create awareness of a product or favourability towards a brand (measured through brand
research of brand awareness, brand favourability or purchase intent through using an
online brand-tracking service such as Dynamic Logic, http://www.dynamiclogic.com);;)
encourage trial (for example, achieve 4% conversion of new unique visitors to regis-
tration or downloads of a music service such as iTunes or Napster);
build in-house permission-based list (grow e-mail database by 10,000 during year
through data capture activities);
encourage engagement with content (conversion of 20% of new unique visitors to
product information area);
persuade customer to purchase (conversion of 5% of unique new visitors) to purchase
areas;
encourage further purchases (conversion of 30% of first-time buyers to repeat pur-
chasers within a 6-month period).(3)Integrate all communications methods to help achieve marketing objectives by sup-
porting mixed-mode buying.
Examples of mixed-mode buying objectives:
Achieve 20% of sales achieved in the call centre as a result of web site visits.
Achieve 20% of online sales in response to offline adverts.
Reduce contact-centre phone enquiries by 15% by providing online customer services.
It is also worth noting that communications objectives will differ according to the
stage of development of an e-commerce service. Rowley (2001) suggests that the general
goals of these four stages are:
Contact– promoting corporate image, publishing corporate information and offering
contact information. Content.
Interact– embed information exchange. Communication.
Transact– online transactions and interaction with trading partners. Commerce.
Relate– two-way customer relationship. Community.
Four similar levels of intensity of promotional activity are also identified by van Doren
et al. (2000).
Conversion marketing objectives
Although traffic-building objectives and measures of effectiveness are often referred to in
terms of traffic quantity, such as the number of visitors or page impressions, it is the traf-
fic quality that really indicates the success of interactive marketing communications
(e.g. van Doren et al., 2000; Smith and Chaffey, 2005). Traffic quality is determined by:
whether the visitors are within the target audience for the web site;
whether the visitors convert to on-site outcomes in line with the communications
objectives.
Internet marketing objectives can also be stated in terms of conversion marketing.
This technique of objective setting uses a bottom-up approach to objective setting as
shown in Figure 8.10. Take, for example, the objectives of a campaign for a B2B services
company such as a consultancy company, where the ultimate objective is to achieve
1000 new clients using the web site in combination with traditional media to convert
OBJECTIVES AND MEASUREMENT FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS