Digital Marketing Optimization Smart Insights TFM

Digital Marketing Optimization
Fuelling growth by improving your digital experiences

and marketing communications
Author: Dr Dave Chaffey
Part of the Managing Digital Marketing Transformation Toolkit

Contents
Introduction.......................................................................................4
1. Understanding customer journeys.............................................8
2. Managing customer experiences..............................................12
3. Managing Digital Marketing Optimization................................15
Appendix. Methodology.................................................................19

© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides. 2
Executive summary
This research from Smart Insights and the Technology for Marketing Virtual 2020 event
explores the latest practices in how businesses manage improvements to their digital
marketing activities.
Digital Marketing Optimization (DMO) is a process to improve the effectiveness and

efficiency of key digital marketing activities that businesses must manage as part of
modern marketing.
The response from participants clearly shows the opportunity for improved digital
optimization in the businesses we surveyed, with less than one fifth using a structured,
continuous approach to optimization.
Research finding summary

Findings and recommendations are grouped in three areas aimed at improving the
commercial contribution of digital marketing for businesses.
þ 1. Understanding customer journeys: this assesses the popularity of techniques

to research customer journey effectiveness and to provide relevant content and
offers to audiences through segmentation and targeting.
Customer personas, customer journey mapping and AB testing are popular
techniques used by more than half of respondents.
þ 2. Enhancing customer experiences: we review who is responsible for managing
customer experiences and which KPIs are used to measure online customer
experiences.
Over half of businesses have no clearly defined responsibility for customer
experience suggesting no proactive approach to the process of measuring
customer experience effectiveness and putting in place methods to improve it!
þ 3. Managing digital marketing optimization: covers the maturity of optimization
and the use of a marketing technology stack to support optimization.
The majority of companies rate their digital marketing capabilities at lower levels of
1 to 2 on this scale across each part of the RACE marketing framework showing
potential to improve the effectiveness of digital marketing.

Introduction
Why research digital marketing optimization?

Online marketing used to be relatively straightforward; businesses had a website, an
email newsletter and offline channels to sale. Today, the picture is far more complex, with
the combination of touchpoints where we seek to influence consumers and businesses
stretching across paid, earned and owned media.
This visual, structured around the Smart Insights RACE planning framework, shows
some of the many options available to communicate with prospects and customers today.
Within each of these activities there are many options for optimization, yet the number of
touchpoints poses challenges for managing the optimization process.
REACH ACT CONVERT ENGAGE

BOFU - Landing page
MOFU - Landing page
Personalized
Onboarding
Personalisation
Customer
Customer
1st Class
Program
Paid media
Sales calls
Service
Loyalty
Merchandising
Customer Interactions and Value
Remarketing
Marketing Automation
Owned media
Remarketing
email programme
CRO
Personalisation
Re-engagement
Earned media
CRO
Experience
TOFU - Landing page
Livechat
Remarketing
Product page
Influencer Outreach
Content Marketing
Home page
CRO
Social Media
MQL Customer
Search PPC
Print/DM
Display
Lead Nurture
SEO
+
Engage others
in Buying Unit Lapsed
Prospect - Customer
Database contact
Demand generation Repeat Customer

and purchase intent and advocate
Time
What is Digital Marketing Optimization?

We see Digital Marketing Optimization (DMO) as a process to improve the effectiveness
and efficiency of key digital marketing activities that businesses must manage as part of
modern marketing.
Businesses that use Digital Marketing Optimization successfully have adopted a mindset
where they are committed to using a data-driven approach to improvements through use
of insight and structured testing.

Introduction
To simplify the challenge of setting up digital marketing optimization across all the
different touchpoints shown in the customer lifecycle visual, we recommend you consider
opportunities for optimization across these six pillars of digital marketing.
Planning and Goals and Conversational

Media Content Experience
Governance Measurement Messaging
• Strategic initiatives • Forecasts • Paid media • Content • Website • Email

• Marketing • Digital KPIs • Owned media marketing customer marketing
integration strategy journeys • Mobile
• Digital • Earned media (desktop
• Digital dashboards • Top-of- messaging
• Offline/online funnel and mobile)
transformation • Customer integration • Human-
(TOFU) • Landing assisted chat
• Business and profiles • Always-on pages
revenue models • Middle- • Automation
• Attribution and campaign of-funnel • Apps
• Budgets and ROI investment and CRM
(MOFU) • Structured
• Systems, • Bottom- testing
structures and of-funnel
processes (BOFU)
• Resources and
skills
• Marketing
technology
We explore these further in our free digital marketing plan template detailing the questions
you should ask to identify improvement priorities across these pillars.
In the research, we asked about use of optimization across four pillars. The response
clearly shows the opportunity for improving digital optimization in the businesses we
surveyed, with less than a fifth of businesses using a structured, continuous approach.
How often organization uses optimization for these

'always-on' or campaign activities
35%
32%
30% 29% 30%
30% 29%
25%
25% 24%
22%
22%
20% 19%
16%
15% 14%
10%
5%
0%
Digital media Digital experiences Content Outbound messaging
No / limited testing Occasional testing Continuous, structured program

Introduction
Research methodology and recommendations

The survey was completed online during June and July 2020. We surveyed 257
marketing leaders who included Smart Insights members and Technology for
Marketing and Ecommerce Expo attendees. Fuller details of the audience sample is
given in the Appendix.
We hope you find this research and recommendations useful in reviewing and
improving your online customer experiences and many thanks if you took part
in the survey!
If you have any comments or questions, do get in touch.
Dave Chaffey, Smart Insights, July 2020

Introduction
About the author

Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and content director of digital
marketing publisher and digital learning platform Smart Insights.
He is author of five bestselling books on Ecommerce including
Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice and was
recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 2004 as one
of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future
of marketing.
About Smart Insights

Smart Insights is a digital training and performance platform that supports individuals,
teams and organizations to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Actionable
learning and data-driven content covering the full customer lifecycle is provided in a
dynamic learning ecosystem to save marketers time, provide quality advice, frameworks
and templates that are proven to improve marketing processes and deliver results.
More than 150,000 Free members use our blog, sample marketing templates and
twice weekly Digital Marketing Essentials newsletter to follow best practices and keep
up-to-date with the developments that matter in digital marketing.
Thousands of Individual and Business members from over 170 countries use our premium
planning and management toolkits, templates, guides, and video courses to map, plan,
and manage their marketing using the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.
þ Individual and business membership pricing - learn more
About Technology for Marketing

We teamed up with Technology for Marketing to research and present this research
and recommendations. The Technology for Marketing Virtual 2020 event brings together
over 8,000 marketers to learn how pioneering marketing technologies can empower
their organisations. As the UK’s largest virtual event dedicated to marketing, it’s a unique
opportunity to explore the future – and see how it applies to your present.
þ Free registration - learn more

1 Understanding customer journeys
Techniques used to understand customer journeys

Given the complexity of customer journeys described in the introduction, we were
interested to learn about the most popular techniques used to understand and visualize
customer journeys. The popularity of different techniques is shown in this chart (multiple
response options were available).
Which techniques do you use to research and improve

customer journey effectiveness?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
A/B testing 56%
Customer personas 54%
Customer journey and content mapping 51%
Voice of customer surveys, e.g. Net Promoter Score 33%
Path analysis in analytics 32%
Website customer intent surveys 30%
Usability studies of digital experiences 23%
Multivariate testing 12%
Other 5%
In the remainder of this section we give an overview of these techniques with examples,
of visualization given in order of popularity from the survey.
Customer journey mapping

This technique considers typical customer journeys between different touchpoints or
channels. It is a top-level technique used to think through how customers can be informed

or incentivized to switch between channels. It’s often combined with persona analysis,
with typical journeys shows for different personas. An example for a multichannel retailer
is shown below.
Alternative techniques for evaluating customer journeys are presented in our Customer
Persona guide and template for premium members.
Path analysis in analytics

This involves reviewing customer journeys in analytics. A typical behaviour flow from
the Google Analytics demo account based on the popularity of landing pages is
shown below.

This analysis can be used to prioritize optimization of different page templates and
categories. In this example, there is a significant challenge of people leaving after their
initial interaction.
To use Google Analytics to review journeys for key pages in the customer journey we
recommend using forward and reverse path analysis.
BEST PRACTICE TIP. USE PATH ANALYSIS

Forward and reverse path analysis is really useful for enhancing site paths
that generate value, particularly for B2B or lead generation sites
Read more about forward and reverse path analysis in our 7 Steps Guide to
using Google Analytics to improve Online marketing.
Customer personas
In the research, creating personas was almost as popular as the two previous techniques.
It involves developing summaries of customer characteristics, needs and behaviours.
Model customer journeys or scenarios can then be created for different personas.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCE
Smart Insights Customer Persona Toolkit
Our toolkit has examples of how to create personas for different sectors
þ Customer Persona Toolkit
Online customer intent surveys

Customer intent surveys involve reviewing site visitor intentions and reviewing whether
their goals were achieved and the level of satisfaction. We have a blog post containing a
compilation of these tools and other feedback tools.
Offline customer survey

These are traditional customer research surveys.

