Measurement

“Never try, never fail, those are the words I live by”, or so says Drew Carey’s character Crank in the animated kids film ‘Robots’. I heard these words coming from the back of the car a few days ago as I headed off on holiday with the family for a week in North Devon. You could run a business by that motto but I’m not sure it would last long or be an exciting place to work.

On the contrary,  it is the belief of both my team and I that we must try, that sees Foviance opening for business in China this quarter, with a new office in Shanghai. 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…

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

I’m increasingly convinced that the issues that most businesses face around the successful deployment of analytics in their business are not to do with their technologies but to do with their businesses processes. That view was reinforced this week when I was running a workshop with a group of students studying on a Masters Programme in Internet Retailing. Read more…

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

There’s the saying doing the rounds at the moment “why waste a good recession?, meaning that times like these provide an opportunity for organisations to become leaner and trim off some of the fat in the business. Whilst it’s not necessarily a very pleasant experience, the trading conditions that we are experiencing at the moment helps organisations focus on being both effective and efficient. Data and analytics have been helping organisations to optimise their processes and improve their returns. My sense though, is that the focus of analytics over the past year or so has become increasingly tactical and operational, now with murmuring in some quarters about green shoots of recovery it’s time to start thinking about how analytics is going to help companies gear back up for growth. Read more…

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

Maturity models seem to be all the rage these days. These models help organisations to identify where they are on the roadmap of whatever discipline or capability the model is about and where they need to be. They help to describe the journey to world-class status or best practice. I have been using a simple “maturity model“ for a few years to help organisations identify where they are in terms of their development of their digital marketing optimisation capabilities. I’ve found it a useful device to help people understand the journey they are on and a sense of the ultimate destination. Read more…

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

Last week I was over in San Jose for the Emetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit for three days of input and output on all issues around digital analytics. As usual there was a wide variety of content to absorb and a breadth of issues to discuss. As I sit and write this at the airport on my way home (got to meet those ClickZ deadlines…) I get a chance to reflect on some of the key themes that came out of the conference. Read more…

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

The first sign of spring is the beginning of the conference season and it kicked off for me this week when Omniture came to town hosting their European Summit in London. Around a 1,000 people from across Europe gathered together last Tuesday to listen to what one of the largest marketing technologies companies had to say. Read more…

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

When is a visitor not a visitor? The answer is… “when it’s a cookie”.
The controversy surrounding one of the core metrics of web analytics, Unique Visitors, has raised its head again. In a recent blog post Eric Peterson, the web analytics consultant and author, called on the web analytics industry to stop using the term Unique Visitors because it doesn’t accurately reflect what is actually being measured. The issue stems from a set of proposed definitions from the IAB on audience reach metrics, including Unique Visitors. The definition of Unique Visitors from the IAB is different to the definition commonly used in the web analytics industry which is cookie based. Read more…