Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices New to Sitecore’s Engagement Value? Follow this five-step process to develop your brand’s Engagement Value Scale.

BY SITECORE BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES

White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Contents Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3 What is SBOS?������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3 Why you need to use Engagement Analytics�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3

Understanding Engagement Values���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4



What do Engagement Values look like?��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5

How to create an Engagement Value Scale������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 7 Terminology guide���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 7 Creating your website’s Engagement Values�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8

Prerequisites��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8



Five steps to creating your Engagement Value Scale������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 8

1. Identifying strategic themes������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 8 2. Identifying strategic and marketing objectives�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10 3. Understanding digital goals prior to building the Engagement Value Scale����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 11 4. Creating an Engagement Value Scale��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13 5. Identifying key performance indicators����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 18

Appendix Examples of common Engagement Value Scales and digital goals��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 B2B Engagement Value Scale and goals���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 24

Published 9/16. © 2001-2016 Sitecore Corporation A/S. All rights reserved. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners. This document may not, in whole or in part, be photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Sitecore. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore.

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

E-commerce (B2C) Engagement Value Scale and goals��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 25 Non-profit Engagement Value Scale and goals������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 26 Information/media Engagement Value Scale and goals������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 27 Healthcare Engagement Value Scale and goals������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 28 Government Engagement Value Scale and goals���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 29 About Sitecore��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 30

Published 9/16. © 2001-2016 Sitecore Corporation A/S. All rights reserved. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand and product names are the property of their respective owners. This document may not, in whole or in part, be photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior consent, in writing, from Sitecore. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore.

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Introduction There isn’t a single organization that can afford to do online marketing the way they did in the past. In this age of customer experience, the customer expects marketers to stay connected across multiple channels and to deliver a customer experience that is relevant to their individual needs and preferences. Marketers can only do that effectively if they use what we at Sitecore call “Experience Analytics.”. You see, traditional web analytics do not have a metric that measures the quality of the visitor’s experience based on the customer’s behavior. Web analysts have had to infer the visitor’s experience from a collection of traditional metrics, creating a lot of error and putting analytics in the hands of analysts rather than in the hands of marketers. Experience Analytics, core to the Sitecore® Experience Platform™, unlike traditional web analytics, creates metrics based on the customer’s behavior based on their interaction with digital goals, such as registrations, survey completions, or other marketing outcomes. Experience Analytics is a measure of marketing’s relevance to the customer. It also acts as a proxy for strategic objectives because it has a high correlation between Engagement Value, a primary metric used in Experience Analytics, and the achievement of the primary objective. Experience Analytics serves marketing well when it is used to improve the customer experience and a key strategic objective.

In this guide, Sitecore Business Optimization Strategies introduces its five-step process for developing your Engagement Value Scale (EVS). The Engagement Value Scale defines the Engagement Value metric—a key metric in Experience Analytics. Engagement Value Scales can be created for all types of businesses, from profit to non-profit, B2B to B2C. Refer to the Appendix at the end for Engagement Value Scale examples across different business and organizational models. You’ll also find answers to frequently asked questions throughout such as how Experience Analytics compares to Lead Scoring, how to use Experience Analytics with a loyalty system, and more.

Why you need to use Engagement Analytics This guide is designed to help you reach the Holy Grail of digital marketing, Experience Analytics. It doesn’t matter whether your organization is B2B, B2C, informational, health, or governmental. Every type of online marketing can use Experience Analytics to improve their customer’s experience and optimize their marketing. With Experience Analytics you can track the same metrics as traditional metrics, but with the powerful advantages of knowing what your customers find relevant as well as the marketing efficiency of each of your marketing efforts. Use Experience Analytics with your marketing efforts to:

What is SBOS? Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of implementing and using the Sitecore® Experience Platform™, the Sitecore Business Optimization Strategies team (SBOS™) is a best practices resource that helps establish the digital maturity of your organization and identify where you want to be—and then provides practical plans for getting there. Learn more about SBOS, and drill down into the details of how the team helps customers get results.

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Know which marketing efforts produce the greatest impact on a key strategic objective

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Increase return on marketing Investment

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Optimize marketing relevance to the target audience

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Optimize omnichannel marketing

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Evaluate A/B, multivariate, and personalization testing quickly and easily Evaluate and compare online and offline marketing efficiency Compare the effectiveness of different marketing efforts

Experience Analytics gives you an unfair advantage over your competitors.

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Learn the foundations of Engagement Analytics and definition of Engagement Values by reading the whitepaper “From Web Analytics to Engagement Analytics: Quality over Quantity.” 1

Experience Analytics are based on an Engagement Value Scale that measures the visitor’s level of engagement and commitment. The best way to create an accurate scale of Engagement Values is to follow the precise steps in this Sitecore Business Optimization Strategies best practices guide. The following steps and guidelines are essential for creating and implementing an accurate Engagement Value Scale.

Understanding Engagement Values Engagement Values are a measure of visitor behavior. Engagement Values are weighted based on their impact on a strategic objective and on how engaged and committed the visitor is in achieving that objective. This is different from traditional web analytics, which are based on computer log files and do not evaluate business objectives or a visitor’s behavior. The Experience Analytics based on Engagement Value enable you to measure: ■■

Across and between channels and marketing efforts

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Relevance of marketing to the visitor’s needs

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Marketing impact on a chosen strategic objective

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Marketing efficiency of different marketing efforts

Engagement Values are a weighting assigned to different digital goals. Digital goals are online interactions that commonly involve some optional visitor interaction such as registering, completing a survey, or requesting a call. The weight assigned to a digital goal, its Engagement Value (EV), depends upon the estimated impact that digital goal has on marketing’s key objective. Because visitors have a choice of 1

interacting or ignoring a digital goal the Engagement Value score also measures the relevance to a visitor’s interests and needs. If the visitor ignores a non-relevant digital goal then the visitor accumulates no value for that goal. Conversely, visitors will accumulate a high value from digital goals that are relevant. As visitors complete (convert) digital goals that have EV assigned, each visitor accumulates their own Engagement Value score. With the use of Experience Analytics, and tools such as the Path Analyzer, marketers can see the trail of accumulated touchpoints left by visitors. Touchpoints that attract high value visitors will accumulate a high value. Touchpoints that aren’t relevant to visitors will accumulate low or zero value points. This makes it easy for marketers to see which channels, campaigns, pages, and assets are most critical to success. Marketers only need to look for touchpoints where high value has accumulated. A great benefit, and a reason this is a core concept for Sitecore, is that visitors with different personalization profiles often accumulate values at different touchpoints and marketing assets. By using, Experience Analytics marketers can filter data to show only the values and visits for specific personalization profiles. This enables marketers to quickly identify the marketing touchpoints that are most relevant each profile. It is critical that you identify the strategic objective your Engagement Value Scale will drive. If you choose the wrong strategic objective or you choose digital goals that don’t drive your key strategic objective, then you will optimize your marketing in the wrong direction and not achieve your strategic objective. “What you put Engagement Value on is what you optimize for.” For example, if the marketing objective that supports your strategic objective is to increase the number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), then a digital goal where a visitor requests a demonstration would surely be high value and might be assigned 100 points. All other digital goals that support accomplishing that MQL should receive Engagement Values proportional to that topmost value. Placing an incorrect Engagement Value on the right digital goal or putting an Engagement Value on the wrong digital goal can optimize your marketing in the wrong direction. For example, watching a video shows visitor engagement, but it does not move visitors closer to the end goal of becoming

“From Web Analytics to Engagement Analytics: Quality over Quantity.”

