In a recent article for B2B Marketing Magazine, a UK-publication dedicated to being B2B marketing information resource, focused on coping with new EU legislation. Conrad Bennett outlines the three steps you need to take: 1. Make sure you are aware of all cookies in use on your site The legislation includes both your own cookies, which will usually be first-party, and cookies set by any third party. As the site owner, you are responsible for how the cookies are being used and whether you conform to the legislation. 2. Check that your privacy policy is up to date Ensure you make it clear what information you are collecting, as well as the purpose and the method used. Provide information on how to reject or delete cookies. Install the option to opt-out. Make your privacy policy easy to find from every page. 3. Consider how you use cookies, and all variations of cookies It should not be necessary for you to stop using cookies, but you need to carefully consider their use, and make it very clear to site visitors that you are using them. Don’t be tempted to start using other methods of tracking such as Flash Local Shared Objects as these are no different from normal cookies as far as the Directive is concerned. Visit B2BMarketing Online for the full story from Alex Blyth who investigates "Cookies have been with us since 1998 ....why is everyone is suddenly talking about them."

The world has gone digital and we are now more connected than ever. Interactivity, access and control are the consumer expectations. They are inviting you into their world—their conversations—and reward you with their priceless influence. In response the “R” in ROI has come to mean more than dollars. It’s critical to broaden how we understand “return” and understand how to track engagement. Where there is engagement and interaction, there is an opportunity to learn about the customer, about the business and about the future. Today react-ability is the new opportunity and being able to manage understand data and act on it will provide companies the unique opportunity to capitalize on these significant market dynamics and blaze trails in the category. Traditional media models are being challenged as technology alters how consumers interact with brands and those who were once partners have become competitors. Traditional channels lend themselves beautifully to predictability, but are limited by their “sales” construct of pushed-out messages. Today’s consumer has a much more sophisticated appetite for co-creating brands. The channels available for such engagements will require different controls and benchmarks. The movement from predictability to measured engagement/responsiveness leads to optimized experiences and loyalty. Changes in the way customers receive and process information via social-networking sites, mobile phones, retail, television and the Internet, combined with shrinking margins, deteriorating customer loyalty, and increased demand for marketing accountability, suggest the need for a customer-centric approach to measurement. It is no longer an “if” but rather a “when.” So, what does this mean for you?

• A company must identify a clear understanding of metrics, both traditional and those made appropriate in emerging channels. This will inform effective management, optimization and ROI analysis.
• You must understand where your target lives, works and plays. This will mean exploration of mobile, social, viral, ARG, video, event and promotional media strategies. This will give the right input to develop appropriate benchmarking on channel role and performance expectations.
• You need to develop a strong and sure testing plan that generates results quickly and drives toward reliability and predictability.
• Deploy relevant and robust technology that can be managed easily and completely, and that centralizes all pertinent data around the customer and the goal.
• Establish a team structure that can supports and drive data at every step of the process, communicating successes, insight and learning and necessary next steps.

Predictability is the quantified form of leveraging the data. Through strategic leveraging of Webtrends tools companies can drive consistent analysis of data in order to inform relevant forecasting and projections of channel role and behavior in order to drive to a place of predictability. Increase focus on predictability enables better campaign management and better interaction between high-level and low-level tactics. This is essential in generating better quality marketing communications. But it is equally as critical to value react-ability. In order to get to a place of predictability, it requires more than just optimization of efforts. Optimization without insight is like driving without a destination. Reliability of outcomes is the combination of strategy + tools + insight, surrounding clearly identified business objectives. In order to take advantage of this robust data environment, you must have deep, relevant insights and flawless technical data management. This customer-centric method is designed to identify insights, execute on those insights and optimize for the most effective delivery of messages against those insights. [This guest post is from Marc Schwartz - Global Lead, Data and Analytics at SapientNitro, a premier Webtrends Agency Partner. Marc presented on this topic along with Bob Wilcox from CA Technologies at Webtrends Engage. To see all the presentations and videos, visit our Engage media gallery ]

Yesterday our new VP of Mobile, Mike Ricci spoke at Marketing Innovation & Discovery Summit held in Austin. This event, hosted by Quantum Digital, brings together agency super stars and executives from world-recognized brands. His session was on uncovering what's fueling the mobile marketing explosion and help get attendee up to speed on some key trends and metrics that are driving adoption.

