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Journey to Data Driven Marketing at DaveRamsey.com Advanced Analytics Yields 567% ROI

By Susan Aldrich Senior VP and Senior Consultant

A Case Study Prepared for Adobe Systems Inc. by Patricia Seybold Group

http://www.customers.com

Patricia Seybold Group © 2011 1

Journey to Data-Driven Marketing at DaveRamsey.com Advanced Analytics Yields 567% ROI

By Susan E. Aldrich, SVP and Senior Consultant

Prepared for Adobe Systems by Patricia Seybold Group

Introducing Dave Ramsey

Tens of millions of people know Dave Ramsey’s story: how his financial breakdown led him to discover the path to financial peace and share it with the world. Dave Ramsey is a world renowned author, educator, and motivational speaker with a startling and welcome message to people: with some knowledge and a lot of gumption, you can be debt-free and experience, finally, financial peace. Ramsey hosts a nationally syndicated radio show with five million listeners; until recently, he hosted “The Dave Ramsey Show” on Fox Business Network; he publishes a newspaper column that reaches 14 million subscribers; his message is delivered via a website with more than a million unique visitors per month; more than a million families have completed Financial Peace University; and millions more have connected with Dave’s advice through his books, coaching, Total Money Makeover seminars, and subscriptions.

Ramsey self-published his first book, Financial Peace, in 1992. That’s also the year he got his start in radio, with “The Money Game” talk show in Nashville. The radio show was a huge hit. In 1996, Ramsey began syndicating the show, and, within three years, there were 32 stations carrying “The Money Game.” Ramsey was soon working on his next book, More Than Enough, a New York Times bestseller; speaking at events; and teaching Financial Peace University, his 13-week seminar. In 1996, the DaveRamsey.com website was launched—primarily as a focal point for information on Dave Ramsey shows, products, and events. It served to amplify Dave Ramsey messages, and increase customer loyalty. The site quickly expanded and, by 2001, was selling books, workbooks, online learning, and events, making a modest contribution to company revenue.

The Lampo Group Incorporated, Dave Ramsey’s corporate entity, has grown rapidly from its founding in 1988. Today, its 20+ business lines across B2C and B2B reach millions of people who are seeking control of their financial lives, directly and through partners, churches, coaches, and trainers. Marketing is controlled by each business unit and spans radio, TV, direct mail, email, and both inbound and outbound calling. Bill Hampton, EVP of the Broadcast division, wore the CMO hat until summer 2010. The

Helping Millions to Financial Peace

Early Growth Fueled by Radio, Books, Then Web

Decentralized Multi-Channel B2C and B2B

Journey to Data-Driven Online Marketing at DaveRamsey.com

2 Patricia Seybold Group © 2011

Lampo Group has roughly 40 people in marketing; roughly half comprise the Internet marketing team which now reports to the new CMO, Jennifer Sievertsen.

Initially, technology choices were constrained by the ecommerce environment. When DaveRamsey.com made platform changes in 2001-2003, technology for marketing was not yet a priority. Google Analytics was brought on board for tracking, but it didn’t drive decisions. It was only much later in 2007 that the first steps were taken to create an advanced marketing platform that would enable automation, optimization, and data-driven decisions. Today, the online marketing platform is comprised of:

Adobe SiteCatalyst Adobe Test&Target Adobe Discover Adobe Search Center ExactTarget for email, integrated with Adobe SiteCatalyst

When Dave Ramsey began in 1991, the mission that drove him was to help people. Twenty years later, that mission is alive and well. The company has grown from a startup to a mid-sized business with over 300 people, all with the same goal of helping people.

Today the company has expanded its initial 1991 counseling offering to teaching people about personal finance across multiple industries and market places. You’ll find Dave’s financial teachings on the radio/TV, in high school and college classrooms, church classes, military classes, and at live events across the country. More recently, a Spanish version of Dave’s financial principles is making its way into the marketplace.

Currently, the Dave Ramsey organization is gearing up to further their EntreLeadership business and leadership teachings with the launch of Dave’s EntreLeadership book in the latter part of 2011.

Dave’s business philosophy is simple: help enough people, and you’ll never have to worry about money. The Lampo Group’s entrepreneurial culture has fed rapid growth through maximum innovation and minimum control. Each department leader is responsible for their P&L, their marketing, their business. They strive for excellence and change is a part of their culture. The Lampo Group despises the term “managers” opting instead for “leaders”. Managers manage things; leaders blaze a trail that others follow.