Usability studies of digital experiences

According to the research usability studies are surprisingly unpopular, likely because of
the perceived or actual cost of conducting this research. However, benchmark studies
are available such as those we shared from Simple Usability which have practical tips to
improve customer experience for different page template types.
Techniques for improving online experience relevance

Relevance, Relevance, Relevance! should be the mantra for improving all online
creative from website headlines and copy to email or ad creative. Personalization
of content and promotions is a key technique in digital marketing to improve both
customer experiences and the response from online communications.
To assess the degree to which businesses are able to deliver relevance to their online
audiences. We asked which segmentation, profiling and targeting techniques are used
to deliver more relevant content and/or offers (multiple selections available).
Online targeting techniques used for personalized

content and/or offers via ads or on-site personalization?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Location (country or city)
Demographic segmentation (disclosed profile, e.g. age, gender) 51%
Behavioral segment (preference based on click or purchase) 39%
Customer value (i.e. current or future potential) 38%
Programmatic display advertising 25%
AI / Machine learning based on multiple variables 11%
Technographic segmentation (device or resolution) 7%
Other 6%
Targeting techniques used to increase communications relevance tend to vary by sector,

with transactional businesses such as retail, travel and financial services having more
behavioural profiling available. The response shows that traditional targeting based
on demographic segmentation or profiling is a common approach, closely following
location-based targeting. Over one third of businesses are taking advantage of more
specific contextual targeting based on behaviour with many also layering on targeting.
It’s good to see this figure approaching half of respondents, although it suggests that
many businesses aren’t delivering the potential for “one-to-one” experiences which
online marketing has always promised.

2 Managing customer experiences
Responsibilities and techniques for managing multichannel

customer experiences
With increasing customer choice of brands and content to interact with online, there
is an increasing need for ownership of the multichannel customer experience. But,
this clearly presents a challenge in larger businesses, since there are different people
in different teams managing different parts of the experience, particularly in larger
organizations. So, we wondered who is responsible for managing experience? Is there
a designated person who owns and manages this experience, or is it shared
collectively?
Defined person responsible for the quality of

multichannel customer experience?
20%
50%
30%
No - shared responsibility No clear responsibility Yes - single defined person
Over half of businesses have no clearly defined responsibility for customer experience
suggesting no proactive approach to the process of measuring customer experience
effectiveness and putting in place methods to improve it! There is also a similar danger
of lack of management of the experience with shared responsibility, so kudos to the
companies with a single defined person responsible for managing customer experience
such as a ‘Chief Customer Officer’, or those who co-ordinate this across multiple roles.

Measuring customer experience and communications

Measuring the effectiveness of customer experiences and how they are promoted is an
essential way to benchmark current experiences and improve them. We asked which
techniques companies use for evaluation to compare approaches (multiple selections
available).
Evaluation techniques to assess digital media and

multichannel customer experiences
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Standard campaign tracking media source codes 53%
Digital marketing dashboard 48%
Customer satisfaction surveys (evaluating the experience) 38%
Reviews and ratings of the brand website quality 30%
Net Promoter Score (including satisfaction drivers) 24%
Attribution models of media 23%
Online customer panel feedback 21%
To optimize digital communications successfully, it’s essential to identify website visitor

referral sources such as different sources of organic and paid search, social and email
visitors. It was positive to see that the most popular response to this question was use of
standard campaign tracking codes since if these are used, you gain more insight about
email and social media marketing in particular, reducing problems of untracked email
marketing or ‘dark social’.
A digital marketing dashboard was deployed by around half of respondents. This is a

key part of a data-driven approach to modern marketing where performance can be
reviewed weekly or monthly to assess month-on-month and year-on-year changes in
performance and ideally, performance against target. Without a defined dashboard and
a regular review and corrective action, you are essentially ‘flying blind’ and will be failing
to adequately respond to opportunities or inefficiencies in digital channels.
A traditional approach of assessing online customer experience through satisfaction

surveys is also a popular approach. Gaining more detailed feedback from customers is
used by nearly a quarter of businesses.

