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Category Archives: Analytics

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Get Real Problem-Solvers for Real Results from Your Big Data

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Big Data and Predictive Analytics It can be very easy for a user to get lost in all the “Big Data” hype, but several things need to be in place to make sure your company finds the gold that lies within large data sets. It should be stated that you could have all the newest tools and experience in the world, but without the proper problem-solvers, your marketing intelligence could be misinterpreted. Big data for marketing is best applied with a combination of the latest software and skilled talent. By taking insights gained from a Big-Data analytics platform, you can make smart marketing adjustments grounded in science.

The ability to understand a problem/opportunity and what data is applicable to that problem/opportunity is what separates a great Big-Data capability from a good one. The ability to mine, process, and collect data has been around for a while, but the ability to analyze that data and quickly make revenue-generating recommendations for digital marketing campaigns is a game-changer. Simply put, with better insights, you can profit from careful segmentation of your target audiences.

Big Data can cost your company rather than benefit it if used incorrectly. The key ingredient to Big Data is finding a service done by a software platform or problem-solvers that has the capacity to make sense of your data. The act of taking the correlations your Big Data reveals and turning them into tactical marketing recommendations is the missing factor that companies need. That missing piece is usually filled by real-life problem-solvers who have experience in the field. If you consider outsourcing this process to a company that has experience applying predictive analytics and the ability to make sense of your large data sets, make sure the results are transparent in the form of increased ROI (in incremental revenue lift).

Posted in Analytics, Big Data, Predictive Analytics | Tagged , , ,

 

The “Other” Moneyball: Baseball Business Analytics

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With the Major League Baseball season only a month old, spring fever has hit the Fathom team as we reminisce about my favorite sport: Baseball. Incomparable to any other sport, statistics rule the game of baseball. Virtually every conversation about the game mentions a player’s batting average, home-run total, ERA (for pitchers) or one of a thousand other measured stats from the national pastime.

After the release of the best-selling book and award-winning movie Moneyball, there is more attention than ever on statistics in baseball. Though with less fanfare than the player side of the game, business analytics in Major League Baseball is what helps teams drive revenue and provide a better experience for their fans.

Analytics has become an area of focus for most major-league teams over the past few years. Most teams have one or maybe two analysts on staff to help the organization make better data-driven decisions on the business side. Having previously worked in analytics for the Cleveland Cavaliers, I understand the many challenges that these analysts face:

  • Data coming from multiple systems:
  1. Ticket sales
  2. Secondary ticket sales – Stub Hub et al.
  3. Merchandise
  4. Concessions
  5. Social media and other online interactions
  • Lack of internal IT resources to pull and organize the data
  • Financial resources for analysis tools
  • Numerous analytics projects to work on for different areas within the business
  • Too much data to analyze with such a small team

Most professional sports teams do not have the internal resources to fully maximize the revenue opportunities that analytics provide. This is where an experienced team like the one at Fathom can help: gaining a better understanding of your fans, identifying the indicators that lead to a purchase, and strategically marketing to those fans to drive significantly more revenue.

Fathom also offers “do-it-yourself” tools for organizations interested in analyzing the data themselves. Our dynamic analytics tools can help save up to 80% of the time it takes to perform the analysis. This customized interactive reporting platform will free up your analytics team to spend more time on the tasks that will make a bigger impact on your business.

With all of this talk about baseball player and business statistics, it’s important to remember that baseball is a game that creates memories and brings people together. In this spirit, check out a fun video we just put together of Fathom staffers talking baseball:

Posted in Analytics, Big Data, Predictive Analytics, Sports/Entertainment

 

“Big Data” Means Knowing Where to Find the Gold

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Back during the American Gold Rush, most of the people who went out for gold were enthusiastic amateurs who had to search for it the hard way – they’d sit by a stream where gold had already been found, and run water through a shallow pan, hoping for paydirt.

Today, a lot of people using digital marketing – be it email, SEO, PPC or some other medium – are functioning about the same way those miners did; that is, hit and miss and hope for the best.  They’re missing out on leads and sales because they don’t have a clear idea of when, where or how to direct their efforts.

That’s where “big data” comes in.  To boil it down to one simple image, big data is knowing where to find “gold” in the form of leads and/or finished sales.  It means avoiding guesswork. It means taking your database and extending it with additional data, analyzing it and running it through models. The end result is data on your customers that lets you target them in the right way at the right time – thus achieving the results you need.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to be careless about your data. Data that’s not maintained and used correctly can waste money and damage your online reputation, particularly in the area of email marketing.  Bounces, invalid addresses and accounts left inactive (which could be spam traps) can mean that your message won’t get where you want it to go. Even in PPC or SEO efforts, you need to know the message you want to deliver and how to time it for maximum effect.  Big Data can help you make the right choices.