Online Marketing Platform Evolves

Entrepreneurial Culture



DaveRamsey.com Timeline

1996 website launched

2000 First

dedicatedweb

resource

2001 Ecommerce

launch; Urchin install

2002 Bradshaw leads

Internet team; email

marketing begins

2005 web marketing team forms

2007 SiteCatalystimplemented

2008 Test&Targetimplemented

2009 Discover

implemented

2010 ExactTargetimplemented

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Internet share of revenue visitors/day

1996 website launched

2000 First

dedicatedweb

resource

2001 Ecommerce

launch; Urchin install

2002 Bradshaw leads

Internet team; email

marketing begins

2005 web marketing team forms

2007 SiteCatalystimplemented

2008 Test&Targetimplemented

2009 Discover

implemented

2010 ExactTargetimplemented

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Internet share of revenue visitors/day

Illustration 1. DaveRamsey.com has experienced rapid growth starting in 2001, with the efforts to modernize the technologies and practices for online marketing. Adobe’s solutions have been key to sustaining growth since 2007.



Early Online Marketing: Flying in Fog

In this entrepreneurial environment, new ventures were constantly launched based on intuition and gut feel, trying out ideas. Leaders invested more resources in ventures that showed promise in delivering what customers needed, and that nurturing allowed those initiatives to flourish.

With the rapidly paced entrepreneurial environment, the business focused on taking the offline business and moving it online. Online marketing wasn’t a focus. It was more about launching the businesses. Company growth was fueled by improving existing online systems and putting in new ones. Once those systems were in place, it was easy for Dave to drive traffic and business via the radio. However, analytics weren’t a priority. They weren’t part of the culture. Gut and opinion reigned supreme. Sound familiar?

When web reports were reviewed, the company focused simply on visitors and pageviews, which was not uncommon for the day. At that time, they relied on WebTrends on the Interland hosting platform.

In 2000, the company started getting more serious about the web and what it could do for the business. Executive VP of Broadcast, Bill Hampton, attended a radio conference where he heard talks about how the Internet was going to impact radio, the business unit he lead. It was during this time that they committed to investing more in the web.

Hampton hired Kraig McNutt to lead the eBusiness initiative in November 2000 and was quickly given the opportunity to add additional team members in March 2001. This included a pivotal player: Tony Bradshaw.

McNutt’s vision was to make DaveRamsey.com a platform that would serve millions. His first steps were to install the foundational web team, take care of a backlog of web needs, and win Dave’s approval and support for a broad role for the online business. He redesigned the website in the first 100 days. Kraig expected it to be hard to win Dave’s support. What surprised him was how difficult it was to get the right skills and technology in place and get budget commitment from his peers—who had their own lists of demands. Even harder was meeting the company’s business model: starting a business without going into debt to do it.

Early Days Focused on Business Launches

Intuition Drives Decisions

Elementary Statistics, Little Insight

New Leadership

New Vision



DaveRamsey.com in 2000

Illustration 2. When Bradshaw joined as the 33rd employee, the website was centered on the radio show.

Within a few months, Kraig was tapped to head up the online subscription website which launched in October 2001 as Dave’s Club (renamed to MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com in 2003). This transition opened the door for Tony to lead the web initiatives for the rest of the company. At the time, Tony was 31 years old and relatively new to the web having dabbled with online calendar management and websites.

That work began in 1998 when Tony had become interested…no…enamored with how the web could be used to gather information from online users and share it. Dissatisfied with free script solutions, he raided his bank account to buy the most advanced tool of the day—Cold Fusion 4.0. This investment launched Tony’s journey of exploration and education, preparing him for the role he would take at DaveRamsey.com.

In August 2002, Tony took the helm and quickly added two team members, with two more joining in 2003. The Internet was becoming a major contributor to the company’s business and revenue, delivering or impacting roughly 25 percent of revenue. At that point, the web team spent most of their time in tactical execution of projects.

Bradshaw Takes the Helm



As the company’s experience with the web grew, Tony and the team began formulating more strategic initiatives. Tony began building the organization, practices, and tools the company would need to move the company forward in the Internet arena.

“The early days were very interesting. No one in the company really knew what the web was worth. Everyone was an entrepreneur. Kraig had a vision for where we could go with the web, but it was way too far out there for anyone to really grab hold of it. At the time I didn’t realize it, but I had that same entrepreneurial spirit. I was passionate about this new career I envisioned, and despite a pay cut that was painful for my family, I didn’t regret it for a second.