BEST PRACTICE TIP CUSTOMER PANELS

Consider gaining feedback through a customer panel
Customer panels can give more detailed feedback than online surveys, for
example through focus groups.
Use of Net Promoter Score by a quarter of respondents suggests a more rigorous

approach to reviewing customer satisfaction including review of the factors that impact it
from different channels, so we recommend this as part of customer experience strategy.
!
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION: NET PROMOTER SCORE
Consider use of NPS to review and improve satisfaction
NPS provides a clear benchmark of overall customer satisfaction with a brand,

so we recommend it, although it can sometimes neglect online and multichannel
customer experiences.
Improving experiences using Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

CRO is a structured approach to use tests to improve the effectiveness of web and
mobile experiences. In this research, we wanted to explore how many companies use
CRO, whether they use it continuously in ongoing programmes and whether they use it
in-house.

3 Managing Digital Marketing
Optimization
Assessing the digital maturity of your optimization

Whether companies are able to deliver on the potential of digital channels to contribute
value depends on whether they have the right capabilities in place across the company
for all the digital touchpoints that need to be managed.
!
KEY STRATEGY RECOMMENDATION: BENCHMARK YOUR CAPABILITIES
Score your optimization capabilities to benchmark and then analyze how
you can improve and win the case for investment
Assess your current optimization capabilities so you can then communicate a

vision of how you improve processes supported by technology. Communicate
to colleagues where you need to improve. All Smart Insights members can use
our interactive benchmarks in the member area to review their digital capabilities
across the Smart Insights RACE Planning framework.
We asked organizations to rate their digital capabilities from an initial level of 1 through to
an advanced ‘optimized’ level of 5 by referencing this capability assessment.
AIMING FOR INTEGRATED Take your digital marketing to the next level with our
capability assessment based on our RACE Planning
LIFECYCLE MARKETING framework. Use our visual checklist to audit how well your
business or clients are exploiting their digital channels to
identify and prioritise techniques to improve.
#DIGITALBENCHMARKING 5. Optimised
2. Managed
1. Initial Digital transformation
‘Always-on’ omnichannel Retention and LTV model.
marketing plan in place. implemented. Structured
Plan Pritoritised activities. Goals 90 day planning. Martech
No strategy. Unclear goals Revenue-based funnel testing and optimisation
Creating a not modelled or aligned. roadmap and structured
or prioritisation. acquisition model. programme.
strategic roadmap Martech adoption ad-hoc. evaluation.
Reach Limited ad hoc use of Search target keywords Structured approach to Programmatic. Regular Media fully optimised
Build awareness paid media. No outreach. paid, owned and earned improvements to media. based on attribution and
Drive visits SEO not proactive. Google Ads/paid media. media to agreed targets. New media review ad hoc. evaluation of new options.
InterAct No insight on personas Some hero content and Content marketing and Personalisation optimised. Multivariate testing. High
and customer journeys. CTAs for lead generation personalised journeys to Ad hoc AB testing of quality content marketing.
and content No content strategy. encourage leads/sales. site sections. Structured testing.
Convert No paid retargeting. Initial media retargeting. Re-targeting optimised Segmented lifecycle Retargeting and
Build multichannel No email welcome or Targeted newsletter. Welcome and abandon emails, personalisation & personalisation optimised
sales nurture. Simple welcome emails. emails. Personalisation. paid media retargeting . across touchpoints.
Engage Limited experience No loyalty programme Customer research Loyalty programme. NPS. Retargeting and
Customer loyalty research. Email newsletter Targeted newsletter. informs site improvement. RFM-based email and personalisation optimised.
and retention and social media. No personalisation E-mail re-engagement personalisation Machine Learning applied.
Brand Basic brand identity, Brand personality and Fully integrated brand
Building emotional but not clear on-site. Blog and social media defects researched and reputation management
connection communicated. Customer reviews. develop brand. acted on promptly. including PR.
Governance Analytics in place, not Analytics reviewed ad-hoc Dashboard reviews. Social Value-based KPIs Lifetime value KPIs.
Managing growth reviewed. No social media Regular performance governance. Minimum 90-day planning review. Structured defect
approach governance. Skills gap. reviews. Social listening. digital skills in place. Skills improvement. reduction programme.
“Improving Lifecycle “Planned Lifecycle “Managed Lifecycle “Optimised Lifecycle
“Basic Lifecycle Marketing” marketing” marketing” marketing”
marketing“

