Web Analytics: Marketing Beyond Online Customer Data

January 2012

Web Analytics: Marketing Beyond Online
Customer Data Analyst Insight
As the volume of customer-related data (transactional, behavioral and Aberdeen’s Insights provide the
unstructured) continues to grow, marketing organizations are in danger of analyst perspective of the
becoming increasingly data-rich, but insight-poor. In July and August 2011, research as drawn from an
Aberdeen surveyed 176 organizations regarding their use of analytical tools aggregated view of the research
and processes in marketing campaigns and programs, with 93 of the surveys, interviews, and
responding businesses indicating that they are actively using web analytics to data analysis
support their marketing activities. This Analyst Insight will identify how Best-
in-Class companies among those 93 respondents track, measure and use
online customer data to improve their performance in key indicators of
marketing program success. These metrics include marketing's contribution
to company revenue, and the incremental sales lift resulting from marketing Aberdeen’s PACE Methodology
campaigns and programs. The analysis review key factors that help Aberdeen applies a methodology
businesses move beyond simply collecting customer data through their to benchmark research that
websites, to using this information as a strategic lever to help marketing evaluates the business Pressures,
become a truly data-driven function that has quantifiable impact on company Actions, Capabilities, and
results. Enablers (PACE) that indicate
corporate behavior in specific
business processes:
Business Context
√ Pressures — external forces
The rising and falling tides of economic instability over the past three years
that impact an organization’s
have left many organizations engaged in fierce competition to survive and market position,
thrive. Aberdeen's Q2 2011 Quarterly Business Review study shows that the competitiveness, or business
top challenges organizations face in meeting their business goals are operations.
economic conditions (39%) and increased competition (36%). These harsh
realities put marketing at the forefront of the organization's drive to make √ Actions — the strategic
the business stand out from its competitors, and to maintain and improve its approaches that an
organization takes in response
financial health.
to industry pressures.

Table 1: Top Pressures Driving Marketing Agendas √ Capabilities — the business
process competencies
All Analytics Users (process, organization,
performance and knowledge
Pressure to increase the returns from management) required to
 52%
marketing spend execute corporate strategy.
Organizational pressure to deliver higher √ Enablers — the key
 51%
quality sales leads functionality of technology
solutions required to support
Faster response time to customer activities the organization’s enabling
 30%
required for business impact business practices.
Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011

This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen Group. Aberdeen Group's methodologies provide for objective fact-based research and
represent the best analysis available at the time of publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group, Inc.
and may not be reproduced, distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent by Aberdeen Group, Inc.

Web Analytics: Marketing Beyond Online Customer Data
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Aberdeen's October 2011 study, The Marketing Executive's Agenda for 2012,
reflects these rising organizational expectations from marketing. Fifty-one
percent (51%) of all companies surveyed indicated they are holding
marketing accountable for demonstrating quantifiable returns on investment.
Data from Aberdeen's current study shows that 52% of the companies using
analytical tools (e.g. web analytics) to support their marketing programs are
struggling with organizational pressure to demonstrate quantifiable ROI
from their marketing spend, as shown in Table 1. Marketers need to use
online customer data for more than just managing website content--they
must leverage web analytics tools strategically, to improve targeting and
personalization and provide the right messaging / offer(s) at the right time to
each customer, leading to increased returns.
What better way is there to demonstrate the value of marketing besides
correlating marketing programs with selling results? Unsurprisingly, one out
of two companies using analytical tools to support marketing activities
indicated that they expect their marketing departments to deliver higher-
quality leads to support sales reps - see Table 1 above. Marketers are
challenged with using web analytics tools to convert information captured
through the website into high-quality leads for their sales teams. Aberdeen's
December 2011 Sales and Marketing Alignment: The New Power Couple study
affirms this finding; the second top organizational goal after increasing top-
line revenue is improving the quality of leads marketing sends to sales.
Defining Metrics