“Initially, we had three primary tasks: 1) move the company from Interland to a local hosting company, 2) Purchase and install Urchin for our analytics, and 3) create a signup/ecommerce system (my first) so people could register for the summer reshoot of our Financial Peace University program (which has now become the leading part of our business). I was about as green as it gets, but being where God wants you to be is a wonderful thing. Somehow, it all came together,” says Bradshaw.

In these early days, the company had two goals for the web: move the offline businesses online, and create new online businesses. With few resources and limited funding, the team’s energy was almost totally focused on supporting the offline business units.

Bradshaw’s first project for the new platform was analytics. In 2001, he replaced WebTrends with Urchin (later acquired by Google and the basis for Google Analytics) during the move from Interland to local hosting. Urchin analyses provided aggregate visit and conversion statistics, and it pinpointed the pages where people abandoned the site. But analytics had yet to take a central role. “We really didn’t focus on analytics back then. We looked at visitors and pageviews. If those went up along with revenue, we were happy,” said Bradshaw. “We didn’t dedicate resources to analytics, so we could only grab the obvious insights.”

Email marketing began with Dave’s eNewsletter in 2002. Kraig championed email marketing. He built up a mailing list from the customer database, essentially anyone who had ordered or contacted through the website. At the time, there wasn’t even an email sign-up form on the site. By 2003, the list was segmented into specific opt-in lists for a series of newsletters. The early emails were very promotional. By 2004, the email had evolved to a content-driven newsletter with a softer sell and fewer ads with several hundred thousand subscribers.

Today, there are seven newsletters offered to the general public. Dave’s eNewsletter now reaches roughly a million readers, and “Investing Minute,” “Real Estate Minute,” “EntreLeadership Advisor,” and others have more than 100,000 subscribers.

Early Goals: Get Online

Getting a Handle on the Web

Starting Email Campaigns



Emails are handled by two people in a central department. Business units are responsible for content, but the email team edits and audits each email and takes responsibility for distribution. “We track everything,” says Tim Munsell, Web Analyst. “Every link, all images, open rates, bounce rates, even some reporting on the long-term effect of email on the visitor and on web traffic.” Conversion associated with email is not tracked across the board, because not all newsletters have conversion events associated with them. Also, “It’s hard to place a value on non-monetary actions,” says Tim. “What’s the value of someone opening a newsletter for a product that has an offline sales model? Until we figure some of these things out, we can’t really report the whole story on our campaigns.”

Trends are closely watched. If the open or click-through rate for a newsletter differs significantly from the previous month, the team will dissect the newsletter to determine whether the change is seasonal, due to content, or other factors.

The release of Total Money Makeover in 2003, another of Dave’s best sellers, was a great opportunity to find out what kind of leverage email marketing could provide for the book and seminar series. This was a concrete step in the shift from the internet as a revenue channel to the internet as a strategic marketing platform. The newsletters fostered the relationship with customers, offering information and insights in addition to products for sale. As customers responded and clicked through to DaveRamsey.com, leaders began to recognize the importance of delivering a good customer experience and tracking customer actions.

It began to be clear that the intuitive approach to site design, navigation, and promotional offers was becoming an obstacle to achieving goals. But pageviews and visits weren’t actionable analysis. This unsophisticated look at customer activity couldn’t perform the tasks that were really needed: track a multitude of conversion funnels and concepts; segment visitors; observe paths visitors were taking; determine which navigation approach was easiest for visitors; assess the value of content and whether the right content was available; and track the impact of campaigns that were more complex than an email blast.

Google Analytics was free, and everyone was accustomed to its data and reports. But free isn’t no-cost. DaveRamsey.com was not completely satisfying customers and was missing revenue opportunities because it wasn’t making the most of visitor attention or web page space. Free was costing Bradshaw’s team, impacting DaveRamsey.com’s customers. Tony knew the company needed more: they needed to know the value of marketing campaigns, not just the traffic from a single email blast. The team needed to track many conversion concepts and events for each of Lampo’s products. The team’s designers needed to understand visitors’ paths through the site in order to improve the customer experience, and the marketers needed to understand those paths in order to design better campaigns and offers. Everyone needed to know what paths weren’t working for visitors, what content was ineffective or missing, and how different segments responded to the content. And the analysis everyone was looking at was pageviews and visits.

Email Team Provides Coordination

Email Campaigns Become Strategic

Growing Traffic Demands Optimization

Free Tools Constrained Success



Lacking the right information, the Internet team relied on intuition and negotiation to reach decisions. Like most companies, decisions on how to use web space at DaveRamsey.com were based on each line of business’s importance to The Lampo Group’s success. Thus, for example, the home page had a banner that cycled randomly through the top four business units, regardless of visitor, context, or campaigns. Conversion for that banner was very poor, as could be expected for a randomly generated generic offer. “We needed better targeting. We needed to measure and test, to find out what was effective for each of 28 business lines on each of the pages.” said Tony.

