June 2011
5 posts
3 tags
Customer-Driven Marketing
According to a survey from eTailing and the Krillion Group, today’s consumers spend a considerable amount of time online in “research mode” prior to ever contacting a given company or making a purchase. Which means, by the time your sales team gets to talk to them, your customers may have already made up their minds.
42 percent of shoppers spend more than half of their total...
3 tags
A peek inside the Performable office & culture
Our friends over at T3 Advisors recently came over to film our offices and interview a few Performable team members (Performablers?). I thought you might like the behind-the-scenes look into the Performable office and culture:
Video hosting
var socialJQuery = jQuery.noConflict(true);new SocialBar("1307979242054_social_7445", {buttons:["embed","twitter","facebook","wistia","email"],...
5 tags
Tracking Google +1 and Facebook "Like Button"...
Social media metrics remain one of the many moving targets in online marketing. How does getting someone to “like” your page or “retweet” your link correlate to more sales or better brand loyalty? By tracking those on-site social actions, we’ll get a little closer to uncovering social media return on investment (ROI).
Tracking Google +1’s
Google released the...
2 tags
Automate your Marketing with Webhooks
Today’s sophisticated customers interact with your company in many different ways: over the phone, on your website, through social networks, and using email. Keeping up with these sophisticated customers is difficult, especially for marketers on small teams or those with lots of customers.
At Performable we’re trying to solve this problem with our automated marketing feature called...
3 tags
Dance Lessons for Marketers
A couple of years ago my father taught me to dance. It was several months before my wedding and my usual method of jumping around wildly wasn’t going to cut it. Anyone will tell you the hardest part about learning the waltz is noticing when your partner is leading you somewhere. The challenge is in paying attention to slight nuances amid a flurry of other steps.
Today’s marketing is...
May 2011
3 posts
3 tags
How to get past blast emails
[caption id=”” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”Photo by Will Lions”][/caption]
Every few months or so I go on an unsubscribe rampage. It’s typically done late at night after I’ve exhausted all of the other interesting content on the internet and I am still unready to give up the day. But it’s a rampage all the same. Ten to...
2 tags
UTM Tagging in Action
In the past we’ve introduced you to the concept of using UTM parameters to track marketing campaigns across channels like email, social media, and search engine advertising. Today’s video (third in the series) is going to walk you though a free tool that Performable developed to make building UTM tagged URLs easier.
If you missed the previous videos in this series, don’t worry....
5 tags
Trivia: Are you smarter than a cookie?
The following is a screenshot of anonymized visitors to our website as measured by cookies — the most common way analytics tools track website traffic.
Look fast: How many unique visitors do you see?
How Google Analytics would answer:
13
The real answer?
One.
The above list is actually all of cookies that were generated by one unique website visitor over time. Let’s call him...
April 2011
4 posts
4 tags
When it comes to follow-up, an hour can change...
There was an interesting stat coming out of Harvard Business Review on the importance of timely responses when it comes to following up with online leads. The data originally came from a study of 2,241 U.S. firms led by a researcher at South Korea’s Sungkyunkwan University. According to the report:
“Companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving...
7 tags
This is Big. Join us.
You know that perfect space between hunger and achievement? That point of ascendency when you look at the team around you and think: This is big.
We live there.
Every day at Performable, I think about how rare this experience is and how much opportunity is still ahead. We are in a field dominated by giants not satisfying their customers — and they’re slow — but in a marketing era...
4 tags
For Better or For Worse: Guide to Choosing an ESP
Warning: this is a long post…because choosing an ESP is a big deal!
Choosing an ESP is like selecting a spouse
Disclaimer: I have never chosen a spouse.
When you choose an ESP, you’re looking for stability, a good fit, room to grow together and a trust fund…er, the first three. You’re not looking for sexy features that are appealing today but will fade over time. Choosing a vendor is a long...
2 tags
Why Should I Click That Button?
Clearly communicating your value proposition to customers is a critical part of marketing. Marketers should clearly explain why a visitor should sacrifice time, money, or personal information in exchange for their product.
A big challenge for marketers is getting access to a customer’s social networks—the holy grail of information for data-driven marketers.
The Facebook application,...