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

an MQL. Placing a high value on watching a video would optimize your website so more visitors watch the video, but not necessarily qualify as MQLs. This might not optimize your website for creating Marketing Qualified Leads, your website’s highest purpose.

each level of the Engagement Value Scale should move a visitor toward achieving the marketing objective of creating an MQL. The value of each level should be proportional to how much that level contributes to the visitor reaching the marketing objective.

In most cases, Engagement Value is created at digital goals where people have an interaction or transaction with a marketing effort. The Engagement Value at these visitor touchpoints is related to the level or depth of four levels of growth in human relationships.

B2B Engagement Value Scale example

Those four levels from interested to highly engaged are: 1. Attraction 2. Two-way communication 3. Trust building 4. Commitment Digital goals that involve only attraction, such as reading a page or watching a short video, will usually have no Engagement Value since there is little visitor involvement and little impact on the strategic objective. However, as digital goals move from levels 2 to 4 they will have higher levels of Engagement Value. In some cases, a digital goal that shows complete commitment is the actual strategic objective and could be assigned 100 points. Some websites have few transaction points. For example, informational and non-profit websites primarily have one-way communication, visitors prefer to remain anonymous and not assume even a low-level of risk or commitment, and there are few conversion points. On sites like these “Interaction Points” involving one-way transfer of information and no shared risk may have to be used. In every case, goals that are assigned Engagement Values must meet two requirements: ■■

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Each Engagement Value is relative to the visitor’s level of communication, trust, and commitment. All goals with Engagement Value Points must move the visitor toward the strategic objectives.

What do Engagement Values look like? The following example shows the Engagement Value Scale for a B2B business that has a long sales cycle with the key marketing objective of capturing MQLs. From bottom to top

Request demonstration

100

Request pricing

50

Instant sales chat

25

Sign up for webinar

10

Sign up for newsletter

5

Watch video

0

Note that each level of the Engagement Value Scale contains either a digital goal or category of digital goal types with a value. The value is a measure of the impact digital goals at that level have on the key marketing objective. It is also a measure of that digital goals relevance to visitors. If you want to track visitor interaction with digital goals that do not impact the key marketing objective you must assign to these goals an Engagement Value of zero (0). Different strategic objectives will determine different sets of digital goals on your Engagement Value Scale. For example, if you are an informational non-profit with activism as one of your key objectives, then some of your top goals might be volunteering and donations. If you are a government entity your goals might include self-service for government services and greater participation in the governing process.

What are the Experience Analytics Metrics? Creating the Engagement Value Scale and then assigning Engagement Values to important digital goals gives the Sitecore® Experience Platform™ the ability to track and store the value associated with each visitor’s interaction with marketing efforts. For example, as each visitor interacts with digital goals during each visit they accumulate for that visit the Engagement Value associated with each digital goal they have “touched.” By totaling the accumulated Engagement Values associated with each visitor responding to a campaign

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you can assess which campaigns create the greatest value (or impact on your strategic objective). Comparing the values accrued by different campaigns enables you to see which campaigns have the greatest or least impact. Since the Engagement Value is a metric that works across channels, online and offline, it enables you to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of all your marketing.

Creating and assigning Engagement Value produces two new metrics that aren’t available in traditional web analytics. These are Value and Value per Visit. With the addition of the traditional Visits metric, you have the ability to measure your marketing’s impact on strategic objectives as well as marketing efficiency.

Value

Engagement Value is a proxy for achieving your marketing objectives. For example, the Value of a marketing asset, such as a campaign, is the total Engagement Value accumulated by all the visitors who pass through that campaign. Those visitors generated their Engagement Value by transacting digital goals that were on the Engagement Value Scale. This makes comparing marketing efforts easy—a white paper that has accumulated an Engagement Value of 7,500 points has a greater impact on the strategic objective than a white paper with an Engagement Value of 6,000 points.

Visits

Visits is the total number of visits. This traditional web metric is used in conjunction with Value to generate new metrics and analytics.

Value per Visit

Value per Visit is a measure of marketing efficiency. You might compare it to miles per gallon as a measure of a car’s efficiency. For example, a campaign with a VpV of 3.6 is twice as effective in creating an impact for each visitor as a campaign with a VpV of 1.8. The VpV must be weighed against the total Value and Visits of a marketing effort, i.e., a campaign with small number of visitors might be highly efficient but may not have a huge impact due to the small number of visitors.

Experience effect

In the Sitecore testing capability (for A/B, MV, and personalization testing), the system tracks the Value per Visit for each test variant. Once a visitor is exposed to a test variant, the system will record any Engagement Value the visitor may subsequently earn during the visit. This value is called “trailing value.” Best experience effect is the rate of change between the highest tested trailing value per visit and the original trailing value per visit in a given test.

How can you use Experience Analytics to optimize your marketing? The Sitecore Experience Platform comes with out-of-the-box analytics applications to help you use Experience Analytics to optimize your marketing. These analytics applications include traditional web metrics such as visits, visitors, page views, etc., but most important, they give you insights into which marketing efforts are most relevant to your customers and which have the greatest impact on your strategic objective. Out-of-the-box Experience Analytics applications include: ■■

Experience Dashboard The Experience Dashboard shows a near-real-time executive-level view of Experience Analytics. It is easy for executives to see which channels, campaigns,

profiles, and sites generate the greatest Value or are most efficient. For in-depth analysis of pages and campaigns you may need to develop additional dashboards using third-party BI tools. ■■

Path Analyzer The Path Analyzer is an amazing application that shows you the paths visitors take through your site. You can see the paths with the highest Engagement Value, paths with the most visitors, paths with the highest efficiency (VpV) and more. It is like a marketing funnel on super-steroids. When combined with third-party BI tools accessing Sitecore® Experience Database™ (xDB) on-premise data, the Path Analyzer is easily one of the most powerful web optimization tools available.

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You can use also use third-party business intelligence tools to analyze your Sitecore xDB on-premise data. Because xDB records almost every user transaction, you can use data analytics tools such as Microsoft Excel with PowerPivot, Microsoft Power BI, Tableau, and more to create extremely powerful custom analytics solutions.

