Quantcast
Channel: Finally – MarketingSmartGuide

Demo Account for Google Analytics (GA) is Finally Available: Here’s Why It’s So Awesome

0
0

We’ve long wished for a demo account for Google Analytics (GA). Now, it’s finally here and with real data flowing through it. For instant gratification, go get it now.

I’m really excited to see this especially because we have access to a number of reports and integrations that are hard to set up in a personal sandbox. Most people aren’t going to want to set up an eCommerce store just to learn GA enhanced eCommerce. The data in the demo account comes from a real source, the Google Merchandise Store, so there’s data and special reports to play with that you might not have in your own setup. Who can use this new demo set-up?

Teachers/Trainers

The demo allows you to train on several integrations that were difficult without releasing your own company’s data or creating and maintaining a sandbox that still may not have had all the scenarios you want. The Enhanced eCommerce, AdWords & Search Console reports in particular will be valuable with some real data flowing in. No more relying on blurred out screenshots, use the demo account to navigate during a training without worrying about revealing your or another client’s data.

In-House Analytics & Marketing Professionals

If there’s a GA feature you’ve been thinking about testing but haven’t been able to, the demo account probably already has it. Use it to familiarize yourself with more customization options (see below.) You may be able to use it as an example as you build a case to invest in the implementation on your own site. Don’t have the people in-house to handle it once you’ve convinced them? Ask Seer.

One of the first things we do at Seer when we spot an anomaly in a clients data we think might apply broadly, we look to see if there’s something similar in other accounts. But if you’re in-house, you might not have access to multiple accounts the way we do at Seer. You can always take to Twitter to ask if anyone else sees XYZ, but this demo will give you a second source immediately. Though it’s too early to tell how much of an indicator this demo account may be, it’s nice to have.

Students & Others Learning GA

Go play! Get it, open it up, create hypothetical questions and try to answer them with the data. If you’re taking courses within the Google Analytics Academy use this demo to test your new skills out in a working environment with data.

Analytics Bloggers & Professionals

Blogging about GA and all of the things you can do with it? Use the demo account to take your screenshots without needing to blur data out.

Want to test out how a personal asset you’ve developed looks when shared and accessed through the Solutions Gallery? Test it out not only in your account, but in the Demo account to see how it may change.

Need to explain to a client how data will flow into their GA before you finish configuring the tracking? Point them toward the demo.

What do you get in the GA data?

There’s a lot available in this demo. All your basic reports and data you would get with a vanilla GA setup is there: real-time, acquisition, behavior. It’s the extras that might prove the most useful. Here’s a rundown of what you’ll have access to:

  • Data populated from the Google Merchandise Store including some reports from integrations and customizations you might not have with your own Google Analytics account (yet).
  • Demographic & Interests reports
  • AdWords integrated reports
  • Search Console reports
  • Content Groupings
  • Internal Site Search data
  • Event data
  • Goals with funnel visualization
  • Enhanced eCommerce
  • Calculated Metrics
  • Custom Dimensions (including one via Data Import)
  • Ability to create custom reports & dashboards.
  • Ability to add personal tools & assets. Though these are not shared with all users. These include:
  • Custom segments
  • Annotations (private)
  • Attribution Models
  • Custom Channel Groupings
  • Custom Alerts
  • Scheduled Emails
  • Shortcuts
  • Ability to share assets you develop/test within the demo.
  • Ability to view account and property settings. You can’t make changes here (which is good, wouldn’t want to accidentally add a filter that destroys the data for everyone else) but you can take a peek and how everything is setup with the various customizations and settings available.

Some items we have not seen in the demo account so far include:

  • AdSense or Ad Exchange reports
  • Experiments
  • Collaborating on shared assets
  • Ability to change tracking settings or tracking code (for obvious reasons)

Everyone accessing the demo account publicly will have Read & Analyze access, so restrictions are based on the GA user permissions for this level.

If you didn’t click on it at the top of this post, what are you waiting for? Go get the demo account.

References:

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Seer Interactive

The post Demo Account for Google Analytics (GA) is Finally Available: Here’s Why It’s So Awesome appeared first on MarketingSmartGuide.


How Apps Could Finally Take Flight for Marketers

0
0
Share this content:

2017 may be the year marketers finally master the in-app experience, and go beyond customer acquisition to engagement and retention

Image source: Thinkstock

Mobile is a complex marketing channel, and it’s difficult to truly normalize or standardize a strategic approach to it. Nevertheless, it’s one of the strongest channels for marketing because of its consistently high user engagement.

