My previous post around email marketing in Thailand about Benchmark Email Marketing Fashion Industry Thailand revolved around the open rate providing a summarized data in line of weekly and hourly performance. It is very interesting to see some trends in terms of total email being sent against the open rate and click rate.

The graph below presents the scenario on the way total email influence click and open behavior of the email.
A very interesting insight that could be seen extracted from the graph below; both clicks and opens remains stable although the number of emails being sent are seen decreasing. It is one odd day where there were tons of clicks seen and on the similar day total unsubscribe trend is seen increasing. The trend continues in the similar pattern. And after 13 days it is seen increasing. Based on the chart below there are two action item the email marketing tea should start digging into.
1. Why the unsubscribe trend is seen increasing?
2. Type of promo served to the audience?
   

Based on the total unsubscribe trend increasing it is very important to do a quick check if there is a sudden increase in the bounce rate. The email being sent to the audience might not hit the mailbox if the headline and/or the content of the email are not balanced. The email system would consider it a spam and this could lead towards the email either being sent to spam box or it is bouncing off from the email delivery system responsible for dispatching image.

As a rule of thumb it is best approach to segment the audience mainly not seen opening the email. Segment these audience to deliver email either weekly and followed by monthly and later completely opt these audience out of the email list.

The above suggestion of segmentation would keep your email in the good books of email agent. Also, it will help you uplift the Opens and Clicks. A healthy click rate and open rate will keep you achieve better conversion.

5% most viewed LinkedIn Profiles for 2012!

The average CPC for Online advertisement in a Fashion and Clothing industry would be around $0.09 with an average CTR of 0.15%. The campaign was circulating around Shoes, Clothing, Underwear, Socks both for Men and Women.

The result of the Campaign during these 16 days saw:
CPCs and Clicks Behaviour:

• The CPC was more or less Flat except on DEC 1 when it went extremely high to be US$ 0.29. It was those high value clicks were bought with very few clicks before the Campaign was stopped.
• The clicks went extremely high during the launch approximately spending nearly US$ 3000 per day. The CPC was acceptable between 9 to 10 Cents.

CTRs - Dropped due to more spending:

• Notice CTR fell down which gives a message that fresh Ads were very interesting for the users once the campaign was launched but as period passed by it became stale and it fell around 0.12%.

 Please see below the co-relation between the CPC and CTRs along with the Impression and CTRs.
AS the impression grew the CTR fell and while the fell in CTR was being recorded it saw increase in CPC.

The strategy seems to reflect a very aggressive marketing over few days to capture enough visit to meet the KPI. In general it is better to lose the money within a short span of time and than concentrate over optimizing the effort to target on the products which could be sold and there is demand for the product in the market.


Note: The above information are meant for instructional purpose and it could vary depending on the criteria and type of Ads being served.

Online Commerce in Thailand is still crawling its baby step. Although the credit card penetration is increasing the interest of users in online sector can be outline as below: 

In my earlier post in June 2011No Traffic Segmentation is a Crime Against Analysis the emphasis of data segmentation and a short overview on the things which are needed to consider was mentioned. Segmenting the data to view the performance of the site will always yield into new discovery. Having mentioned segmentation it is always necessary to consider the Email marketing channel. The segmentation is a must and it should always be always measured against its KPI. Every vertical should have a KPI, if the vertical is not measured against the KPI there must be something wrong with the vertical itself and it is worth completely deleting the vertical.

Email marketing is one of the most profitable vertical and a it should be measured against its KPI. The KPI for email could be:

• Click Rate
• Open Rate
• Total Email Sent
• Conversion Rate

Rank	Country	Percentage
1	Norway	82%
2	Denmark	80%
3	Ireland	79%
4	Sweden	78%
5	United Kingdom	78%
6	Netherlands	76%
7	Finland	69%
8	Switzerland	69%
9	Portugal	60%
10	France	56%
11	Austria	54%
12	Germany	54%
13	Belgium	49%
14	Greece	45%
15	Italy	45%
16	Spain	44%
17	Czech Republic	42%
18	Poland	42%
19	Turkey	27%
20	Russia	26%
21	Hungary	24%

• 64% of European purchase Leisure Travel (Traveling for Leisure)
• 54% Purchase Hotels (Book Hotel Online) 
• 47% Purchase Business Travel (Traveling for Business)
• 46% Purchase Package Holiday

A General Question and Answer about SEO and SEM beginners in Thai market -

Q: How should the prioritization of Thai vs. English keywords is done, while starting Search Engine Advertisement (Google Adwords)? Thai people search in English or Thai, when they are looking for a) brands, b) buying stuff online, etc.

