Mark Thompson
Chief Technology Officer
RappDigital
thompsonm@rappdigital.com
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Enabling Your Web Site for e-CRM Analytics
So you've got a Web site and you want to know how it impacts your relationships with customers.
Your Web server's log file tell you a lot of people are visiting, but who are they? Are they customers? Were they customers before they came to your site? How many came as a result of direct mail or email messaging? How many email messages does it take to convert a prospect on your Web site to an online customer? How effective are the major search engines at driving high-value traffic to your site?
The answers to these questions can only be found by setting up your Web site to capture the data necessary to provide the answers. Here's how you can set up your Web site to capture the data necessary for rudimentary electronic customer relationship management, or e-CRM.
e-CRM
Electronic Customer Relationship Management (e-CRM) is the practice of keeping track of the interactions your customers have with your brand through your electronic communications
channels. These interactions must be an on-going dialog with each communication mapped out as a decision tree-based upon the user's actions and expectations. This is analogous to the corner store, where the owner or cashier knows you and your preferences and may or may not make suggestions based upon that knowledge. They also know whether or not you're even the kind of person who wants suggestions, and if so, under what circumstances.
e-CRM is enabled by tagging every communication vehicle (direct mail piece, email, Web ad unit, even television commercial) with an identifier that can be passed on to your Web site, where this information can be linked to the session data of the visitor. This information can then be appended to the user's profile record, allowing for the analysis of Web site behavior as it relates to each tagged communication channel.
The kinds of information you need to include in this tag depends upon the medium, but generally are captured
in two codes:
1. A Source Code, consisting of
- A value representing the channel of the communication
- In the case of print, ad units, radio or TV, a value representing the publication, web-site, station or channel in which the communication ran
- A value for the position or time-slot in which the communication appeared
2. A Vanity Code, consisting of
- A value representing the creative treatment for this specific communication
- A value representing the message used in this specific communication
- A value representing the call-to-action used in this specific communication
These codes can easily be constructed using alphanumeric values from spreadsheets or databases that contain the media plan and production asset inventory for each campaign. Now, when a user hits your site, you'll be able to figure out not only which channels, positions or timeslots within
channels and combinations of creative, messaging and calls-to-action are delivering high-value users, but also how to continue your dialog with these high-value users.
e-CRM Enabling Your Web Site
For example, our campaign uses email and direct mail to communicate the availability of a special offer on a new product to our current customer base. We're going to start our messaging sequence to existing customers with an announcement email, with a tagged link to our Web site embedded. Subsequently, if we don't hear from them within two weeks, or their email bounces, we'll follow up with a direct mail piece that also includes the URL and a code printed on it.
When a recipient of these communications responds by navigating to our URL, we can then pass the source and vanity codes into the users' session. Now we can update our records about whether or not to follow up with additional communications, as well as capture greater detail about the effectiveness
of each communication, such as how deeply into the Web site one communication drove respondents vs. others.
By analyzing the inter-relationships between and across different communications and channels, marketers can begin to understand the effectiveness of our communications on a much deeper level, allowing us to optimize those communications more effectively, facilitate a better experience for our audience(s) and improve the return-on-investment (ROI) of our marketing programs.
Conclusion
Converting your Web site to become e-CRM-capable is quite straightforward. All it requires is that you identify the questions you need answered about your audience(s), and add source and vanity codes to your marketing communications. Next you enable session tracking to carry these codes though your users' sessions on your Web site, appending them to your lead/customer records when e-transactions, such as form submissions or online purchases, are made. You
then have all the data you need to begin practicing
e-CRM and to calculate the ROI of your programs.
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