By 2005, the stakes were getting higher along with the pageviews and visits. Tony knew that the team needed better data and analytics to optimize his site. A major part of their future strategy was launching a new website. The company was heavily dependent on the web for leads and revenue. A mistake with the website would be costly. To prevent this, Tony planned to make a heavy investment in analytics for the new website project. He already knew from experience that having tools implemented was a small skirmish in the battle to understand what was going on: you needed to learn your tools and dedicate the resource to using them—and then commit to taking action based on the insights produced.

In 2005, as the team began laying plans for the new website, Tony began researching alternatives to Google Analytics. In early 2007, an analyst report caused him to broaden his search. He convinced Dave to send him to Adobe’s customer event, Summit, where he learned about SiteCatalyst and talked with SiteCatalyst customers. He became convinced that, although it had a notably higher price tag, SiteCatalyst was worth it.

SiteCatalyst had the scalability DaveRamsey.com needed. It had the flexibility to track the myriad events and variables required by the multiplicity of business units and product categories. SiteCatalyst is designed for customization. It allows extensive use of custom variables, events, and attributes—all of which would enable DaveRamsey.com to track the variety of conversion concepts and points in the many businesses it supported.

Automation is another feature of SiteCatalyst. It’s possible to insert offline data into SiteCatalyst and have it correlate with online data. Reports can be shared through the report menu interface, bookmarking, direct linking, or email. This means that the web analyst doesn’t have to spend time distributing reports: they are automatically available to the appropriate people as soon as they are created.

In concert with Test&Target and Discover, SiteCatalyst would provide the advanced online marketing platform the business needed. Moreover, Adobe offered 24/5 live support, monthly learning labs, consultants, industry best practices, Adobe University, and an extensive developer and partner network. This support safety net would prove valuable to the team’s effectiveness and productivity. “Getting an answer quickly and moving on is very helpful when you are getting started. When I was new, I wasn’t sure what the data was saying or what to do about it,” said Tim Munsell, Web analyst. “Adobe is always there by phone, email, chat, and even Twitter.”

Lack of Time Constrained Tools

Looking for Alternatives

SiteCatalyst Meets Requirements

Client Care a Key Consideration



First Steps in Data-Driven Marketing

SiteCatalyst Delivers New Insights within Weeks

In 2007, Bradshaw made the decision to spend money on Adobe SiteCatalyst, and a dedicated analyst to get the best results out of the Adobe product, estimating as much as 800 percent ROI. Replacing free with fee, and on-premise with SaaS, took some persuading. But SiteCatalyst quickly paid for itself—in the first year, it delivered 567 percent ROI, including training, travel, implementation, service costs, and a first month consumed mostly by setup and tuning. SiteCatalyst was to become the communication platform for what was happening online.

The implementation project was completed in less than three months: most of that time was taken with training and planning. “The planning process is really key. We spent two months planning what we would need to analyze and track. When we went live in July, we implemented 85 percent of what we had planned, but we didn’t want to wait any longer. August was spent honing and refining and completing more of our plan. Some of our plan wasn’t really necessary, such as site sections and hierarchy,” said Tim Munsell.

With SiteCatalyst in place, Tony’s early initiatives demonstrated for his peers the impact of data driven design: The team tackled user flow, forms, and the overall site navigation and design. The site had not changed in four years, new customers found navigation confusing, and conversion was hovering at three percent, much lower than Tony thought it should be.

SiteCatalyst immediately showed that significant traffic was arriving from Internet search engines looking for the Endorsed Local Provider program (ELP), The Lampo Group’s partner program. Visitors were landing in the store, which was the most prominent search engine link. ELP wasn’t represented in the store, so these visitors were frustrated. Analysis of visits and searches indicated that as much as 12 percent of traffic was ELP-bound but ending up in the store, and that about 20 percent of ELP leads were starting in the store. Conversion rates were very low for these visitors. Exiting to Google and trying again didn’t help: the ELP home page was not initially optimized for SEO. The Internet team quickly created search engine ads to link directly to the ELP pages, placed ELP content in the store so searchers could find their way out, and optimized the ELP landing page content to improve SEO.