Last year saw AR, live streaming, and other forms of interactive video dominate mobile, and many of the discussions around it. This year’s major mobile shake-up has yet to reveal itself, but marketers can rest assured that something is coming to this vital, tumultuous space as 2017 unfolds. In particular apps — more specifically, app experiences — will be a likely be a big topic for mobile marketers throughout the year.

“Whether it’s time-spent-in, purchase activity, average order size, or whatever it may be: When you look at apps vs. mobile web, apps tend to outperform by a very significant margin,” says Jasper Radeke, director of marketing, US, at AppsFlyer. “On a macro level, it makes sense for a lot of different companies across different verticals — whether you’re copy commerce, or gaming, or travel — to really invest and develop an in-app experience for [your] consumers.”

Nevertheless, while the Ubers and Lifts of the world have blazed a mobile app marketing trail, many businesses still struggle to make app experiences valuable to their audiences. Indeed, even those that are successful in this may find that apps don’t have much of a shelf life for their brand.

“Within 30 days, on average, 80% of those [app] users will go dormant,” Radeke says. “That’s because it’s extremely competitive. There are a million different apps in the app store, so it’s very hard to get the attention of users.”

Part of the responsibility lies at marketers’ feet. Many who are striving to push apps do so with the goal of acquiring customers or leads, and not necessarily of improving the customer experience in any significant way. That may, or at least should, change this year.

“One of the main things moving into 2017 we see is moving beyond just acquisition, and moving more into retention and engagement,” Radeke says.

Along with driving app engagement, marketers may also want to pay close attention to mobile ad fraud, particularly install fraud, and how tech providers are combating the issue.

“When we look at install fraud as a whole, conservatively, it’s a $ 300 to $ 400 million-a-year problem. Again, that’s conservative. It’s probably much larger than that,” Radeke says. “The challenge we’re trying to solve here is that, while fraud exists, historically it’s been a reactive approach to addressing it after the campaign has run and the money is spent.”

Marketers can take a more proactive approach to combating install fraud, and other forms of mobile ad fraud, by having the right technology in place, and by thoroughly reviewing reports from their partners.

“The average mobile-first marketer is using upwards of 28 different partners to drive users into the app and retarget them,” Radeke says. “As you start to drill into that through active fraud insights… you can start to quickly identify offenders, and get ahead of that in real time.”

Loading links….

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

All DMN Content

The post How Apps Could Finally Take Flight for Marketers appeared first on MarketingSmartGuide.

SAP Hybris: Finally a Marketing Cloud

0
0

“SAP is now finally a leader in marketing. Who would have thought that?” SAP Hybris CTO, Moritz Zimmerman, in his keynote to the 2017 SAP Hybris Global Summit had just highlighted the company´s appearance as a leader in the latest Gartner magic quadrant for multi-channel marketing.

And indeed, SAP Hybris, the commerce arm of the German software giant, is finally talking about being — among other things — a “marketing cloud.” It´s been a long time coming. Tracking the progress of Hybris over the last fewyears, I´d perceived an avoidance of discussing the whole marketing cloud space — an emphasis, instead, on front office microservices.

Leonardo: Our “catchy” name

But in conversation now with Jackie Palmer, global VP for strategy and solution management, responsible for SAP Hybris Marketing, I found a willingness to talk openly about competing with Adobe, Salesforce, and Oracle. They´ve even chosen a “genius” handle for the AI component of their offering: Leonardo. “We had to get our own catchy little name,” she confessed. And Zimmerman had admitted, “We have to do some work on our brand recognition in this space.”

Talk of the SAP Hybris marketing solution as a marketing cloud is “relatively new,” she said. The company, of course — not unlike Oracle — has an on-prem software heritage. Indeed, the Hybris toolbox, which includes not only marketing, but commerce, sales, service, and billing, can still be closely tied to back-office functions like finance and ERP. Each of the five Hybris offerings has its own global VP: “There are five of me,” Palmer explained.

Taking GDPR Seriously

One enormous contrast between recent U.S. tech conferences I´ve attended and the SAP Hybris summit in Spain (or Catalonia — watch this space) was the reaction to any mention of GDPR.  In the States, conference attendees slump in their chairs and look distraught at the idea of any restrictions on gathering, using and storing customer data.