Best-in-Class Results The performance criteria in
Table 2 are defined as follows;
Aberdeen used two performance criteria to study how web analytics help
Best-in-Class businesses differentiate themselves from Industry Average and √ Marketing's contribution
Laggards; to company revenue: The
percentage of company
revenue that is attributable
Table 2: Top Performers Earn Best-in-Class Status to multi-channel marketing
Definition of Mean Class Performance campaigns and programs. It
is typically measured by
Maturity Class
determining the percentage
 65% of all closed business coming from marketing of closed business that was
Best-in-Class:
campaigns and programs generated or influenced
Top 20%
 7.1% average year-over-year improvement in (nurtured, touched) by
of aggregate marketing campaigns before
incremental sales lift resulting from marketing
performance scorers resulting in a sale.
campaigns
 11% of all closed business coming from marketing √ Incremental sales lift
Industry Average: campaigns and programs from marketing
Middle 50%
 1.7% average year-over-year improvement in programs: Year-over-year
of aggregate
incremental sales lift resulting from marketing performance measure
performance scorers
campaigns demonstrating the impact of
marketing activities on
Laggard:  2% of all closed business coming from marketing improving organization's
Bottom 30% campaigns and programs
selling results.
of aggregate  1.9% average year-over-year decline in incremental
performance scorers sales lift resulting from marketing campaigns

© 2012 Aberdeen Group. Telephone: 617 854 5200
www.aberdeen.com Fax: 617 723 7897

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Why These Metrics?
Aberdeen asked the survey respondents to rate the value of specific
performance metrics to measuring the effectiveness of analytical tools, in
this case web analytics, in improving marketing results. The top two
measures identified were Return on Marketing Investments (72%) and
incremental sales lift from marketing programs (66%). As for the former
measure, research findings reveal that most companies (66%) use
marketing's contribution to sales pipeline and company revenue to
determine the ROI of their marketing activities.
In the world of web analytics, these metrics translate into identifying how
each online customer activity is converted into an online or offline purchase.
While marketing's contribution to company revenue is an enterprise-level
metric measuring overall marketing effectiveness, sales lift from marketing
campaigns can be measured by identifying how each multi-channel marketing
campaign drives business in various forms, including in-store purchase,
online order and phone order.

The Best-in-Class PACE Model
Integrating web analytics as a strategic differentiator to achieve
organizational goals and mitigate the pressures mentioned above requires a
combination of strategic actions, business processes, and enabling
technologies summarized as shown in Table 3.

Table 3: The Best-in-Class PACE Framework
Pressures Actions Capabilities Enablers
 Pressure to  Improve the  Executive support for  Data management / cleansing
increase the targeting of using customer analytics  Marketing content management
returns from marketing offers to in marketing programs  Marketing automation
marketing optimize marketing  Test effectiveness of  Predictive analytics
program spend ROI campaign content
 Gain insight into  Measure customer
effectiveness of profitability
specific marketing  Customer behavior is
campaigns and used to segment and
channels target marketing
audiences
 Disseminate knowledge
on marketing campaigns
to key decision makers
 Capture customer
sentiment data


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Best-in-Class Strategies
The study results indicate that Best-in-Class companies focus on
customizing their marketing messages based on each website visitor persona
and identify which marketing efforts provide the greatest impact on driving
marketing effectiveness - Figure 1.
Using online customer data captured through web analytics tools is a key
enabler in helping organizations better personalize their marketing
campaigns in order to improve their marketing ROI. Aberdeen's September
2011 Customer Relevancy Drives Precision Marketing in the Mobile Channel study
demonstrates the value of this strategy; companies using customer data to
create customized marketing campaigns achieve 72% greater (6.4% vs. 3.7%)
year-over-year improvement in marketing's contribution to company
revenue, compared to those don't.