3 Managing Digital Marketing Optimization
Results show that the majority of companies rate their capabilities at lower levels of 1 to
2 on this scale across each part of RACE. Generally, businesses are more advanced for
the Engage, Brand and Governance activities.
How your organization manages digital optimization

40%
37% 37%
35%
35% 33%
31%
30%
30% 29%
27% 27% 27%
26% 26% 26%
25% 24% 24%
23%
21%
20% 19% 20%
20% 19%
16%
15% 14%
15% 14%
13%
12%
10% 10%
10%
7% 7%
7%
5% 5% 5%
5%
0%
PLAN REACH ACT CONVERT ENGAGE BRAND GOVERNANCE
1 - Initial 2 - Managed 3 - Defined 4 - Quantified 5 - Optimized
Note that in this maturity benchmark Stage 3, ‘Defined’ is a good target for getting the
foundations in place to be competitive using digital marketing optimization. Companies
who are stages 4 and 5 are making more sophisticated use of optimization, but with Level
5 only necessary for the most advanced companies.
Management of digital marketing optimization should also consider the fantastic range of
tools available to marketers today as online Software as a Service (SaaS). To highlight
the range of great marketing technology available, the infographic on the next page
recommends the categories of tools you should consider and highlights the most popular,
most capable tools.
Rather than simply categorizing tools, we have also grouped them across the Smart
Insights RACE Planning system for managing digital marketing so that you can review
where you could make better use of the tools across the customer lifecycle. We include
both tools to support marketing operations, but also optimization tools and insights
sources.

Premium members can download the full recommendations of how to select a martech
stack with recommendations on selecting tools in our Guide to Marketing Technology
selection.
With the number of marketing technologies evident in our ‘Martech wheel’ it’s apparent
that to make the most of the opportunities of digital marketing optimization, it’s worth
defining your future martech stack to support optimization.
?
MARTECH STACK
A marketing technology stack is the combination of different software services or
tools used to run all marketing operations including customer acquisition, conversion,
retention, team communications, and to deliver customer and market insight and
reporting.

In the research we asked which businesses have achieved a well defined marketing
stack. Just 15% of organizations have defined a martech stack. This is perhaps not
surprising if you look at the number of tools.
How well defined is your martech stack?
15%
43%
42%
We don't have a structured approach to selecting and integrating martech

We have significant gaps in our ideal martech stack
Our martech stack is well-defined and we review opportunities to refine it
As businesses have deployed more martech services, the need to manage and integrate
them has been highlighted. Potential, common problems include:
ý 1. No long-term plan for martech
ý 2. Insufficient rigour when evaluating martech
ý 3. Technology solutions from different vendors aren’t integrated
ý 4. Data is inconsistent
ý 5. Customer journeys can’t be tracked across channels
ý 6. New martech isn’t rolled-out with sufficient updates to training and process
ý 7. Return on marketing technology isn’t reviewed
ý 8. Service performance or availability issues.
Thank you!
We hope that you have found the results in this survey interesting and they have prompted
you to question your approach to managing and implementing online experiences.

Appendix
Methodology
Respondent profiles
The survey was completed using an online survey during June and July 2020.
We surveyed 257 Smart Insights members who identified as having senior roles and
previous attendees of Technology for Marketing, a conference based in the UK, so the
emphasis is on UK attendees.
Role and seniority

We wanted our research to be indicative of how more senior marketing leaders in
a business perceived digital marketing optimization. This is reflected in this seniority
of respondents with the majority having ‘head’ or ‘manager’ or equivalent in the job title.
Respondent role
0% 10% 20%
Head of Department 16.3%
Manager with staff 15.6%
Manager without staff 14.8%
Marketing Exec 14.4%
CEO/COO/President/Chairman 11.3%
Owner/Proprietor 10.1%
VP/Director 9.7%
Other 7.8%
Industry sector
Respondents were from a diverse range of sectors including Agencies (22%), IT and
Telecoms (9%), Retail (8%), Financial services (6%), Healthcare (5%) and Public sector
or Government (6%).


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Digital Marketing Optimization

Fuelling growth by improving your digital experiences

Author: Dr Dave Chaffey

Part of the Managing Digital Marketing Transformation Toolkit

1. Understanding customer journeys.............................................8

2. Managing customer experiences..............................................12

3. Managing Digital Marketing Optimization................................15