March 2011
11 posts
2 tags
The Next Stage of Behavior-Based Email Automation
About a year and a half ago the Wall Street Journal ran an article, Why Email no longer rules… that led to extended discussions on whether email had seen its last, best day. One could easily understand the argument. When social media first pummeled its way onto the scene, three things stood out:
1. It was immediate.
2. It enabled companies to react at the individual level.
3. It had...
2 tags
Announcing Performable University
I’m very happy to announce our new Internet Marketing Video Podcast, Performable University, which can be found on our blog and on iTunes.
Performable University is for data-driven marketers, designers, developers, and people learning how to become data-driven marketers. We’ll be covering lifecycle web analytics, a/b testing, marketing automation, lead generation, and social media...
2 tags
Real-Time Marketing Automation with WebHooks
Today’s new feature is dedicated to marketers and developers who are interested in taking their data-driven marketing to the next level. Thanks to our latest software release you will now be able to setup WebHooks to get push notifications to your application or server when your customers satisfy a business rule.
What’s a WebHook?
If you aren’t familiar with WebHooks,...
2 tags
Measure Your Facebook Page Like a Ninja
Often people ask “How can I measure my Facebook Page?” or “How do I install analytics on my Facebook Page?” What many people don’t know is that Facebook has built its own analytics product that comes baked-in for free. And while there are compelling use cases around measuring user behavior across channels, from mobile app to website, to Facebook and beyond (something...
2 tags
Join us for Web Analytics Wednesday 3/30
You remember the day you first set-up analytics on your site.
You rarely miss an Avanish Kaushik post.
You have very strong opinions on bounce rates.
If any of the above apply, we’re throwing you a get-together.
Join us on March 30th at 6PM for Web Analytics Wednesday. The meet-up, which will take place at Performable’s Central Square headquarters (486 Green St in Cambridge), will...
2 tags
Super Conversion Button New Designs
Just in time for the spring runway season… Performable’s free tool, the Super Conversion Button, now has some new styles to choose from. Benefitting from the designs of Wurkit, ZURB, Next Big Sound, fresh tilled soil, KISSmetrics, Transparent Language and Chad Mazzola, Performable’s Super Conversion Tool enables you to create effective call-to-action buttons in seconds. A few...
4 tags
Slow and steady only wins if you can measure it
Among the most memorable of Aesop’s Fables was the story of the race between a quick-footed hare and his slow, focused counterpart. The lesson? Sometimes slow and steady wins the race. We’ve all seen this anecdotally throughout marketing efforts: the relationship built over time with customers is often stronger and more productive than the flash-in-the-pan sale. The problem is: most...
2 tags
How to make Email List Management 500% Easier
In our research we’ve discovered that managing email lists is a huge burden for today’s professional marketer. We talk every day with people who are frustrated with how difficult it is to manage their email lists. The common steps to manage them are something like this:
Gather emails from website submissions (often several locations). Export these emails as a CSV file.
Combine these...
2 tags
Campaign Tracking: The Basics
Cross-channel marketing measurement and optimization has been around in at least rudimentary forms for a while now. Urchin, which became what we know today as Google Analytics, supported and popularized a technique of URL tagging that allowed web analytics to speak the language of the marketer. These UTM tags allowed Urchin to record marketing campaign data alongside other analytics data,...
2 tags
Creating a Customer-Driven Company
At Performable, we love working with our customers.
From day one, whether you’re an intern (which we’re looking for) or the CEO, everyone takes part in customer support. In fact, the ability to empathize and empower a customer is one of the most common skills among our small but tight-knit team.
Here are 4 customer-driven principles we follow:
1. Every Customer is Your Best Customer
...
2 tags
Creating a Customer-Driven Company
At Performable, we love working with our customers.
From day one, whether you’re an intern (which we’re looking for) or the CEO, everyone takes part in customer support. In fact, the ability to empathize and empower a customer is one of the most common skills among our small but tight-knit team.
Here are 5 customer-driven principles we follow:
1. Every Customer is Your Best Customer
...
February 2011
2 posts
2 tags
What are the best ecommerce analytics tools?
This morning I read a great answer to this question on Quora by my colleague Josh Porter and I thought I’d share it here.
Question:
What are the best ecommerce analytics tools? I am familiar with GA implementation for ecommerce and wondered if there are any additional effective solutions.
Answer by Josh Porter:
This question keeps me up at night. To try and help build a great ecommerce...
2 tags
The Performable Office Warming Party
Despite the sub-zero temperatures, despite Central Square’s serious parking shortage, and in the face of anyone who thinks Tuesday nights aren’t for parties – you showed up. You showed up and gave Performable the best office warming party we could have hoped for.
