Search results matching tag 'Conferences'

Advertising Week 2009 New York - Anyone Going?

980070 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:19:00 GMT

I'll be with Microsoft Advertising at Advertising Week 2009 in a few weeks and will be blogging and Tweeting both here on Media Week and my personal blog.

Anyone else coming? Up for a hot dog and a foamy beer?

Details to come on exactly how we'll be bringing the event to life!

SMX London 2008 - Speaking & Networking

980070 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:49:00 GMT

Been a bit quiet recently as I was filming Escape To The Country last week. It was a fascinating experience which took a lot longer than you'd think for a one hour show, but was nevertheless a hoot and a considerable break from the norm.

So having got back to several hundred emails, I'm already off out tomorrow to attend Search Marketing Expo - Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman's Search Engine Land conference - to hear some of the best speakers in the industry impart valuable advice on SEO, PPC, link building and keyword research.

I'll be speaking at 9am (!) on Wednesday 5th on Brand Reputation Management Strategies and again at the Paid Search Check Up at 3pm.

I really do recommend coming along if you can make it. The agenda really is first class!

Check out the adCenter Blog for details on who you can get a cheeky 15% off the registration fee!

Speaking At A4U Expo Next Week

980070 — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:14:00 GMT

I'll be teaming up with Dixon Jones and the fabulous Tor Crockatt next week at the Affiliates 4 U Conference and Expo in the Docklands.

The session is about improving ROI on PPC campaigns:

"The expert panel will examine the fundamentals of paid search strategies, covering link and display text, the future of demographics and the quality score, and keyword research tools for affiliates."

If you're having trouble with campaigns check out some of Tor's Keyword Research Tips.

It should be a cracking seesion so hope to see you there on 15th October at 11am!

At ad:tech London For 2 Days

980070 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:01:00 GMT

I'll be at ad:tech London over the next couple of days.

Thoroughly recommend the conference even if you just attend the free expo and seminars.

I'll be on the MS stand and speaking on both days at 12.30pm so pop by and say hi!

Blogging and Twittering From SES San Jose 2008

980070 — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:08:00 GMT

I’m off to Seattle tonight and then San Jose for the 10th Anniversary Search Engine Strategies conference on Sunday.

Looking forward to catching up on all the latest news and views on the search industry at what is billed as the biggest search marketing conference ever.

I will of course be blogging for Media Week about some of the insight I gather, and I’ll also be Twittering, so follow me at http://twitter.com/MelCarson for my updates from a very sunny California.

If you’re going to be there then let me know and we can hook up over a beer or three!

Digital Twin Peaks

980070 — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:21:59 GMT

There are two "summits" going on this week in London that you should consider attending...

The eMetrics Marketing Optimisation Summit will be kicking off from 20-21st in Russell Square. If you enjoyed my posts from San Francisco then you'll know I've been totally absorbed by this way of looking at business metrics and web analytics.

The other conference is at the British Library and is all about International Search. Andy Atkins-Kruger leads the agenda which includes sessions on advertising in Asia, International content management & geolocalisation.

If you can get time off, do go along - you won't be disappointed!

Segment Or Die

980070 — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:52:06 GMT

Bit OTT I grant you, but these analytics fanatics I’m listening to over here in SFO are pretty passionate about what they do.....

The premise behind segmentation with web analytics is around grouping customers based on their behaviour. Once you understand why they behave the way they do you can do something about it.

So if a whole bunch of people are coming from a certain site and bouncing (not going further into your site or buying anything) you can do some analysis, change your strategy for them and then watch their behaviour change over time.

Alternatively ring-fence users who are converting well. They may come from a particular keyword in organic search, so it might be an idea to test variations of that keyword to see how you rank organically. If you don’t rank well, then try those words through PPC and get more sales.

Knowing who your customers are and how they behave is crucial to online success. Your customers are not sheep, they don’t all follow the route through your site you think they should. They don't always come through your homepage either.

By segmenting those behaviours, and understanding why they do what they do, you have the information you need to take action.

eBay's Approach To Analytics

980070 — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:00:45 GMT

eBay presented today at eMetrics on Improving Customer Experience – Some great content if a little poorly delivered...

In 1996 they had 41k users. Today their marketplace has grown to 276m sellers and buys worldwide. They have over one billion photos on their site, generate $2039 of sales per second and process 2 petabytes of data every day.

