ABA Banking Journal

Not too long ago, all the hoopla was about how social media and the online world were the latest and most engaging marketing tools ever. Banks—and businesses in general—quickly embraced the concept of developing ongoing electronic conversations with current and potential customers, building relationships, and cementing trust.

This is still true, or at least it can be. Recent studies indicate that the first feverish rush to convert the electronic channels into actual revenue streams has cooled off. But the potential for all that marvelous marketing remains—if only businesses can properly measure what they get out of it.

In short, the studies link several issues: providing outstanding customer experiences, measuring the right things, and demonstrating return on investment. A common theme seems to be that the most effective online marketing is tied directly to the most effective customer relationship management systems.

Of course, various vendors already have picked up on this and are tripping over themselves to provide solutions.

Start with Gartner Inc. It found that although the adoption of social applications (apps) by sales, marketing, and customer service departments continues to grow rapidly, by the end of 2012, only 50% of Fortune 1000 companies will receive a worthwhile ROI through these apps.

Many organizations have established a social presence, Garner says, but many also lack a clear business performance objective for social CRM. “Social data, such as numbers of fan pages and weekly Tweets, is not enough to correlate with the contribution of top business objectives,” says Adam Sarner, research director at Gartner. “ROI, measureable business value, and budget justification for social projects are becoming unavoidable topics for many organizations.”

At the other end of the business spectrum, Web.com Group surveyed 500 small business owners and came up with similar results. While 69% of organizations consider mobile marketing crucial to their growth in the next five years, most have not fully leveraged this channel. It found that 60% of these companies have a website, just 26% have a mobile-friendly website, and only 14% have a standalone mobile website.

Interestingly, 84% of the companies with a standalone website report increases in new business activity. Why don’t more businesses concentrate on mobile marketing efforts? The study indicates that most don’t think they have the time and resources to entertain new marketing channels.

This leads to a survey by Message Medium and Ventureneer, which concluded that it takes a minimum of 25 hours per week to see worthwhile results from social media marketing efforts. “While many small businesses and nonprofits market online, very few have a firm grasp of the strategies, tactics, and tools to do it well, in spite of the overload of how-to information,” says Maisha Walker, president of Message Medium.

Adds Geri Stengel, president of Ventureneer, “The survey confirms that you can’t get the best results from online marketing programs, unless you know how to effectively measure whether you’re achieving your goals or not. While we found that a majority of companies attempt to measure performance, they don’t understand what actually works. The concept of trying, measuring, and tweaking—almost in real time—is new, but it’s as critical to effectiveness as is time spent.”

Extractable, a digital design agency, released its own study, which was conducted by Forrester Consulting. It shows, predictably, the advantages of using data-driven design processes in crafting websites. However, it also finds that, in general, many firms measure the wrong kinds of data.

“Sites are often measured on metrics that don’t show business value,” the company report says. “For example, 46% of respondents indicated they used ‘time on site’ as a key measure. This doesn’t always indicate a positive experience—it could also mean that users are lost trying to navigate the site.”

Also, 37% report ignoring data that is uncovered, and 34% say they gather data, but do not use it.

Where there’s a problem, there are vendors happy to solve it. Here are a few that recently entered this space:

•    FICO seeks to boost data analytics capabilities through its acquisition of Entiera Inc., a provider of customer dialog management solutions. The stated goal is to improve campaign efficiencies and increase significantly marketing ROI by delivering relevant and target messages, in real-time, across multiple customer channels.

“When we look at the future of marketing, we see a need for marketers to more easily execute campaigns across channels and conduct dialogs with customers, driven by deeper insights into customer needs,” says Will Lansing, FICO CEO.

•    NICE introduced integrated Customer Interaction Management, which offers real-time analytics and guidance solutions with voice-of-the-customer and workforce optimization capabilities. It’s intended to maximize the value enterprises generated from customer interactions that occur at all touch points, including contact center, web, mobile, back office, and branch.

•    comScore Inc. launched Mobile Metrix—what it calls the “next generation mobile behavioral measurement service.” It seeks to enable a unified view of an entity’s total mobile reach, providing advertisers with actionable insights to optimize their strategies.

These have come over the transom in just the last couple of weeks. No doubt there are other relevant solutions out there, with more to come.

The basic takeaway: Marketing over social and digital streams holds as much potential as ever. You just have to justify it all in hard dollars as well as sense.