Often marketers are rapidly putting together rollout plans and aggressively chasing market share and customer centricity takes a back seat. But does customer centric action impact the bottomline!Do the CEO & CFO care?

Forrester’s previous research has shown a high correlation between customer experience and three key elements of loyal behavior: willingness to buy more, reluctance to switch, and likelihood to recommend.

Here is an extract from an interesting study from Forrester:

But how does Customer experience affect a company’s bottom line? To answer that question, we looked at the percentage of loyal customers within the customer bases of more than 100 companies. It turns out that customer experience leaders have an advantage of more than 14% over customer experience laggards across all three areas of loyalty. The annual revenue gains from a modest difference in customer experience can total $311 million for a large hotel. Banks and hotels garner the largest gains from their current customers, while airlines get the most from an increase in positive word of mouth. Customer experience professionals should use this information to build customized business plans.

I believe that in growth markets such as India the opportunity to embed "customer centric" processes into the fabric of the organization is very strong. This is because entire industries are being created right from "scratch"-Retail, telecom and many others.

It needs a strong CEO who drives the customer centricity agenda himself and makes it practical for the market to absorb. The CEO then must drive a technology agenda, with the CTO, which puts together the "plumbing" for crafting a great customer experience.

Join fellow Google Analytics peers in learning how to use and implement Analytics this spring in Atlanta, Georgia, April 14-15.

Wednesday, April 14th, the Introduction & User Training day is designed for the beginner in Google Analytics and is primarily for non-technical users such as marketers and analysts. It is designed to give a broad and solid introduction to the reporting features of Google Analytics. A large part of the day focuses on the reports available and how to use them. The intent is to present reports, explain what they mean and how they might be used with a site. While covering the reports, the various tools (the calendar, different chart views, tabs, etc.) are explained in context.

Thursday, April 15th, the Advanced Technical Implementation day is primarily for the technical user who installs and configures Google Analytics. Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, and cookie management is assumed.

Location: Courtyard Atlanta Vinings, 2857 Paces Ferry Road SE, Atlanta, GA 30339

Cost: $499 each day or $898 for both days (a savings of $100 for attending both days!). For attending a session you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (so you'd receive $100 in AdWords credit for attending both sessions; limit 2 per company).

Agenda: Instruction begins each day at 9am (with registration at 8:45am to get your training materials, the seat of your choice and coffee!) and goes until 5pm with a one hour break at noon for lunch on your own. Both sessions feature multiple question and answer sessions. These seminars are officially sponsored by Google, so you can trust that you are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on the best practices for Google Analytics.

See what previous attendees had to say about the in-person seminars:

"Wow - the ROI Revolution Google Analytics seminar was unfreakinbelievable. Can't wait to implement what I've learned." -- Annie Cushing


"After the seminar I feel much more confident about using other features of Google Analytics that I bypassed previously." -- Kathryn Graber

"I learned more than expected or intended. The travel, the money, the time, the fun... it was more than worthwhile!" --David Wentworth

"The seminars were professionally designed adn executed. Two of the best I have attended in years." -- D. Moore

"Seminar was worth 20x investment just in time saved on what I learned." -- Bob Johnson

"If you want to really know what's possible in Google Analytics - and how to implement it - you need this course." -- J. Withers

"Great instructors who were friendly and knowledgeable. Worth traveling from the UK." -- Adele Wiseman

"These guys clearly know what they're talking about. Google Analytics can be very pretty to look at, but extremely overwhelming and confusing. Shawn did a great job of breaking it down, showing us what we should pay attention to and simplifying it as much as possible." -- Gabe Silverman

"Google Analytics is so new to me. Prior to coming to the seminar someone else at my company dealt with GA, so I had only briefly seen and heard about it. I only attended one day (Introduction & User training) and it was great. I have to say I walked away with a gang of knowledge, and before i had the chance to ask a good 90% of my questions they were answered. If I didn't have a very basic and minimal background of computer software I might have been lost. GA has a ton of components and I realized its going to take some playing around with the program to ensure that our company is using it to the best of our capacity. GA is a new territory for me, and I'm excited about implementing it." -- Alicia Swift

Learn more about the topics covered and register for the Atlanta Google Analytics Seminars.

