Maximizing Interactive Marketing ROI with Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution A SIMPLE PLATFORM FOR A COMPLEX ENVIRONMENT www.kentico.com 1 www.kentico.com
Table of Contents Overview... 3 Scope and Goals... 3 Target Audience... 3 The State of Interactive Marketing... 3 Introducing Kentico EMS... 5 What Does Kentico EMS Provide... 7 Core Content Platform... 7 Web Analytics and Reporting... 8 Reporting... 9 Web Analytics... 9 Campaign and Conversion Tracking... 11 Contact Management... 13 Lead Scoring... 15 Content Optimization... 16 A/B Testing... 16 Multivariate Testing... 17 Personalization... 19 E-mail Marketing... 19 The Value of Kentico EMS... 22 Marketers... 22 Technologists... 23 The Kentico EMS Architecture... 23 Conclusion... 24 About Kentico... 25 Works Cited... 26 2 www.kentico.com
Overview Scope and Goals This white paper provides a description of the features and benefits of Kentico s Enterprise Marketing Solution (Kentico EMS) an innovative new product line that extends the latest version of Kentico s Content Management System (CMS), Kentico CMS 6. After reading the white paper, you will understand: the purpose of the enterprise marketing solution the core capabilities of Kentico EMS the benefits of Kentico EMS by role how Kentico EMS can improve your online marketing efforts the high level design of the platform where to get additional information This white paper is not intended to provide detailed advice or best practices for implementing interactive marketing campaigns. And, although the white paper provides a brief technical overview of the platform, it should not be considered an in-depth technical or operational guide for Kentico EMS. Target Audience The content in this document primarily targets online marketing professionals, enterprise architects, solution designers and technical decision makers involved in the selection of a platform for managing online marketing activities. However, even if you are just curious about what Kentico EMS provides, you can benefit from reading this white paper. No specific technical, product or line-of-business knowledge is required to understand the material. The State of Interactive Marketing Marketing can be what separates a successful, rapidly growing company from one with similar products, services, size and goals. Marketing has existed in some form since humans began selling things. However in recent years, interactive or online/internet marketing has dramatically influenced the way goods and services are promoted. In its early days, online marketing focused almost exclusively on pay for demand tools like search engine placement and display ads. Interactive marketing has quickly transformed and now includes an almost dizzying array of digital approaches from video to online newsletters to microsites and blogs designed to develop deeper relationships with customers. 3 www.kentico.com
Marketing continues to evolve. The emergence of new styles of interaction like social media and the rapid adoption of technologies like smart phones and tablets continue to propel online marketers forward toward possibilities that weren t even conceptualized a few years ago. And, the growth of internet marketing is expected to continue. According to Forrester s latest interactive marketing forecast, by 2016 over $76 billion dollars will be spent on interactive marketing an increase of 10 percent from current levels as illustrated below in figure 1. Figure 1-2011 to 2016 Interactive Marketing Growth (VanBoskirk, 2011) What is driving the continued increase in investment? Interactive marketing is in many cases more cost efficient and effective than traditional marketing channels like television, direct mail and newspapers. Consumers are spending less time interacting with traditional media sources and, even when they do, consumers increasingly leverage tools like DVR to bypass advertising. The reality is in most cases, if you want to compete successfully, customer centered interactive marketing must be a part of your strategy. 4 www.kentico.com
Figure 2 - Consumer Media Interaction Trends Despite the promises of interactive marketing, it is not without its challenges. This new form of marketing is changing quickly, and many organizations struggle to quantify returns and maintain a holistic view of performance across campaigns, channels and accounts from their efforts especially when leveraging emerging media. Although online marketing is evolving and maturing rapidly, the reality is that technology in many organizations is not keeping pace. Organizations are using a mix of siloed, ad hoc and homegrown tools that make management even more difficult, time consuming and frustrating, resulting in wasted effort, resources and, in some cases, revenue opportunities. This is extremely problematic given that tighter budgets have made it even more important to thoroughly understand how various online marketing efforts interact with each other and offline campaigns to ensure that budgets are being used as effectively as possible. Luckily, vendors such as Kentico are stepping forward to offer a solution. Introducing Kentico EMS According to interactive marketing expert Joe Stanhope, Organizations must proactively invest in integrating multichannel analytics, content management, and campaign execution to sidestep the inevitable long-term negative impact of siloed approaches on the customer experience and marketing ROI. The online marketing suite offers a solution to this challenge. (Stanhope, Vittal, & Dickson, 2011) 5 www.kentico.com
Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution is the realization of the online marketing suite that Stanhope envisions. By leveraging Kentico EMS, you can align the content, execution and analytics critical for successful interactive campaigns within a single integrated platform speeding delivery and optimizing return on investment (ROI). As illustrated below, Kentico EMS is a complete customer experience management solution that provides all of the capabilities necessary to: Figure 3 - Kentico Enterprise Marketing at a Glance gain better customer insight generate, manage and score leads optimize user experience and engagement manage campaigns evaluate conversions. From a functional perspective, Kentico EMS provides a holistic set of marketing and analytics tools that allow you to manage contacts, campaigns, information and gather actionable data to evaluate performance. Figure 4 below illustrates the features that comprise Kentico EMS. By providing a complete solution with functions from web site optimization to contact management, Kentico EMS liberates organizations from the long, complex and expensive integration of multiple products that is often required to comprehensively address marketing needs. 6 www.kentico.com
Figure 4 - Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solutions High Level Features Kentico EMS fully embraces customer experience, not just in the features it provides, but also in its own design. Unlike similar solutions, Kentico EMS is specifically designed to be easy for non-technical users to leverage and gain value rapidly something that definitely should not be ignored in the product evaluation process. What Does Kentico EMS Provide Core Content Platform Kentico EMS is a new product line released with Kentico CMS 6. The enterprise marketing solution is built on top of Kentico s flexible web content management platform, which gives it all of the features and benefits that Kentico CMS provides to build rich, dynamic web sites and applications. 7 www.kentico.com
Out of the box, Kentico CMS 6 includes: a flexible repository for storing content for easy reuse ability to manage websites without technical knowledge versioning and workflow for managing multiple versions of content in a predictable manner configurable security support for internationalization to engage a global audience support for managing multiple sites social network to enable deeper user interactions e-commerce support many built in modules like blogs, polls, events, multimedia and user content contributions that allow you to create a site with the exact features you need Leveraging Kentico s single integrated, solution, allows you to avoid lengthy, costly development cycles and focus on quickly delivering business value. Additionally, Kentico CMS has implemented a well-documented modular design using standard.net technology; this allows the platform to be easily enhanced and extended to meet any unique organizational needs. Kentico s CMS provides a solid foundation for delivering the new marketing features that have been introduced in version 6. Web Analytics and Reporting If you are making marketing investments, but not tracking and evaluating the performance you are wasting money. Not might. Not maybe. Are. Measurement is a critical component for the success of interactive marketing. Some campaigns will fail. Others will not achieve the expected results, or conversely, campaigns predicted to perform modestly can exceed expectations. Unless you are endowed with a super power, measurement is the only way to definitively know which is occurring. Measurement enables a more effective utilization of marketing budgets by allowing you to direct resources to campaigns that deliver the desired results and greatest profitability. Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution has a number of features that allow you to gain the insight required to analyze your marketing performance such as: a web analytics engine campaign and conversion tracking a flexible reporting engine with standard and customizable reports 8 www.kentico.com