Figure 1: Best-in-Class Web Analytics Strategies

40% 38% Best in Class
33%
30%

20%

10%

0%
Improve the targeting of Gain insight into effectiveness
marketing offers to optimize of specific marketing
marketing ROI campaigns and channels
Percent of respondents, n=176
"Having timely and accurate
In addition to their focus on using customer information to customize their
insights into which marketing
multi-channel marketing activities and improve ROI, Best-in-Class marketers campaigns were successful
are also keen on getting granular with the specific impact of each marketing helps us to eventually optimize
channel and campaign. This helps those businesses integrate their web our marketing programs based
analytics deployments with broader multi-channel and cross-channel on prospect activity."
marketing efforts, and provides the ability to trace the results of each
~ Chris Kuelbs, Lead Project
marketing campaign. Using this strategy in conjunction with personalization
Manager, Polaris
efforts allows the Best-in-Class to go beyond operational reporting of web
activities to strategic marketing activities that impact returns from their web
spend.


Page 5

Case Study - Mid-size Financial Education Services Company

A leading financial education provider in North America broadcasts one
of the largest independent radio shows, and providing a wide array of
products and services to its customers. To align the online delivery of
these products and services with its business strategy, the company
launched a new web site and adopted a marketing automation solution
to manage the site. “We changed our approach to marketing by
automating it and making it a more data-driven function, with precise
measures to assess marketing campaign results and utilizing web
analytics is a key ingredient of this strategy,” says the company's Lead
Web Analyst.
One of the first steps the company took was to use a web analytics tool
to track results (visitations and click-throughs) to understand the paths
visitors take online. “The ability to understand how to effectively utilize
our online real estate was an immediate benefit for us. It allowed us to
improve the impact of our marketing assets, thus truly integrating the
content on our new web site with our business.”
Another key component of the company’s marketing automation
strategy is disseminating marketing campaign results to relevant
stakeholders. Today, 20 individuals from different roles, ranging from
executive management to marketing staff, can view campaign results.
While putting these capabilities in place, the company kept a keen eye
on the costs of its campaigns to determine which were successful. “Our
new solution enabled us to associate returns from each marketing
campaign with its respective costs and as a result, we are able to
determine marketing campaigns that would deliver the maximum return
on investment (ROI) for us,” adds the Lead Web Analyst.
Careful planning and implementation of a marketing automation strategy
allowed the company to reap many fruits of its labors. The first year
after implementing the new solution, it increased ROI 5-fold.
Marketing’s contribution to online business has jumped to 50%. Time-
to-market (time to create and deliver marketing assets or content to
market) also improved significantly. “It used to take us weeks to create
content and put on our website; today we do it virtually in real-time,”
concludes the Lead Web Analyst at the company.

Key Capabilities
As illustrated in Table 4, Aberdeen has identified six key business processes
and four technology enablers required to successfully implement the core
web analytics strategies above, and achieve Best-in-Class results.


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Table 4: The Competitive Framework
Best-in-Class Average Laggards
Test effectiveness of campaign content
76% 51% 21%
Process Customer behavior is used to segment and target marketing
audiences
65% 56% 41%
Executive support for using customer analytics in marketing
Organization programs
76% 61% 38%
Disseminate knowledge on marketing campaigns to key
decision makers
Knowledge 62% 49% 28%
Capture customer sentiment data
57% 41% 14%
 62% Data  56% Data  46% Data
management / management / management /
cleansing cleansing cleansing
 57% Marketing  45% marketing  34% marketing
Enabling content content content
Technologies management management management
 50% Marketing  41% marketing  24% marketing
automation automation automation
 43% Predictive  33% Predictive  17% Predictive
analytics analytics analytics
Measure customer profitability
Performance
67% 48% 36%

Capabilities and Enablers
Based on the findings of the Competitive Framework and interviews with
end user companies, Aberdeen’s analysis of the Best-in-Class demonstrates
that these top performers are dedicated to using a certain set of business
processes and technologies, which help them succeed at web analytics.