It was a great party and we are so grateful to those of you who made it and those who couldn’t make it but helped to spread the word. ...
January 2011
10 posts
2 tags
The Power of "First Touch"
I want to share a quick example of Performable Lifecycle Analytics in action and in particular the power of our “First Touch” metric. If you follow Performable, you know that we believe Lifecycle Marketing is the best way for marketers to turn website visitors into passionate customers. “First Touch” is just one part of Lifecycle Marketing. You can read more about the...
2 tags
Super URL Builder - Bulk URL Builder Tool
A few weeks ago we released Super URL Builder, a free tool that allows you to quickly and easily create tracking URLs. Last week I told you about one of its special features, email marketing integration. This week I want to talk about our free Bulk URL Builder Tool.
One of the more time consuming aspects of URL building is when you have to tag hundreds or even thousands URLs at a time. This...
2 tags
Providing a great customer experience even when...
A common concern about social media is that disgruntled customers can use a blog post or tweet to amplify their negative feelings about a company or organization beyond a normal level. It’s a reasonable concern, given that complaints (and accolades!) are a natural part of the interaction between a company and its customers, but when a complaint hits a tipping point and gathers lots of...
2 tags
Developer Tools: New in Performable!
Performable is made for all types of users, from non-technical people to senior developers and every level of tech savvy in between. Our commitment to helping our users get set up properly for maximum success using our product has led us to focus heavily on in-app configuration features to eliminate the need to change javascript once it is on your site.
Today’s release is intended to take...
2 tags
Maximize The Value Of Existing Customers
Great infographic from our friends at Flowtown on the importance of retaining customers. Stay focused on your customer acquisition, retention and attrition rates.
Original Article
2 tags
Super URL Builder's Secret Sauce: Email Marketing...
Last week we announced Super URL Builder, a free tool that helps build tracking urls. This week I want to explain the secret sauce that sets Super URL Builder apart from other URL building tools.
The Secret Sauce: Email Marketing Integration
If you are using URLs in email campaigns, we automatically append the recipient’s name and email address to the URL. Passing this information allows...
2 tags
Measuring Customer Engagement
Measuring your customer engagement is a critical step in defining your customer lifecycle.
According to a Forbes Insights Survey measuring customer retention is the primary way businesses are measuring customer engagement. In other words keeping a customer is a better sign of business health than how many new customers you are acquiring.
When acquiring a new customer can cost 6 to 7 times...
2 tags
Landing Page Testing - The New Low Hanging Fruit
I recently came across a Marketing Sherpa chart that shows the effort and effectiveness of PPC tactics. While reading it, I was reminded of the saying ”go after low hanging fruit first”. In PPC marketing, I consider low hanging fruit anything a marketer can do within a tool’s interface. This would cover testing ad copy, creating targeted adgroups, refining bidding, geo targeting,...
2 tags
Announcing Lifecycle Analytics
Those of you who are already Performable users may know that we release code every day, responding to feature requests and other customer feedback. Every so often though, we push a release that is major enough that we feel it’s worth blogging about, to discuss and highlight the changes as well as to solicit your feedback!
We released just such a major update this morning, so here is some...
2 tags
Announcing Super URL Builder
Identifying site traffic and where it came from is vital to proper customer lifecycle marketing. A universally accepted way of determing this is to pass information in the links you use in your marketing initiatives. (Everything after the ? in the URL below is passed information)
...
December 2010
6 posts
2 tags
Keeping a Customer vs. Creating a new One
Often marketing professionals get tunnel vision and subsequently solely focus on creating new customers. Although new customer acquisition is extremely important, the value of keeping a current customer should not be neglected.
SEOMoz has a great post that outlines 6 tips for keeping your current customers happy (and subsequently paying). The tips are primarily for e-commerce businesses but even...
2 tags
[December Newsletter] 4 Holiday Tips for up to 80%...
The holiday season is in full-swing here at the Performable offices so we thought it would be fun to share some Holiday analytics tips with you. In addition, we’ve got a really cool new feature that we hope you like (you can import and edit templates visually now) and we’ve also pointed you to some of the best stuff from our blog. Happy Holidays!
Not getting the newsletter? Sign up...
2 tags
3 Things Every Web Page Must Do for Success (Part...
This is the second article in a series on What 3 Things Every Web Page must do for Success. In the first article, I talked about how to Describe What is on the Page, an often overlooked task that every web page should do to successfully communicate. In this 2nd part, I’m going to talk about how to communicate why this page or content is valuable.