Is your enterprise a candidate for big data? If you want to expend your digital marketing dollar efficiently, you need to look at the data you use and how you use it.  More importantly, you need to know what do with the data once you’ve analyzed it and are ready to implement what you’ve learned.

Big Data is still, to some extent, in its infancy.  Now is the time to evaluate your company’s acquisition and use of data and how you can get ahead of the curve.

Posted in Analytics, Big Data, Email Marketing

 

Breaking Down Big Data

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What should I do with all this digital marketing data?

Tapping into large data sets can be a complicated task, but imagine all the possibilities you could uncover if you did. Digital signals come from all sorts of channels, and taking this data and turning it into actionable information can have a positive effect on your bottom line. Imagine taking all of your digital metrics like click-thru rates, page views, bounce rates, time on site, cost per click, et al., and turning them into information that your business can use to make scientific decisions. Finding reputable outside help to make sense of your “Big Data” can be profitable.

Big Data is hot in 2012, but what is it?

Defining Big Data is important because the term has been given a variety of different meanings. For some, the term simply means any set of data that has become so large that it can no longer be analyzed using normal database management tools. For Fathom’s purpose, Big Data presents a marketing opportunity. It indicates the process of taking large amounts of data from a variety of sources and using that data to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, and other useful information. This collection can be used to gain competitive advantages over even the toughest of competitors. The resulting insight from predictive analytics will also have a positive impact on your inbound marketing strategy and most importantly, your bottom line.

How do I know if a Big Data solution is needed for my company?

Not every company is an ideal candidate for a predictive analytics solution. Before you go “all in” with Big Data, you should have a few things already in place to ensure the data you are collecting is statistically significant. Big Data solution-seekers should have a high-energy inbound marketing plan in place. In order to make calculated predictive decisions, a company must have a strategic inbound marketing plan that produces a significant amount of digital signals. What this means is that you should have solid search-engine optimization, paid search, social media, and digital marketing presences before you dive into full data-based solutions.

We call this the “acquire” period of Big Data. Next, you need an efficient way to organize or integrate the data collected. Lastly, you need to analyze the organized data in order to understand what it implies and make educated decisions that give your business a competitive advantage.

If you deal with a lot of data, don’t lose sight of the opportunities today’s technology and digital marketing afford.

Posted in Analytics, Google Analytics, Predictive Analytics | Tagged , , , ,

 

If You Haven’t Tried Microsoft adCenter for Paid Search, Now Is the Time

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Quite a few welcome changes have arrived from Microsoft adCenter lately, providing more control and flexibility when managing paid search accounts.

I recently sat in on a webinar from adCenter which highlighted these changes as well as a few announcements for more enhancements this coming quarter.

 Change highlights from Q1:

  • You can now target specific smartphones and devices.
  • Ad description character limit from 70 to 71.  Although this is small, this slight increase helps for an easier copy of ads from Google AdWords into adCenter.
  • Improved geo-targeting options.
  • Ad group keywords no longer override campaign-level negatives.  This now aligns with AdWords, allowing for more general negatives to be applied across the account in addition to negative keywords that apply to only a few ad groups within a campaign.

Exciting management & advertising opportunities: 

These are being rolled out (in some cases, slowly) over the next few months:

  • The ability to more easily manage keywords by match type individually.  Within the interface, you can see keywords by each match type individually to adjust status, assign bidding, params and destination URLs.
  • The ability to use the “broad match modifier” match type.  If you are not familiar with this in AdWords, you can add a “+” in front of all or a few keywords to give you more control, like “phrase match” with the flexibility of “broad.” The terms within the keyword with a “+” must be in the search query for your ad to be triggered.  For example, if your keyword is +soccer shoes, your ad could show for soccer balls or shoes for soccer, but not for tennis shoes or shoes for prom.
  • You will be able to include location extensions with your ads.
  • For campaigns that use the new ad location extensions, you will also be able to use click-to-call.
  • For exact-match brand terms only, you will be able to utilize rich ads on search.yahoo.com and bing.com.  They will only show for ads in the first-page position.  This is in beta right now, so if you have an account representative, you will need to reach out to them to apply.

For the past two months, adCenter has had about 29% of the US search market share, according to comScore’s recent reports.  With all of the new marketing features that have been implemented and changes coming, now is the time to start advertising in adCenter and capturing that 29%!