Process
• Measure effectiveness of each marketing campaign
content. Maximizing marketing ROI requires that the business
understand which marketing campaign(s) deliver the greatest results
/ returns, in order to help them identify and repeat successful
campaigns, and avoid unsuccessful ones. Using web analytics tools to
evaluate the effectiveness of campaign content is an essential step in
this process, along with determining the proper timing and
channel(s) of the campaign. Aberdeen's November 2010 Marketing

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Asset Management report notes; "…Best-in-Class companies are keenly
aware of utilizing both fundamental and innovative performance
management measures to advance their marketing materials and content
in a manner that directly supports the business," highlighting the
importance of measuring the effect of each content in multi-channel
and cross-channel marketing campaigns on business results.
• Using customer behavioral data for segmentation and
targeting. This process lets organizations use customer behavior
data captured through the web analytics to craft different marketing
strategies based on the unique needs and characteristics of various
customer segments. Companies can use one or many criteria (e.g.
age, location, historical spend) to segment their customer base. In
addition to streamlining the management of typically exhaustive
customer databases, this process also enhances companies' ability to
contextualize marketing messages. For example, using prior
customer spend history (which can typically be obtained through
web analytics tools), a company can identify high-value / spend
customers and create customized marketing messages for these
VICs (Very Important Customers). Companies using this process
achieve 82% greater incremental sales lift from marketing campaigns,
compared to organizations that don't use customer behavioral data
to segment and target their customers - Figure 2.

Figure 2: Performance Impact of Customer Segmentation
Companies using customer behavioral data for segmentation
6% and targeting
All Others
4.8%
5%

4% 82% greater
2.6%
performance
3%

2%

1%

0%
Average incremental sales lift resulting from a marketing campaign

Organization
Executive-level support for integrating customer analytics within
marketing programs. To target customers through the web in a
personalized fashion, companies must use web analytics to understand
customer personas in order to pair the right content with the right
message. Data shows that Best-in-Class companies are twice as likely as
Laggard businesses to have executive support for leveraging customer


Page 8

analytics within marketing programs. Using customer analytics with web
analytics tools helps companies unlock insights otherwise hidden behind
online customer data. These insights can in turn be used to tune marketing
programs and enhance the contextualization of marketing campaigns.
Companies without executive-level support for customer analytics
experience 80% lower (0.5% vs. 2.7%) year-over-year performance gains in
marketing program contribution to company revenue compared to their
counterparts who lack executive-level support for their broader web
analytics initiatives.

Knowledge Management "The focus of most marketing
• Share knowledge of marketing campaign results with key organizations has changed
dramatically; we are no longer
decision-makers. Best-in-Class companies in this study are 49%
leading the marketplace, we are
more likely than all others to provide executive-level insights to key simply following the customers.
decision-makers within the organization. Using web analytics tools If companies can do a good job
allows companies to track and measure the specific impact of each managing customer
marketing program on online conversions and customer behavior information, then the results
(e.g. sign-up for newsletters or download a coupon). Sharing these will translate into improved
insights is a crucial part of both marketing and organizational marketing effectiveness.”
success. It provides company leadership with much needed ~Virginia Bonofiglio, Ex-
information about the organization's strategic position within the Marketing Manager of a
marketplace, as well as data-driven insights required to manage the Chemicals Company based in
existing product / service portfolio and create new products that the U.S.
meet customers' needs. Furthermore, as illustrated in Table 1, when
marketers are under constant pressure to demonstrate ROI from
their activities, this process lets them share the impact of their
marketing campaigns on business results.
• Capture customer sentiment data. Using analytical tools and
processes to capture website visitation data is different from
capturing customer sentiment information. The former provides
businesses with insight into the behavior patterns of website
visitors, whereas the latter reveals what drives these behaviors.
Customer sentiment data can be captured in many ways--for
example, by monitoring likes, product / service ratings, online
comments, forums and social media status updates. Combining
online customer activity data with sentiment information through
analytical tools lets companies take their web analytics to the next
step - it opens the door to the hearts and minds of customers and
helps businesses improve the results of their marketing initiatives.
This process is an integral part of web analytics activities for 57% of
Best-in-Class companies, compared to 30% of other companies.