The store, the Google ad for ELP, the entry page for the ad, each ELP program, and each piece of each ELP form all have SiteCatalyst variables assigned. In addition, SiteCatalyst events are associated with store search, beginning a form, and completing a form. With these SiteCatalyst tracking capabilities, Tim can set rules and create custom reports that help the team understand how visitor segments are responding to campaigns and site design.

The weeks of careful planning paid off. According to Tim Munsell, “We didn’t need to add anything for tracking for ELP’s home page or its forms. Everything was already in

Promise of 800% ROI

Planning Is Key

POC: Redesign for Web

SiteCatalyst Pinpoints a Problem

Planning Pays Off



place from our initial SiteCatalyst planning. I can count on one hand the things we’ve had to add because we didn’t think of it during our planning.”

DaveRamsey.com in 2010

Illustration 3. Under Bradshaw, the website has changed dramatically. Left side navigation is gone; ad split testing is heavily used; there is much more content to engage visitors; and the community’s voice is represented.



SiteCatalyst has the capability to pinpoint the geography of traffic, a feature that delivered immediate monetary benefit to DaveRamsey.com. Live events are a big business at The Lampo Group. Prior to SiteCatalyst, the only geo-intelligence came from inbound callers seeking help, a tactic that produced thousands of data points per month. With SiteCatalyst, there were hundreds of thousands of data points in a matter of days. Now, finally, the live events planning team knew where its millions of customers and potential customers were located and could schedule events in the center of all that love. This geo-location information allowed the company to better identify target markets and was key in later steps they took to leverage geo-location data to grow the business.

SiteCatalyst pathing enables marketers to study visitors’ journeys through a site and how the paths differ by segment and conversion destination. By studying pathing, Tim Munsell quickly determined that the left hand navigation on every page was a distraction rather than an aid to customers. “We could see on what pages to remove the navigation and reuse that space more effectively. We got new visibility into conversion process holes. We got a better understanding of traffic movement between sites, internal sections, even products and campaigns,” says Tim. “Long term, pathing has been valuable in optimizing sections of the site for behavioral segments that I identify through all the tracking variables on the site. Really, trying to build a set of exact paths is hopeless. We have 10,000 URLs and a million visitors: that’s too many permutations.”

Test&Target Reveals the Secrets of Optimization

Live Events was the first business unit to dive into A/B testing. Their first project was the TMM sign-up form. It seemed logical that reducing it down to one page from four would increase conversion. Using only SiteCatalyst, the team managed to test versions of the new single-page form with two billing options: monthly and annually. Traffic was randomly routed to the one-page or the four-page form. Using SiteCatalyst and assigning custom variables to different options, the team tested different form designs, ultimately achieving 20 percent higher conversion.

But this was a narrow set of tests. Optimizing the entire site and its campaigns would require more flexibility and automation. In 2008, Bradshaw added Omniture Test&Target so that the team could compare design and campaign variations and optimize to the most successful variants. The Live Events team is another big user of testing, constantly optimizing promotions for events.

When Test&Target was brought on board, live events were promoted via a rotating banner on the home page. Each visitor was presented with one of four banners on each visit to the home page. The initial hypothesis was that a promotion for an event naming your city was more compelling than a promotion for an event with 16 cities listed or with no cities listed.

Geo Intelligence Delivers New Revenue

Pathing Study Triggers Navigation Change

First Use of Testing for Optimization

Test&Target Upgrades Testing Capability

Live Events Gets Campaign Makeover



The variations were tested, and, in the first week of running promotions, Test&Target was paid for. In a span of just 60 days, DaveRamsey.com had experienced a 385 percent ROI on Test&Target, including training, implementation, and a first month spent on set up and learning. In the first 30 days using the product, Test&Target paid for itself almost four times over. Adobe Test&Target and SiteCatalyst made it possible to finally understand how to optimize site real estate in representing 28 lines of business.

GeoTargeting at DaveRamsey.com

Illustration 4. Shown on the left, the homepage for visitors from Nashville displays the Nashville Live Event banner. Visitors from cities not hosting events see the generic homepage on the right.

Test&Target: 385% ROI



Adobe Discover identifies the visitor’s geographic segment; rules in Test&Target determine whether to show an ad mentioning the visitor’s city or a generic ad. “The Discover segments showed us that live event market customers weren’t getting into the live events page. Only 10 percent of the people who saw the live event ad even noticed it,” said Tim. Based on what the testing revealed, the treatment of the rotating banner and the rules controlling offers across the site were changed. “Now we still have rotators, but they recycle every three seconds while you are on the page. Also, if you are in one of the markets, the first banner you see will be from live events—and you’ll see more messages and images through site triggered by fact you are from, say, Atlanta. If you have already purchased live events tickets, you won’t see the ads,” says Tim. “Discover and Test&Target let me see the interaction of visitors and campaigns. More importantly, they also tell me if an improvement in one area has a bad effect elsewhere. This makes business unit leaders more willing to give up their real estate to test something else—we can quickly see if you are being hurt or helped, and we stop the test.”

