Analytics

There are obvious attractions to conducting international surveys as conduits of quantitative research.

Not only will they extend your reach and influence geographically, but they also expand the size of your potential samples, while reducing costs considerably compared to securing a similar scope of respondents locally. Surveys do have obvious limitations against one-to-one qualitative studies, but with skilled questioning and efficient organisation, excellent results can still be gained for far lower overheads. Read more…

I’m delighted to be able to share a recent conversation I had with Frank Ma, a close associate in China for the last two years now, and the man who will be responsible for ensuring the success of Foviance’s exciting new venture in Shanghai – Foviance Asia.

Frank, can you tell me a bit about your background and what attracted you to research?

I started out in research over 13 years ago right out of university. Like many fresh graduates I had little clue of what I wanted to do except that I wanted to get exposure to a number of different industries. This is what the research offers – a chance to work with a broad range of companies and learn how they do things. Read more…

In response to NMA article, 21 January 2010 Peter McCormack, co-founder of McCormack and Morrison, makes some interesting points in his opinion piece in published in NMA 21st January.

If brands are truly throwing away their traditional marketing campaigns in favour of third party channels such as Facebook then I would agree it is unwise – but only ‘today‘. Because today you cannot connect the dots and establish the identity of twitter’ers and other anonymous users of social networks, but that will not always be the case. There will come a time when total transparency exists online and your anonymity will be lost. Read more…

Everyone has their childhood fears of which some stay with you in adulthood, mine’s that of earthquakes, so much so that since a young age I’ve feared visiting San Francisco. Haiti on the other hand has always been on my ‘radar’ as a place where slavery is rife, as if that’s not bad enough; Haiti is then hit with a devastating earthquake. The horrific effect of the Haiti earthquake however has woken the world up to the plight of the poorest country in the western hemisphere and the humanitarian efforts to bring this devastated country back from the brink have been in effect worldwide. One of the fastest ways donations have been received towards the relief efforts, has been through mobile phones – simply by sending a text from our mobiles to a specific number. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 22/12/09 and is republished here with permission.

It’s hard at this time of year not to get a bit reflective at the year that’s gone by and to think ahead to the year that’s about to be. But it only struck me though as I sat down to write this column that I am just about to complete my first decade working in digital marketing analytics. I got started when I moved to work at an online auctions business in 2000 having spent a (large) number of years working in “offline” marketing analytics and consumer insight. I remember that when I got to this online business that the head of marketing told me to forget everything that I had learned in the offline world as this was “new media” and that “things were different” now. Read more…

Deep Dive Into Analytics: When Bounce Rate No Longer Floats Your Boat

Foviance’s Director of Analytical Consulting, Neil Mason will be speaking about how to delve deeper into analytics once you have the fundamentals of web analytics under control.

Speaking at London’s SES London, Neil will  be speaking on the first day of the three day event, helping to provide you with all of the essentials for understanding your data.

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 06/11/09 and is republished here with permission.

At the Emetrics conference in DC I picked up a copy of a white paper by Eric Peterson on marketing attribution. In the white paper Peterson outlines the challenges with marketers relying on the traditional “last click” attribution models that are built into most web analytics systems, at least as a default setting. I’ve highlighted some of these issues before in this column and it’s good to see the subject getting more attention from other commentators in this space. Read more…

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 23/10/09 and is republished here with permission.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the conference circuit. WebTrends held their Engage conference in London and last week I was in Washington DC for the Emetrics Marking Optimization Summit . It was good to see WebTrends out and about in the market, showing off some of their latest stuff. They’ve been working hard on their messaging by the looks of it and getting a distinctive market positioning going. The core brand themes they talked about were “Power”, “Elegance” and “Openness”. Read more…