The premise behind the presentation was how they optimised the site for users through research. eBay is about people so they need to know who they are and what they need to do to find good value in the site afterall, 1.3m people make their living on the site. (Wonder how many of them pay ta!?)

The need to understand what motivates their users, what are their pain points and what are their challenges.

Their research/marketing teams do a lot of segmentation of users in order to drill down into the facts of what is going on on the site. They go much deeper than just buyers and sellers. They look at utility, usability, desirability and lastly the brand experience. They carry out the research in a number of different ways through lab testing, field visits, surveys and eye tracking.

They call it participatory design.

With lab testing, they watch people with different levels of experience. They’re very keen on watching what people do instead of what they SAY they do. Two very different things! The incredible thing is that they actually sketch whatever feature they’re looking at like a story board. Yes they actually draw it on a piece of paper before they do anything else!

The field visit idea was interesting too. They send staff into the homes of their users to watch them in their time and their environment. Talk about thorough! They take photos too. One of them was of a women holding a book standing on some bathroom scales.

For them it’s very much an end to end process of how, what and why. How does eBay fit into their lives? What can eBay do to address users issues?

They teamed up these small samples of research with online analytics in order to validate their assumptions and drive usability. One example of tabbing on the page used three different experiences which you could hardly spot the difference but it was impressive that they went to such lengths to get it just right.

Taking a really thorough approach really does work when it comes to design, usability and ultimately profitability. Too many sites are still being built because they look pretty or have whizz-bang features which have never been tried or tested. Striking a balance between innovation and ease of use is the holy grail.

Research and analytics can help you get there.

Tesco, DunnHumby & Digital Data

980070 — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:08:57 GMT

Rufus Evison, the new digital guy at dunnhumby spoke today at the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco on Deep Data Diving – Bringing Online & Offline Inline.

In the 45 minute slot he outlined a digital approach to analytics but with some offline examples, really making the audience think about how offline data can be used in the same way as we use it online.

Dunnhumby’s work with Tesco and the ClubCard is obviously a huge part of this. 13m people in the UK are on their list and if there are 26m households in the country, Tesco have an enormous amount of data to slice and dice.

Typically in the US coupon redemption is less than 1% but Tesco manages to convert 30-50% of coupons because they are so well targeted.

At a high level Rufus saw the analytics journey to financial nirvana as being a case of the flow between data, information and insight. The raw data, once we know the context, provides us with information and some robust analysis of the information with good controls, should in turn provide us with actionable insight.

The holy grail is seen as the achievement of three things:

Linking ad exposure to customer purchase behaviour
Understanding the effects of ALL advertising
Know what people are planning to buy

Once cracked, those achievements should be measured in financial return. In fact he went so far as to say that “E-Metrics is dead, it should be called business metrics!”

After all why are we doing all this analysis? To increase sales for the most part...

But we have to be careful which data we take notice of. Not all online campaign research should necessarily result in the thumbs up for digital. He gave a great example of how a $7m TV campaign had created a 13% uplift in sales because it had crossed over to YouTube and gained a bit of viral love. A relatively quiet press campaign for the same product earlier in the year, had cost just $1.7m but only seen a 9% uplift in sales.

When they digged deeper into the data, the TV/online campaign uplift was with existing customers, while the press campaign had generated new buyers, resulting in a much more valuable life-time value number.

Just goes to show that digital is only part of the media mix. It’s proving of great value but should be seen in context. It’s the data analysis that proves its value positively or negatively for any given campaign.

One privacy question sprang to mind so I asked it:

“Are the 13m ClubCard holders in the UK aware that Tesco rifles through their shopping baskets every week, knows an awful lot about them and targets the coupons in order to get them to come back and spend more?”

Rufus was quick to answer that, “Pretty much all of Tesco’s customers know or understand why they are getting sent relevant coupons?”

Really?

Anyway bit of trivia: When people start buying nappies, Tesco sees an uplift in sales of cans of beer too!

Any ideas why?

Banking Bank Holidays!

980070 — Mon, 05 May 2008 01:47:50 GMT

This'll be the second bank holiday this year I've missed through my dedication to the digital marketing industry....

One of the things that baffles me about Microsoft is the lack of holiday my US counterparts get. Ten or so days a year as official "vacation" is their lot, although they do get 8 more days for things like Thanksgiving and celebrating Columbus (the detective?)!

Anyway I'm out in San Francisco for the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit. It's all about Web Analytics and such like and should be interesting.

I'll let you know what I learn...