REPORTING Kentico EMS reporting provides a complete environment for: viewing categorizing customizing creating Visually rich reports within the enterprise marketing solution in Kentico EMS are grouped in hierarchical categories to allow more efficient retrieval of similar or related information. Unlike many similar solutions, you have complete control over categorization; Kentico allows you to create, modify, remove and assign reports to categories right from the user interface. Figure 5 - Report Categories Report customization is not limited to categories; it extends to actual reporting. Kentico EMS provides a built-in visual report editor that allows you create custom reports (from scratch or by copying an existing report) with data, static values, charts and / or graphs. The robustness and flexibility Kentico EMS reporting provides a solid foundation for visualizing the data collected by web analytics and conversion/campaign tracking. WEB ANALYTICS If you run multiple online ads, how do you know which ad, if any, is driving traffic to your site? How can you determine which result in the highest number of sales. Without website analytics, it is not possible to differentiate performance or optimize your online marketing. 9 www.kentico.com
Kentico EMS web analytics allow you to collect, measure and analyze user activity quantitatively on a site, which enables you to better understand your visitors behavior and if you are creating the most positive user experience possible. Attempting to optimize an interactive marketing campaign without web analytics is like a carpenter building a house with no measurement tools. The carpenter might get lucky a few times and align things properly, but the majority of the construction will probably be shaky, and in the long run, the entire project will be unsound. Yet, this is the state of affairs within the marketing department for many organizations. Web analytics eliminate the need to make assumptions or guesses about how users are interacting. Out-of-the-box, Kentico EMS tracks over 20 standard statistics and events such as browser capabilities, page views, search keywords, time on page, user registrations, traffic sources and top exit and landing pages. However, like most features in the platform, web analytics is highly configurable. As shown below, you can enable or disable each standard measure by site or disable web analytics entirely. Figure 6 - Web Analytics Configuration This ensures your business is in complete control of defining the web analytics that are valuable not the platform. The image below depicts the web analytics dashboard, which includes multiple reports. 10 www.kentico.com
Figure 7 - Sample Web Analytics Dashboard The flexibility within Kentico EMS web analytics is not limited to turning the feature or standard measures on and off. Kentico EMS allows you to create, track and report custom statistics and events unique to your site. If it is important and within Kentico, you can track it. Once created, custom measures behave exactly like those that are pre-defined, giving you a single environment for tracking and understanding what is occurring on a site. CAMPAIGN AND CONVERSION TRACKING Kentico EMS provides a comprehensive set of features for campaign and conversion tracking that easily allows you to evaluate the success of your marketing efforts. Although campaign and conversion features were available in the previous version of Kentico CMS, they were greatly enhanced with the introduction of the enterprise marketing solution. Within Kentico EMS, you can define an action such as the sale of a product as a conversion - the transition of a visitor to a lead or a lead to a customer. Out-of-the-box, Kentico EMS can track: user registration newsletter subscription shopping cart activities submitting a form voting in poll page visits as conversion events. However, if the standard actions do not meet your needs, you can extend the platform to track any action required to meet your business goals as a 11 www.kentico.com
conversion. In addition, because conversions may vary in business value, Kentico EMS supports the ability to specify a number that represents the importance of the conversion as shown in figure 8. Figure 8 - Conversion Management Interface Keep in mind, Kentico EMS is an integrated solution. This makes it easy to compare conversion statistics to other site metrics, optimize performance with A/B or multivariate testing and/or better understand the context of user actions using campaigns. Although tracking conversions is valuable, alone it may not be sufficient for some organizations to manage marketing performance. Campaigns allow you to track the activities visits or conversions- associated to a specific group of related activities as a single concept. In addition, each campaign, allows you to define expected cost, effective dates, performance goals and/or rules to target a specific segment (see figures 9, 10). Figure 9 - Campaign Goals Interface 12 www.kentico.com
