Success metrics for social media planning

Taken from Web strategy by Jeremiah - posted 25 jan 08

So, you’re going to launch a social media campaign huh? You’ve got all the tools, resources, and processes together, but did you remember to set some goals?

I get to meet and talk to many companies that are adopting social media from a variety of levels of sophistication: unsure, scared, excited, embracing, overly ecstatic. One of the biggest challenges they have is forgetting to visualize what success looks like. In many cases, they are overly focused on fondling the hammer, that they forget about the overall goal.

Even if a company is doing a trial project (externally, internally, whatever) part of the expectations of the project should include a page, slide, or document that indicates what success will look like –even if they know that it may not be reached, here’s a few example to get you started:

A few examples of what success could look like for you:

• We were able to learn something about customers we’ve never know before
• We were able to tell our story to customers and they shared it with others
• A blogging program where there are more customers talking back in comments than posts
• An online community where customers are self-supporting each other and costs are reduced
• We learn a lot from this experimental program, and pave the way for future projects, that could still be a success metric
• We gain experience with a new way of two-way communication
• We connect with a handful of customers like never before as they talk back and we listen
• We learned something from customers that we didn’t know before
  

As you prepare your plans (you’ve got one right?) to use social media, don’t forget to include a section on “what does success look like”, and visualize and aim for you goals. Oh, and guess what, your goals can change over time, and they should.

Experimentation with these are important, these are radically different ways for companies to communicate with customers, so be sure to indicate to your management how this is experiment, and you’ll need a bit of wiggle room and latitude for the unexpected. It’s their job to empower and trust you, knowing the risks that could happen as you learn to let go to gain more.

It’s important to setup expectations for yourself, your management, and your customers (feel free to let them know why you are doing this) in order to give yourself a purpose as you embark on connecting in new ways.

Email Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

Taken from http://www.silverpop.com

Gone are the days of brochure-like mailings that rely solely on the novelty of email and the Internet in general to get the kind of response needed for a successful email marketing campaign. As the Internet continues to evolve, so do recipient expectations. Customers and prospects expect a new kind of relationship with the companies they do business with—one that anticipates their needs, focuses on their wants and gives them a measure of control.

The future of email marketing in a Web 2.0 world must embody the desire to connect with the customer on a personal level. Here are a few tactics for operating in a Web 2.0 environment.
Talk to Customers IndividuallyUsing Web 2.0 technology, marketers can not only send personalized messages, they can send completely different messages to each recipient based on the recipient's behavior. Dynamic content can be created using a variety of factors including purchase activity, service inquiries, or downloading a coupon/white paper/newsletter, etc.

Because dynamic content allows you to build messages based on specific recipient characteristics, it is one of the best email marketing techniques for improving targeting, controlling frequency and driving relevancy. However, despite the success of dynamic content in lifting response rates and increasing relevance, marketers have generally shied away from it because of its perceived complexity and difficulty. But marketers working with one of the select number of sophisticated email service providers have found that integrated platforms take away much of the pain, leaving all of the gain of dynamic content. In fact, JupiterResearch found that 44 percent of email marketers using an ESP incorporate dynamic content into their email campaigns, compared to just 25 percent who use in-house applications.

Dynamic content delivers substantial benefits, particularly in a Web 2.0 world, where consumers demand higher levels of relevance than ever before. Email campaigns based on dynamic content help companies enhance customer relationships, loyalty and lifetime value.

Dive into AnalyticsHaving a targeted, sophisticated email campaign is only half the battle. Capturing your progress and analyzing the results is another facet essential to successful email marketing. To truly understand the results of your campaign, you must look beyond the basics of opens and clicks.

With the next generation technology of Web 2.0 comes sophisticated email marketing platforms that have reporting and analytics features that allow for massive amounts of data to be condensed into simple and actionable information. This information can be used to answer key questions to boost your bottom line results.

For example:
Does geographic location affect results?
How does gender or age impact the likelihood of clicking a specific link?
Analyzing information can give marketers significant insight into the thoughts and habits of their most active customers as well as those with only occasional or rare interaction.
Build Brand Along with ROIDespite all of the whiz-bang features of many Web 2.0 technologies, there is still no substitute for good, old-fashioned brand recognition. Even the most inactive customers will be less annoyed and more inclined to open the occasional email if it’s from a company they know, trust—and although not always interested—appreciate receiving offers from.