Cancellation Guarantee: You can register now, and even if you have to cancel, we will refund your money in full until 8 days before the event. After that, you can transfer your registration to someone else, if you need to.

I have always believed that banks can do much more with the consumer data that they have without sacrificing any consumer privacy guidelines. Imagine the power of Debit & Credit card retail spends information.

Here is an interesting initiative from Citibank called Bundle. It showcases proprietary data, sourced from Citibank's massive card-spending warehouse.

The site is based completely on spend data, showing household spending personalized to your specific location. There's also professional personal finance advice mixed with stories and comment from the community. Even the articles use the database to illustrate points.

Imagine the power of Analytics in driving this business model forward. In India it would be interesting to see a bank use its large Debit card base to build an application like this.

Have a look at this application at:
http://www.bundle.com/

Jim Bruene at Netbanker has some very good analysis on this(in his words):
If they want to attract data junkies like myself, the data needs to be more transparent and they need more robust tools to play with it. I enjoyed being able to compare the spending of my Seattle neighbors against that of my home town in Iowa (it's surprisingly similar). But I was left with a number of questions:
    * Where does the spending data come from? The FAQs are vague on saying that it comes from Citibank card data, government sources and "other third parties."
    * If its primarily Citibank card data, is it really representative of the entire town or just the people that hold Citibank cards? For example, Bundle tells me (screenshot #3),  that the average dining out expense in Seattle is $115 and the most common spot is Starbucks followed by McDonalds. Something seems wrong with that.  
    * And furthermore, are these estimates of all spending or just that on Citibank cards? And which Citi portfolios are included? What about business cards?
    Check out Jim’s comments at
http://www.netbanker.com/topics.htm

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana

Previously tucked away under the tools menu in the old AdWords user interface, the "My Change History" tool is an account manager's best friend and as such, has been moved to a more prominent place within the account under the reporting tab.

Why has this tool been granted such a prominent position in the new interface, alongside such heavy hitting account management tools as Google Analytics, Conversion Tracker and the Report Center? Well, sure it's a reporting tool like the others, but it's unique ability to track changes to your account, coupled with its performance metric graphs and visual timeline overlay make it a key weapon in any AdWords account manager's arsenal. It's placement under the Reporting tab is a testament to its usefulness.

While managing any AdWords account, it is common to make tens or even hundreds of changes to your account in one sitting in an effort to optimize traffic for better return on investment. Periodic tweaking of your account is essential to long-term growth and greater ROI. However, these changes are only beneficial to you if you can account for which ones resulted in performance improvements, and which ones didn't. In fact, it is the accountability of PPC optimization that affords us confidence in the power of split testing to boost profits.

And so, AdWords has given account managers the "My Change History" tool which records all changes made to an account for 2 years prior to a given date, then categorizes those changes for easy access.

You can see from the screen shot of the tool's controls below, the many ways by which you can filter your change history to find exactly what you're looking for.

You can specify an exact or preset date range, filter changes by campaign and ad group, and narrow the scope of change types (ad creative, budget, cpc bid, etc.) displayed in your report. If you're trying to find the exact date you rotated new ads into a given ad group over the past 3 weeks, these filters will isolate them for you in seconds. This makes it easy for any manager to analyze the performance results of the changes you have made without the fuss of digging through pages of detailed and itemized adjustments hoping to find the needle in the haystack.

What if you notice a significant change in performance, but you're not sure what caused it? Was it a bid increase, or maybe some new keywords you added? The "My Change History" tool can help you find the cause of performance fluctuations even if you don't know what you're looking for.

Let's say you noticed a significant drop off in conversions in your account and you have no idea why your ROI is in the toilet. Just fire up the "My Change History" tool, select a date range that precedes the drop in conversions, select all change types and voila.

Click on the number, and the tool will display only the changes that were made on that date, narrowing down weeks, months, or even years of records. Once you have this information, you'll be able to reverse those changes, and get your conversions headed back in the right direction.

When used methodically, you can optimize your account with precision and confidence, knowing that any changes you make can later be analyzed, isolated, and expanded or reversed based on their success or failure. AdWords' "My Change History" tool is a major asset in managing an account.

