non~linear creations (NLC) is excited to announce that CMS partner Sitecore, the leading provider of .NET Web Content Management System (CMS) and portal software, today released the Sitecore Online Marketing Suite, a breakthrough for organizations now able to unify Web content management capabilities, Web analytics and marketing automation for greater customer engagement and personalization. Sitecore’s Online Marketing Suite (OMS) helps marketers easily track and better understand their online visitors and initiatives. Marketers are now empowered with revolutionary insight and agility to create immediate and meaningful results.
The Sitecore Online Marketing Suite (previously code-named Everest), an add-on to the Sitecore CMS, provides online marketers with enhanced abilities to monitor visitor behavior, deliver personalized experiences, perform usability testing and more effectively manage online campaigns.
non~linear creations (NLC) has put together the following six scenarios to illustrate a handful of the many ways in which better knowledge of visitors behaviour can drive improved business outcomes for Sitecore clients. For a demonstration of the new marketing features from Sitecore, please email sibbotson@nonlinear.ca
Scenario One: Targeted Promotions for Unknown Visitors
The Context:
A non-profit organization maintains a web site that attracts several distinct audiences – mission-driven visitors (who care about changing the world), donors and potential donors (willing to open their wallets), catalogue shoppers (who are looking for an ecommerce scenario) and education seekers (looking to learn, or complete their homework).
The Challenge:
The organization believes they need to drive more revenue from the online channel – and view the internet as the future of advocacy activities. How can they improve the conversion rate of online offers – whether product, mission or education focused?
The Sitecore Solution:
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite will allow marketers to score visitors based on the information they view. Visitors viewing advocacy information can be identified as mission-driven visitors; those searching for a product can be identified as a shopper.
And Sitecore Online Marketing Suite allows you to define business rules for showing the targeted promotions to each of these groups. The result is higher conversion rates, deeper engagement with visitors and more revenue.
Scenario Two: Lead Scoring based on Behaviour
The Context:
A business-to-business company is struggling to meet aggressive revenue targets. The VP of Sales claims that marketing simply is not providing the sales team with sufficient opportunities. The VP of Marketing angrily points to the thousands of names collected through numerous whitepaper marketing campaigns. To which the VP of Sales replies – “those are names, not leads.”
The Challenge:
They’re both right. Marketing is identifying people with interest in the product and a large percentage of them will eventually buy – but it might take them two years to reach that point. Sales only cares about what can be closed this quarter.
The Sitecore Solution:
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite allows a profile of a visitor to be built up over time based on the number of times they visit, what they view, what they seek, the IP address they are originating from and how they find the site. This provides the opportunity for the VP of Marketing and the VP of Sales to work together to determine what counts as a “lead.”
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite allows marketing to score each visitor and determine when they reach the threshold that sales will accept as a lead. Then and only then do they transfer that name to the sales automation system. Until the visitor reaches that threshold, it remains marketing’s job to nurture the opportunity.
Scenario Three: Bolstering A|B and Multivariate Testing
The Context:
An automotive company maintains multiple brands targeted at very different consumers – from discount vehicles targeted at budget sensitive buyers to luxury vehicles aimed at high net worth individuals. Clearly these groups make decisions in very different ways – and they weight different kinds of information when arriving at a conclusion.
The web site has become the primary mechanism that consumers use to book test drives. The site has very high levels of traffic and the company wants to convince more of these visitors to register for a real-world test drive.
The Challenge:
Marketers want to test different promotions, offers and creatives to improve conversion rates. They have access to sophisticated A|B and Multivariate testing tools. But they want to test very different elements for budget buyers and luxury prospects.
The Sitecore Solution:
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite can be easily integrated with Multivariate testing tools. It also allows visitors to be categorized based on the content they view, the number of times they’ve visited and the searches they have performed. Marketers can elect to trigger specific A|B or Multivariate tests based on the category of the visitor. Prospective luxury buyers might be presented with an ad testing the effectiveness of the words “luxury” vs. “comfort” vs. “opulence.” In contrast, marketers might chose to test “cost-effective” vs. “discount pricing” for advertisements presented to potential budget purchasers.