Posted in Analytics, Paid Search, Search Engines | Tagged , ,

 

Big Data, Big Hype? How To Harness It

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You need a full-blown process, team, partner to do it right. All aspects are critical.

 

Interest in “Big Data” is exploding. According to Google Insights, relative search volume for the term big data has increased steadily over the past year (see chart below). The high point was last Thursday when President Obama made his proclamation about big data.

 

There are lots of players in the mix, from storage and processing to boutique analytics firms and automation partners like Marketo.

Data analytics has been democratized. The access to and ability to process Big Data has opened up a big opportunity for commerce and industry. Naturally, the source of this ever-growing Big Data is the increasing volume of activity happening online.

However, my 15 years at The Nielsen Company taught me a profound respect for the quality of data and the rigorous methodology needed to make informed decisions. You need the right partners across the entire spectrum of this process.

Each player has a unique approach to apply to each part of the process; however, business owners need to keep in mind that it’s the results that matter—profitable revenue.

Below is a quick overview of what you need in place to execute a Big-Data strategy well.

  1. First, a big driver of Big Data for business is a dynamic and consistently thoughtful inbound marketing strategy. Businesses must have great content, be optimized for search, and engage in a social media strategy to communicate with potential customers and generate leads. This process emits digital signals which are the critical inputs for the big-data movement. With this data you can then supercharge RPM (revenue performance management) platforms, e.g. by protecting organic search-engine rankings from drops associated with over-optimization.
  2. Next, one has to collect all the signals—digital and even analog—to analyze and synthesize the data to develop insights leading to action.
  3. Segmentation is next. Your insights must go beyond a binary measure of who’s hot and who’s not. Knowing your personas and identifying the state of buyer consideration leads you to step 4.
  4. Targeting. You must develop custom messaging and enhanced treatment to continue nurturing or send buyers into a sales process for conversion. This output should also be continuously kicked back to refine #1.

The result
Following this process end-to-end with the right partners creates leads that convert and profitable revenue for marketing that even a CFO would love.

If you want more information, ping us to hear more about our new VisiOne 4CAST program.

Stay tuned: We’ll also soon be publishing a case study/white paper about a client’s success with Fathom’s results-driven predictive marketing in a heavily regulated and intensely competitive environment.

Posted in Analytics, Lead-gen, Online Marketing, Predictive Analytics | Tagged , , , ,

 

Fathom Now Offers Interactive Video Experience – INGAGE: Interactive Engagement

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INgage LogoDid you know that Fathom now offers an interactive video solution? We call it Fathom INGAGE: “Interactive Engagement.” You may be asking yourself, “What, exactly, is an interactive video?”

Interactive videos are clickable video players that allow the viewer to choose an individual path throughout the video, leading to heightened view times up to 5X  longer than linear business video, and increased conversions by an average of 35%.

So, how is this done? Interactive clickable objects within the player itself allow the user to choose the next preferred video to view. And not only do these buttons provide viewers with complete control of their video destiny, but they also can be hyperlinked to external websites, such as product pages, checkout pages and even landing pages.

And the best part? These applications are designed to convert! The implementation of form fields within the player itself tie leads directly to the video!
Through detailed analytics, you’ll gain valuable insight into audience viewing behavior, such as number of views and average length of time spent watching.

You’ll access critical-path and decision-point information, such as:

INGAGE Path Analytics, Decision Points

Gain insight into viewer decision points

  • Percentage of viewers who requested more information
  • How many users stopped viewing from each individual clip
  • The most and least popular path taken from each clip
  • (Most importantly) Conversion rates per clip.

Check out the interactive player above, and shoot us a comment below to let us know how you think an interactive video solution could help enhance the user experience of your site! And don’t forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for more educational content from Fathom!

Posted in Affiliate Marketing, Analytics, Fathom Company News, Internet Video Marketing, Online Marketing, Online Video, Sports/Entertainment | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Straight Outta MIT Sloan: Why Sports Analytics Is Hot

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What topic could bring the likes of comedian Drew Carey, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, Forrest Gump producer Steve Tisch and me to a 30-degree, snow-covered Boston this past weekend?

Analytics
The hottest buzz in the sports industry today is analytics. It was one of the hottest topics at the National Sports Forum in January and consumed the sold-out Hynes Convention Center in Boston this past Friday and Saturday at the 6th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

So why is analytics so hot?
It’s simple. Analytics helps companies make more money by working smarter, not harder.

Gone are the days when a team’s ticket sales staff blindly opens up a phone book to make 100 cold calls a day (yes, teams actually used to do this!). With the sophistication in technology, brilliant minds (like those of the team at Fathom), and strong business acumen, sports organizations are starting to realize the benefits of analytics.

