Webtrends Finds Most Companies Lack Knowledge, Expertise to Run Successful Digital Measurement Programs

Releases the first survey findings from participants who took the Webtrends Digital Marketing Maturity Model survey

Washington D.C., - October 21, 2009 – Webtrends, an enterprise customer intelligence company, today made results available from the Webtrends Digital Marketing Maturity Model (DM3), the first standardized model for determining how effectively organizations measure and utilize the data generated by their online marketing.

Over 160 companies have completed the DM3 assessment survey since its release in June 2009. Preliminary results demonstrate geographic and industry-specific strengths and weaknesses with a broad but strong awareness of the importance of digital measurement programs. Financial services companies, for example, have reported higher levels of maturity in the Ongoing Optimization category than technology companies. Companies in the United States are less mature than the United Kingdom for the categories of Data Integration and Data Visualization.

The Six Core Areas of the DM3 Framework
The model provides a framework and objective criteria for assessing and building digital marketing maturity over time in the following areas:

* Measurement Strategy
* Analytics Resources and Domain Expertise
* Data Integration and Visualization
* Data Analysis and Insight
* Adoption and Governance
* Ongoing Optimization

Within each of these core areas, there are four levels of maturity, along with profiles that describe the measurement practices common to each. A complete description of the framework is available here.

"The results from DM3 prove that organizations are strongly aware of the need for a digital measurement program and resources to maintain it, but they struggle with the tactical challenges of executing an effective program," said Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Webtrends vice president of marketing. "Using measurement tools alone is not enough to manage a successful digital measurement program. Webtrends provides companies with the right knowledge and expertise to effectively apply the data they’re collecting. These findings prove that companies are investing thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in measurement tools without fully understanding how to get the most out of them."

The broad trends and patterns proved to be compelling. More than two thirds of respondents had strong scores in Measurement Strategy and Analytics Resources, the two most fundamental pillars of a successful digital measurement program. Regarding Web Site marketing and marketing analysis, more than half of respondents received low scores and nearly three quarters scored low on Social Media Analysis. Achieving Enterprise-wide adoption of measurement and establishing governance standards also provided significant challenges, with almost three quarters of participants scoring at the low end of the maturity spectrum for Adoption and Governance. In the final pillar, Ongoing Optimization, just over half of participants received low scores in this area.

The DM3 results suggest that as measurement tools grow more sophisticated and organizations more digitally mature, the most successful vendors won’t be the ones who sell the most tools; they’ll be the ones with the most successful clients. DM3 is the first and only assessment tool that takes a multi-channel approach to measuring digital maturity, including SEM and social media. Other industry models focus exclusively on web site measurement and are limited to web analytics only.

The detailed results of the DM3 survey are available here. The original white paper is also available to learn more about the model. There is no charge to take advantage of the DM3 framework.

Source: Webtrends Inc.