How to create an Engagement Value Scale Time and experience have proven that the following process is the best for creating the Engagement Value Scale. This process:

Terminology guide Digital goal: A customer touchpoint on the website where conversion or completion occurs for a marketing effort. The visitor must take an action to complete the digital goal. This action reflects the customer’s behavior at this touchpoint. An example would be completing a registration form or requesting a phone call. Engagement Value: Assigned to a digital goal is an integer numeric value that is proportional to its impact on a strategic objective. The Engagement Value for a digital goal is accrued by a visitor when they act on or convert the digital goal. Engagement Values: What visitors accrue as they pass through the marketing effort. For example, a channel that has accumulated a high Engagement Value from valuable visitors can be assumed to have a high impact on the strategic objective. Strategic theme: The distinctive thrust or focus that defines an organization’s strategy. Successful companies have only two or three complementary strategic themes. Strategic objective: An overarching end result that must be accomplished for an organization to be successful at its strategic theme. The strategic objective

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Increases the eyes on the problem and insures key objectives and digital goals are included. Creates more realistic Engagement Value weights and ratios due to the discussion and knowledge of the cross-functional team. Increases buy-in and understanding by including diverse members of marketing and IT.

It is highly recommended you use this process or a similar process that involves a cross-functional marketing, IT, and Sitecore partner team. Incorrectly setting Engagement Values or using the wrong digital goals will cause poor marketing results.

is usually composed of multiple cross-functional objectives such as financial, marketing, customer, human resources, IT, etc. Marketing objective: A strategic objective within the domain of marketing. Accomplishing the marketing objective will help the organization succeed at its strategic objectives. KPI: A Key Performance Indicator. An organization may have hundreds of performance measures or indicators, but the Key Performance Indicators are those critical few performance indicators that are critical to success. Outcome: The business significant result of a dialogue between a contact and a brand. Through a contact’s path to becoming a customer, you can track the events they have triggered and the goals they have converted on their journey. The collection of these events provides you with an insight into how contacts interact with your website, as well as the relative financial value they have for your organization. We recommend that you first define goals and an Engagement Value Scale and subsequently define Outcomes. For more information about Outcomes, see: “From web analytics to Experience Analytics: Quality over Quantity.”

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Creating your website’s Engagement Values Prerequisites

To use a slightly longer process that develops understanding, and involves a diverse group of people to build better ideas you can follow the five steps below to creating an Engagement Value Scale.

Prerequisites for creating your Engagement Value Scale are: ■■

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Clear strategic objectives and marketing objectives for your organization. Although clear definitions produce better results, even if you do not have well-defined organizational strategic and marketing objectives this guide can help a team of experienced marketers identify digital goals and develop an Engagement Value Scale. Use of the Sitecore Experience Platform.

The purpose of this guide is to walk you through the process of creating an Engagement Value Scale, without focusing on the specifics of how this is configured2 in Sitecore.

Five steps to creating your Engagement Value Scale The following five-step process can be highly efficient in building buy-in and understanding and using the wisdom of the group to build your Engagement Value Scale. This process takes a few hours of pre-work and one day of team consensus involving 8 to 12 experienced marketers and IT people. If you feel you do not need to build buy-in and understanding and want to speed the process, then one or two experienced marketers can identify the single most important marketing objective that digital marketing can drive. With that single marketing objective, a small group of two or three highly experienced marketers may be able to identify the digital goals for the Engagement Value Scale and their weights. If you take this approach it is critical that everyone involved understand the fundamental principles of the Engagement Value Scale and thoroughly know all the digital goals that support your marketing. If you feel that your group is aligned and that you do not need to brainstorm new or additional digital goals, then you may want to start this process at the end of “Step 3. Digital goals.” At that point you will already have your digital goals and know the marketing objective you want to achieve so all you need to do are Steps 4 and 5.

1

Strategic themes

2

Strategic marketing objectives

3

Digital goals

4

Engagement Value Scale

5

Key performance indicators

Figure 1: Five steps to creating an Engagement Value Scale

1. Identifying strategic themes In this first step you will identify the two or three strategic themes that are core to your organization’s success. These are almost always two or three themes by which your organization is known to your target audience. To begin you will build a causal map that shows how your digital goals drive marketing objectives that in turn achieve the strategic objectives that support your themes. The starting point for this causal map is your organization’s strategic themes. Once you identify your themes you can identify the strategic and marketing objectives your company needs to achieve its themes. Once you identify your primary marketing objectives it should be straightforward to identify the digital goals in your website, email, and social that you use to achieve your marketing objective.

For more on configuration, please look for the latest documentation on the Sitecore document website, https://doc.sitecore.net/. 2

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Every marketer must understand their company’s marketing objectives—how marketing contributes to the organization’s strategic success. Doing this exercise with a cross-functional team, and then posting the causal map in a common room or hallway can lead to a major shift in marketing’s consciousness. Strategic themes are broad statements of how the company expects to succeed and how it wants to be perceived by customers. Every successful company operates with one or two strategic themes. Companies that have more than three

themes usually fail because they are not focused in their use of resources or in the minds of their customers. When you think of most successful companies you can usually identify a one or two word “theme” the company represents. There are a limited number of strategic themes used in organizations no matter their business model or whether they are profit or non-profit. The following table includes some of the 15 strategic themes and companies that operate with them.

Well-known strategic themes Theme

Company

Description

Highest quality

Lexus

Products or services are recognized as having the highest quality.

Highest performance

BMW

Products or services are recognized as having the highest performance in their class.

Leading-edge products

Intel Apple

Products are the most innovative and advanced in their industry or segment.

Total solution

Sitecore IBM

Provide everything needed by the customer. In the case of IBM this is hardware, software, consulting, and support.

Operational excellence

Dell General Electric

Manufacturing, operations, and distribution are vastly superior to competitors.

Lowest cost

Wal-Mart Dell

Initial cost of purchase is the lowest.

Build the franchise

McDonald’s Starbucks

Increase the number of outlets to meet the customer at every possible location.

Customer intimacy

Land’s End

Know the customer’s needs so well you can make recommendations to them they will appreciate.

Customer value

Wal-Mart

The sum of total benefits for the customer beats all competitors.

System lock-in

Microsoft Oracle

Once you start with this company’s products or services it is very difficult to switch to a competitor.

Corporate citizenship

P&G Vodafone Whole Foods

Stand-out as the leader in corporate and social responsibility in legal, ethical, environmental and community areas.

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2. Identifying strategic and marketing objectives A key reason for doing the following exercise with a cross-functional team process is that after many years of consulting we’ve found that most marketers cannot clearly state the key objectives their marketing should drive. For example, should marketing’s primary objective be to drive visitors, drive sales qualified leads, or drive increased breadth? (These are just a few choices.) For a fun brainstorm, serve lunch to a large team of your marketers and ask the open-ended question, “What is marketing’s primary objective?”

You don’t have to be on the executive planning committee to identify most organization’s strategic themes. Some midlevel managers have effectively identified their organization’s strategic themes by interviewing key cross-functional vice presidents. This interview process is also an excellent way to increase communication and raise awareness between marketing and other functions.

Homework for Step 1: Identify Strategic Themes Write down the two or three strategic themes you feel your organization wants to achieve. This is an excellent exercise to conduct with a diverse group of experienced managers. You should have no more than three themes. Themes can usually be described in two or three words. Themes should not contradict each other, for example, “Leading edge” and “Lowest cost” is a pair of themes that would be difficult to execute together for a startup.