Mike provided an overview of new mobile devices, applications, and services, including: tablets, QR codes, location-based SMS, Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Shopkick, and much more. Take a look at his presentation and see how you can put some of these tools and technologies to good use in your integrated marketing campaigns. Presentations are being live-streamed and videos will be available on the Quantum Digital site after the event.

There was great dialogue at the show and online, you can see all the Twitter buzz here or with #mids11 - the conference hashtag.

Please join us in welcoming Mike to the team. If you've got questions about mobile for him or topic you'd like to see covered here - share your thoughts with us below or any of our social channels (Facebook, Twitter or in our User Forums)

Too much web development is based on aesthetics. Often, there’s also a misplaced desire to showcase the latest applications, social media technology and Web 2.0 functionality. However, these shouldn’t be the yardsticks by which a site is judged. Introducing the shiniest new thing on the web for no practical reason will have no impact beyond increasing bounce rates. If you want to make your site more sticky and ensure visitors follow calls to action, all changes should be based on data. Before optimising any site, you need insight into which pages require adjustment so you can pinpoint exactly where the highest bounce rate is occurring. There’s no point in deciding the homepage needs work just because it seems like a good place to start. It may be a well-worn adage, but it’s true here: if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Test, then test again

Any alterations made should be underpinned by extensive trials so that every button and tab helps the user complete a task – whether that’s buying beans or signing up for a newsletter. Multivariate testing breaks a page down to its core components in order to try out different combinations of how items are placed, what they look like on the page and how they’re received by real-life users. The behaviour of those users can then be tracked after exposure to variations in content, determining the strengths and weaknesses of each option. These results – combined with data on individual visitors (what time of day they logged on, the browser they were using and so on) flag up the most successful combinations. Segment-based targeting is another function that site owners should consider if they want to identify and act on specific behaviour. The IP addresses of visitors can be identified, ascertaining location so that you deliver the most relevant content. That’s something that a person’s opinion can’t compete with, so when you’re performing a test, let it run completely in order to obtain the whole picture. Resist the temptation to cut it short and fill in the gaps with guesstimates. It’s also worth thinking carefully about whether adding something – a live Twitter feed, for example – is going to ease someone’s path through your conversion funnel, or whether it’ll end up drawing people away when they see something else. Web users are flighty things and need no encouragement to find another corner of the internet to explore. If your site’s call to action is to follow a Twitter feed, by all means include one. But without any other reason backed by testing, you’re more likely to distract the user away from your website’s main goal. Every aspect of developing a great site needs to involve designing, testing and planning, and should be based upon performance analytics, not opinion. To avoid your pages becoming stagnant, the testing process should be continuously implemented. Therefore, content can regularly be refreshed and updated, helping you to ensure that there isn’t too much clutter by way of secondary calls to action, be they affiliate adverts or other areas within your site. Yes, advertising can drive revenue, but it can also push people away from what you want them to do.

Trust the numbers

Many site owners are now using cross-channel optimisation for other areas of their business, ensuring continuity in all contact with customers. For example, once someone has purchased an item, follow-up communication with them should offer products and services that complement the initial purchase. If they buy a printer, don’t send an email saying, “We saw your recent purchase and thought you might be interested in some new printers that we now have in stock.” It won’t get you another sale because they’ve just bought one. Whatever the future holds (and, let’s face it, in the ever-changing world of the web, no one can say what that is with absolute certainty), individual websites will always be unique and cannot be directly compared to one another. With that in mind, ignore opinion and let the data decide. [This was originally published 4/2 on .net magazine. Colette Wade is the Marketing Director, Webtrends EMEA and Australasia. -- Ed] For more on Webtrends Optimize, our testing, targeting and site optimization solution visit our product site or review some of our other posts on optimization. Any other topics you want to see covered here or a burning question you've got. Let us know!