Keeping your brand in a favorable light with recipients can have a high return-on-investment in the long run. Consider the following tactics for a good relationship with strong brand recognition:
Establish and cultivate a trusting relationship with the recipient through relevancy and timing
Use your brand name in the subject and/or "from" line so recipients immediately recognize you as a sender whose email is safe to open

The availability of advanced and user-friendly solutions make marketing in a Web 2.0 world less intimidating. For more tips on email marketing in a Web 2.0 world, download the newest Silverpop white paper, "Web 2.0 Email Marketing: 5 Steps to Unrivaled Results."

Web Analytics

Web Audience Measurement Clouds Build, Few Signs of Clearing in '08
By Kate Kaye, The ClickZ Network, Jan 2, 2008

Talk of online audience measurement reached a crescendo in 2007. Publishers, advertisers and measurement firms grappled with significant shifts in how Web content is published and how users interact with it. Publishers pumped up the complaint volume about reporting discrepancies. And the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) demanded the two biggest online measurement firms shed light on their methods.

While baby steps were taken in '07 to adjust audience measurement for a maturing Web, publishers remain disgruntled, Internet users continue to explore new means of consuming digital media, and, for better or worse, agencies have more and more data to decipher.

Perhaps the most significant event in the space occurred in April. In an impassioned missive addressed to the CEOs of online measurement firms ComScore and Nielsen/NetRatings (now Nielsen Online), IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg expressed dismay and frustration with discrepancies in site audience and ad impression reports. Calling for impartial audits of the firms' methodologies, the new IAB chief voiced his surprise that the main Web audience measurement systems employ panels, "a media-measurement technique invented for the radio industry exactly seven decades ago."

Web publishers, which comprise the bulk of the IAB's membership, have long dealt with audience measurement reporting discrepancies between their own site-side numbers and those from Nielsen Online and ComScore, contending those firms' panel-based measures underreport the number of users visiting their sites or mistake audience demographics. Advertisers and agencies insist publishers use third party reports to validate claims about the size and makeup of their audiences.

Spanish media outfit Prisa has filed a lawsuit against Nielsen in a New York court, claiming Nielsen's underreporting of its site audiences resulted in "serious damages" from ad revenue loss. Major League Baseball's MLB.com President and CEO Bob Bowman also recently took aim at Nielsen, stating in a press release,"we remain disappointed with the grossly inaccurate traffic reporting by Nielsen Online."

Both ComScore's and Nielsen Online's systems are undergoing full audits by outside auditors, monitored by the Media Ratings Council, a media industry-funded auditing service created in the 1960s by the U.S. Congress to create broadcast ratings standards.

While publishers gripe about mismatched panel-based numbers, the need for new gauges for online audience interaction is evident. Increased use of streaming video, music and online games on publisher sites or within other points of distribution across the Web is diminishing accuracy of metrics like unique visitors and pageviews. Media diffusion in widgets and small sites not easily picked up by panel-based systems, along with proliferation of technologies such as AJAX and Flash that dynamically alter content without the need to refresh Web pages, spurred ComScore and Nielsen to introduce new metrics this year.

ComScore unveiled new "visits" metrics for tracking the number of times a unique site visitor accesses content within a Web property, in addition to new reports showing the number of display ads viewed by particular audience segments. The firm also launched an initiative with blog publisher Federated Media to provide metrics appropriate for measuring blogs and other conversational media.

Nielsen launched its own "total minutes" and "total sessions" metrics this year, aiming to measure site audience volume more accurately. The company also announced an online video measurement service based on panel and census data this year.

"We need a much greater sample" to measure online user interaction, said Bill Tancer, GM global research at Hitwise, arguing panel-based measurements are becoming obsolete as people flock to smaller sites. Hitwise aggregates anonymous user data gathered through ISPs.