Figure 10 - Campaign Definition Interface As with web analytics, Kentico provides several standard conversion and campaign report, such as conversion count by campaign and total conversion value, to evaluate results. Campaign and conversion metrics can be used in custom reporting like all other available data. Contact Management Online marketing has transformed the very nature of marketing communication. The most effective marketing promotions have evolved from a one-way generalized message controlled by the marketer to an interactive bi-directional customer-centric dialogue. Maximizing ROI on your marketing investment requires not only analysis and understanding of your marketing campaigns, but also deep comprehension of your customers their preferences, their dislikes and how they consume information. Unfortunately, visibility into the activities of an individual is not always straightforward. A single individual may interact with a site across several channels, have multiple user accounts, be registered or unregistered or share relationships with other site visitors. Kentico EMS makes gaining a complete visitor profile of your site traffic easier by providing tools that track the actions they perform such as: page visits search keywords e-commerce behavior voting 13 www.kentico.com
at a contact level, which spans user accounts, subscriptions, channels, statuses and time. Figure 11 - Create Contact Interface In addition to managing individual contacts, Kentico EMS supports aggregation of contacts into dynamic segments to help you analyze behavior patterns between similar or related users. Contact groups Accounts Statuses Dynamic Contact Segmentation Contacts can be optionally segmented into categories An account is an organization or company that can be associated with a contact. Contacts can be optionally assigned to one or more accounts. Additionally, accounts can be grouped into subsidiaries. Kentico EMS supports customizable statuses for: Account status e.g. Partner level Contact status e.g. legacy contact, prospect contact Contact role e.g. CTO, CEO, director Table 1- Contact Segmentation Strategies 14 www.kentico.com
Like other features of Kentico EMS, the behavior of contact management is extremely flexible and completely integrated with the other features of the platform. Lead Scoring A marketing campaign may generate thousands of contacts or visitors. Lead scoring allows you to identify which visitors/contacts have highest probability of generating value. Leveraging lead scoring allows organizations to more efficiently use their sales resources by allowing them to focus on the most important contacts or qualified leads. Using the detailed information collected by Kentico EMS (e.g. contact profile, purchases, site activities), you can define rules based on user attributes or activities to automatically score each site visitor. Scores and rules are customizable. Each score consists of a list of rules (figure 12) and each rule consists of a condition, value/points and expiration date Figure 12 - Sample Lead Score with Two Rules Figure 13 - Rule Definition Interface 15 www.kentico.com
In addition to evaluating rules, Kentico EMS also includes tools for monitoring lead scores. The platform can: send a notification if a contact achieves a specific number of points export contacts for a score create customized lists of contacts for a score threshold Content Optimization Kentico EMS supports both A/B and multivariate testing (MVT) to optimize the content presented on a site. Unlike popular stand-alone solutions for content optimization, A/B testing and MVT are a completely integrated within EMS. A/B testing allows you to create multiple versions of a page and determine the best option based on which results in the most conversions during the test period. Like A/B testing, the purpose of MVT is content optimization. However, A/B testing is designed to look at a single change at a time (e.g. which page is better), while MVT tests multiple combinations of variables at once (e.g. which version of a poll and featured product). Another way to think of A/B and MVT in context of Kentico EMS is A/B tests are optimization at a page level, while MVT is optimizing page components. A/B TESTING A/B testing is the simpler form of content optimization testing. Once enabled, an A/B test can be created for any site page. Further, one or more page variants may be created for each test. Figure 14-A/B Test Creation Interface 16 www.kentico.com
Figure 15 - Creating a Page Variant Kentico EMS randomly displays a version of the page to each visitor and tracks in real-time how many conversions occur as a result of each variant making the entire A/B testing process transparent to site visitors. The system also remembers which version of a page was displayed initially to a visitor to ensure the same page variant is displayed if the user visits the page again. You can see the results of an A/B test in real-time using one the five standard conversion reports or by creating a custom report. Total conversion value Conversion rate Conversions count Conversions source pages Conversions by variations A/B Test Conversion Reports Displays the total conversion value for each page version Displays the conversion rate (# of convers / page visits) for each page version Displays the number of conversions for each page version Displays number of conversions by source page Displays information about each conversion by page version Table 2- Conversion Reports MULTIVARIATE TESTING Kentico EMS also allows you to create optimized pages by evaluating which variant of an individual page component performs best. For example, if a page contains a poll and two 17 www.kentico.com