In this second step you will dive into your organization’s strategic themes and identify the strategic objectives and marketing objectives needed to make that theme succeed. Although there are a limited number of strategic themes, there are thousands of ways of executing each strategy. To have a strategic theme an organization must achieve specific strategic objectives. It is the execution of these strategic objectives that make a strategic theme successful. The strategic objectives executed by marketing are known as marketing objectives. (Importantly, history shows it is not the best strategy that wins, but the one who executes the best.) For example, one strategic theme is “Leading edge,” being a company with products and services that is always a thought leader and technology leader. In this case, marketing’s objective would be to build demand for leading-edge products, create discontent with old products, and build an image of the “next new thing.” A marketing objective here might be: Increase visitors with an “early adopter” persona by 25% in the next quarter. Not all marketing objectives directly drive revenue or sales. A marketing objective may reinforce a brand strategy in the minds of the targeted audience or it might nurture an audience for future growth. For example, if a strategic theme is “Build the franchise” then the marketing objective might be: Increase awareness of our products and services by 12% in new geographic regions before we enter. Other strategies might have different marketing objectives, such as: ■■

■■

■■

Increase by 25% the rate of visitors in the X niche profile over the next six months. Identify the three top marketing messages for revenue and focus those messages on existing customers. Increase the cross-sell rate by 8% and the up-sale rate by 10% for the X product line sold into the Y audience segment.

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Homework for Step 2: Identify strategic and marketing objectives In order to identify and understand your marketing objectives, you may want to create a table where you can identify strategic themes, their definition, strategic objectives that drive the strategic objectives, and the associated marketing objectives. Identify your top one to three marketing objectives for each of your strategic themes. Make them specific and keep in mind that these are objectives you want to drive with your cross-channel online marketing. The next part can be critical! From the multiple marketing objectives you identify, select one key marketing objective you will optimize your digital marketing for. This is the single marketing objective your Engagement Value Scale will focus on optimizing.

You must know which marketing objective you want to optimize. That marketing objective is the purpose of your Engagement Value Scale. Your EVS will optimize your channels, campaigns, and marketing assets to achieve this one marketing objective. As the previous section stated, if other marketing objectives are aligned they will also be improved as the key objective improves, but only one objective can be optimized. If you have objectives that are not aligned or that even compete against each other, then optimizing your key objective may reduce the effectiveness of these non-aligned objectives, e.g., the objectives to increase total number of visitors and increase the highest quality of visitors will probably compete. Digital goals that improve quality, such as a detailed registration, can reduce the total number of visitors. From your list of marketing objectives, select the one marketing objective that is most important. This is the marketing objective the Engagement Value Scale will optimize your marketing to achieve.

Other marketing objectives may be improved as you optimize the key marketing objective and its digital goals, but attempting to optimize two objectives at the same time causes confounding which muddies your marketing optimization so neither is optimized. When you focus your optimization on one marketing objective and the digital goals that drive it, other objectives may also be improved, but they will rarely be optimized.

The following table shows one key marketing objective.

Strategic theme

Customer intimacy

Definition Know customers’ needs. Make excellent suggestions.

Strategic objective

Increase revenue from loyal customers.

3. Understanding digital goals prior to building the Engagement Value Scale In this third step you will take time to understand the types of digital goals used in an Engagement Value Scale. This step is important! SBOS has learned that in too many cases organizations have selected incorrect digital goals and incorrectly weighted them in their Engagement Value Scales.

Marketing objective Increase cross-sell and upsell to loyal customers by 30%. Capture quality profile information on 75% of visitors by third visit.

Before you begin using either method in Step 4, be sure you understand the types of digital goals that work best for Engagement Value Scales. If you are using the team brainstorming method it is critical that all team members understand the types of digital goals used in an EVS. If you are using the data-driven method then members of your smaller team must understand.

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As you look at the marketing objectives you identified in the previous section, you should be asking yourself what you can do in your online marketing efforts and on your website to make the key marketing objective succeed. Do you need a detailed registration form? Can you engage visitors with a calculator that would also capture profile information? What online marketing effort or action will move visitors toward your marketing objectives?

downloading a membership benefits form, using an online calculator, or viewing a qualifying video. While most interaction goals can be very “soft” in that they involve little engagement or intimacy with the visitor you can create stronger interaction goals by using Outcomes in Sitecore 8 (and above) to evaluate when a visitor completes multiple interaction goals that show engagement, for example, first viewing product pages, then checking a price page, then using a configuration calculator. All of these combined could show a strong engagement and intent worth a high Engagement Value.

These website interactions with your visitors are usually referred to as “digital goals” in websites. Goals could be a registration, completing a survey, requesting a free offer, chatting online, contributing to a forum, and so on. ■■

Not every digital goal, or visitor interaction, is important. They do not all contribute the same toward achieving your marketing objective. Some, such as registering for a newsletter by submitting an email address, might have little impact while others, such as requesting a call from a salesman or submitting a donation, directly achieve your marketing objective. Conceptually there are three different types of digital goals; transactional, interactional, and process. In reality you will work with them the same, but for some types of business models it is important to know the difference between types of digital goals. While transactional goals confirm engagement through the visitor’s behavior, the other two types of goals can also be used if your website or business model doesn’t have many transaction goals. These three types are: ■■

■■

Transaction goals—Transaction goals usually involve two-way communication and an exchange of information involving a degree of trust and risk on both sides. For example, the visitor transacts with your website either by supplying his/her contact details for more information, purchasing a product, signing up for site membership, or joining an email newsletter. Informational goals—Informational goals are oneway transfers of information that involve little risk. In interaction goals the visitor may remain anonymous. For example, the visitor downloads an asset which helps his/her decision making process, such as

Process goals—Process goals involve a sequence of transactional or interactional goals over time that show intent and movement through the marketing funnel. For example, a visitor downloads five whitepapers and watches three videos within one week. Process goals often require the assistance of a program developer to convert the actions in the process into a digital goal with Engagement Value.

When you think of marketing objectives and digital goals remember that they may change over time, so keep your focus at the highest level. Start with high level marketing objectives and identify the goals that either drive them or are critically related.

Homework for Step 3: To easily explain the different types of digital goals you will use in your Engagement Value Scale you may want to create a table with a few examples. Keep this table posted on the wall and refer to it so that people can refresh their memory. The following table shows some mock examples of digital goals and references how and why they can or cannot be used in the EVS.

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Digital goals and EVS worthiness Digital goal

Type

Use in EVS

Register for newsletter with email

Transactional

Yes. Probably a lower value.

Use a calculator to estimate a quote

Transactional

Yes. The use of the calculator can be given an EVS value. (Sitecore’s Federated Experience Manager can be used to capture and store calculator data in the user profile significantly increasing profile data.)

Request a quote or complete a purchase

Transactional

Yes. These would probably be high EVS value as they are closer to achieving a marketing objective.

View a page or video

Informational

No. If it is in a website with other Transactional types of goals that show more visitor behavior and action.

View 70% of a page or video

Informational

Yes. If it is in a website that is primarily one-way distribution of information, such as an online newspaper. A large percentage of viewing shows engagement. Code can be written to measure the percentage of page read or video viewed.

Download three whitepapers, watch a video, then register for a webinar

Process

Completing all of these within two weeks could complete a “process” that shows engagement.