"The existing measurement solutions don't facilitate the level of granularity and tracking that this very complex media marketplace is going to require as it evolves," said Adam Gerber, CMO of Quantcast, a firm that combines panel and directly measured site data. Gerber believes the ultimate online audience measurement system will provide real-time audience interaction data that can work in conjunction with ad targeting.

The question remains whether advertisers and their media planning agencies will have the wherewithal to put all these emerging data sets to use. "There is a danger of data overload," said Gerber.

Though he'd prefer more rather than less data, David Smith, CEO of integrated media agency Mediasmith said, "We need better tools all the time to parse the data." Those tools, suggested Smith, will come in the form of Web analytics dashboards that allow for data to flow from the ad planning to buying to execution to post campaign analysis stages. "In the next year or two, dashboards to handle this data will be a big story," he continued.

In the meantime, the IAB hopes to refine the processes already in place. According to David Dody, SVP thought leadership and public communications at the IAB, its Audience Measurement Working Group will release guidelines in 2008 defining terms like unique visitors, pageviews and time spent, and reviewing factors that can tarnish panel-based measurements such as cookie deletion and Web spiders.

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young

The future of virual worlds is kids....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/business/31virtual.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In game advertising

In-Game Advertising Built Momentum in '07
By Enid Burns, The ClickZ Network, Dec 28, 2007

While Microsoft's "Halo," the most anticipated video game to hit store shelves in 2007 was off limits to advertisers, the sector gained momentum both in games and around games.
Among the hot titles packed with advertising was Activision's "Guitar Hero III."

"The biggest thing this year is the momentum, the acceptance of the medium, the increase in size in the advertising buys, and increased acceptance in the publisher community," Cory Van Arsdale, CEO of Microsoft's Massive unit told ClickZ News.

In addition to advertisers and publishers, developers became more receptive to the appearance of brands into games. According to Van Arsdale, developers continue to obsess about the storyline, however they are considering advertisers in the process "They're increasingly thinking about[ad] inventory quality and how that might work."

Publishers are beginning to prioritize how and where ad insertion happens in a game. "There's only so much room in a game. When we look at priority, it's dynamic," said Shelby Cox, senior director of ad sales at Electronic Arts, the publisher of the "Madden" and "Need for Speed" series among other franchises. "The stuff we typically sold will now have dynamic tags on it."
Dynamic placements are able to be updated with new brand campaigns while static insertions are hard-coded into a game and remain with the same creative throughout.

"I think you'll see blurring of the lines between dynamic and static," said Van Arsdale. "Static ads that are in the game stay, they are shipped with the title, they never change, and you can't measure exposure. If you make those dynamic you can actually track that."

Earlier this year Double Fusion began offering dynamic product integration on its network. Massive has the ability to do the same, and expects to tag static items in games to provide metrics on gamer exposure and interaction. Without tags, a brand will know how many copies of a game are sold, but not how many gamers interacted with the brand.

Previously, marketers with large-scale integration bought additional dynamic ads to provide metrics, though the metrics didn't necessarily correlate with interaction with the brand in the game.

Momentum grew in in-game advertising in a year when the video game industry took part in a more businesslike Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Media buyers were privy to more meetings and invites than in previous years. "E3 of the past was a great place for [agencies and brands] to come get a snapshot [of the industry]," said Cox. "Some of the folks we talked with [this year] found it to be disappointing, but we did get a lot of business done meeting with the agencies that actually did come."

Many agencies, brands, and even in-game ad networks decided not to attend. Massive's Van Arsdale has only attended E3 in past years as a spectator. Though from a business standpoint, he said the emphasis for Microsoft is on the Game Developer Conference, Cannes, and Microsoft's Strategic Accounts Summits held throughout the year.

The next hurdle for in-game and around game advertising is to establish standards and metrics. "You have IGA Worldwide with one definition of an impression, and Double Fusion and Massive with another," said Cox. Massive counts a cumulative :10 exposure as an impression.

The onus is not entirely on the networks, but a general industry understanding. "We need to set standards and metrics buyers understand, and to come up with a vernacular," Cox said. "The research is there, but as an industry we need to do a better job making it easier for buyers to buy."