A: Search Engine Advertisement - People search in both languages English and Thai and also they type in Thaingish (Thai + English). Hence it is better off seperating the accounts in multiple languages:

• Account 1: Language: Thai, Location: Thailand

• Thai Keywords only, (SQR to generate related search and add Thainglish (Thai + English) in this account).
• Site Links Thai
• Text Ad - Thai

• Account 2: Language: ALL minus Thai, Location:Thailand

• English Keywords only, target Expat and the English speaking Thai community.
• Thai AdText - Thai Keywords
• Mix Keywords - Thai AdText
• English AdText- English Keywords

Q: We are willing to have a monolingual site (only Thai). How should we built all the URLs?  English or in Thai

A: My suggestion is to go in English due to following reason:

• The same word could be written in different ways with different spellings, this will land us to 404 page as visitors would come up with their own grammar and spelling. In short there is no standardization.
• Bookmark, URL, Redirect, 301 redirect and also buying the URL in Advertisement would face difficulty hence let us keep it simple targeting Thai and Expat community.

However, if the website is going to be targeted only in multiple language separate the domain –

• Thai - .co.th
• English - .com

Q: In general, is there any search behavior guideline or benchmark over the traffic and language of the browser in Thailand?

A: Please see below -
Visit Estimation - (Based on Language they use - Language of Browser):

• Language    % Visit Estimate

• English        68.58%
• Thai        30.15%
• Others        1.28%

Origin Estimation - (Based on Location they are - Origin of User):

• Language    % Visit Estimate

• Thailand    97%
• Others        3%

Based on Search Behavior -
Search Terms        Type

• Thai

• Generic Products

• English

• Branded Products   

• Thai + English

• Purchase + Research

Q: How many e-mail addresses do you think we need until it makes sense to get started with newsletters? My opinion: I expect to be conversion 0.5% max., so to generate at least 10 orders from one newsletter campaign, we should have > 2,000 subscribers.

A: Clothing and Accessories Industry -

• EM-Open Rate = Approx. 8%
• EM-Click Rate = Approx. 2.7%
• Conversion Rate = Approx. 0.42%
• To Generate 10 Orders = Total Email Subscribers - Approx: 20,000

o    Note: Depends on total products being featured and Louis Vuition would convert more if the offline price is beatable.

Conversion rate across different industry for the month of March 2012. WK#12 vs. WK#11. Overall a -14% drop in email marketing while 8% growth in the general conversion which is mainly boosted by 11% growth all seen coming from New Visitors. This looks obvious that email had recorded the drop as the new visitors seems not yet targeted via email.

The table below will give a general guideline on the conversion rate across various industry. The data can be compared with 2010 (Conversion Rate 2010) we can expect in terms of that the conversion rate has increased. The global conversion rate is 2.80% vs. 2.30% which is 21% increase compared to 2010. While on the other end the Fashion industry has seen a -22% drop 1.70% vs. 2.20%.

Overall the one more important thing displayed below is the Repeat Visitor vs. New Visitor Conversion rate. The blog Why measure Pre-Click and Post-Click? will become very handy if we are going to measure the conversion performance.

Please see below the detail conversion rate - March 2012 (Source: Fireclick Index):

• Seasonality, Economical Condition, Political Stability/Instability, Competitor Behavior, Online Ad Spend, News and Media Influence, etc.

The graph below represents the consumer purchase behavior for male and female in APAC region:
Overall in APAC region Female tends to buy more than Males. Female are more active travelers than male or let us put it another way around, Female are purchasing travel products more.

• Females buyers are 49% while 

• Male are 46%

• Others 5%

If we take a look at a breakdown we will see that:

• Females are active buyers of Travel products in the following regions:

• AU, CN, HK, IN, ID, MY, NZ, PH, and TH

• Male are active buyers of Travel products in the following regions:

•  JP, KR, SG TW, and VN

Online shopping seems gathering momentum in Thailand. The usage of internet in Thailand has grown significantly so has the mobile usage:
Internet users: 20 million – increase 27% over last year (2010 vs. 2011)

• Apple iOS (mobile devices) responsible for half of the daily mobile internet browsing sessions in Thailand. 
• The total number of internet sessions (per day) from mobile devices is broken down as follows:
• 200,000 iPhone
• 45,000 iPad
• 57,402 Nokia
• 22,000 BlackBerry

As Newtons Third Law of Motion says: "To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction". The theory always reminds me that altering traffic being sent to site would impact conversion over the site. However the only thing doesn't fit with the theory is the metric are not reacting in proportion as the quality of traffic,  seasonality and performance factors would play a very vital role.

