The world has gone digital and we are now more connected than ever. Interactivity, access and control are the consumer expectations. They are inviting you into their world—their conversations—and reward you with their priceless influence. In response the “R” in ROI has come to mean more than dollars. It’s critical to broaden how we understand “return” and understand how to track engagement. Where there is engagement and interaction, there is an opportunity to learn about the customer, about the business and about the future. Today react-ability is the new opportunity and being able to manage understand data and act on it will provide companies the unique opportunity to capitalize on these significant market dynamics and blaze trails in the category. Traditional media models are being challenged as technology alters how consumers interact with brands and those who were once partners have become competitors. Traditional channels lend themselves beautifully to predictability, but are limited by their “sales” construct of pushed-out messages. Today’s consumer has a much more sophisticated appetite for co-creating brands. The channels available for such engagements will require different controls and benchmarks. The movement from predictability to measured engagement/responsiveness leads to optimized experiences and loyalty. Changes in the way customers receive and process information via social-networking sites, mobile phones, retail, television and the Internet, combined with shrinking margins, deteriorating customer loyalty, and increased demand for marketing accountability, suggest the need for a customer-centric approach to measurement. It is no longer an “if” but rather a “when.” So, what does this mean for you?

• A company must identify a clear understanding of metrics, both traditional and those made appropriate in emerging channels. This will inform effective management, optimization and ROI analysis.
• You must understand where your target lives, works and plays. This will mean exploration of mobile, social, viral, ARG, video, event and promotional media strategies. This will give the right input to develop appropriate benchmarking on channel role and performance expectations.
• You need to develop a strong and sure testing plan that generates results quickly and drives toward reliability and predictability.
• Deploy relevant and robust technology that can be managed easily and completely, and that centralizes all pertinent data around the customer and the goal.
• Establish a team structure that can supports and drive data at every step of the process, communicating successes, insight and learning and necessary next steps.

Predictability is the quantified form of leveraging the data. Through strategic leveraging of Webtrends tools companies can drive consistent analysis of data in order to inform relevant forecasting and projections of channel role and behavior in order to drive to a place of predictability. Increase focus on predictability enables better campaign management and better interaction between high-level and low-level tactics. This is essential in generating better quality marketing communications. But it is equally as critical to value react-ability. In order to get to a place of predictability, it requires more than just optimization of efforts. Optimization without insight is like driving without a destination. Reliability of outcomes is the combination of strategy + tools + insight, surrounding clearly identified business objectives. In order to take advantage of this robust data environment, you must have deep, relevant insights and flawless technical data management. This customer-centric method is designed to identify insights, execute on those insights and optimize for the most effective delivery of messages against those insights. [This guest post is from Marc Schwartz - Global Lead, Data and Analytics at SapientNitro, a premier Webtrends Agency Partner. Marc presented on this topic along with Bob Wilcox from CA Technologies at Webtrends Engage. To see all the presentations and videos, visit our Engage media gallery ]