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) committee on advertising in video and Web-based games released its first findings. The document was primarily definitions and a baseline of information.

"I think [the IAB] is going to have an increasing impact going forward," said Chris Houtzer, senior director of new media and games at RealNetworks. "Having the IAB recognize in-game advertising as a significant media for advertisers and the games industry in general is really important."

The IAB's goal to establish standards and terms is agreed to be a worthy objective. "Hopefully it will keep my competition from obfuscating the definitions of things, because I think that's not helping the medium," Van Arsdale said.

Van Arsdale wants to see a designation between different media. "People will call it in-game when it's not in-game, it's around-game or a Web site," he said. This includes banners and interstitials in Web-based games, and sponsorship of tournaments and contests. While these are viable options for advertisers who want to reach a particular audience, or be associated with a specific game, there is a distinction. "People really need to understand the medium, and that's what this year's been about," he said.

Momentum built in casual and Web-based games in much the same way as console and PC games. "Instead of this being an experimental year, we've seen the transition in 2007 from experimental to a must have for advertisers," Houtzer said.

Casual games paralleled console titles in terms of advertising. "In general across the industry we saw a lot of adoption of advertising as a significant way to monetize games," said Houtzer. "Developers made a great leap in supporting advertising, instead of 2006 questioning the legitimacy. What's really helped them do that this year is initiatives that Real has, as well as others, the aspect of sharing revenues."

Casual game sites including RealNetworks and Microsoft began offering developers a share of ad revenues. Many publishers earned stronger revenues from advertising than sales.

In the coming year new opportunities for casual games will emerge. EA is bringing the casual game experience of its property Pogo.com to the console. "We are focusing on different types of products on the console that are much more suited for advertising," said Cox. "Like our Pogo model, there's going to be products out there where advertising is the root business model."
The console manufacturers have already realized the value of such products. An IDC report identified additional revenue streams the current generation of consoles bring in. "The installed base growth and connectivity growth helped," Cox said.

TV ads online

Consumers Who Watch TV Online More Engaged Than TV-Set Watchers, Simmons Finds
by Mark Walsh, Monday, Dec 24, 2007

CONSUMERS ARE 47% MORE ENGAGED in ads that run with television programs that they view online than those watched on a TV set, according to new research findings.

A cross-media study by Simmons, a unit of Experian Research Services, also found that viewers are 25% more engaged in the content of TV shows that they watch online than on a TV.

The study defines "engagement" according to six characteristics that respondents identify with media: "inspirational," "trustworthy," "life-enhancing," "social interaction," "personal time-out" and ad receptivity.

Survey participants were asked, for instance, to rate TV shows, magazines and Web sites based on how "inspiring" they were or how much they provided fodder for conversation. Ad "receptivity" was gauged on how willing people were to view or read advertising in a given medium because of its relevance.

John Fetto, product manager for Experian Research Services, said that the research suggests that TV ads online are especially effective at reaching consumers.

"Web sites that are extensions of properties that exist in other media channels have great potential to funnel audiences that are highly engaged in the first place," he said.

TV aside, the study found that people are 18% more engaged in ads online, as opposed to print versions, of magazines--and that they are also 15% more engaged in magazine articles online than in print.

In demographic terms, women and younger consumers were shown to have higher levels of engagement online than men and older users. However, the differences were not huge. For instance, based on a 100- to 500-point scoring system, women on average were only slightly more receptive to online ads than men on average, at 236 to 228, respectively.

Also, those between the ages of 35 and 54 rated the Internet as being almost as trustworthy a source of information as did 18- to-34-year-olds (307 for the older demographic, 316 for the younger one).

Other findings:

• People are more receptive to ads on sites that they visit often. Those who visited sites two to six times per week or more are more likely to be responsive to ads than less frequent visitors.

• Among media overall, print rated higher in engagement than TV or the Internet. Does that mean rumors of print being dead are highly exaggerated? Not necessarily. Fetto said that the study showed that among those who read magazines, it's the most engaging medium--but overall, the audience for print media is declining.

The Simmons study was based on 74,996 interviews with U.S. adults about the TV programs, magazines and Web sites that they watch, read and visit. The survey was conducted online and