These conversion metrics are results of traffic being received on the site. The traffic beig sent over the site should be measured and grouped as Pre Click and Post Click. This will allow us to classify the traffic if there is any cannibalization over the traffic or even conversion.

For instance, there is a massive traffic flowing from your new partner and the bounce rate is way above the average of the site. There are major impact over the traffic and overall the website as the partner is resulting into following:

• Immense amount of traffic leading towards manipulation the click share being delivered by the different channel.
• The traffic being delivered has a bounce rate way above the average bounce rate for the site in the end leading towards skewed bounce rate.
• The higher traffic flow has brought down the entire conversion rate of the site which is way below the industry standard.
• The traffic flowing is fluctuating over different categories which is leading towards unstable KPI which was set earlier.

Conversion Rate the metrics which makes every online markers thinking on how it can be improved. The basic fundamental A/B testing and various online marketing channel, design and templates are done on a yearly basis. However everyone forgets easily that we got to be present every-time consumer are searching for us.

In an online arena a Conversion Rate of 2% is considered as a minimum target but people easily forget that 98% of the people left the site. To capture these consumer who left a 360 degree marketing approach needs to be implemented.

How to approach the 360 Degree Advertising?

• Branding: Brand Advertisement is a the most essential and the first step in an advertisement. It is the first mantra of online advertisement.
• Display Advertising: Content Network Advertisement or Display Network: It is one of the second mantra of tapping untapped visitors. This will get a boost in the total visitor and it is advantageous as the CPC is less competitive.
• Social Advertisement: One of the channel which is really important to engage visitors. These visitors would help spread the word with their tweet or online sharing.
• Email Marketing: Now once all these channels are starting to drive traffic the most important task is to start reminding them via means of Email Marketing. 
• Re-Marketing: Dropping cookies and capturing these visitors via means of Readvertising i.e. Remarketing is one of the last but most important step. Those visitors who came to the website are the visitors who are interested in the product which is being offered. These visitors are potential buyers and missing to provide the product information once they are in there process of researching is like missing the potential buyer. Hence re-marketing comes into play and it will ensure that the message is delivered to the visitor.

Quality Score of a Keyword is related towards the performance of the Keyword participating in an auction and it is a real time calculation when the auction is being conducted and the keyword is eligible to participate. Quality score does is tied with the Adtext, Campaign, Account and Website Performance.

The quality score binds directly with the URL but it has other factors influencing the score.Please be mindful that the Quality score is not influenced by Google Display Network but it soley relaies on Search Network.

Tips Improving Quality Score:

• Always build the Campaign, AdGroup, Adtext and Keyword which are tightly Knitted. A thorough check is vital to be done immediately to see the Quality Score of the keyword.
• Dynamic Keyword Insertion in the Text Ads helps improve the overall Qualty Score of the Keyword.
• It is all about relevancy - Keyword should be relevant with the Adtext, AdGroup and the most important Landing Page URL and its Content.
• Initial Bid should be high enough to accrue higher CTR which would improve Quality Score and the actual CPC which is to be paid.

PPC and Organic Search are two completely different segment of traffic. The traffic which are being bought either CPC, CPA, CPM  etc. are classified in terms of PPC while those traffic which are being pouring as a result of search engine optimization or being referred via search engine are classified under organic search.

SEM professionals are always placed under a radar to a very generic question like -

• Does PPC takes away conversion from Organic Search?

• The answer to this question is:
  No, PPC does not take away conversion from Organic Search. It helps drive additional traffic to the website in the form of organic search. With the help of PPC and a significant improvement on the landing page via web-optimizer tool; an improvement could be made to the overall website.
  
  The improvement in the website and optimizing the page for the keywords is only the first step. Next step would be the SEO efforts like keyword analysis, keyword density analysis, keyword proximity analysis, link building, Social network awareness, Press release, Article publication etc. Finally, PPC activity is a must to uplift the quality of traffic. Once enough traffic is seen coming and the SEO effects comes into play the organic traffic received by the page is increased.
  
  It is seen that the PPC traffic can help us optimize the keywords which are to be targeted for SEO purpose. Not all the keywords which generates tons of clicks always convert. Hence to decide the keywords which are difficult to rank and it is worth testing the goal of the website using PPC. Once the myth is proved with the help of PPC it can next be passed to SEO team to optimize the keyword for Organic search.

It is seen that there is 6% to 8% increment in traffic while the both organic and PPC are running simultaneously. This stat might vary based on the size of the website and total traffic the site is receiving. Moreover also note seasonality and category of website would influence the the traffic numbers.  

