Coremetrics's Spring Fling

Coremetrics moved forward into Web 2.0 with the seasonal release of its analytics and precision-marketing suite, Coremetrics 2007. The release focuses on measuring customer behavior across all channels, thereby enabling marketers to optimize marketing practices and allocate budgets accordingly. Central to the release is Web 2.0 measurement. For the first time Coremetrics users will be able to measure the impact of consumer activity via blogs, podcasts, and networking sites and integrate this knowledge with action in other channels. Coremetric's new offering highlights the growing necessarily for marketing software vendors to pay attention to Web 2.0 technology, according to one analyst. Brian Tomz, director or product strategy at Coremetrics, says that the upgrade was developed through a common need of Coremetrics customers. "Many of our clients were making misleading business decisions based on information based on marketing data measured solely within a single session." As customer activity online expands, customer interaction with brands and products becomes more complex. Web 2.0 technologies present new reasons for customers to visit company sites other than simply to shop or research products. Many companies are currently left with no way of understanding these interactions. Suresh Vittal, senior analyst at Forrester Research says, "These dynamic, rich applications on the Internet change how markets look at a Web page. The page views don't show what's going on in the page." The release will enable marketers to measure intrapage activity so that they can keep tabs on customers' interactions with Flash, Flex, and Ajax technology. This measurement is made possible through the use of Coremetrics LIVE Profiles, which records all visitor behavior at a personal level across multiple channels. This technology helps marketers to break out the customer buying process into acquisition, influence, and conversion or purchase. The Web 2.0 measurement will be integrated into a preexisting framework of multichannel measurement, which includes, search, email, and call center data. Tomz says that the release is "just a stepping stone to our vision of providing an integrated marketing suite to our customers to be able to access data to understand the full 3D view of a customer's activity online." Vittal, says that an interest in Web 2.0 is not unique to Coremetrics, but is growing in the Web analytics space as a whole. As marketers are finding their customers using Web 2.0 technology, they are looking for a way to measure it, to treat it as they do other, older marketing channels. Vittal explains that the greatest challenge facing Coremetrics and other vendors looking to sell such solutions will be marketers' limited understanding of the new online technologies. He says, "There's this whole phase of education that Web-analytics vendors have to go through to bring marketers up to speed to this technology. Having this functionality available is a check box. The next thing they need to do is execute on that." Related articles: Coremetrics Acquires SurfAid Analytics; WebSideStory Analyzes Streaming Media Making Better Use of Web Site Behavioral Data Freeing Metrics From Fraud and Rejection