4. Creating an Engagement Value Scale There are two different methods of creating an Engagement Value Scale for your organization. In either method it is critical to get buy-in from key stakeholders. Innumerable studies have shown that without buy-in from key stakeholders performance improvement and culture change efforts usually fail. Two Ways: People and brainstorming, or people and analysis There are two primary methods of creating your Engagement Value Scale. The first method uses structured facilitation with a team of experienced marketers to guesstimate the Engagement Value Scale. The second method works well if you have a significant amount of data that you can use to determine which goals have a high correlation with your objectives.

Creating an Engagement Value Scale, like the one shown on page 4, takes about half of a day of work for a cross-functional team of experienced marketers. You should follow the initial development of the scale with a time for reflection and examination that may stretch over one or more weeks. Building your team Whichever method you use to develop the Engagement Value Scale you should involve the most important stakeholders. You need their buy-in, their communication to others, and most importantly their cross-functional experience in selecting and weighting the most important goals. The team you bring together should have eight to ten people who are highly experienced in marketing and digital marketing. (The experience factor is there so they respond from the pain and exultation they have felt, not just from anecdotes they have read.) It should include people from all marketing

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functions, from the CMO to campaign managers and content editors to marketing analysts. It can also be good to include a representative from IT or your Sitecore partner to add technical insights, especially when considering future digital goals. Many studies have shown that cross-functional teams develop more and better ideas than homogeneous groups. Team members should be stakeholders. You need them to buy in to Engagement Value metrics, understand how and why it works, and act as evangelists for optimizing marketing. Some examples of team members might be: ■■

CMO or CMO representative

■■

Customer experience leader

■■

Digital strategist

■■

Content marketer

■■

Marketing technologist

■■

UX designer

■■

Digital analyst

■■

Context marketing project manager

■■

Experience program manager

■■

Experience architect

■■

E-commerce and merchandising specialist

■■

Data analyst

■■

IT representative

■■

Sitecore partner representative

You can read a definition of these roles and learn more about organizational roles in, “Context marketing: Getting organized.”

Preparing for the meeting 1. Before the team meeting: ■■

Distribute the homework results from Steps 1-3. This will give all team members the same concise background. The following chart shows one example strategic theme and its objectives.

A strategic theme and objectives example Strategic theme

Customer intimacy

Strategic objective

Increase revenue from existing customers

Marketing objective

■■

Once you have completed your “homework” from previous steps, then you need to gather a team and use the following process. This is a divergent/convergent process that takes approximately three hours. The divergent process at the beginning generates as many ideas as possible for current and future goals. The convergent process aggregates these ideas and prioritizes the best. At the end you can rank ideas by what can be done now, near term, and future.

Know individual customer needs

Post a banner with the purpose of the next meeting, e.g., “Identify digital goals that drive our key marketing objective and weight them by impact.” »»

»»

Method 1: Creating by team brainstorming and ranking

Increase upsells and cross-sells

Post a banner with the single key marketing objective you will optimize, e.g., “Increase upsells and cross-sells.” Explain how a system can only be optimized for one objective, but when a system’s objectives are aligned other objectives are also achieved. In this example, “Know individual customer needs” will also be optimized.

It is critical that all team members have in front of them the statement of the one marketing objective that will be optimized.

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■■

Buy large format Post-it© notes. These are 6” X 8” and should have the adhesive along the top of the long side so you can stick them in landscape orientation on a wall or whiteboard. Make sure you have enough dark-colored dry erase markers for all team members. (Dry erase are safer if someone accidentally writes on a table or wall.)

2. Schedule the meeting for three hours in a morning later in the week. Mornings are best for innovative thinking. Later in the week people usually have more free time. Do not make the meeting on a Friday. Brainstorming digital goals 1. Post the purpose of the meeting and the marketing objective statement at the front of the room. 2. Describe the different types of digital goals. See “Homework 3.” Do not use too many examples from your website or you may bias team members. 3. Distribute a few of the large 6” X 8” Post-it notes to team members. A rule of thumb for how many Post-its each person gets is to divide 40 by the number of people on the team. 4. Remind the group of the marketing objectives. 5. Post these rules on notes at the front of the wall to make sure everyone writes their ideas on the Post-Its so they are readable. ■■

Write the digital goal in 3 - 5 words.

■■

Use BLOCK letters.

■■

Write one idea per Post-it.

6. Give the group five to ten minutes to brainstorm current and future goals that drive the marketing objectives. Brainstorm INDIVIDUALLY! ■■

(Research consistently shows the best ideas come from individual brainstorming that is then aggregated and reviewed by the group. Do not allow discussion. This is individual brainstorming.)

7. Ask everyone to break into teams of three or four and identify the best 30% of their digital goals (Post-Its). Do not tell them, but this is to encourage the groups to

discuss why the digital goals they have chosen drive the objective. 8. Collect these 30% Post-its©. Grouping goals 1. Arrange the first 30% of the Post-its across the bottom in a “smile.” This will give you more room to rearrange notes in the open space above. 2. As you post each note, read it off. If the idea is not clear, ask for an explanation from the person who wrote it. 3. Ask the group to rearrange Post-its into pairs of similar or identical engagement. KEEP THEM IN PAIRS. Do not aggregate and throw away too early. Aggregating into large groups too early reduces flexibility and stifles diverse thinking. 4. Collect the rest of the Post-its and post them in a “smile” across the bottom. Ask the group to help you add them to existing pairs or create new groups as needed. 5. Continue grouping until you have homogeneous groups. You may want to put symbols at the top of each group to make it easier to talk about a group. Labeling or naming a group too early can reduce new ideas. 6. Review notes to make sure that groups are small and all contain a homogenous idea, such as variations on “Detailed registration,” “Free trial download,” or “Online chat.” 7. Identify each group by writing a label on a Post-it at the top of the group, e.g.,

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■■

Detailed registration

■■

Order completion

■■

Free trial download

■■

View 70% of webinar

■■

Schedule appointment

8. Remove the Post-it notes from the group leaving only labels. At this point you should have six to 12 Post-It notes that describe digital goals, or categories of digital goals, that drive your marketing objective. For example,

■■

A good method of scoring is to use 100 points for the highest engagement value and a value of 10 for the next to lowest. A value of 0 (zero) is used for goals you want to track, but do not want to place an Engagement Value on. (See the Considerations section below for discussions where this is valuable.)

4. Review the relative value of points. A good way to estimate value is to compare the relative ratios of different transactions and interactions. For example, “Are ten newsletter registrations at 10 points each the equivalent to a 100-point donation?” 5. Examine some of the sample Engagement Value Scales at the end of this document. How does yours compare? Let your EVS “rest” for a few days and then review it with key team members to see if it feels valid.

■■

Email registration for newsletter

■■

Detailed registration for webinar

■■

Request a quote

■■

Contribute to a forum

Method 2: Creating goals by data-driven hypothesis

■■

Make a purchase

You can create your Engagement Value Scale based on data from conversions on the digital goals in the Engagement Value Scale. If you are using an e-commerce system or a CRM that records sales, then you can also base your Engagement Value Scale on completed sales.

