One thing that constantly amazes me is the general acceptance of failure when it comes to measuring marketing initiatives.  It is not a problem that solely effects our marketing efforts, most of our campaigns are very successful when compared to traditional standards.  This is a much more global problem that effects the entire marketing industry as a whole.

On average a good email marketing campaign has a 3-4% success rate.  This simply means that 3-4% of people who receive the email actually follow through with whatever the call to action might be.  So if you send an email blast to 1000 people promoting a new sale at your online, on average 30-40 people would actually buy.   These numbers are based on the fact that your campaign is pretty well put together and relevant to the audience who is receiving it.

Now take a step back and look at this situation from a different perspective.  When we were in school you had to achieve at least a grade of 70 in order to consider to pass a test or class.  A 70 was a C and was considered the baseline of success.  If you got an A or B you were considered above average.

As another example think of airline on time percentages.  Typically airlines try to stay above 85% with their on time arrivals and departures.  In my frequent traveling I often think I always find a way into that other 15% but typically people don’t.

So if in almost every other area of our lives we measure success at levels above 70%, why on Earth do we allow the definition of successful e-marketing to sit at less than 10%?  That means 90%+ of the money spent on these campaigns is thrown away.

How many things are you willing to accept a less than 10% success rate on in your life?  An even better question is, how do we fix this?

Now of course we make a tool for creating best of breed landing pages, microsites, blah, blah, blah, but the true value in our product is offering personalization in marketing campaigns.  It almost never fails anytime I talk to a marketer these days, they are always looking for the next big thing.  Unfortunately the shelf life of a Chief Marketing Officer in many companies is less than 18 months.  That means from the time they are brought in, which is usually a bad situation they were hired to fix, they have 18 months to turn things around and get moving in a different direction towards effective marketing campaigns.

I am still rather shocked at the amount of marketing related information I receive on a daily basis that is of no relevance to me.  I typically shop online spending at least $100 with each purchase.  From the moment I land on a site, data is gathered that reports on every activity I do while I’m there.  Most time this results in a sale, because I know what I’m looking for, and other times I’m just browsing around for what I want to buy on my next shopping spree.  I typically buy the same type of items, men’s clothes and shoes, but no store seems to be smart enough to know that that’s what I’m on their site for.  I receive emails every few days about new discounts and sales that are going on, but many times they are not for items I am looking for.  Sometimes when I get to the online store, I have to wade through all the stuff that doesn’t come in my size and drill down to what I can actually wear.

I’m now 31 years old so I think my clothing sizes are pretty well set.  Chances are that I will wear around a size 13 shoe for the rest of my life.  So if you know what size pants I wear and what size shoe I always buy, why not only show me that content?  This is what personalization is all about and this is what marketers are going to start having to do alot more effectively in the coming months and years to run effective marketing campaigns.  It does no good to send a message out to 300,000 people that ultimately resonates with no one.  The key to effective marketing is to deliver personalized content on an individual basis  that shows shoppers  such as myself what’s in it for us.  So the next time I get an email about this week’s sale, show me items that actually come in my size.  If you want me to attend your events, trying sending me information on events that are actually in my local area.

Fortunately I do work for a company that makes this very easy.  At OnDialog our solution allows marketers to deliver personalized messages to individuals that speak directly to them and engage them in ways previously thought impossible.  Although we have a great tool for this, there are tons of resources our there for marketers to get moving in the right direction.  The biggest key is collecting data on people, then using that data to deliver the correct message.

If you are a marketer I challenge you to find ways to personalize your campaigns, and I promise you the results will astound you.

The one thing that I wouldn’t change about my life for anything is my love of computers and IT.  Ever since I could read I have been writing computer programs and trying to figure out new ways to solve common problems.  In my adulthood this has resulted in a number of business ventures, some successful and some not, that constantly keep me busy.  One common thread in all of these businesses has been one simple key, data.

Data is what makes the world go round.  It is what has propelled Google to the leader in internet search and what makes people so wary about buying things online.  Lots of people and companies have found new ways to process it and there are lots of ways that still remain to be invented.  At the end of the day each of us is nothing more than a group of 1s and 0s stored somewhere in a computer.

So if data is so important, why don’t more people collect it.  Data is available about each and every aspect of our lives.  Much of it is mundane but even the most boring piece of it can give valuable insight into who we are.  In a conversation over the weekend I began the think about the differences in the transit system in Dallas, DART and the one here in the DC area, Metro.  Although I prefer the DART system from an economical standpoint, I am very much a fan of the Metro system due to its technical innovation.

I think of DART as a legacy system as they are still very much dependent on paper processes.  Monthly passes are nothing more than a color coded card that you show whenever you get on a bus, and that allow for unlimited monthly rides.  Metro offers the complete opposite with no flat monthly pricing, everything is based on how much you use the system.  Additionally Metro also uses an electronic system to keep track of ridership.  Although it is not publicly exposed, Metro knows every detail of my individual ridership and can analyze that information in any way they please.  I don’t know that much about what they do with this information, but I would hope that they use it to gauge ridership and plan for improvements in the future.

Sure DART knows how many people ride its system in a given day, but they have no means of tracking who they are.  They can possibly segment into my neighborhood depending on where I start my trips, but they are missing key pieces of granular data that could easily aid in their decision making processes.

If there is one key that I could give to any prospective entrepreneur, it would be to capture as much data as you can about your users.  While it may at first seem irrelevant, with time you will be able to do new and interesting things with this data that will help you increase the level of service you are able to offer your user base.