2) Communicate why this is valuable. (Why)
...
2 tags
Why multi-channel marketing = great customer...
With the rise of social networking, mobile access, and the persistence of email, it’s no secret that marketing is more multi-channel than ever. Many companies are heavily investing in multi-channel marketing and analytics, trying to figure out what channels work best for them and their customers.
An interesting take on being a multi-channel company comes from the service-oriented retailer...
2 tags
The Optimizers Guide to Adwords: Conversion...
Our friend David Iwanow, Director of Marketing at The Lost Agency, recently put together a series of videos on Adwords optimization. The videos cover the impact of Google Instant Preview, Google Places as well as cost optimization. They are a great way to to keep up with Google’s latest features and make sure you are making the best use of your marketing budget.
Also we noticed David has...
2 tags
How Performable is Different from Other Analytics...
One of the questions we get a lot at Performable is how we’re different from other analytics packages. Well, we’re currently giving webinars that help answer that question, and the slides below are from the latest one, held last Friday.
Download Slides (PDF)
Original Article
November 2010
9 posts
2 tags
Types of Customer Testimonials and Why They Matter
One of the best ways to measure the success of your product is not by how many units you’ve sold, how much website traffic you’ve received, or even how many people use your product – it’s how much your customers like your product. These feelings often manifest themselves in the form of a customer testimonial. Think of a customer testimonial as a stamp of approval for your company and/or product....
2 tags
3 Ways to Increase Conversions with Web Analytics
Knowing what your visitors are doing on your web site can be invaluable to understanding your business’s customer lifecycle. Web Analytics has come a long way from simply counting “hits” or “clicks.” Below are three sure-fire ways to increase conversions.
1) Learn Which Marketing Channels Drive Revenue
About six months ago, we decided to look at what traffic sources were sending us the most...
2 tags
Marketing in the Cloud
I had some requests for my slides from my Marketing in the Cloud talk at CloudInno 2010 event in Cambridge, MA. My talk was focused on the next generation of Web Analytics, Web Analytics specifically built for the new generation of Data-Driven Marketers. Here’s my take on that big shift:
As always I would love to hear your feedback on this presentation and on the future of Web Analytics...
2 tags
The Optimizers Guide to Adwords: Ad SiteLinks
As a website owner with different pages (a landing page, a pricing page, a feature tour, and a contact page), you have to decide which page to send your Adwords traffic to. Because different audiences may be interested in different parts of your site, this can be a tricky proposition. Although landing pages are designed to help make the process easier, there is always room for improvement and more...
4 tags
8 Lesser-Known SEO Techniques - Part 2
Anyone who’s spent time administering a website has probably heard a few things about how to optimize your site for search engines (search engine optimization, SEO). The most commonly recommended (and effective) techniques include sprucing up your text or [innocently] squeezing in a few more keywords to raise your ranking in search engines. And while there’s no substitute for a well-written...
6 tags
Applying the Marketing Funnel to Customer...
Originally posted in a LinkedIn discussion group on Customer Development—Applying the Marketing Funnel to Customer Education is a topic every business person should be interested in. It was my way of thinking out loud, but perhaps more people will find it interesting.
It’s probably not a new idea, but one the the guys at Heroku got me thinking about how reverse funnel analysis (and better...
2 tags
Is Inbound Marketing Dead?
Now that I have your attention I want to tell you about the next phase in online marketing, Lifecycle Marketing. ;-)
Would love to hear your feedback on this presentation and on Lifecycle Marketing below in the comments.
Original Article
2 tags
Performable to Present at CloudInno
CloudInno, a conference focused on innovations in cloud computing, will showcase Performable’s “Marketing in the Cloud” Web Analytics service along with 4 other amazing cloud computing companies.
CloudInno will take place in Cambridge, MA, on November 10th, CloudInno is hosted by General Catalyst Partners, FastIgnite and Yottaa with a goal of uniting vendors, investors,...
2 tags
Why it's Risky to Write Instigator Headlines
Note: This is the latest post in a series on How to Write 7 Types of Catchy Headlines for your landing pages or online articles.
“Instigator” headlines catch a reader off guard and rouse emotion by making a counter-intuitive or surprising statement that intrigues the reader and gets them hooked. But because of this they are risky headlines to write…here’s why you need to be careful...