When three different ad designs were tested, the results showed that customers in all markets preferred one of the three ads—except those from Birmingham, who preferred a different ad. That was 2009. Testing in 2010 has revealed that tastes in Birmingham have changed, and visitors from that geo-segment no longer prefer the ad they enjoyed so much last year. The combination of SiteCatalyst, Discover, and Test&Target make it possible to keep a finger on the pulse of visitor preference.

Redesigning the Team

Bradshaw had started to build a data-driven marketing team, hardly an overnight endeavor. He needed new skills and processes in order to get the value of the company’s new technology. Many of the skills he hired; others were developed internally. The processes are devised and improved by the practitioners.

Tony was adamant that he have a dedicated web analyst. He knew from experience that the lack of that resource and skill would prevent him from getting value from his technology investment. Without a dedicated analyst, the team would be trying to make something out of pageviews and visits. Tim Munsell, who has been part of DaveRamsey.com since 2002, was his top choice. Tim used Adobe training, but he is also an avid researcher on the theory, tactics, techniques, and best practices of online data-driven marketing. Tim develops processes for testing, segmentation, analysis and reporting.

Data Driven Online Marketing Today

By 2010, the website was hosting a million visitors per month; the web staff had grown to 65 web team members, and web-based efforts are impacting well over half of revenue. The website had evolved to become a strategic marketing platform and, finally, a source of information about customers.

Geo Targeting Now Possible

Keep Testing: Preferences Change

New Skills, New Processes

Dedicated Analyst

Today: Internet Is Top Channel



Jen Sievertsen, Lampo’s CMO, has a marketing strategy that mirrors the company strategy: help as many people as possible. Her marketing plan is designed not only to help business unit leaders, but also to help customers and visitors be successful in reaching their goals. With such varied business units, she has several measures for marketing success. For example, there are conversion and revenue targets for the store, generating leads is the important factor for several business units, while growth and retention is key for the subscription-based website, MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com.

Most marketing today is online and mostly via email, Facebook, and Twitter. Email reaches millions; Facebook and Twitter not yet a million, but the interaction is continual. Offline, there is advertising via Dave’s radio shows, and TV and billboard ads in live event cities. There is no tracking of these offline campaigns, other than traffic spikes whose timing can be associated with the ads.

Dave Ramsey had 663,000 Facebook fans on September 2, 2010, a number that grows by 30,000 per week. These are intense fans. Typically no more than 10 percent of the posts are promotional, such as mentioning live events or encouraging people to sign up for a newsletter that is due for distribution. There are also more than 100,000 Twitter followers by the end of 2010, and the number is growing rapidly. The impact of Facebook and Twitter are measured by SiteCatalyst. Tim has automated the creation of bitly URLs that embed an Adobe tracking code. Any of the marketing team who are posting a shortened URL automatically get a version that has tracking.

Data-driven marketing, based on business metrics, is now entrenched. The impact of actionable data on DaveRamsey.com marketing decisions—and results—has contributed to an evolution toward data-driven decisions across the company. This evolution is being led by marketing; marketing is bringing analysis that business leaders understand and can act on. Executives now increasingly look for research and validation for decisions in other areas and ways to measure results.

Communicating Online Marketing and Results at DaveRamsey.com

Teaching

Bradshaw recognized early that communication is key to the success of data driven marketing. The business unit managers and the marketing staff need to understand DaveRamsey.com’s performance against KPIs, DaveRamsey.com’s progress against goals, and how the analytics and testing can support the goals and KPIs. It’s really a journey in understanding advanced online marketing, but the students are busy executives. The education has to fit into their daily routine, and the information has to be of compelling interest.

Marketing Strategy and Metrics

Campaigns Are Online and Offline

Social Media Is Huge

Today: Data Driven Online Marketing

Education on the Job



The earliest reports from Urchin indicated pageviews and visits, abstract but simplistic concepts: more is better. However, there is no direct line from these statistics to revenue or growth, especially for a business unit that depends on offline sales. Leaders were accustomed to, but not very interested in, pageviews and visits.