Sorting and weighting goals 1. Sort the Post-it notes so those with the highest impact on achieving the marketing objective are at the top. ■■

■■

■■

Judge the level of engagement by the amount of twoway communication and risk involved. Remember the levels of engagement: »»

Attraction

»»

Two-way communication

»»

Building trust

»»

Commitment

Transactions that show solid commitment, such as calling for an appointment, making a donation, or talking to an expert should receive higher points. Discuss the relative contribution and order until you have consensus.

2. You should have four to six levels in your Engagement Value Scale. Each level is a digital goal or category of digital goals. (See the examples at the end of this paper.) 3. Work with the team to identify the Engagement Value, a whole number, for each digital goal or category of digital goals. Write the Engagement Value point on each note in red.

Analyze digital goal, e-commerce, CRM, or sales data 1. Prior to the team workshop export marketing data that includes the conversions of each digital goal that drives the marketing objective. Include in the data a visitor identifier so you can tie digital goal data to the purchase or completion of the topmost goal. (For example, if you are a non-profit and your topmost goal is gaining volunteers, you will use this data to find the ratios of conversion for digital goals on the Engagement Value Scale to conversion of the top most digital goal. If you want your EVS to relate to a completed sale, then you will need additional sales data.) 2. If yours is a sales-related objective, then export from your e-commerce, CRM, or accounting system data showing successfully completed sales. Completed sales data must contain a customer identifier so you can relate digital goals on the EVS to completed sales. 3. Run a correlation analysis between the digital goals on your EVS and either the topmost digital goal or completed sales for each visitor.

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The correlation values will give you a relative estimate of each goal’s contribution toward achieving the marketing objective. If you assign 100 to the highest digital goal on the EVS, then you can normalize the value of the other digital goals appropriately. Selecting valid digital goals and Engagement Values One intuitive approach to whether you have set your Engagement Values correctly is to look at the ratios between Engagement Values under the same marketing objectives. For example, if a simple registration is worth 10 points and a call for a sales appointment is worth 100 points, does that mean that for approximately every 10 registrations you will get one sales appointment? Does that seem reasonable? Remember that using Engagement Values optimizes your marketing efforts using the digital goals in your Engagement Value Scale. This means that if you place Engagement Value on the wrong goals you will optimize your marketing to improve those incorrect goals. This happens most frequently when marketers set Engagement Value on page search, logins, viewing a page, or watching a generic video. Be sure to select the digital goal that represents the visitor behavior you want. For example, imagine you want to test visitors’ interest level by presenting them with an offer for a “Free Sample;” however, after clicking the button visitors

learn they must pay $4.95 for shipping and handling. You use this charge of $4.95 and their entry of a credit card number as a test of their resolution and commitment. If you put the Engagement Value points on clicking the “Free Sample” button you will receive a lot of invalid data because you are getting responses from visitors who thought they would get something free. Instead, if you put the Engagement Value at the completion of the credit card process you will get a valid response showing the number of visitors who have resolution and commitment to your product. You will face this same issue of where to put the Engagement Value points when you create a newsletter or whitepaper registration form. If you put the Engagement Value points on the sign-up page then visitors will earn value even if they bail out before completing the sign-up page. Instead put the Engagement Value points on the sign-up confirmation or thank you page so you are sure the action you want has been completed.

Implementing an Engagement Value Scale Strategizing and planning are necessary, but without execution they are worthless. You must know how to best implement your plan on using Engagement Values. The best practices you’ll read here are taken from real world experience that produced pain, insight, and now foresight.

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Entering Engagement Values After creating your Engagement Value Scale you can enter Engagement Values for digital goals by selecting the appropriate Engagement Value from the drop-down in the Create a New Goal option in the XP Marketing Control Panel. Prioritizing when you implement goals After a great brainstorming session, it’s sometimes difficult to know which ideas to implement. Normally you will already have a number of current digital goals, but you will probably identify new goals you want to add. The easiest way to decide is to divide the goals you’ve identified into two or three groups. The first group contains those goals you can implement immediately and about which there are no doubts. The second group contains goals that cannot be implemented immediately either for tactical or technical reasons. And a third group might be those goals that must be reserved for the future.

You should have a KPI for the most important digital goals and for each marketing objective. Remember, the word “key.” Not every performance indicator is a “key performance indicator.” KPIs you should monitor include: ■■ ■■

■■

Value by channel, campaign, profile, and asset New and returning Visits by channel, campaign, and profile Value per Visit by channel, campaign, and asset

Your Critical Few KPIs are what you want to constantly monitor to ensure you are driving success. There are many other performance indicators (metrics) that can be tracked in Experience Analytics, but what is important are the Critical Few KPIs you identify. The other metrics are useful for diagnostics, troubleshooting, and maintenance.

Homework for Step 5:

5. Identifying key performance indicators If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Once you enter Engagement Values for the digital goals on your EVS your system will begin tracking Values, and your Analytics Dashboard and Path Analyzer will begin displaying results. The term used to describe the measurements that are “key” to improving performance is key performance indicator (KPI).

To identify your key performance indicators, and your critical few metrics, list your strategic and marketing objectives, goals, and KPIs in the following table. Once you have them listed go through and mark the KPIs that are your critical few. You should have no more than five to seven metrics in your critical few list. Limiting the “Critical new” to five to seven helps keep everyone focused and avoids “paralysis by analysis.” (Remember the K in KPI stands for “Key.”)

The following is an example showing one strategic objective, two of its marketing objectives, and their related KPIs.

Strategic theme framework Strategic theme

Strategic objective

Marketing objective

Goals

Critical few

Target

Customer intimacy

Increase revenue

Increase sales to existing and loyal customers

Upsell conversion to existing customer

X

10% monthly increase

Visitors with prior purchase

8% monthly increase

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Considerations Engagement Values can be misinterpreted. The following considerations come from some of the most frequently asked questions. Old data or starting fresh? Unless you are starting from scratch in digital marketing you face a choice when you implement Engagement Values. Do you convert all your old data and attempt to recalculate past historical Engagement Vales or do you leave the old and start anew? Creating Engagement Values for previous digital goals is not difficult; however, correctly assigning all the EV weights to channels, campaigns, and assets as they were originally used by visitors is virtually impossible. The best practice recommendation is to not upgrade your old data to include Engagement Values. Updating an Existing Engagement Value System to New Engagement Values How often do you reevaluate your digital goals and Engagement Values? And if they change, what do you do? Best practices recommendation that you can change or modify your Engagement Value Scale and enter new values

for digital goals. (Be sure to remove old values on previous digital goals.) However, because the scale and values are new you can no longer do a direct comparison of Value and Value per Visit between old and new systems. You may be able to compare trends and relative ratios between old and new systems. Validating the Engagement Value Scale When you first create an Engagement Value Scale you are using your best estimate or analysis as to the Engagement Value numeric values. After you have used Engagement Values for a few months you should validate your estimated Engagement Value Scale. You may want to validate your initial Engagement Value Scale when you have a statistically valid sample of your traffic. To validate your estimated Engagement Value Scale you will need to do a correlation between the Engagement Values accumulated by visitors and the achievement of your marketing objectives. For many organizations these accomplishments will be stored in an ERP system or CRM as closed sales, donations, or memberships. For example, if you relate the number of conversions per digital goal to the revenue for the accounts, you could have a table like the following:

