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Financial Services: Increase New Accounts & Acquisitions via Web Analytics

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Countless industries have made dramatic increases to their web-based marketing efforts as of late. In 2011 alone, budgets usually allocated to print-based efforts were diverted to online ad spending. The Internet Marketing space has proven to be an efficient means to market to specific clientele via various forms of targeting. However, as with almost every instance of change throughout history, there are still those who lag behind in adapting to the circumstances.

In the financial services industry in particular, we have noticed a sizable population of organizations that either lack in marketing in the digital space or are not monitoring their marketing channels effectively (if at all). Large portions of marketing budgets are still being alotted to traditional efforts like print or billboards, which is fine: But how accurately is return-on-investment for these channels being monitored?

If implemented properly with solid policies and procedures, Web Analytics can shine quite a bit of light on the performance of your web efforts as well as how much return traditional channels are really generating. Here’s 3 ways Web Analytics can help:

  • Optimization for Increasing Loan Applications & New Accounts: In many ways, your institution’s website is as important as your branch tellers and representatives. It is client-facing, has to serve up the information your customers are looking for, and get them to bite on additional products and services you offer. Web Analytics can help shine light on how well the site does at cross-selling and up-selling your clients and point out where improvements could be made.
  • Identification of Seasonal Trends: Different seasons yield different trends with consumers. This is old news to anyone in marketing. Monitoring what non-branded search phrases people are using to find the website on search engines can uncover gems to base marketing strategies on in the next month.
  • Monitoring Effectiveness of Traditional Channels: Web Analytical platforms’ visibility can extend beyond the website. Want to determine how much of a return that shiny new billboard your organization has on the interstate is really generating? Using a combination of vanity numbers, URLs, and unique landing pages, you can measure its effectiveness at creating new banking and investment customers right alongside your website’s data.

The list of benefits extends well beyond these alone. Not only can you optimize your institution’s website, but you can also measure return-on-investment on other channels of marketing as well. Gone are the days of remaining blind to performance and the inability to compare and contrast channels. Use Web Analytics to increase sales and new accounts.

Want an example of how Web Analytics actually helped a Financial Services Institution? Check out this Case Study. Also be sure to Follow Us on Google+ to receive the latest news & tips on Web Analytics, Internet Marketing, SEO, and more!

Selecting a Sensible Web Analytical Platform For Your Organization

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There’s countless blogs, articles, and studies out there that preach about how web analytics is the greatest thing since sliced bread and how it can tie together virtually any marketing effort for an organization and measure their effectiveness side-by-side and against each other. All the features, reports, visuals, metrics, and alerts are great…but only if your organization can dedicate the time, talent, and funds to properly implement and support the platforms.

There’s been more than one instance where we’ve seen a large organization invest in a big and flashy analytical platform like Omniture and WebTrends, and not dedicate the necessary resources to properly implement, support, maintain, or even use it properly. It almost seems like some organizations view these platforms as set-and-forget endeavors, when in reality they are no different than the machinery that is used to make their products or the buildings in which those products are sold. Just because it isn’t tangible does not mean it won’t need ongoing support.

One of the driving reasons these platforms and strategies are improperly executed is because of a lack of budget. Most of the larger analytical platforms use a pay-per-pageview approach to their billing, which for well-traveled websites can add up quickly. After figuring in servers and databases, the total cost for the year can easily stretch into the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This usually swallows up the majority of an analytics budget and doesn’t leave much more room for bringing on talent for proper implementation and usage. So this brings us to the driving point of this blog: Choosing a web analytical platform that your organization can actually afford to support (via either internal talent or external agencies) is a critical step that should not be overlooked.

For some of the aforementioned organizations, selecting a cheaper (or even free) platform like Yahoo! Web Analytics or Google Analytics would have yielded much better insights. We even saw this with one client, as they had both WebTrends and Google Analytics, and the latter platform offered exponentially deeper and more insightful reports.

So whether you are the individual or an agency pitching to the higher-ups of an organization why they should go with analytics, make sure you ask the right questions: What do we really need, and what can we actually afford to support moving forward?

Keep your eye on DaBrian Marketing Group’s website for a more in-depth article on this. Also be sure to follow DaBrian Marketing Group’s new Google+ Page!

Event Tracking to Reduce Bounce Rate Due to Affiliate Sites

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One of the greatest challenges a web analyst faces in the field is gaining full visibility into all facets of an organization’s online presence. As analysts, we are curious creatures by nature with an unquenchable thirst for data and knowledge. We want to know where traffic is coming from, how these visitors are using the website, and where they are going. Discovering a missing piece to a data collection puzzle can be a double-edged sword: It means we aren’t getting the complete picture, but it also serves as motivation to always be on the lookout for new sources of analytical data.

In the past year, we were approached by a client in the financial services industry that wanted to track their website’s organic performance on search engines as well as receive monthly analytical reporting and recommendations. A few weeks after initial implementation, however, we noticed a consistently high bounce rate to the website. These bounces were primarily happening from the Home page of the website, which is a major red flag to even the most inexperienced of analysts. After some additional analysis and a look at the navigational summary of visitors, we were able to determine that most of these bounces weren’t leaving the website: They were proceeding to the separate secure Online Banking portion of the website. Due to internal security policies of this particular bank, we were unable to implement any direct tracking of this platform beyond the Home page of the website. A new solution to alleviate the high bounce rate needed to be identified.