So you’ve run some analytics, now what?
Running the numbers and identifying the trends is only the beginning of the process. The success really comes from activating the knowledge and insight gained in the analysis phase.

Better understanding your customers and getting a 360-degree view of the fan’s behavior (ticket purchasing trends, merchandise/concession sales, interaction on social media and email marketing campaigns, mobile and website interaction) help position the sport organization to pitch the customer the right product, at the right time, through the right communication method.

This is where digital marketing comes into play. Without the digital marketing tactics that turn knowledge into revenue, analytics are just fun facts.

Through digital marketing, an organization can have a true one-to-one relationship with the fan. Technology allows teams to send customized messaging to each specific individual—optimizing the opportunity for a closed sale. Through each digital interaction, new insight is gained and added to better understand the fan. This is the key to turning simple “analytics” into revenue.

 

What topic could bring the likes of Comedian Drew Carey, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettmen, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, Forest Gump Producer Steve Tisch and me to 30 degrees and a snow covered Boston this past weekend?

Analytics

The hottest buzz in the sports industry today is analytics. It was one of the hottest topics at the National Sports Forum in January and consumed the sold out Hynes Convention Center in Boston this past Friday and Saturday with the 6th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

So why is “analytics” so hot?

It’s simple. Analytics helps companies make more money by working smarter, not harder.

Gone are the days that a team’s ticket sales staff blindly opens up a phone book to make their 100 cold calls a day (yes, teams actually use to do this)! With the sophistication in technology, brilliant minds (like the team at Fathom), and strong business acumen, sports organizations are starting to realize the benefits of analytics.

So you’ve run some analytics, now what?

Running the numbers and identifying the trends is only the beginning of the process. The success really comes from activating the knowledge and insight gained in the analysis phase.

Better understanding your customers and getting a 360 degrees view of the fan’s behavior (ticket sales purchasing trends, merchandise/concession purchases, interaction on social media and email marketing campaigns, mobile and website interaction) help position the sport organization to pitch the customer the right product, at the right time, through the right communication method.

This is where digital marketing comes into play.

Through digital marketing, an organization can have a true one-to-one relationship with the fan. Technology allows teams to send customized messaging to each specific individual in a way to optimize the opportunity for a closed sale. Through each digital interaction, new insight is gained and added to better understand the fan. This is the key. Turning “analytics” into revenue.

Analytics are just fun facts without the best digital marketing tactics to turn knowledge into revenue.What topic could bring the likes of Comedian Drew Carey, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettmen, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, ESPN’s Bill Simmons, Forest Gump Producer Steve Tisch and me to 30 degrees and a snow covered Boston this past weekend?

Analytics

The hottest buzz in the sports industry today is analytics. It was one of the hottest topics at the National Sports Forum in January and consumed the sold out Hynes Convention Center in Boston this past Friday and Saturday with the 6th annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.

So why is “analytics” so hot?

It’s simple. Analytics helps companies make more money by working smarter, not harder.

Gone are the days that a team’s ticket sales staff blindly opens up a phone book to make their 100 cold calls a day (yes, teams actually use to do this)! With the sophistication in technology, brilliant minds (like the team at Fathom), and strong business acumen, sports organizations are starting to realize the benefits of analytics.

So you’ve run some analytics, now what?

Running the numbers and identifying the trends is only the beginning of the process. The success really comes from activating the knowledge and insight gained in the analysis phase.

Better understanding your customers and getting a 360 degrees view of the fan’s behavior (ticket sales purchasing trends, merchandise/concession purchases, interaction on social media and email marketing campaigns, mobile and website interaction) help position the sport organization to pitch the customer the right product, at the right time, through the right communication method.

This is where digital marketing comes into play.

Through digital marketing, an organization can have a true one-to-one relationship with the fan. Technology allows teams to send customized messaging to each specific individual in a way to optimize the opportunity for a closed sale. Through each digital interaction, new insight is gained and added to better understand the fan. This is the key. Turning “analytics” into revenue.

Analytics are just fun facts without the best digital marketing tactics to turn knowledge into revenue.

Posted in Analytics, Conferences and Events, Predictive Analytics, Sports/Entertainment | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

 

Sports Marketing & Predictive Analytics: A Match Made in Heaven (or Iowa)

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In their youth, odds are that today’s professional athletes enjoyed the same sports they now are paid to play, only in local parks with friends. They likely woke up on weekends and went out to the closest park, field, rink or court in search of a game. That’s exactly what it was to them—a game.

