Knicks & Knacks

Is it my imagination or is the Web analytics Conference season packed even tighter than usual this year? We have Webtrends’ Engage starting 2/28, Omniture Summit and Customer Advisory Board on 3/7 and eMetrics on 3/14. Thanks heavens two of the three are in San Francisco or I could just kiss my daughters goodbye for a month! It sure would be nice if we could space them out a little bit…

Up before any of these on my calendar is a DM Radio program this Thursday. It’s a panel on “Achieving Lift with Predictive Analytics” and I’m on with Dean Abbot of Abbot Analytics, Simon Arkell of Predixion, and Louis Bajuk-Yorgan of TIBCO-Spotfire. That’s a pretty good group and a nice balance of tools and consulting. Predixion is a cloud-based analytics infrastructure that integrates with Excel and PowerPivot (the very cool Excel add-on that lets you handle much larger data sets). Spotfire is a powerful visualization and reporting engine that is excellent for state-of-the-art analytic dashboarding. These are two technologies Web analytics folks really should know about. You can register (it’s free) here…

The week after, it’s time for Engage. Webtrends has re-invigorated this Conference. Last year’s event in New Orleans was terrific – the best Webtrends Conference I’ve been to by far – they’ve made the Conference lively, informative, and, well, engaging. As an extra cool bonus, this year's main social event is at the new Academy of Sciences Museum. If you have not been, that will be a treat.

I’ve already finished my presentation (he said with a smirk). In what is, for me, an unusual twist, I’m in the CMO track. I nearly always (and appropriately) end up in the Analyst track and frankly that’s where I’m most comfortable. At Engage, however, I’m riffing on my current blog series on the convergence of Database Marketing and Web Analytics. This idea that there is a way to do Digital Analytic Marketing that brings the techniques, power and impact of traditional database marketing to Digital channels is a true CMO-level story. It’s a path to driving significant value from online measurement that is real, concrete, and achievable. It may be the first CMO-worthy story that I, at least, have ever had to tell around Web analytics. If you’re going to be out in SF, check it out and say hello.

Ditto for the next week at Omniture CAB and Summit – if you’re coming out and would like to meet or share a drink, just drop me a line. Summit (rather like X Change for Semphonic) has always been a remarkable brand facsimile of Omniture. It’s a beautifully run marketing machine and while it can be a bit overwhelming at times you have to admire the level of execution that goes into it. I’m looking forward to the Developer/API discussions and there’s quite a bit more on the Developer Connection this year so if that’s your interest, you’re definitely in luck.

I’m not a skier except under duress from my girls, so I’ll be back in plenty of time for eMetrics. I’m doing a panel there on Sentiment Analysis along with Michael Healy. Put the two of us together and I envision some serious, deeply techno-geek talk. I can practically guarantee that you will walk away from listening to the two of us with some ideas that you have not heard or thought about before. Whether they will be bad or good ideas I cannot predict.

After that I hope to do some actual work – of which there is a bountiful and interesting early spring harvest here at Semphonic. In my next post, I’ll be returning to my ongoing series on Digital Analytic Marketing and working through a set of techniques that we originally developed for classic Web analytics but that turn out to be extremely useful when it comes to targeted marketing and personalization with digital data.

Comments

[Patrycja]

Looking at how CMS Watch is evaluating the dnieerfft Web Analytics tools in the market, one question came to my mind:Has anyone ever looked at the CMS solutions in the market to evaluate which is the best one for Web Analytics?What if you are looking for a brand new CMS and want to pick one that will offer the best features for a new web analytics implementation? Something- Integration with several analytics tools- Easy tagging and tracking code installation, with almost no IT intervention- Hierachy handling- A/B Testing ready- Event tracking- ...Or even put together such a list of features?Nice post, by the way!ThanksJose

[Andreas]

Organization will still need a Web Analytics specialist or chmpiaon. why? because for marketeers/business users, Web Analytics is only a part of their job. They don't want to have to learn all the technical knowledge that is required, to follow WA best practices & technologies, to coordinate implementation and more.That is typically the role of a WA specialist, expert or whatever job title. I don't like much the title "web analyst" - I think it does not reflect all the aspects mentioned above.So yes, you are right, role will evolve but certainly not die.Michael(www.kaizen-analytics.com)