Two new online marketing software solutions were recently released, namely Coremetrics’ Coremetrics 2007 and Digital River’s new MarketStudio toolset. Web analytics-based products such as these have already become key e-marketing tools, but the web 2.0 support offered by Coremetrics 2007 should prove especially useful as marketing managers increasingly look to what web 2.0 technologies can offer.
Coremetrics 2007 allows companies to put into practice a more scientific and data-driven approach to online marketing. This is done via a real-time monitoring application that allows users to follow activities such as time-dependent special offers, and make changes to them depending on their performance.
The solution provides a real-time dashboard that shows the user what is happening on their website. It also includes Intelligent Offer, a tool that allows companies to automate cross-promotional processes, with flexibility to set marketing preferences based on, for example, the number of sales or the buying pattern of the customer. Coremetrics 2007 is closely integrated with IBM’s WebSphere Commerce e-commerce platform.
Digital River’s new MarketStudio toolset, meanwhile, provides functionality to track and report online activity performance, using a single dashboard. This allows the user to optimize marketing activities with access to the organization’s web analytics, email delivery, bid management, and affiliate technologies. The toolset can improve the accuracy and detail of data, and as a result, provide better support for the decision-making process.
Web analytics play an important role in online marketing, allowing the optimization of web-based promotional activities, and decision-making supported by accurate data. These solutions have become an essential tool for e-marketing, and are used to analyze the mountain of customer-related data that e-commerce sites generate. Web analytics help companies make sense of customer behavior, buying patterns, and other factors that affect online purchasing decisions, and thus manage their marketing campaigns more effectively.
Furthermore, the evolution of the web into web 2.0 is affecting online marketing. With Wikis, blogs, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds, web 2.0 technologies have created an easy communication channel for consumers to share their opinions and experiences with each other, effectively extending the timeless word-of-mouth recommendation to the web.
From the marketing and publicity perspective, web 2.0 is both an opportunity and a threat; it can be viewed as a massive opportunity for multimedia-enabled publicity, but the free-for-all communication channel is very hard to monitor to gauge customer opinion.
Increasingly, e-marketing solutions are incorporating functionality for the web 2.0 phenomenon. Coremetrics 2007, for example, provides support for integration of RSS feeds, allowing data input from other sources such as intranets, or external news and blog sites.
The new functionality offered by Coremetrics 2007 and its ready-made reports are likely to appeal to busy marketing managers. These enhance the on-demand solutions offered by the vendor.
Digital River’s MarketStudio toolset adds automation to the company’s analytical services. The solution fits well with Digital River’s main offerings of e-commerce solutions and services, software downloads, and revenue sharing. The company is positioned well to leverage its presence in the e-commerce market to generate more revenue.
However, web analytics are only part of the bigger picture. Companies should try and take advantage of web 2.0 technologies for online marketing purposes, to leverage maximum benefits from the evolving web.
Source: OpinionWire by Butler Group (www.butlergroup.com)
