These are just some of the questions posed by the 2010 Web Analytics Survey, which Bienalto conducted during February and March 2010. We asked more than 100 Australian organisations some hard questions about their online channel – and have collated the results into a valuable and insightful report.

For the first time, Hurol Inan will be launching the report at the eMetrics Summit in Sydney. He’s sharing the key findings of the report in his summit session on Thursday, 22 April 2010.

What the report includes

The report examines, in detail, the following key areas:

• Perception of web analytics and the online channel
• Technology adoption
• Expenditure and resource allocation for web analytics activities
• Key challenges faced by web managers
• Priorities for the year ahead.

The examination of the online channel is a new addition to the Web Analytics Survey, with comments classified into three useful categories: consumer engagement, management and marketing.

By introducing this section, we sought to reveal the issues, challenges and priorities for web managers; how effective the channel is perceived to be; and, of course, how web analytics contributes to its performance.

We have also included two in-depth case studies, with Deakin University and Sydney Water. The comments provided in these case studies place the results in a real-world context that should provide some great take-outs for our other clients.

Who should read the report?

Any web manager seeking to validate investment in the online channel should be reading the 2010 Web Analytics Report.

With extensive comparisons to the 2008 and 2007 survey results, the report maps the growth of web analytics, and the areas in which organisations are gaining the most from their investment.

Download your copy of the Report

The report will provide commentary on best practices, preferred tools of the trade, and more. You can pre-register to receive a copy of the survey report.

All people who completed the survey went in the draw to win a free pass to the eMetrics Summit, valued at $995. Congratulations to our winner: Simone Joyce, Web Analytics Manager at News Digital Media. We hope she gains much value from the Summit.

Hurol Inan will be speaking at the Summit; and it’s not too late to purchase tickets to this significant digital marketing event.

Learn more about the event and book your tickets now.

The premise of Make it so is simple. It will take people’s dreams and turn them into reality; showcasing how engineering teams solve problems with creativity, innovation and the application of science. In doing so, it will change the face of engineering in Australia forever.

We encourage you all to submit your ideas to the competition.

Ordinary Australian can submit their wildest dreams and challenge a crack team of engineers to transform those dreams into reality. The best suggestions – voted on by an army of engineering advocates – will go in the running to be “made so” later this year.

Bienalto has been busy recruiting advocates

In addition to building the competition website – which is what you see here – we have been hard at work recruiting advocates to the campaign.

Given that the success of the competition requires the support of thousands of engineers across Australia – to rank suggestions, help promote it and eventually turn dreams into reality – this has been a critical campaign.

From July 2009 to February 2010, the Make it so website targeted engineers, encouraging them to sign up as advocates.

Learn more about our scientific, technology-driven approach to mobilising advocates

To capture as many advocates as possible, and to generate wider buzz, we promoted the competition in a range of cost-effective and memorable ways via the digital channel:

-   Social networks – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

-   Digital campaigns and competitions

-   Monthly email newsletters to advocates

-   Regular blog posts.

These actions helped Engineers Australia to recruit nearly 8,000 advocates since the campaign kicked off.

“The Make it so campaign is absolute proof of the power of digital marketing. We have chosen our digital channels carefully – and put them to great use to maximise exposure of the Make it so campaign,” said Hurol Inan.

“Now, with the public competition launched, we look forward to applying best practice technologies to help spread the word and generate massive digital buzz.”

-   Enter the competition now

-   Check out some of the ideas already submitted

-   Learn more about our online marketing strategies for Make it so

Bienalto was appointed to manage the online component of the 12-month public awareness campaign, and has been educating and engaging with the engineering community since August 2009.

Online activities are supported offline by an extensive public relations campaign being rolled out by Pulse Communications, which focuses on sharing inspirational stories of how engineers are ‘making it so’ in the community.

Advocates key to the campaign’s success

Getting engineers to sign up as advocates – and asking them to throw their weight behind the Make it so campaign following its public launch on Tuesday – has been critical to the campaign’s success.

Bienalto implemented a series of step-by-step micro-campaigns to galvanise the support of engineers. It worked – nearly 8,000 people have signed up as Make it so campaign advocates, far exceeding the initial target of 4,000.

Each micro-campaign was meticulously planned to collect content for the website, and to ensure the advocates would be ready for action once the competition reached voting stage.

“This has been an incredibly scientific and technology-driven campaign, from the very outset. It’s like a complex machine – where every single step has a purpose, and nothing is wasted,” said Hurol Inan, Managing Director, Bienalto.

For example, one of the micro-campaigns was a competition where engineers had to enter a definition for their engineering discipline (such as electrical, civil, mechanical, etc.). From the data collected in this competition, a taxonomy was developed that is now being used to automatically workflow ideas to the right engineers.

“With hundreds of ideas coming in every day, we wanted an efficient and intelligent way of sending ‘civil engineering’ ideas to civil engineers, for example. By creating this powerful taxonomy, we can apply scientific rules to every aspect of the competition website,” said Inan.

The competition website runs on a cloud computing environment, with servers in US and redundancy in Ireland.