Scenario Four: Tracking Lift across Properties
The Context:
A national, publicly traded cosmetic surgery company operates multiple brands and has clinics across the country. Each brand maintains a web site; many clinics maintain independent sites. They also maintain a lightly branded “educational” site targeted at those casually considering cosmetic surgery. In addition, the national direct marketing group spends several million per year in online marketing driving prospects to lead generation pages.
The Challenge:
The company has no idea what is working and what is not working – they simply can’t disentangle the effect of the various brand web sites, the educational site and the online promotions on lead generation. Marketing is pretty sure they are all important – but they have no rational means for assigning budgets and resources.
The Sitecore Solution:
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite can address this challenge if all of the initiatives are powered by a common Sitecore solution. Visitors can be tracked across the various properties and landing pages and a profile built up of their interaction with online campaigns. Sitecore Online Marketing Suite can then pass these profiles on to the firm’s web analytic solution and allow accurate assessment of the value of each marketing initiative. The final result is that marketing can make smart, rational decisions about investments in online endeavours.
Scenario Five: Segmenting Visitors to Assess Web Site Performance
The Context:
The marketing group of a national law firm considers its web site to be the most critical element for deepening its relationship with key clients. Senior partners have been reluctant to invest heavily in the web site because they are terrified their top competitors will use the site to identify and recruit their top legal talent.
The Challenge:
It is hard to have rational, informed conversations about investments in the web site because no one is able to answer the questions:
- Do our current clients use the web site?
- Are our competitors actually using the site to poach legal talent?
Without answers to these questions, the group is caught in a seemingly endless loop, having the same conversation over and over again. This inability to make decisions is holding up key corporate strategies.
The Sitecore Solution:
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite allows you to categorize visitors based on their IP address – in the case of this law firm, they’re able to bucket visits from existing clients and competitors into distinct categories. By passing this information on to their hosted web analytic solution, they are able to establish and monitor how competitors are using their site. If they see a specific employee is attracting disproportionate interest, they can take action. They can also quantify their progress in deepening their relationship with major clients and demonstrate the effectiveness of online investments. Maybe most importantly, it provides a framework for breaking their internal deadlock and making progress on corporate priorities.
Scenario Six: Improved Advertising Revenues
The Context:
A large media company publishes tens of thousands of articles each month in both print format and online. It has become clear in the last year that they must find a way to generate revenue from online advertising to replace the fall off in print advertising revenues. They currently run a mixture of online display advertising on their properties, sold on a CPM (cost per thousand views) basis, and CPA (cost per action) advertisements, where they are paid only when visitors successfully “convert” on their clients’ sites.
The Challenge:
The company would like to charge more for every thousand viewers of display advertising. But to do this, it needs to be able to sell these advertisements based on microtargeting of visitor interests. Similarly, they would very much like to increase the rate at which traffic driven by cost per action campaigns convert – small increases in conversion rate can drive large increases in their revenue stream. Overall, they would like to have a rational framework for deciding when CPM advertisements are shown and when CPA advertisements are shown.
The Sitecore Solution
Sitecore Online Marketing Suite allows visitors to be profiled based on the content they view, the frequency with which they visit the site, the IP address from which they originate and dozens of other variables. Marketers can integrate these profiles with their advertising solution and analytics system to ensure:
- CPM advertisements are targeted based on visitor interest. This has the potential to increase revenues. Advertisements shown to those frequently viewing stock quotes may demand higher CPMS than those viewing classified advertisements. Travel companies may pay a premium for reaching frequent viewers of travel related information.
- By analyzing the profile of visitors that actually convert on client sites as a result of CPA campaigns, the company can understand who is most likely to respond to these offers. By targeting these profiles, the company can almost certainly obtain better conversion rates for the traffic it drives. This equals more revenue. They can also show CPA advertisements only to those most likely to convert, which allows them to maximize the number of visitors viewing CPM advertisements.