Example of an EVS validation Goal

Initial engagement Values

Conversions

Attribution to revenue

Scheduled demonstration

100

5,402

10,656,854

Request pricing

50

2,673

8,563,465

Instant sales chat

25

1,354

2,326,564

Sign up for webinar

10

8,960

6,565,432

Sign up for newsletter

5

7,895

324,652

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We can calculate “Revenue per conversion,” by dividing “Attribution to revenue by conversions,” to get the results below:

Goal

Revenue per conversion

Scheduled demo request

1,973

Request pricing

3,204

Instant sales chat

1,718

Sign up for webinar

733

Sign up for newsletter

41

We can normalize this so that the highest goal, “scheduled demo request,” is 100. To do that calculate the normalization factor for scheduled demo request as 100/1,973 (Revenue per Conversion) = 0.051. Multiplying the normalization factor, 0.051, times the “Revenue per conversion” will adjust all the goal values relative to 100 for the largest. This will give us new Engagement Values based on actual results as shown in the table below.

Goal Scheduled demo request

Revenue per conversion 1,973

New Engagement Values 100

Request pricing

3,204

162

Instant sales chat

1,718

87

Sign up for webinar

733

37

Sign up for newsletter

41

Remember, it is critical that the digital goals you chose meet your hypothesis that they drive your marketing objective. If you chose goals unrelated to the key marketing objective you can drive visitors to those digital goals, but it will not improve your marketing objective. Engagement Value is not lead scoring At first glance it might appear that Engagement Value could be used for lead scoring, the ability to identify which prospects are most likely to purchase, however, Engagement Value and lead score are different. Engagement Value is used to optimize your digital marketing. Lead scoring is used to qualify readiness to buy. Engagement Value is used to optimize for digital marketing objectives as a whole. Engagement Value is scored initially and does not aggregate over time. It does not decay with time for a visitor as a lead score should. The Engagement Value should only be used to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing in achieving your key marketing objective. Lead scoring is used to evaluate an individual prospect’s readiness and capability to buy. Although Lead Scoring might include Engagement Value, it also involves many different factors to considere including: ■■

Ability to buy

■■

Authority to buy

■■

Need to buy

■■

Stage in the buying cycle

■■

Recency of contacts

■■

Frequency of contacts

■■

Monetary or Average Order Value (AOV)

■■

Previous commitments or purchases

An accurate assessment of lead scoring requires more than just Engagement Value. In most cases since the Sitecore® Experience Database™ (xDB) stores the Engagement Value, the xDB will send Engagement Values to a CRM or other offline data source that contains these additional Lead Scoring factors. The CRM or offline data source can then calculate the Lead Score. Engagement Value is not brand equity

2

Brand equity or brand value can also be confused with Engagement Value. Just as with lead score, Engagement Value may contribute to measuring brand equity, but it is

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not a direct measure of brand equity. Engagement Value can show how engaged those people who come to your website are, but Engagement Value can’t show you what portion of market share you own, what the trends are in social media, or many other external factors. There are many components involved in measuring brand equity such as marketing awareness, market share, social media volume and trends, and so on. Measuring brand equity is a difficult, long, and often expensive process. How to handle negative engagement or disengagement If you use negative values for churn events, like unsubscribing from a newsletter, just make sure the negative value is opposite of the positive value, e.g., if the sign up for Newsletter is 5, then the unsubscribe would be -5. Assigning Engagement Values for completing a process Another behavior you may want to assign an Engagement Value to is when a visitor completes a process or sequence of actions. For example, a visitor may view an overview video, download two case studies, and calculate a price all within a one-week time frame. Assigning an Engagement Value to a completed process or sequence of events requires the assistance of a developer. Monitoring loyalty For some business models, loyalty, and visitor retention is very critical. In this case it is important to remember that Engagement Value is a measure of marketing effectiveness is achieving an objective and should not be used as a measure of loyalty or activity over time. If you want to measure activity over time—a proxy for loyalty—create a profile that increases with each specific action you want to measure. Evaluating the size of the profile value will give you an indication of the amount of activity. You may also want to use an Outcome to evaluate loyalty based on recency, frequency, and activity.

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Examples of common Engagement Value Scales This section describes frequently seen Engagement Value Scales for different types of organizations. Every organization, their objectives, and the digital goals they use are different so your Engagement Value Scale will differ from these. Common engagement points are always transactional. Engagement points that are transactional are the most valid indicators of Engagement Value. The following transaction points do not require high levels of risk or require a great deal of information exchange so their Engagement Value will be lower. The actual value you assign is up to your team. Some examples of digital goals common found in all types of organizations are:

Common digital goals ■■

Registration, partial information

■■

Registration, detailed information

■■

Forum, join

■■

Forum, participate

■■

Blog, contribution

■■

Social, like

■■

Social sharing, send to friend

■■

Rating, content/product/service

■■

Request for detailed information

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B2B Engagement Value Scale B2B businesses are businesses that engage with or sell to other businesses. A frequent model is that the vendor’s website needs to connect with multiple people from the same purchasing organization. Before a purchase occurs there usually needs to be a lot of bi-directional communication and a high level of trust built up over months. Actual conversion takes place offline, but the precursor is often an online request for quote or request for sales appointment. As you start looking for engagement points, look through the common engagement list first. Second, look through the following of B2B engagements. You might also look at some of the creative ways that other business models are engaging their visitors.

Strategic objectives

B2B digital goals ■■

Request for sales call

■■

Upgrade request for existing product/service

■■

Request for quote

■■

Extend warranty

■■

Online payment

■■

Online chat

■■

Registration for training

■■

Registration for corporate conferences

■■

Registration for giveaways, SPIFFs

■■

Registration for free trial

■■

Calculator for quotes and estimates (incremental registration)

■■

Partner lookups

Increase revenue

■■

Location finders

Increase retention

■■

Marketing objectives

■■

Download partner/affiliate application

■■

Register, product, or service brochures

■■ ■■

■■ ■■

Increase conversions

Activity level (marketing automation used to add points)

Increase awareness of products/services (organic brand search)

■■

Identify buyer persona and behavior

■■

Increase loyalty/retention

B2B Engagement Value Scale example Request demonstration

100

Request pricing

50

Instant sales chat

25

Sign up for webinar

10

Sign up for newsletter

5

Watch video

0

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

E-commerce (B2C) Engagement Value Scale Don’t put an Engagement Value on “Adding to basket” or “Adding to wish list” since this would optimize your marketing so that visitors put items in basket or wish list, but did not necessarily buy items.

B2C businesses engage with individual consumers. Often the B2C’s reputation already exists and risk has been reduced with the presence of a brick and mortar store or through personal referrals. Sales often happen with one visit and one unique visitor may make multiple smaller purchases rather than one large purchase.

