I read a recent article published by a company from Australia. You can read the article here. The author raises the issue that digital marketing campaigns are becoming more useful through tracking because of the improved analytics programs that are now available.
For example, in the article he gives a case of a person that goes to a web site via a pay to click ad, but doesn't buy. He later returns via a direct mail campaign and finally submits a form showing interest. His argument is that the person was not really a lead until he submitted the form, but most analytics programs would have targeted him from pay to click ad. What part of the campaign was responsible for making him a customer?
First, in advertising it often times takes multiple touches before someone will buy. Therefore, simply saying that the last item is what turned them into a customer is really incorrect. It might and most likely was a combination of multiple advertising messages. Unfortunately determining that is a business decision, not an analytics decision.
The point is that in any direct marketing analytics is very important, but how you interpret those analytics is what gives you real decision making information. Not everyone will use the same criteria to interpret something.
The author also seems to suggest that there is technology that is available to track a person from beginning to end. How exactly would someone do that if you are doing both offline and online marketing? The methods for tracking a unique person on a web site are flawed at best. I know hard core analytics gurus will argue with me on this point, but it is true. There is no definitive way to determine that a specific person with identifiable concrete information about their identity visited your web site through a certain channel and then later returned through another channel that isn't even online, unless they fill out some type of form or request some type of report or something, but that isn't analytics telling you that. CRM systems can get close on some of this if you have the rigtht business systems in place, but again the interpretation of analytics is an excercise in business decision making.
I agree with the author to a point that their are technologies available that will help track a prospect from beginning to end, but how you interpret data, what specific technologies you use, and whole host of other variables will determine the true effectiveness. Thankfully I believe we are still a very long way from replacing all people with analytics programs and computerized decision making software. For now anyway analytics is a tool and should be used, but don't put too much stock in it. It is simply one more piece to a very technical puzzle of direct marketing.