With the advent of more sophisticated analysis from SiteCatalyst, there has been a sea change. More of the business units are testing landing and home pages. “Departments that previously were complacent about their web pages and campaigns, and were refusing tests, are now asking for tests. We may need more people soon, to generate ideas and carry out the testing and analysis,” says Bradshaw.

Responding to increasing interest in understanding the data, Bradshaw has taken a four-pronged approach to the communication and teaching that are so important to the success of Lampo and DaveRamsey.com. Several of the top business unit managers have executive dashboard with their results. At staff meetings, Tony and the marketing team present key concepts in bite-sized chunks, gradually educating the management team. The Lampo Group’s web team prepares reports that summarize results and plans supporting ongoing strategies. Finally, big flat panel displays in the marketing area present current conditions, which keep the marketers informed and occasionally excite a bit of curiosity from the rest of the company.

Some departments are just starting to make use of the reporting; others are deep into using it. Of course, the entire web marketing team has a fundamental understanding of the data, and uses it. Web technical support uses the data for their reporting: in a good week, calls are down, visits are up, meaning website quality is good. Web developers spend time with the reports seeing the results of what they have built, so they can do better job of tagging and tracking next time. Many of the business unit managers and marketing staff are using SiteCatalyst reports at various levels—getting a verbal summary from staff, viewing reports themselves, or even making custom reports.

Leading

Bradshaw’s team has been the go-to source of ideas for online campaigns, website improvements, and customer experience improvements. They take their ideas to the business unit, talk through the investments and impacts, and then provide their support for the execution and analysis.

Bradshaw describes their approach as setting a strategy and establishing focus areas. Current focus areas, for example, include the Endorsed Local Provider program and the Total Money Makeover products. The online marketing team of 20 works with the business units to develop ideas on how to improve results, such as campaigns or enhancements to the site. Then the campaign or change is tested in a few variations, and the results carefully measured and analyzed.

Leaders Enthusiastic about Sophisticated Data

4-Pronged to Communicating

Widespread Use of Reporting

Ideas for Sites and Marketing



In a culture that is accustomed to Ready, Fire, Aim, data-driven decision-making is uncomfortable. It forces people to slow down—stop—and study unfamiliar numbers. Meanwhile, life is going on at Internet speed. Leading by successful example after successful example, the web team is quietly helping to work data into The Lampo Group’s strategic culture. Departments are now taking the lead in asking for tests, insight, and analysis. Dave himself has been instrumental in this shift, asking for data in advance of decisions.

Dashboards

The Lampo Group has invested heavily in the Adobe marketing suite. According to Tony, Adobe is one of The Lampo Group’s most advanced systems. With a majority of the company’s revenue tied to Internet results, leveraging and committing to the best tools is the right business decision. The management team can get an accurate and comprehensive snapshot of the business’ biggest driver, the Internet, by looking at their SiteCatalyst dashboards.

KPIs for DaveRamsey.com Online Marketing

Business Goal Key Performance Indicator Insight

Growth Revenue Per Month

Subscriptions, Renewals

Enrollment

Profitability

Are we tracking to business plan?

Productivity of Marketing Spend

Leads

Sales

How can we improve allocation of marketing resources?

Awareness Number of Unique Visitors Per Month

Are we building momentum? Can we sustain growth?

Customer Engagement

Average Number of Customer Visits Per Month

Are customers using the service component?

Are we maintaining a relationship?

Growth Conversion rate for key purchase, renewal, enrollment steps

Where are people losing interest?

Optimization Culture



KPIs for DaveRamsey.com Online Marketing

Business Goal Key Performance Indicator Insight

Click-through rates Why are people interested or not interested?

Post click-through conversion rate Where are buyers losing interest? What keeps their interest?

Productivity of Marketing Spend

Email sends, delivered, opened Where are we having difficulty getting our message noticed?

Bounce rates How might visitors misunderstand information directing them to this site? Where is the disconnect?

Awareness

Referring websites How are we being found?

Customer Engagement

Time on site Are we providing the content that our customers are interested in/looking for?

Table A. Performance indicators tracked by DaveRamsey.com online marketing; and the diagnostic metrics that provide the insights that will improve performance.

Lessons from DaveRamsey.com

Tony and Tim identify six lessons they would like to pass on to others taking this journey.

1. Have a Strategy. Without a strategy, you can’t really make decisions on what to do, or how to do it. You certainly need a strategy for your optimization.

