A long, long time ago…

… in a not-so-distant galaxy…

… there was a world without e-mail and social networks.

There was no MySpace or Facebook or Twitter or Pownce…

… no Google or Yahoo or Del.icio.us or Digg.

There was no WebTrends or Omniture or Double Click or ComScore.

There was………………… NO INTERNET.

<pause for gasps and shrieks of horror>

It was a barren wasteland where people communicated in complete sentences, punctuated, read strange paper bound objects and made curvy markings with their hands using bizarre, ink-filled contraptions.

And marketers marketed without metrics!

It’s true.

I marketed through the pre-Web era, and lived to tell the tale.

A tale of guessing and wishing and scratching our heads as we sent film (yes, film) with glossy ads to print publications, touting our brand message.

(For those as ancient as me, 133-line screen, Right Read Emulsion Side Down is forever emblazoned on my brain by overzealous Production Managers!)

We sent pithy copy to radio stations and shot TV spots. We procured huge Lambda printers to make bus shelters and billboards.

We all knew the term ‘Cling Z.’ (Not to be confused with ‘Click Z’)

We sent out direct mail with BRC’s (‘Business Reply Cards’ for those of you who grew up on the Internet and thought I just misspelled BRB – ‘Be Right Back.’) and keyed in responses by hand as data entry people tried to decipher human writing.*

*the act of using a pen or pencil to form characters using one’s hand instead of a keyboard.

We transmitted facsimiles (later termed ‘fax blasts’) on toilet-paper like rolls of shiny paper.

We gave out pens and paperweights and rulers and sticky pads with our logo and tagline on it, which we proudly donned the ‘logo lockup.’

All in the hopes of cultivating customers, building brand equity and gaining ‘share of voice’ in the marketplace.

SOV.

Yet another extinct acronym in the digital world.

And we did all of this with relatively little – or in some, cases, absolutely NO – quantifiable metrics.

Sure, we had focus groups (but we all know how helpful those were as we pranced around with marker comps and storyboards Vanna White-style).

And telephone polls. (Wasn’t everyone always oh-so-willing to take the time to talk to a telemarketer and provide feedback and insights on advertising campaigns? Not so much.)

And readership surveys. (Fill this out and drop it in the mail…rrrrriiiiiigggght.)

And ‘How did you hear about us?’ check boxes, the pinnacle of empirical fact.

Some more fancy schmancy marketing teams actually had varying 800#s for different ads, which in today’s space would be tantamount to unique URLs, but this was not the norm.

Unless you were Coca Cola, and could throw barrels of money around like drunken sailors to build your brand, your marketing expenditure could not be directly correlated to any sort of ROI.

Sure, you could draw dotted line conclusions: if you spent X dollars on advertising in the 1^st quarter and saw a spike in sales or brand growth, you could postulate the effects of your marketing, but you couldn’t validate it.

Not for certain anyway.

But we trudged on, trying to be more efficient in our spend, developing best practices and standards for how to achieve results.

My favorite was, ‘If your competitor is advertising there, so should you.’

Made sense then. Seems positively absurd now.

How about, ‘If your target audience is there, you should be advertising there?!’

That’s why the Internet is so powerful.

You can pinpoint with a high degree of certainty – if not 99.9999999% accuracy – where your customers are and reach them directly.

And you can not only get your brand message right in front of them, but you can also stimulate your desired action and bring them right to it.

All instantly.

In just a few clicks.

One to one.

You can even ‘follow’ them around and watch their behavior to see what they do or don’t respond to, and iterate mid-campaign.

Although I’ve been deeply entrenched in Internet marketing for more than ten years now, as I attempt to define online metrics and analytics, even I’m blown away.

The possibilities really are staggering.

And yet e-marketers are still initiating online campaigns without the proper metrics in place to evaluate results and optimize continually.

What’s worse, they don’t even bother to review the metrics that are available, allowing precious data to elude them. Data that could be used to drive sales, gain market share and generate, retain and cultivate loyal users.

I know what you’re thinking.

Why in the world would anyone do such a thing when we have a wealth of tools available to ensure the success of our initiatives that we never had before??!

I think it’s a combination of things.

Besides being just plain irresponsible, spending a company’s budget all willy nilly-like (and I believe that’s the technical term), it also under serves the web properties in delivering the most personalized – and relevant – experience to its users and robs users of the value that we, as marketers, are finally able to provide in pushing out targeted messaging.

To the right audience.

At the right time.

Using the right medium.

If someone had traveled back in time and told an offline marketer that they could specifically analyze each of their target’s behavior and revise messaging real time according to audience wants and needs, they would have looked at them in amazement uttering, ‘tell me more, Obi Web.’

Because that’s how fantastically, awesomely unbelievable metrics and analytics are.

Or at least can be if used properly.

So use them.

Seriously.

Do it. Do it.

Here is a really simple, ‘just add water’ cheat sheet of the high level metrics you should be focusing on to harness this immense power:

• Click through Rate: I can’t believe I even have to list this one but simply, how many people are clicking through from your ad or e-mail? Ideally, you should be testing different creative executions/messaging to see which has the greatest pull. A savvy marketer will also employ specialized landing pages per segment.
• Length of visit – How long did the user stay on your site? Studies have shown that if you can engage the user for longer periods of time in one session, they are more likely to reach a buying or conversion conclusion. This isn’t an exact science but the ‘time spent on site’ factor can offer some indication as to how compelling your site is. If you can’t hold their attention for more than a minute, it’s not likely that they’ll be performing the behavior you are seeking — or coming back.
• Conversion Rate – How many visitors completed your call to action whether it’s registration, purchase or another desired behavior.
• Site path – If you can tag your users with a unique id beyond just a referring URL denoting from where they came, you can literally follow their activity throughout your site to see where they go. This can give you valuable insights as to a) whether your ad/call to action drives them accordingly, b) if your site is intuitive in its navigation to key areas to which you want to encourage traffic, and c) if there are any trends as to when or where users may fall off in the process. (This brings us into the area of usability, but that will have to wait for another post.)

But merely reviewing these elements is not enough; you need to act on them to optimize for the greatest return. Think of it this way, you wouldn’t invite a hundred people to a party and bring them to a house with no food or drink. Yet that’s what you’re doing if you drive users to a site that doesn’t effectively lead them to your desired action. Just think of me as the one reminding you not to forget to buy booze before the big bash!

The formula is simple:

1. DEFINE the criteria you’ll need to gauge success before you initiate the campaign
2. DEVELOP the necessary code, tags, creative, etc.
3. IMPLEMENT the tactics accordingly
4. EVALUATE user activity and corresponding variables
5. OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE, OPTIMIZE

The tools are available. You just need to access them.

In other words, the only roadblock to success in your online initiatives is you.