Technology
When it comes to leveraging technology tools to support existing web
analytics deployments, Best-in-Class companies focus on four key
technologies (Figure 3);


Page 9

Figure 3: Adoption of Technology Enablers
70% Best in Class All Others
62%
60% 57%
52% 50%
50%
43%
41%
40% 34%
30% 27%

20%

10%
Data Marketing content Marketing automation Predictive analytics
management/cleansing management solution


• Data management/cleansing. Customer data is one of the most
important tangible assets any organization owns. Managing and
cleansing databases that store this information is paramount in
helping companies use this data. Data management and cleansing
tools support businesses by ensuring the accuracy of customer data
obtained through web analytics. This information can be used to
generate targeted marketing campaigns. There are various methods
of integrating customer data with web operations; for example,
companies can use reverse-IP technology to gather information on
website visitors and customize their marketing messages.
Companies using data management / cleansing tools are 39% less
likely (19% vs. 31%) to struggle with interpreting customer data
from web analytics.
• Marketing content management. This technology is associated
with the second process capability in Table 3 - testing the
effectiveness of marketing content. Marketing content management
tools automatically update web marketing content based on
customer information, typically gleaned through web analytics
deployments. When a business lacks prior data on a website visitor,
it uses information captured from other customers to personalize
the visitors' web experience. For example, a client visiting a clothing
company's website for the first time might click to see more coats.
Based on this information, the company can use data from other
visitors' sessions to make an offer to the first-time customer with
trending coats or complementary products, such as gloves and
scarves, that other visitors view or purchase when they click on
coats. Businesses using marketing content management achieve 2.3-
times greater (4.3% vs. 1.9%) year-over-year gains in cross-sell/up-
sell revenue compared to those that don't.
• Marketing automation. One out of every two Best-in-Class
companies currently uses this technology to support their web
analytics activities. Marketing automation tools help businesses use
online customer data within the scope of their broader multi-

Page 10

channel marketing campaigns. Customer information helps
companies coordinate different touch-points for each account
across multiple digital and off-line channels. In addition to providing
timely and broad communication capabilities, this technology also
enhances the consistency of multi-channel marketing messages. Data
from Aberdeen's August 2011 Metric-Driven Mobile Marketing
research shows that companies using marketing automation
technology are 2.3-times (43% vs. 19%) more likely to indicate that
they have established consistency within their marketing messages
across all channels.
• Predictive analytics. These tools let organizations take advantage
of online customer data captured through the company's website by
using web analytics tools to predict what customers will want, as
well as how, when and where they will want it. Despite being
currently used by less than half of Best-in-Class, the deltas in
adoption of this technology between Industry Average (43%) and
Laggards (153%) are significant. This reflects the value of this
technology in helping companies achieve the Best-in-Class results
demonstrated in Table 1. The table below illustrates the planned
adoption patterns of this technology among all web analytics users.

Table 5: Planned Adoption of Predictive Analytics Tools

All Web Analytics Users

Plan to Implement by August 2012  34%

Plan to Implement after August 2012  21%


Performance Management
• Measure customer profitability. Sixty-one percent (61%) of all
organizations participating in Aberdeen's upcoming January 2012
Customer Experience Management: Using the Power of Analytics to
Optimize Customer Delight study indicated customer profitability as a
key measure of the effectiveness of customer management activities.
Improving this measure begins with understanding each customer or
account's impact on the company's top-line and bottom-line results.
Establishing visibility into customer profitability begins with back-end
data systems that capture and store customer data, typically
collected from myriad sources including web analytics tools.
Organizations with a well-structured customer data system can drill
down into information on historical customer spend, and correlate
this information with the costs of acquiring and targeting each
customer. With this net number, businesses have a quantified
measure of the profitability of each customer and marketing


Page 11

channel, including the web. Research results from the Customer
Experience Management study indicate that businesses conducting a
cost / benefit analysis of each customer interaction improved their
average profit margin per customer by 4.7% year-over-year,
compared to a 1.2% decrease for businesses that are not
performing such calculations.

