TRACKING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF E-COMMUNICATIONS 535them to run a national online campaign with Yahoo!, after a long history of using traditional media channels such
as TV and print. The reasons behind this choice were the higher levels of accountability and engagement associated
with online campaigns.
Yahoo! ran a 41-day display campaign with promotions to encourage customers to register with the Dunkin’
Donuts loyalty programme. To increase campaign performance, behavioural targeting and continual optimisation
were implemented.
The campaign resulted in more than 16 000 sign-ups, and enrolment increased by 300% between the first
14 days and the last 14 days of the campaign.^229Th e essence of CRM is to have a single comprehensive database with a complete history
of the prospect or customer that can be accessed from any of the customer touchpoints (sales,
call centre, personalised website and customer service).^230 Dell provides a Premier Pages
service for its corporate clients. Premier Pages are sites dedicated to a particular customer
and only accessible to that customer. Each dedicated site holds a record of all previous inter-
actions between the customer and Dell and can be used to communicate with the customer
and inform him or her about exclusive off ers. Th e collaborative soft ware that Amazon.com,
the online book and CD retailer, uses allows communication of personalised advice on products
that the soft ware predicts to be interesting for a certain customer.^231 L i v e P e r s o n s o ft ware
( http://www.liveperson.com ) off ers website integration with live customer service representatives in
real time.^232Tracking the effectiveness of e-communications
Th e company website is a way to reach customers directly and deliver information to them,
take their orders and build relationships. Th e Net is also a medium used to place advertising
and to create a direct communications line with customers and prospects. For these reasons,
it is important for marketers to know how their website and online marketing campaigns are
performing and how they can improve the eff ectiveness and effi ciency of their site and digital
strategy. As the Internet is an interactive and computer-supported medium, all information
about site traffi c is stored on the net server in server log fi les. Analysing these fi les is one way
of tracking website performance. About half of Belgian and Dutch marketers feel that the
results of online marketing actions are more measurable than those of most other traditional
marketing actions. Th e only other technique whose eff ectiveness is even easier to measure, in
their view, is direct marketing.^233
Assessing the eff ectiveness of e-marketing involves fi nding answers to questions like:
z Are the corporate and marketing objectives identifi ed in the e-marketing strategy being
met?
z Are the marketing communications objectives identifi ed in the e-marketing plan achieved?
z How eff ective are the diff erent promotional tactics used?^234Measuring website effectiveness
Th e most basic method to measure site eff ectiveness is by asking for feedback on the website.
Th is can be done by asking visitors to leave a contact e-mail address or by inserting a feedback
form on one of the web pages. Both methods will only elicit the most extreme (negative and
positive) reactions, and are not representative of the site audience. Moreover, little feedbackM15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 535M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 535 6/6/13 8:55 AM6/6/13 8:55 AM