variable pieces of content and there are four options for each components, MVT allows you to determine the precise combination of options that results in the highest number of conversions. Similar to A/B testing, once MVT is enabled, a MVT test can be created and then you can define variants for webparts, widgets, webpart zones and widget zones. Figure 16-MVT Creation Interface Figure 17 - MVT Variant 18 www.kentico.com
Conversions for MVT are tracked identically to A/B tests and the same reports shown in table 2 are supported. PERSONALIZATION Content personalization is another option for optimizing website content in Kentico EMS. Personalization allows you to display different versions of a page or one of its components for different users. Kentico EMS supports both content targeting, which allow you conditionally display content based on simple rules, and true personalization, which controls display based on complex, rules, conditions and activities. As illustrated below, you can create personalization variants of page components and define rules that determine if or how the content is displayed. E-mail Marketing Figure 18 - Content Personalization Kentico EMS includes a robust set of e-mail marketing features to manage newsletters and e-mail campaigns significant components of the online marketing strategy for many organizations. At the core of e-mail marketing functionality is the newsletter module. The newsletter module allows you to create highly configurable newsletters to communicate with subscribers. Newsletters may be: Static - every issue is edited and sent manually. The newsletters are based on predefined templates Dynamic - issues are sent out to all subscribers automatically at a specified interval. The content is dynamically taken from a specified page 19 www.kentico.com
The actual content in the newsletter or e-mail communication is only limited by your imagination. The system allows you to create the content in the same robust, visual, browser-based tools for building site pages. Figure 19 - Newsletter Creation Interface In addition to allowing you to create and manage e-mail communications and subscribers, Kentico EMS includes several tools for gathering feedback and monitoring performance. The platform supports: Open e-email tracking This feature allows you to monitor how many newsletter e-mails subscribers actually open - a key metric for judging the success of an e-mail campaign. 20 www.kentico.com
Kentico EMS tracks open e-mails by embedding a small, invisible image into the content of e-mails. When the image is displayed in the e-mail the first time, the system marks the e- mail as received and opened for the subscriber. You can review the number of open e-mails in real-time within Kentico EMS. Bounced e-mail monitoring Figure 20 - Open Email Tracking When an e-mail cannot be delivered successfully, information about the problem is automatically returned to the sender. Kentico EMS tracks bounced e-mails to identify addresses that do not correctly receive e-mail communications. You can configure a maximum number of bounces allowed, and when the number is exceeded, the subscriber will be blocked. Removing addresses that regularly fail saves bandwidth and improves campaign accuracy. Click through tracking Figure 21-Blocked E-mail Monitoring Clicked links are another strategy for measuring the effectiveness of an e-mail campaign. Once enabled, Kentico EMS tracks: 21 www.kentico.com
Unique clicks - shows how many different subscribers clicked on the link. Total clicks - indicates how many times the link was clicked, including multiple clicks from the same user. Click rate (%) - displays the click through rate of the link as a percentage (unique clicks/sent emails). and allows you to drill all the way down to see which subscribers clicked which links. Figure 22 - E-mail Clicked Link Tracking The Value of Kentico EMS Marketers Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution is filled with features that allow marketers to achieve their goals easily and efficiently. Kentico EMS provides the tools necessary for marketers to execute common business tasks without burdening the technology staff. The solution is designed to be quickly setup and operational with limited technical knowledge so organizations can rapidly obtain: better visibility and insight into customers improved customer experience better campaign ROI Kentico EMS is a complete platform. It provides all of the capabilities necessary for managing interactive marketing from planning and conception through execution and analysis. There is no longer a need to combine products from multiple vendors, track information in spreadsheets, do ad hoc development and hope for the best. 22 www.kentico.com
With Kentico, you can manage all of your sites and online marketing requirements from a single place. Technologists Kentico EMS allows technologists to be more productive, write less code and focus on delivering true business value. The platform is built using the latest technologies from HTML 5 to Windows Azure. The entire solution is designed in an open and modular fashion so that when enhancements are required, it s not a forensic exercise and you don t have to call the vendor. In addition, Kentico EMS has been enhanced with enterprise features important for medium and large business like: Health Monitoring Multiple SMTP Servers External Windows Services for execution of scheduled tasks Security enhancements More details on the design and architecture of EMS are provided in the The Kentico EMS Architecture section. The Kentico EMS Architecture Kentico EMS has a robust technical architecture intended to fully support the functional and performance requirements of the most demanding organizations. Kentico designed EMS with technologists in mind. The platform has a fully documented open API that allows.net developers to easily and confidently extend and customize the solution with custom event handlers, custom providers, custom modules, custom server controls, custom web parts and widgets, custom form field types and more. Additionally, full source code licensing is also available. Key Architecture Features: Microsoft.Net 3.5/4.0 Microsoft SQL Server 200+ built-in web parts/controls Customizable authentication and security Active Directory integration Fully extensible with custom modules and controls Visual Studio integration Full WebDAV support Health monitoring Support for the latest web technologies like HTML5 and REST Support for Windows Azure Kentico EMS uses the latest Microsoft.NET tools and server technologies, which allow existing knowledge, skills and investments to be leveraged and sites to be created faster with higher quality. In addition, Kentico has a browser-based 23 www.kentico.com
development model for many system changes and customizations. This allows resources with even minimal.net knowledge to develop sophisticated dynamic websites. From a design perspective, Kentico EMS is implemented using the latest recommendations from Microsoft and other industry leaders for building enterprise class web application. The platform has a multi-layered design with features implemented as independent but collaborating modules Figure 23- High Level Kentico EMS Architecture In addition, Kentico EMS includes several features such as health monitoring, JavaScript minimization, caching and support for cloud-based deployment, designed to ensure the highest level of performance and stability for the solution. Conclusion The Kentico EMS customer experience platform is a major evolution to the Kentico product family. Like the core content management system before it, EMS is designed to offer a flexible, easy to use solution that allows you to focus on what s important making your business successful. 24 www.kentico.com
After reading this white paper, you should now understand: the purpose of the enterprise marketing solution the core capabilities of Kentico EMS the benefits of Kentico EMS by role how Kentico EMS can improve your online marketing efforts the high level design of the platform If you need more information contact: U.S. East Coast Kentico Software US 379 Amherst St, #375 Nashua, NH 03063 USA UK Office Kentico Software Ltd 22-24 Broad Street Wokingham, Berkshire RG40 1BA United Kingdom U.S. West Coast Kentico Software US 14900 Interurban Ave South, Suite 271 Seattle, WA. 98168 USA International Office Kentico Software s.r.o. AXA Centrum Uzka 8 602 00 Brno Czech Republic (European Union) About Kentico Kentico, founded in 2004, is a global provider of web content management and web experience management solutions built using the Microsoft.NET platform. The latest release of Kentico s flagship product, Kentico CMS 6 is the most advanced evolution of the platform to date. It features a new product line Kentico Enterprise Marketing Suite - that augments the platform s existing capabilities with tools for driving interactive marketing success. Organizations of all sizes in more than 80 countries use Kentico s platform to build and manage 7,000+ rich websites and application from intranets and community to Web 2.0 properties and online stores. Customers are supported by an experienced network of over 1,200 partners and four Kentico corporate offices. 25 www.kentico.com
Works Cited Stanhope, J., Vittal, S., & Dickson, M. (2011). Revisiting the Online Marketing Suite. Forrester Research. VanBoskirk, S. (2011). US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2011 to 2016. Forrester Research. 26 www.kentico.com