Free or Paid Web Analytics?
This research document has noted the business impact of web analytics
tools and the differentiating business processes and technologies which
support them. However, which tools should businesses use? The web Fast Fact
analytics market is a mix of free, paid and mix (free and paid) tools. Figure 4
below and the sidebar illustrate the impact of each model. The breakdown of companies
indicating that they are
currently satisfied with the
Figure 4: Business Value of Free vs. Paid Web Analytics
quality of information delivered
Free web analytics users through their web analytics
50% Paid web analytics users deployments is as follows;
Free and Paid web analytics users 41%
40%
√ Free web analytics users:
10%
30%
30% 25% √ Paid web analytics users:
29%
20%
√ Free and paid web analytics
10% users: 32%

0%
We are not getting the full value from our web analytics solution

Companies using free web analytics are more likely to struggle to interpret
data output from these systems, compared to peers using paid or mixed
(free and paid) web analytics deployments (Free: 31% vs. Paid: 27% vs.
“There are free analytics
Mixed: 24%). Interestingly enough, however, those businesses that deploy solutions out there that are
only paid web analytics are 64% more likely to indicate they are not getting good at providing click-through
the full value from these tools. On the other hand, paid web analytics users data; however, if a company
are 2.9-times more satisfied than free web analytics users with the quality of doesn’t associate that
information they receive from their web analytics tools - see sidebar. Let's information with conversions
put the findings into context and observe the disconnect between why paid on the site, it’s useless data.”
web analytics users are more satisfied with the quality of data, yet indicate ~ Ex-SVP of Marketing at Large
that they are not receiving the full value from their solutions. Is it related to North American Consumer
the sub-par performance of these companies? Or are organizations not fully Services Company
leveraging the capabilities of their paid web analytics deployments? Figure 5
below demonstrates the year-over-year performance results of companies
using all three models of web analytics.


Page 12

Figure 5: Free vs. Paid - Year-over-Year Performance Comparison
6% 5.4%
Year-over-year percent change, n=176

4.7%
3.7% 3.6%
4% 3.3%
2.0%
2%

0%

-2% Fast Fact
-2.1% While findings demonstrated
-2.5%
-4% in Figure 5 show that mixed
analytics users outperform
-6% -5.0% free analytics users, close
Marketing’s contribution Average incremental Return on Marketing
analysis of the data reveals
to closed business sales lift resulting from Investment
a marketing campaign that focusing on fully utilizing
the capabilities of paid
Free web analytics users platforms helps businesses
Paid web analytics users achieve further performance
Free and Paid web analytics users gains, compared to peers
Source: Aberdeen Group, August 2011 using a mix of free and paid
web analytics.
The figure above indicates that companies using only free web analytics
solutions experience a year-over-year decline in marketing campaign
performance. Companies that use paid web analytics tools, on the other
hand, achieve consistent improvements in year-over-year marketing results.
Paid web analytics users are not experiencing sub-par performance gains; on
the contrary, they reap the greatest benefits compared to businesses using
free or mixed web analytics. The main reason these companies feel they are
not getting the most from their investment is that they lack strategies and
business processes to track, capture and comprehend the impact of their
web analytics deployments. The following section presents practical
guidelines to mitigate this challenge.

Key Takeaways
Whether a company is trying to improve its performance in web analytics
activities from Laggard to Industry Average, Industry Average to Best-in-
Class or maintain Best-in-Class results, the following actions will help spur
the necessary performance improvements:

Laggard Steps to Success:
• Determine key metrics. Sixty-six percent (66%) of Laggard
businesses still don't have defined measures to evaluate the
effectiveness of their marketing campaign performance. Establishing
a process and metrics for measuring online marketing results with
web analytics is a critical step toward creating a data-driven view of
marketing results. This should be complemented with frequent