When sports are more than a game

But that’s before they became professionals. Sports is also a big business that involves many groups—from the owners to the athletes all the way down to the spectators, and in their own way, even people who try to ignore the game play a role. Like in any business, applying predictive analytics—using data to determine how people are going to react to a given stimulus—can enable smarter decisions.

The reasons a team drafts a certain player are typically obvious: to fill a need (or needs). And the reason teams pick certain logos, colors, fonts, advertising campaigns, etc. is actually the same exact reason — to fill a (marketing) need. Research data tell businesses everything they need to know about their clientele. And the more data a business has, the more successful marketing campaigns are likely to be.

Start with goals

If the goal of a team is to boost attendance at its games, it’s going to be more likely to reach that goal if it knows how to entice its customers: the fans. Sometimes it’s a matter of advertising in the right place at the right time. Sometimes it’s a matter of appealing to their sense of community, team pride or even patriotism. And sometimes it’s just plain bribery with promotional giveaways and the like. The more the team knows about its potential customers, the more likely it will be to entice them to come to a game or match … or to become season-ticket holders.

Of course, having a winning team helps. A winning team with an ugly logo, mismatched colors and no giveaways might still entice fans. But putting together a winning team can be very expensive and time-consuming. Not every team can be a contender every year. The cruel irony, of course, is that without the wins, it’s hard to make money without good marketing, which brings predictive analytics back into play.

If the goal is to fill the stands, the first step might actually be new uniforms. Many teams have tried this strategy with great success. A new logo leads to merchandise sales, which leads to chatter in the community, leading to increased interest in the team, followed by a bump in ticket sales, confidence in the locker room and, finally, wins. Crazy as it may sound, it has worked time and again.

Using your data: Going next-level

And once you’ve got people coming to the ballpark, field, rink or court, you can tweak your strategy as needed. Predictive analytics may tell you that a Tuesday home game requires giveaways and a Saturday afternoon game sees higher attendance with family-themed activities, while a Friday night game needs neither of those, for example.

Knowledge is and always has been a great power. And the better a business knows its potential customers, the more likely that business will be to turn that potential customer into a lifelong fan.

Learn more

If you’re interested, read more about Fathom’s approach to predictive analytics:

Posted in Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Sports/Entertainment | Tagged , ,

 

The Famous (not provided)…. NOT!

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I’m sure you’ve all heard and read enough about the painful missing information from our Google Analytics organic search traffic, the (not provided) data. Yep, it’s not over. If you haven’t heard about it yet, you can read it on Google’s blog.

I’ve been tracking this so-called “(not provided)” data since Oct. 17th, and the results are interesting. I have pulled together data from 10 sites in various industries which includes e-commerce, education, health, manufacturing, lead generation, and our very own site. Daily visitors range between 3 million to less than 1K and anywhere from 60K to under 100K in daily organic search traffic.

Figure 1 is a chart that shows a week-by-week comparison of the (not provided) data from 10/17 to 1/8. The chart is too large to fit this space so be sure to click the image for a much better view. Click here to see the numbers.

Figure 1

Site 9 and 10 were the most interesting as it climbs the scale for the percentage of (not provided) search traffic. I suspected education would be the front runner of them all. I guess our younger generations are not all that interested in Google Docs, Gmail or even Google+. Are you surprised?

Now take a look at Figure 2 below.

Figure 2

This chart shows a different perspective for the (not provided) search traffic. Below are the numbers. Again, Education is still not the front-runner, but we’re still in the early stages of this (not provided) dilemma.

Figure 3

Figure 1 and Figure 3 are simple segments from Google Analytics. I’m just pulling keywords with an exact match to (not provided), and you’ll see the percentage. Now, calculating the amount of (not provided) divided by the number of organic (Google) search traffic, you’ll see a widely different percentage in Figure 4.

Figure 4

The metrics are amazing across various industries, aren’t they?

So what metric did Google project its >10% search-engine traffic on? Was it week by week? One month at a time? Or did it combine several months to project >10%?

No matter what percentage we look at, they will continue to rise now that Google has launched ‘Search Plus Your World.’ What will the impact be on the (not provided) search traffic? We’ll have to report back once we gather some data.

What are your percentages and what metrics or segments are you using to get your (not provided) information?

A few colleagues in our field have come up with some interesting points: that it’s not totally the end of the world. So let’s move forward and discover what we can do with this information to make the best of it. Check out Avinash’s post and David Harry’s post for tips and value from this (not provided) data.

Posted in Analytics, Google

 

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