1MPACT LA - Sponsor Presentations
There were five sponsor presentations mid-day. Brent Hieggelke of WebTrends spoke of many things, but the one area that hit home for me was segmentation. A 5% conversion rate means 95% non-conversion, so who are those 95%? Maybe 40% were just completely uninterested, but that means that 55% of your traffic is still in the buy cycle and you can reach them with the right message. Some will have price concerns, some need more detailed information, others will have some specific concerns. If you have ways to determine what message to send to these people, you can greatly improve your results. After all, sending a 20% off coupon to someone who is ready to buy but just wanted to know if they could get it in blue will only reduce your margin if you could have send them an email telling them the product is available in sixteen colors, including three blue hues.
Scott Nelson of TrueEffect wanted us to take home just four things to control hidden media costs:
- Measure Yourself (processes, time, reports)
- Educate the Client (might be internal CFO, admin, IT)
- Retain Expertise (prevent sniping talent)
- Technology Your Way (don't let it control you)
He showed data from an IDC study that revealed that half of information worker time is wasted in non-productive efforts caused by poor processes that allow data and information to be lost. Workers then have to recreate content, reformat campaigns, search for old creatives, etc. By measuring yourself you can see what can be fixed and standardized to reduce waste. Know your talent inventory and have redundancy in place in case you do lose a valued employee. Find technology that works and does not take up extra resources. Don't choose a low-cost solution without knowing if it will take a huge toll in labor to install and maintain the software.
Joel Book of ExactTarget talked about using email to drive sales and brand, while Rick Bruner of DoubleClick had a $100 challenge for the audience. His cash is likely safe unless someone else leaks the answer ahead to the next show. He did have a great insight that related to Young-Bean's talk. When you want to build audience cume, portals and email sites are acutely not the best. Because they are so popular and users go there every day if not more often, you run the risk of showing your ad too many times to some users while the campaign is running. You can be better off with a campaign on a site in the real estate, automotive, or hobby area because the audience does not build up and you can better distribute your ads over time.
Larry Freed of ForeSee had some great data showing that user satisfaction not only helps sales, but can be an indicator of overall financial performance and risk. Measuring customer satisfaction more scientifically, accurately, and precisely will help you project the impact on customer behavior. There is some cool stuff coming out of the U of M.