In Europe, where preparations have been underway for some time (GDPR comes into force next May), there´s positive talk of finally being able to use clean, accurate, permission-based data in an ethical marketing environment. Ruebsam told me SAP Hybris will be in full compliance come the relevant date: That alone may give the company a significant competitive advantage over some large U.S. vendors.                                                                                                                                                   

All of which brings me back to another statement Zimmerman had made: “Ultimately, it´s only a suite approach which can deliver a first-class customer experience” — from marketing and acquisition, through CPQ and billing, to “fully integrated” sales and service. As you can see, the SAP Hybris cloud collection shepherds the customer on every step of that journey.

In his presentation, Zimmerman had shown a laser focus on speed, agility, and transformation-disruption (pretty much a compound-noun at tech conferences these days). That´s how he characterizes a business environment in which “your products are becoming services,” with on-demand availability, subscription-based revenue streams, and an increasing emphasis (especially among millennials) on experience rather than ownership (or renting, if you like, rather than buying).

But isn´t there, I wondered, some tension between a business environment gearing up to cater this fast-paced, ever-shifting customer journey, and the concept of a single, unified suite of tech services; ideally layered over the SAP S/4 HANA ERP, and delivered — if not on-prem — from the SAP cloud?

Isn´t that environment better mirrored by a loosely integrated, hybrid set of best-of-breed, but also disposable business applications, even at the risk of Frankenstack?

Not that simple

As so often with SAP Hybris, it´s not that simple. It´s not, it turns out, a binary choice between a single-vendor customer experience suite and à la carte tech snacking. After all, from the main stage, Rob Enslin (president of global customer operations and an SAP executive board member) had said, “It´s an open platform.”

“We shouldn´t use the word ´platform,´” said Marcus Ruebsam, when I reported this remark. “SAP Hybris isn´t a platform. It uses the SAP cloud as a platform.” Ruebsam, SVP and global head of solution management, chooses his words with care. “One paradigm for us,” he continued, “is we want to fix the customer journey. You don´t need 20 products for that. You need the customer ´master´and the data around it.” People are always talking about this platform and that platform: “They don´t need a platform, they need to know how to improve their pipeline.”

Carsten Thoma, SAP Hybris President, had his own take: “I don´t want to call it a platform any more. It´s an infrastructure which supports eco-systems which create an experience.” And to be fair to Enslin, the graphic visualization he offered the audience was indeed that of an infrastructure: satellite offerings (based on acquisitions) like SAP Hybris, SAP Ariba (cloud-based commerce network, SAP Fieldglass (the vendor management system), and so on, circling the S/4 HANA digital core.

But however the visualization is characterized, it does look — at a glance — like all SAP, all the time. But is it? Not necessarily.

The bubble wrap guys

Sealed Air is a major, multi-national innovative packaging business, with food wrapping and (recently spun-off) cleaning and sanitation lines of business. But they will always be known to most people for beloved Bubble Wrap, reated by the companies founders half a century ago.

It´s also a “big SAP shop,” Naveen Kandasami told me. Kandasami is executive director of IT and business partnership with Sealed Air, and also responsible for its global CRM strategy. That´s a secondary role, he told me: he´s not responsible for execution, rather oversight. He was responsible, however, for rolling out SAP Hybris across the lines of business and the many regions in which Sealed Air operates. The brand went live with Hybris Sales last November, and with Hybris Service in May of this year. Hybris Commerce was rolled out for Diversey, the cleaning and sanitation arm just prior to its sale to Bain Capital.  “So they´ll get the benefit,” Kandasami remarked wryly.

The Leonardo Distinction 

Yes, it does sound like they´re jumping on the Watson and Einstein bandwagon. (Adobe´s Sensei doesn´t have quite the same genius ring to it). But it´s worth understanding what Leonardo is, and how it differs — from Einstein in particular.

Leonardo is not about putting a generalized AI solution into every component of the SAP Hybris offering. Not unlike IBM´s Watson, Leonardo is being developed against specific use cases in specific verticals.  What´s more, as Ruebsam explained, Leonardo isn´t some magical robotic force created ex nihilo by Hybris. It´s better thought of as a “tool box,” or a library from which established and tested models and algorithms can be selected and applied to actual business needs.

Given Sealed Air´s investment in SAP back office functions, was the choice of Hybris for the front office inevitable?

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

All DMN Content

The post SAP Hybris: Finally a Marketing Cloud appeared first on MarketingSmartGuide.

Google Marketing Attribution (Finally!) Explained

0
0

Understanding where and why your users convert is important. Each and every user journeys through different channels and interacts with your brand both on- and offline before making a final decision. In this post, you’ll learn all about Google’s attribution models and how they can impact your marketing strategy.


Under the default Google attribution model (Last Non-Direct Click), whichever channel a user touches on their last, non-Direct interaction before converting is assigned 100% attribution.