“This is a first for Bienalto. We selected cloud technology for its massive scalability, as we are expecting huge peaks when the mainstream media pick up on the competition and drive masses of people to the site. The last thing we’d want is server failure,” said Inan.

Rich online marketing strategy

To date, the Make it so campaign has utilised a broad range of online marketing strategies, from direct response campaigns to social media campaigns on Facebook and twitter.

A social media survey conducted by Bienalto indicated a significant Facebook presence amongst advocates. “We responded by developing a distinct Facebook strategy; and also introduced a ‘trivial pursuit’ style micro-campaign on twitter to build up a following in this channel,” said Charlie Graves-Morris, Campaign Manager, Bienalto.

Now in the competition phase of the campaign, Bienalto will continue to apply a scientific approach to managing the competition website.

“With a rich array of analytical tools available to us, we can afford to be responsive – the data will give us the agility to shape strategies on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, we continue with our weekly engagement with people already committed to the competition and use them to spread the word,” said Graves-Morris.

For Engineers Australia, the Make it so campaign seeks to lift the curtain on what it is engineers actually do.

“We want to help Australians understand that from bridges to Blackberrys, drinking water to the Water Cube – engineers and engineering teams help ‘make it so’ in the community,” said Jamie Penrose, Director of Communication and Marketing at Engineers Australia.

“We have achieved an incredible level of engagement with the engineering community through Bienalto’s rich online marketing strategy – and now we plan to build that same level of engagement, using similar strategies, with the general public.”

Visit the Make it so competition website

The survey – now in its fourth year – takes a snapshot of the current state of the web analytics industry in Australia. The subsequent report has become a valuable tool in the online marketer’s arsenal, to help plan and shape future web analytics strategy.

As per previous years, our goal with the survey is to understand where we are at with web analytics, and gain insights into what is motivating, prohibiting or inhibiting organisations’ adoption of various tools and methodologies.

All participants in the survey will receive a copy of the report.

Take the survey now

Win a pass to the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

The 2010 report will be published to coincide with the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, to be held in Sydney for the very first time on 22-23 April 2010.

It is great news that the eMetrics Summit is coming to Sydney this year, as it is renowned for equipping marketing professionals with insights to help them succeed online.

Hurol spoke at the inaugural summit in Santa Barbara in 2002, and has since watched it grow to become a respected think-tank that travels to major cities around the globe such as Munchen, Toronto, San Jose, London, Madrid, Sao Paula, Stockholm and Washington DC.

He will be speaking again at this year’s summit; and Bienalto is proud to be a major sponsor.

We are giving away a pass valued at $995 to one of the participants of Australian Web Analytics Survey 2010.

> Take the survey now
> Learn more about eMetrics summit

Matt has been appointed full-time Creative Director, and will be responsible for taking our creative services division to new heights. His integrated approach to interactive design will draw upon Bienalto’s proven skills in user experience architecture, data and web analytics.

Having successfully taken two mainstream advertising agencies digital in the past (both earning ‘Interactive Agency of the Year’ titles) Matt is looking forward to applying his creative expertise across all of Bienalto’s clients campaigns.

Now, his creative skills are ready to be applied to your next campaign.

Digital marketing drives engagement

With the explosive growth of digital marketing – plus the specialisation of job roles which goes along with it – there are tremendous opportunities for companies to be more creative and engaging online.

While Bienalto has offered creative services in the past, Matt will be focusing on the growth of the division so that it becomes a central component of the online package.

“Previously, Bienalto has had specialists in email marketing, web analytics and data, and information architecture. Now, we’ve got an in-house creative arm as well – which will really shape and inform our campaign strategies,” says Matt.

Matt speaks from experience, having worked as a marketing creative for 25 years and as a digital creative director since 1995, when he started at Euro RSCG and grew its digital division from one person to more than 50 people. He then went on and did the same thing at M&C Saatchi in 2002.

Clearly, he knows what he’s doing.

So what are Matt’s secrets for success when it comes to digital creative?

“Digital marketing is less about announcements and more about relationships,” he says. “You need to talk in a relevant way to your audience – to keep them engaged with your campaign.”

He adds: “Think about the descriptions commonly used for audiences – television has viewers, magazines have readers, online has users. They ‘use’ the content. It describes interaction and relationship.”

Matt sees entertainment playing a huge role in digital marketing. It was the challenge of keeping it relevant that drew him to the field in the first place.

“Online, if your audience is not immediately engaged, they will jump ship at the click of a button or the flick of a scroll wheel. While someone might not want to read your white paper on the subject of ‘under-insurance’, they might use an iPhone app to help them add up the cost of their belongings room by room.”

There is vast potential for digital creative, and Matt looks forward to applying his talents to more of Bienalto’s client campaigns. Indeed, many of our clients have already experience tremendous results when Matt has consulted on their projects.

“We will be engaging with our clients’ customers like never before, giving them relevant information in a compelling and creative manner that will keep them coming back for more.”

Sound good? If you would like to find out how your next campaign could benefit from Matt’s creative experience, you can contact him directly on 0423 572 750 or send him an email.