Ten months ago, Frank Eliason , whose official title is director of digital care, Comcast  came up with the idea of using Twitter to interact with customers of Comcast (CMCSA), the mammoth provider of cable TV, Internet, and phone services for whom he has worked for a year and a half.
Eliason discovered that by doing a search for the word "Comcast" (and occasionally "Comcrap"), he could find tweeters who just happened to mention service complaints he could address. In December 2008, he celebrated the handling of his 22,000th tweet.

Read more about this fascinating use of Twitter for Customer service!

While I would not recommend the use of this strategy for everyone, simply because it invites genuine and “not so genuine” customers and may in fact create a backlash for the brand if not managed correctly. In fact the controversies that Shashi Tharoor generates out of his tweeting may just be a new ploy for driving PR!
However, I do believe that this may be a great way for companies to build a personal relationship with their consumers. If done correctly it has the power of enlisting communities to participate in the creation of a customer service.

Customers look for genuine help even when they interact with companies and remember the best customer service representatives are those who bring that sense of “she is doing this for me” into their professional work!

Here is an interesting comment from Frank on his blog:
What else have we learned?  Customers, just like most Customer Service agents, are craving real time, unedited information.  If something is wrong they really want to know what it is, what is being done and when it will be back.  We are working to create that environment at Comcast.

Read more at Frank’s blog

January is a fresh start, a time for resolutions, and a time for cleaning up the mess made from the holiday season. The same should apply to your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Breathe new life into them with fresh keywords, ad text, and competitive research.

Here is a 5 step plan to give your PPC accounts a (much needed) winter makeover:

1. Read Blog Articles For New Keyword Ideas: Read your industry blogs to keep up with the latest buzz words. Reading the latest and greatest articles may help you think of new ways people will be searching for your products. Setting up a Google blog reader to follow blogs from your industry can help make this task much more time efficient.

2. Write At least 10 New Killer Ads: Take 1-2 hours and brainstorm some new ad text. Walk away from your computer, maybe talk to some clients, go to a white board. Break out from your mold of sitting at your computer and writing your ads. Switch it up! Sometimes to be creative you need to break away from the norm.

3. Study The Quality Score of Your Keywords: Check out which keywords in your account need some quality score help. Then separate those keywords out into their own ad groups and write highly specific ad text around them. Note the quality score before the change, then check the quality score in two weeks. Most likely you will see a big improvement.

4. Use SpyFu.com.: Use this tool to see what your competitors are bidding on! It's not 100% accurate, but it's a great way to come up with some new keywords and keep an eye on your competition. Simply type in your competitors' URL to the search function on this site, and a list of your competitors' paid terms is automatically generated.

5. Social Media: Stay in the loop on Facebook and other sites to see what your target market is saying and how they are talking about your products. This may help you come up with new ad text, and even make some changes to your landing page copy. Keeping your keyword, ad text, and landing pages relevant is an ongoing task. Social media sites can help you stay on the pulse of your ever changing and evolving target market.

I challenge you to make January a month of change! Think outside the box, and make some powerful changes within your accounts that will really impact your bottom line. Also, if you have any success using the 5-step plan please share!

Often times our clients want to get as much traffic as possible, yet their campaign settings are not set up appropriately to accomplish their goal and that's where we come in.

There are two different types of budget delivery standard and accelerated.

Standard Delivery: Selecting this option can potentially limit the number of times your ads show throughout the course of the day. This option designates the campaign to spend the daily budget allocated steadily throughout each day.

Accelerated Delivery: Selecting this option guarantees that your ad will show as much as possible throughout the course of each day except in the event that the budget you allocated for that campaign is depleted before day's end.

As an AdWords advertiser you must decide which of the two settings is a better fit for you and your overall account budget.

To switch between Standard Delivery and Accelerated Delivery, follow these steps:

• Start by accessing one of your campaigns.
• Then, in the new AdWords Interface you will see at the top of the screen an edit link next to Budget:

• On the following screen you will see the "Networks, devices, and extensions" section. Within this section you will see "Delivery Method" and an edit link.
• Click edit and decide which of the two best suits your needs.

Remember: to maximize coverage in your marketplace, choosing accelerated as your delivery method will position you far better to achieve this.