This is okay—but it’s not great. At the very least, this attribution model gives some insight into WHY a user converted. Although it is Google’s default model of choice, there are actually 7 other models of attribution that users can stack against it in the Model Comparison Tool.

Advanced Attribution and the Model Comparison Tool

In Google Analytics, navigate to Conversions > Attribution > Model Comparison Tool. Here you can directly compare these models of digital marketing attribution.

Advanced Attribution and the Model Comparison Tool

Applying any one of these different models to your data can only be done in the tool. It cannot be be applied to any of the other reports in Google Analytics (so if you think you’ve figured out the perfect model for your business, you will not be able to use that anywhere else in Google Analytics – which makes deriving holistic insights nearly impossible.

Last Interaction Attribution

This attribution model assigns all conversion value to the final touchpoint before a conversion. This model is used by most analytics platforms—Google Analytics is an exception.

This model is hardly informative. Using the example scenario above, Direct would get the full credit. This ignores 3 of the 4 touchpoints this user had! How can you attribute digital marketing value without insight into their full journey?

Last AdWords Click Attribution

In this attribution model, all credit is assigned to the final AdWords click before a conversion.

Last AdWords Click Attribution

If your user clicked through an Ad, then came back through Organic Search multiple times, submitted a lead generation form, and then ultimately converted through Email, none of the Organic or Email interactions would receive any credit. This model is generally only useful for ROI of AdWords itself, and neglects the value of all other channels.

First Interaction Attribution

This method of attribution modeling assigns all conversion value to the first click in a user’s journey to eventual conversion. First Interaction Attribution

This is generally useful for companies with few advertising channels, and it helps by identifying which campaign or channel is driving brand awareness for your business. If your company uses a complex marketing strategy that reaches customers through a variety of channels (perhaps over a long sales cycle), this model won’t help identify the true value of your channels.

Linear Attribution

This method of attribution modeling assigns credit to each touchpoint along a customer’s journey to conversion, with each touchpoint receiving equal credit.

Linear Attribution

Yes, this model lets you see which models are repeatedly driving conversions, but where this model misses the mark is that not all channels are create equal. The whole point of attribution is understanding what’s working best, and where you should be investing more money. It is tough to do this acurately using a linear model.

Time Decay Attribution

In this attribution model, the farther away a touchpoint is from a conversion, the less credit it receives. Therefore, the first click in a user’s journey to converting receives the least credit, and the last click receives the most. Additionally, a half-life for this decay can be selected. The touchpoint that occurs on this half life receives 50% of the credit that the final touchpoint receives.

Time Decay Attribution

This model can work well for businesses with longer sales cycles and frequent repeat customers. For instance, Organic Search may have originally brought a user to your website, but it is the email promotional campaign that keep driving that user to come back and shop your sales.

Position Based Attribution

This model assigns conversion credit to touchpoints based on their position in the user’s journey. The first touchpoints and the final touchpoints are both assigned individual credit allocations. All interactions in between these two touchpoints are assigned a combined credit that is then equally distributed among the number of interactions. The default ratio is 40-20-40, which means that the first and last interactions each receive 40% of the conversion credit. If there were two touchpoints in between those two interactions, they would each receive 10% credit (20/2=10).

Position Based Attribution

This model gives significant credit to the channel that first attracted a user and the channel that cemented the sale, and it does not ignore all those interactions in the middle. However, the percentage allocation is subjective and not unique to your individual business. At the end of the day, the first or last channel may not deserve more than double the value of all other initiatives.

Custom Attribution Modelling

Once the above attribution models have been tested, you can customize your own attribution model. Using one of the methods above as a baseline for the model, you can then make decisions on a unique lookback window, user-engagement credit rules, and other custom credit rules. Custom Attribution Model Example

For instance, a lookback window from 0 to 90 days can be selected; this window should resemble a typical user journey. User engagement helps to assign credit based on page depth or time on site. Page depth is measured by how many pages the user actually clicks through on their journey to conversion. Custom credit rules assign credit to specific interaction types.

Of these available options, Custom attribution is optimal. However, this model still assigns the same predetermined percentages to every customer journey. Even if this setup is unique to your business, no customer journey is alike, thus, no two journeys should be weighted in the same way.


Ready to conquer your marketing attribution demons? Read about Attribution 360, a new Google product that allows for end-to-end user journey measurement, here.

Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly digital marketing updates!

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Seer Interactive

The post Google Marketing Attribution (Finally!) Explained appeared first on MarketingSmartGuide.





Latest Images