2. Up-Front Planning Is Key. Know what you want to get out of the technology to

bring business value. Be willing to take the company places it hasn’t been yet, and commit to seeing it through. Web analytics isn’t a job for the technical staff to implement. It requires business, marketing, and technology expertise to truly harness its power.

3. Training Is Crucial. Commit to developing a team that knows the tool and has

the experience to leverage it. Invest in the team through conferences and training. Attending the Summit is a must.



4. Know What’s Important and Focus on It. Each quarter, Tony and his team identify their focus areas based on the needs of the business. Focus sets priorities, making it possible to set some things aside until next quarter, and actually finish some things this quarter.

5. Communicate Value. The executive team can’t make good decisions if they

don’t know what the marketing platform can do for them and what insights it has already revealed. The concepts, data, and math involved can intimidate people, so it’s important to keep trying different explanations and presentations. Educate early and often. As Tim pointed out, “I should have created an imperfect, generic dashboard years ago; the executives would be better educated and would want to give us the money to make the perfect dashboard now. Instead I struggled to create the perfect ones, and it delayed our progress.”

6. Have a Dedicated Analyst. Tony wouldn’t even start his SiteCatalyst project

without commitment from the top that he would have a dedicated web analyst. Without that resource in place, the sophistication of SiteCatalyst would be wasted: the team would not have the time or the knowledge to produce anything more useful than the pageviews and visits that were so inadequate to the task of optimizing the website. Tony hit the jackpot with Tim, who can’t stop looking for best practices and ways to optimize DaveRamsey.com.

Online Marketing Best Practices at DaveRamsey.com

Best Practice Area DaveRamsey.com Execution

Comprehensive Initial Planning for Long Term

Used Adobe professional services for implementation guidance; established variables and events for tracking every type of occurrence

Effective Communications Educate and involve executives in using analytics; business unit leaders participate in optimization decisions

Automation Reports are automatically distributed; set up and run experiments with minimal action

Ongoing Experimentation Never stop working on optimization; design experiments that will increase understanding of market, customers

Focus on the Right Metrics Profitability by business unit is fundamental for this debt-free company

Establish Effective Marketing Platform Adobe SiteCatalyst, Test&Target, and Discover implemented to support campaigns and experimentation

Table B. DaveRamsey.com demonstrates Patricia Seybold Group online marketing best practices in six key areas.



Benefits of Adobe’s Strategy Deepen DaveRamsey.com’s Commitment

DaveRamsey.com’s commitment to Adobe continues to deepen, not only because of Adobe’s technology and services, but also because of the Adobe community and ecosystem.

“Because we’ve hitched our wagon to a top-tier vendor, it’s advanced our mindset and thinking. We’re involved with the best of the best when we’re working with Adobe’s community: ExactTarget, Salesforce, the best companies and products are attached to Adobe,” says Tony. “The Adobe Summit is a critical tool for us, a real strategic asset in advancing our knowledge and thinking. There is no equal in the vendor community—there’s no Google Summit to go to,” Tony points out.

“You’re measured by the company you keep,” adds Tim. “It’s not just that Adobe has the best products, they have the best people to work with, both at Adobe or affiliated with them.”

About Susan E. Aldrich and Patricia Seybold Group

Customers.com® Research Service Unauthorized redistribution of this report is a violation of copyright law. © 2011 Patricia Seybold Group For Reprints/Redistribution rights, contact: [email protected]

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SUSAN E. ALDRICH is a Senior Vice President and Senior Consultant at the Patricia Seybold Group.

Aldrich is a senior analyst for the firm’s Advisory Service. As leading authority on worldwide technologies, customer requirements, practices, and governance for findability, she manages the Search, Navigation, and Discovery Research Practice. Her research focuses on customer self-service, information management and technologies and practices for monitoring, measuring, and managing the Quality of Customer ExperienceSM (QCE).

Aldrich’s experience includes commercial applications development, deployment, and implementation and operating systems development. She has provided information management, customer relationship, and distributed systems management consulting worldwide.

Patricia Seybold Group Trusted Advisors to Customer-Centric Executives

If you're a visionary customer-focused executive, the Patricia Seybold Group should be your first choice for ongoing strategic advice, business and technology guidance, customer experience best practices, and help with customer-centric initiatives.

Founded in 1978 and based in Boston, we provide consulting, research and advisory services, peer groups, and interactive workshops. We help clients to design and continuously improve their customer-focused business strategies and processes using our proven consulting methodology, Customer Scenario® Design.

The CEO and founder, Patricia Seybold, is the New York Times best-selling author of Customers.com and The Customer Revolution. Patty's latest book, Outside Innovation, is available now.

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