That’s where event tracking came in. With Google Analytics, event tracking is a method traditionally used to track actions visitors can perform on a website that aren’t captured by the standard analytics script. This often takes the form of a PDF or document download. Since we could not place any sort of tracking code on the Online Banking platform itself, we decided to place the event tracking code on all links on the bank’s website that pointed towards it. The change in the skewed bounce rate for the website was noticeable almost immediately:

Not only did this help alleviate the high bounce rate, but it also provided more insight into how the bank’s customers used the site and where the entered the Online Banking platform from.

There are never perfect circumstances when it comes to web analytics. More often than not, internal policies, procedures and security will stand in the way of getting the complete picture of an organization’s web presence. Learning these policies from the start and identifying alternative solutions will help in overcoming these obstacles.

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Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Mobile Accessibility of Your Website

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One of the most common mistakes made in the web and e-commerce worlds is the dismissal of the importance of mobile accessible websites. Mobile activity on the web is increasing exponentially every day as more and more consumers trade their laptops and desktops for smartphones and tablets. Society wants to be mobile and less constricted by the ball-and-chain of cables and cords, yet there are still countless websites that fail to accommodate for this properly.

So what excuse is there NOT to optimize your website for mobile visitors? Web Analytics data and reports have proven this traffic has been increasing hand-over-fist every day. Further analysis even indicates these visitors are trying to access what they need and engage with the website (multiple pages viewed per visit), however they tend to leave before they actually convert. A glance to the average amount of time that they spend on the website compared to normal traffic provides a clear picture of just how much trouble they’re having. If the time they spend is significantly more, it means they’re finding the use of the website difficult or perhaps load times are taking a lot longer than they should because of large images.

More often than not, however, the decision makers will not make a move on a mobile solution based upon website performance metrics alone. That’s when you take a look at the market statistics and demographics. The visual below (from the article located here) shows the breakdown of tablet users according to their social status as well as which age groups they are from. Keep in mind, the visual above is only covering the tablet users, which is only a segment of the total mobile visitors out there. Even more people have smartphones than tablet devices. The performance metrics are there. The demographical data is there. Don’t ignore the writing on the walls! Optimize your website for mobile!

Five Reasons to Monitor Your Internet Marketing Efforts

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Over the past several years, the greatest challenge facing internet marketers and web analysts has been convincing superiors and clients of the value of monitoring all of their web-based efforts. All-too-often, they will fire back with something along the lines of “Oh, we know how many visits we’re getting to the site.” This statement usually comes from an organization that has their overworked IT department “monitoring” their site’s activity. Little do these organizations know that the visits metric means little-to-nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially if you are not using it in unison with the countless other metrics that are available.

So perhaps you’ll be making a pitch to the higher-ups in your company about implementing a web analytics strategy, or maybe you are one of the higher-ups and are curious to see whether or not it’s worth it. Well, here are 5 great reasons to use web analytics to track your website and internet marketing efforts:

  1. Visits Don’t Mean Anything! As mentioned before, simply knowing how many visits your website received in a month does not mean you know how your website is performing. There are so many more metrics that should be considered that can be combined to yield more detailed and useful statistics about the website.You can have all the visits in the world, but if they’re not converting, then they’re practically worthless.
  2. Discover Where Marketing Efforts Should Be Focused. Not only can Web Analytics solutions uncover where your visitors are coming from, but it can also shine light on where your organization should be focusing its marketing and internet efforts.
  3. Know What Your Visitors Are and Are NOT Looking For. Paying attention to what pages and content your visitors are viewing most often can uncover what your consumers are actually looking for.Just the same, it can also show what visitors are less interested in, so you can save your company’s time and efforts in pushing the wrong products, services, or information.
  4. Monitor Traditional Marketing Effectiveness. Web Analytics isn’t just limited to seeing how well your website is doing or where your visitors are coming from. When implemented by web analytics ninjas, you can also see how effective your more traditional marketing methods are at driving traffic, and more importantly, conversions, to your website.
  5. Hone in on Your Target Market. Using methods like advanced segmentation and conversion tracking, you can identify who is spending the most quality time on your site and who is most likely to spend money. In doing this, a much clearer picture is painted of who your organization should be reaching out to the most.
There you have it- Five great reasons to seriously consider Web Analytics for your organization. In an economic climate like today’s, your organization cannot afford to turn its nose up to this, as monitoring your internet marketing strategies and efforts yields crucial insights into increasing conversions and sales.

Monitor Phone Lines, Billboards, Direct Mail Pieces, and More Using Multichannel Analytics

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Most people involved with the marketing facet of a company would agree that there are countless avenues to market with.Websites, banner advertising, e-mail marketing, direct mail marketing, cold calling…the list goes on and on.Over the past decade, it’s become increasingly important to monitor marketing effectiveness.Web analytics tools have been improving as quickly as the rest of the internet has, allowing for more dynamic, in-depth analysis with every new update.With these new updates and improvements, it has now become possible to monitor much more than just a website.

When implemented properly and in the hands of a web analytics ninja, platforms like Google Analytics can be used to monitor and track the effectiveness of more than just websites.Using advanced integration methods such as event tracking, virtual pageviews, and cross-domain tracking, these tools can be used to track everything from your organization’s social media efforts to phone calls.That’s right: phone calls. Call tracking is the latest trick in the analytical magic bag, using a hidden, blank web page bound to a specific phone number to track calls via “pageviews”.  Call tracking isn’t the only trackable avenue of marketing that isn’t limited by the internet.Using things like custom phone numbers and vanity URLs, it is also possible to use web analytics platforms to effectively track direct mail and even billboard advertising.

As human beings, we can’t help but think in silos.In today’s marketing world, it is crucial that we break away from this old way of thinking and see how all of these facets and avenues of advertising are tied together.When data from all of these areas of marketing is combined, it can generate crucial business intelligence and reveal insights that could give your organization the edge it needs.