Data Information Knowledge Action(empowering the business decision making)

Shahid J. Butt

• The example used here is for a web site (name has been changed) that provides users the ability to search and compare various products/services like loan refinancing, auto insurance, cell phones etc.

• Upon landing on the website page and after submitting an application the customer request is matched with multiple vendors providing the services.

• The next slide shows how and where does a campaign start in order to bring a customer to the website, what are different stages that a customer goes through before committing to an action that results in revenue for the business.

A web site as a Business Case

• The organization owning the website runs various marketing campaigns to attract visitors to the site. Business would like to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns in terms of profitability.

Impression/Text Link

Click

Session

Inquiry

Lead

$Rev

AffiliatesMedia (MSN, Yahoo etc.)

Retention EmailsSearch Engine

Channel:Medium through which web traffic is driven to the website.

• Affiliates• Media• No Campaign• Retention Emails• Search Engine

Impression/Text Link: • An impression is an image that is shown to a potential customer. It could be a

pop up, ad banner etc.• A text link is simply a URL link on a site (for example an affiliate site) which re-

directs traffic to the website.

Click:• Action of clicking on an impression or a text link. This action brings the potential

customer to the website.• You may or may not have click for an impression

Session: • Once a visitor lands on the site as a result of clicking on an impression or text

link a session is started and a web log entry is created in the web logs.

Inquiry:• Application submitted by a customer. An Application contains multiple pages.• The customer information provided through the application gets fed to the

matching engine in the back end.

Lead:• A completed inquiry is run through the matching engine and a lead is generated

if a match is found. The lead results into revenue for the business.

Cost:• The amount of money paid to various publishers and affiliates for advertising

and marketing the website• Cost is calculated differently for different cost structures. Example: CPA (Cost per

application, CPC (Cost per click), CPT (Cost per thousand impressions)

Cost

Channel

• Every single action shown in the funnel on the previous slide generates variety of data starting from presenting an impression/link on a potential customer’s browser, visiting the targeted web site, and then finally taking an action to either abandoning or committing a revenue generating transaction.

• The data is stored at various locations, for example the Impressions and the clicks on those impressions are stored on the Ad-Serving agency’s (like double-click) servers. Publishers and affiliates also have their own data stores tracking different activities. The targeted web site also has it’s own data in the web logs and the databases.

Where is the data stored?

webserver1.mywebsite.com 10.1.11.233 - - [28/Jun/2012:01:54:03 -0700] "GET

/fh/refinance/refinanceWizardOnePage.jsp?sourceid=sid-3761-4914 HTTP/1.1" 200 22469 "-" "Mozilla/4.0

(compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 0 "10.1.11.233.1119948843946782"

"SERVER_COOKIE=10.1.11.233.1119948843955555; path=/; expires=Thu, 28-Jun-07 08:54:03 GMT"

• Does this data make any sense? • Can any meaningful information be

extracted out of this just by looking at these raw logs?

• I’m sure the answer will be resounding no.

• These raw logs constitute the Data stage which companies have in abundance in today’s information age.

• Having just the data alone does not provide much business benefit.

Data

Sample of a web log after a potential customer visits mywebsite.com

Web Logs

webserver1.mywebsite.com 10.1.11.233 - - [28/Jun/2012:01:54:03 -0700] "GET /fh/refinance/refinanceWizardOnePage.jsp?sourceid=sid-3761-4914 HTTP/1.1" 200 22469

"-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)" 0 "10.1.11.233.1119948843946782" "SERVER_COOKIE=10.1.11.233.1119948843955555;

path=/; expires=Thu, 28-Jun-07 08:54:03 GMT"

Target website Address

Client IP Address Date/Time Stamp of the Log

The name of the page visited ID used for

identifying a campaign.Cookie to uniquely

identify a visitor

• The logs are starting to make some sense about the data. You can understand the individual data elements but the context is still lacking. Up to this point the Information is extracted from the available data.

Data Information

Extracting the Information

• Web log is one of the data sources but there are more data sources that are required to complete the picture:

Impression/Clicks data from the ad serving agencyCost data from publishersCost data from affiliatesSearch engine cost dataOther internal data sources

Converting information to Knowledge

• Data comes in all kinds of formats:Excel FilesText FilesXML Files

Data Information Knowledge

• The data is integrated with the web logs for different marketing campaigns that result in web traffic for mywebsite.com

• The integrated result provides the Knowledge or actionable intelligence around the marketing campaigns.

Examples of knowledge gained after going through the three stages of Data, Information, and Knowledge

Data Information Knowledge

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Media 144 2.1

MSN 28 -1.3

yahoo 15 0.2

bankrate 6 -1.3

weatherbug 9 0.2

aol 7 3.0

Search Engine 32 -2.5

Google 14 4.5

Overture 12 0.5

Retention 1 -1.5

Aff liates 4 -3.1

No Campaign 26 4.3Other 1 -2.6

Total 208 2.5

Inquiries Net RevenueSessions Net Contribution

Examples continued…..

Data Information Knowledge

• This kind of knowledge would have not been possible without going through the Data, Information, and Knowledge stages.

• Now marketing managers are in a much better position to monitor each campaign from different angles and make fact based decisions in the best interest of the business.

Decision Making/Action

• Business intelligence is ineffective if no decisions or actions are taken based on the information provided.

• In the case of online marketing campaign, business might take one or more of the following actions:

Data Information Knowledge Action

• Re-negotiate costs with publishers• Abandon campaigns resulting in lost revenue• Negotiate higher prices with vendors for

products resulting in high quality leads.• Customize/Optimize campaigns for different

regions

Competing on Analytics

• Hopefully the presentation was able to provide a basic understanding of the business intelligence process and it’s power.

• Organizations who are quick to adopt and mature in the process certainly gain a competitive edge.

Data Information Knowledge Action

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetPDF.aspx%2F4AA3-9723EEW.pdfhttp://tdwi.org/pages/posters/business-intelligence-usability/download.aspxhttp://www.gartner.com/imagesrv/summits/docs/na/business-intelligence/gartners_business_analytics__219420.pdf

• More information can be found about the BI maturity models and frameworks at the following links: