How to Measure Engagement, a podcast with Jim Sterne
It’s becoming clear to me that Web 1.0 statistics won’t work in a Web 2.0 world. Measuring “engagement” is rapidly becoming the new “black” in Web stats.
But there is no single button that gives you a clear picture of engagement. Or is there??
Engagement tends to be a much broader endeavor than marketers have had to face in the past. It reflects the need to orchestrate various media channels to capture the most precious of all commodities these days: People’s time!
After reading an article in B2B magazine entitled “How much do you really love me?” I decided to conduct an interview with the author, Jim Sterne. I asked him how to measure engagement, and some of his answers may surprise you! Enjoy …
How to Measure Engagement, a podcast with Jim Sterne
About Jim
Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. A consultant to Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs, Sterne focuses his 25 years in sales and marketing on measuring the value of the Internet as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships. Sterne has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing and customer service including, “Web Metrics; Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success.” Sterne is the producer of the annual Emetrics Summit and is the Founding President of the Web Analytics Association. He was named one of the 50 most influential people in digital marketing by Revolution, the United Kingdom’s premier interactive marketing magazine
Written by Paul Dunay
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
Jim is a great interview. I also had him on my podcast, “DishyMix,” last December.
Susan Bratton interviews Jim Sterne, Target Marketing of Santa Barbara
Hear Jim’s step-by-step process for getting the book you want to write out of your head and onto bookshelves. Get the single most important tip for being the best public speaker ever. Jim tells you why customer centricity and clearly defined goals are paramount in today’s digital world.
http://www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/index.php?action=&showId=46&year=2006
DishyMix is now at Personal Life Media and more great shows can be heard at:
http://www.personallifemedia.com/podcasts/dishy-mix/dishy-mix-show.html
Great interview. Not coincidentally, Nielsen/NetRatings just replaced their rankings based on page views with how long users actually stay at websites. To Jim’s point, online video and new technologies such as Ajax increasingly make page views less meaningful. However, time spent on each website is not a realistic or effective yardstick to measure online popularity, so this new metric is equally problematic.
Measuring engagement will certainly be more challenging moving forward, but this is all a shot in the arm for user experience (to paraphrase the Clinton-era quote, “It’s the user, stupid.”). True engagement reflects a relationship with the brand, which manifests itself in ever more nuanced and impactful ways, from user-generated content to blogging relationships. Yes, metrics are critical yardsticks, but long-term success for digital brands and Web properties will always come to those with the most engaging user experience.
While I think Jim makes some great points, I would like to expand the definition of “engagement” beyond the shopping cart, because not all of us manage ecommerce websites. For instance, on my government website, I measure the number of new subscribers to various publications; the number of new RSS subscriptions; the number of people who register for events online; and a host of other things that I know demonstrate a genuine interest on the customer’s part. Even those who download documents or click through a whole process such as our business licensing system. All of that I think demonstrates engagement. At home, I spend a lot of time on the Food Network and Epicurious websites. I search for different recipes, save them to my personal recipe box on their sites, print them, watch how-to videos, subscribe to newsletters. I couldn’t be more “engaged” in their sites. Just listening to this podcast interview on the Buzz blog is engagement, and you can measure whether I listened to the whole thing. So while I agree that filling up a shopping cart and checking out is the holy grail of engagement in the ecommerce world, I would caution us all not to think that’s the only way to measure engagement. And, it’s noteworthy to mention that it was an Emetrics Summit that helped me to get out of my own box when it comes to thinking about engagement. If you haven’t been, GO! It’s a great experience.