Page 13

reports to the key stakeholders within the organization, to build a Demographics
clear picture of how marketing contributes to the health and
success of the organization. Of the 176 responding
organizations, demographics
• Test the effectiveness of each marketing campaign. Despite include the following:
the plethora of techniques and tools available to test marketing
campaign results, only 21% of Laggard organizations are testing their √ Job title: Senior Management
(34%); EVP / SVP / VP (19%);
campaign effectiveness. Using web analytics to conduct such tests
Director (21%); Manager
helps businesses set expectations on how upcoming marketing (13%); Other (13%)
campaigns might perform, and use this information to fine-tune their
activities to achieve desired results. Companies testing the √ Department / function: Sales
effectiveness of each marketing campaign achieve 3.8-times greater and Marketing (54%); IT
(3.2% vs. 0.9%) year over-year improvement in return on their (9%); Business Management
(16%); Operations (6%);
marketing investments compared to companies that don't.
Other (15%)

Industry Average Steps to Success: √ Segment: IT consulting /
services (22%); Software
• Improve the relevancy of your web content. The increasing (17%); Telecommunications
adoption of social media portals and mobile devices lets customers equipment & services (7%);
easily access almost any information, anytime and anywhere. To Financial services (6%); Retail
attract customers' attention in this environment, businesses must (13%); Other (35%)
deliver the most relevant marketing messages through the most
√ Geography: Americas (73%);
relevant channel(s) at the opportune time(s). This is best APAC region (10%) and
accomplished by customizing web content based on customer EMEA (17%)
behavioral data captured through web analytics tools.
Approximately half (49%) of Industry Average companies currently √ Company size: Large
implement this process; there is ample opportunity for all Industry enterprises (annual revenues
Average companies to adopt and constantly improve this process. above US $1 billion)- 26%;
midsize enterprises (annual
• Ensure the quality of your customer database. The ability to revenues between $50
personalize marketing messages hinges on an organization's ability million and $1 billion)- 27%;
to use customer data gleaned from their web analytics deployments. and small businesses (annual
Aberdeen's upcoming January 2012 Customer Experience Management revenues of $50 million or
study shows that businesses that adopt technology tools to ensure less)- 47%
the quality of customer information within their customer database
achieve approximately two times the year-over-year improvement
in their annual company revenue compared to organizations that
are not using these tools.

Best-in-Class Steps to Success:
• Use predictive capabilities. Less than half (43%) the Best-in-
Class use predictive analytics tools and processes to forecast
customers' future behavioral patterns based on historical and
existing data. While web analytics tools provide a lens to focus on
the past and recent information, adding predictive capabilities into
the mix will strengthen forecasts about how customers will respond
to upcoming marketing campaigns, resulting in greater success.
• Go beyond collecting customer data; conduct sentiment
analysis. Customer sentiment data is a powerful tool that allows


Page 14

businesses to understand what drives their customers' behavior.
Businesses often note that what the customer says they want is not
the same as what they actually want. Capturing customer sentiment
information can solve or mitigate this challenge. Best-in-Class can
take customization to the next step by combining it with web
analytics to identify the drivers motivating their customers: their
thought processes and even their feelings. Data validates this
strategy; companies capturing customer sentiment data are 36%
more likely (34% vs. 25%) to improve the contribution of marketing
programs on top-line revenue results year-over-year.

For more information on this or other research topics, please visit
www.aberdeen.com

Related Research
Customer Experience Management: Results Speak Louder than Words: Using
Using the Power of Analytics to Optimize Marketing to Improve Sales Effectiveness;
Customer Delight; January 2012 December 2010
Metric-Driven Mobile Marketing: Web Analytics: Actionable Insights for
Increase Marketing's Revenue Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Online
Contribution; August 2011 Data; April 2009
Social Media Connecting B2C Companies Web Analytics: The Crystal Ball of
with Generation Y and Z Consumers; Customer Behavior; April 2007
March 2011
Author: Omer Minkara, Senior Research Associate, Customer Management
Technology Group (omer.minkara@aberdeen.com)
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