Strategic objectives ■■

Increase revenue

■■

Decrease loss

B2C digital goals

Marketing objectives ■■

Increase conversions

■■

Optimize for higher share of SEO, PPC

■■

Decrease leakage in funnel

E-commerce Engagement Value Scale example Order completed, registered visitor

■■

Purchases

■■

Upsell during purchase

■■

Upgrade existing product

■■

Extend warranty

■■

Online payment

■■

Activity Level (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points)

100

■■

Fill Wish List > # Items

Order completed, unregistered visitor

50

■■

Join membership club

■■

Instant sales chat

25

Rating products or services

■■

Register, coupons, or promotions

Product and price alerts

10

■■

Online chat

Registration, newsletter

5

■■

Registration for giveaways, SPIFFs

■■

Registration for free trial

Add to basket

0

■■

■■ ■■

■■

Calculator for quotes and estimates (incremental registration) Location finders Activity level (use marketing automation sequence to add points) Register product, or service information

25

White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Non-profit Engagement Value Scale A non-profit’s primary mission is not revenue, but achieving its mission. Frequently this means that there is not as much two-way action with visitors as there is in business websites. Non-profit websites tend more toward one-way communication. But there are ways you can turn that into engagement. Anyone who is in non-profit should also check the interesting methods of engagement in the following sections on healthcare, infomedia, and government. Most non-profits have a great deal of information they want to share. They do not want that information sharing to be hindered by requiring visitors to register or engage deeply. Interaction points a non-profit might use could be viewing videos, downloading free assets, and time on site.

Non-profit goals ■■

Donation

■■

Donation, elite/sponsor Level

■■

Register, special events

■■

Download donation form

■■

Purchase through online store

■■

Send advocacy emails

■■

Join elite membership

■■

Register, membership

■■

Polls

■■

Also check the Infomedia, Healthcare, and Government examples of Engagement Value points for alternative ideas.

■■

Strategic Objectives

■■

■■

Brand recognition

■■

Increase donation

■■

View videos, 70% completion (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points) Download free assets Time on site (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points) Request local information

Marketing Objectives ■■

Increase online participation

■■

Increase loyalty and viewership

■■

Increase participation in events

Non-Profit Engagement Value Scale example Donation

100

Join elite membership

50

Volunteer work sign up

25

Send advocacy emails

10

Newsletter subscription

5

View pages or emails

0

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Information/media Engagement Value Scale The purpose of most infomedia or infotainment businesses is to capture as many eyes as possible. Creating an Engagement Value Scale for infomedia or infotainment websites is not as straightforward as it is for B2B, B2C, or even government websites. Most info websites have a limited number of opportunities for two-way communication or trust building. And most are built on a passive model hoping to attract and retain visitors. In examples taken from multiple info sites, interactions with visitors range from passively viewing content to full engagement involving volunteerism, event scheduling, alert notifications, and uploading content. The fact that it’s an info website means there are even more reasons to engage a passionate audience. In addition to the list of common transaction/interaction points for all websites, the goals list contains points that are more specific to info websites.

Strategic objectives ■■ ■■

Infomedia goals ■■

Alerts, notification of content change

■■

Alerts, % open

■■

Registration, outreach programs

■■

Registration, discounts and offers, for friends of …

■■

Registration, events & notification of real world events

■■

Volunteer, view opportunities

■■

Volunteer, contact me…

■■

Donation, monetary

■■

Upload content (Scribd.com)

■■

Join elite membership

■■

Join regular membership

■■

Locate local groups

■■

Download information

■■

■■

Recency (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points) Activity level (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points)

■■

Videos, 70% complete

Increase market share

■■

Views extended, > x minutes viewing

Increase revenue from affiliate advertising

■■

Marketing objectives ■■

■■

Increase viewership

■■

Increase revenue per banner

■■

Increase affiliate and repurposing

■■

Increase loyalty and sharing

■■

Views, active view (Media Rating Council) (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points) Views, active GRP (Media Rating Council) (use marketing automation to Add Engagement Value Points) Process engagement sequence (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points) (example, If number views > X minutes in month)

Information/Media Engagement Value Scale example Time on site > 2 minutes

100

More than 5 pages viewed

50

Banner click

25

Alert signups Share likes

10

Newsletter subscription

5

Views

0

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Healthcare Engagement Value Scale Healthcare fits somewhere at the intersections of B2C, infomedia, and non-profit. Usually, healthcare’s mission is to improve the health of a community. These organizations must be concerned with financial stewardship yet they can’t appear to be profit driven. Another special consideration is that many visitors to healthcare websites are anonymous and may want to remain so. Healthcare websites have to be ingenious in learning the profiles and personalities of website visitors.

Healthcare goals ■■

Select your doctor

■■

Completed online personal health history

■■

Completed interactive health questionnaire

■■

Online calculators (BMI, diabetes)

■■

Register, webinar

■■

Register, information assets

■■

Strategic objectives ■■

Reduce costs and increase loyalty and retention

Marketing objective ■■

Increase self-service to reduce support costs

■■

Increase awareness of hospital benefits

■■

Increase personalization for focused needs satisfaction

Time on site (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points)

■■

Register, assets

■■

View, 70% of video tours

■■

View, patient/doctor/nurse interviews

■■

Read, medical information

■■

Read, hospital quality comparisons

Healthcare Engagement Value Scale example Select personal doctor

100

Complete medical history

50

Schedule apps and chat

25

Complete interactive health questionnaire

10

Registration, detailed

5

Browse pages

0

28

White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Government Engagement Value Scale Governments have the unusual online status of needing all the best from B2B, B2C, infomedia, and non-profit. They are involved with businesses in development and taxes. They are engaged with a large number of citizens, disseminating information like an infomedia site and transacting with individuals like a B2C site. Government websites can be the most engaging of websites or they can be the most boring.

Strategic objective ■■

Reduce cost

■■

Increase usage

Government goals ■■

Pay bills online

■■

Pay taxes online

■■

Register for emergency alerts

■■

Register for citizen participation

■■

Register for online video of meetings

■■

Register for newsletters

■■

Request schedules of meetings

■■

Renew business licenses

■■

Notification of maintenance needs

■■

View videos of council meetings

■■

Read schedules of events

■■

Marketing objective ■■

Increase self-service

■■

Increase information consumption

■■

Increased governance by citizens

Time on site (use marketing automation to add Engagement Value Points)

Government Engagement Value Scale example Self service completed

100

Register and attend board and council meetings

50

View > 70% of council video

25

Task completion (view series of content)

10

Download PDF from council meetings

5

View pages

0

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White paper // Sitecore® Engagement Value best practices

Interested in learning more? Visit the SBOS Academy

About Sitecore Sitecore is the global leader in experience management software that enables context marketing. The Sitecore® Experience Platform™ manages content, supplies contextual intelligence, and automates communications, at scale. It empowers marketers to deliver content in context of how customers have engaged with their brand, across every channel, in real time. More than 4,600 customers—including American Express, Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, and L’Oréal—trust Sitecore for context marketing to deliver the personalized interactions that delight audiences, build loyalty, and drive revenue. For more information, follow us at @sitecore or visit: sitecore.net.

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