Forrester Research revealed that by 2016 there will be 35% growth in the Ad Spend. It would become a $77 billion industry. The online industry would almost double by 2016 a massive growth of  85% from 2011 to 2016 (19% vs. 35%).

The Online Search trend is growing with a tremendous speed. Especially Mobile it is moving with a much faster speed. The AdSpend in Mobile would over take the combined AdSpend over Social Network and Email Marketing. The search trend is increasing in both Mobile, Tablets and handheld devices. The search trend is shifting in mobile with a tremendous speed. and it looks very promising as the will hit $8.2 Billion by the year 2016.

If the mobile arena is growing with a massive speed it would definetly capture the online marketing share resulting in the fall of other online marketing channel. The victim would be seen as Search. Display Advertising, Mobile Marketing and Social Media all are growing in a rapid pace. Although search would still be leader the $55 Billion AdSpend it is going to experience a massive -10% fall. (55% vs. 44%).

Another promising area which would see a growth is Dynamic Banner, this industry would be growing from $10.9 Billion industry to $27.6 Billion industry. The advertisers would enter in the competition of displaying their ads via means of Dynamic Banner. They would want to present every-time the searches are being made or someone is showing interest in the product. The stalking or  re-marketing would utilize these dynamic banner to a great extent. The blend of re-marketing and dynamic banner would be seen in a very extensive manner. The more segmentation the site would have the more granular stalking or re-marketing or re-targeting would occur. Majority of content network and even social network would start serving these dynamic banner.

Daily Deals would tend to decline as advanced technology and micro sites would start serving the deals and promo. Also, advertisers would tend to reach the consumer everytime they are online. Also, Social media would still tend to remain only $4 Billion AdSpend which is just 7%. 

Display 

AS per Google "Re-marketing is a feature of interest-based advertisement". Re-marketing in a layman terms could be explained as those visitor who visited your website are being again served with advertisement across various website. Re-marketing or call it Re-targeting it is highly targeted as the end users being targeted are not a new visitors but are visitors who once during their purchase cycle had visited the website. These users might have dropped off during their purchase cycle. Re-targeting these users will allow us to re-offer the inventory which he was interested or in other term Convert Repeat Visitors into Customers.


Having said that re-marketing is targeting the visitors who are not the new visitor but returning it is always very significant to classify these users. These users should be segmented properly. The users segmentation would be based upon the type of page and category the user was browsing. The granular the segmentation higher probability of conversion. The user could be re-targeted and thanks to re-marketing but the strategy of implementing the user categorization is vital. It is also important to consider that the visitor had left off the page because the product was not available to catch the interest a mechanism of serving those products which others were interested could lead towards conversion.

A general information on how re-marketing works:

• It is all about tracking:
• A JavaScript or Pixel Image is placed in the website. The code is activated every time the page loads. The data is transmitted via the code to the server which is responsible for offering remarketing ore re-targeting solution.
• It is all about getting to know your visitor: 
• Cookie is placed for every visitor who visits the website. The cookie has specific information at a granular level which is not only limited to the page the users visited but also the place where he dropped off.
  
• Follow visitor during his purchase cycle:
• The third party offering the solution is than capable of serving the visitor with the same product at a discounted price. Or serving alternative products with a highly targeted message as "Purchase now until the stock lasts - Last 3 items remaining".
• Providing sense of urgency and serving the item along with related product would help ease the visitor to make quick decision.
  

How can Remarketing influence Website Performance?
The answer to this question is very simple. The targeting and re-targeting visitor who are interested in your products in every step of purchase cycle could influence the visitor to purchase. There wouldn't be any company in this world who wouldn't want to appear in the search result or either in the form of MSE, PPC, CPC, CPA, CPM or even email marketing. The presence is utmost when the visitor is looking for you. It would be a crime against marketing if the presence is not marked especially when the user is looking for you or your product. Influence on the performance of the website would be seen as generally there is 2% visitor of the website converts while 98% visitors would abandon the website. To improve the performance a highly targeted campaign should be crafted to capture not only the visitor during the Pre-purchase but also Post-purchase. Based on the segmentation different kind of message is to be delivered.

Is price comparison available on Google? The search query are returning pages with the hotel properties and its review along with an arrow which would display the prices. This could also be a test being conducted over the google search pages. It might possibly being done for a better user experience. It could be the user conducting research might also be interested to purchase the properties.

Google search results for the term "hotel budapest" is displaying price for hotels for the selected date range. The query triggered the hotels with review and and price. These results are being seen only for the organic search result. A small drop down beneath if clicked would display the starting rate in US$ and the website offering the property at that price. It also displayed the rate with tax in small letters.

Price Comparison on Google Search Page - Search Query - "Hotel Budapest"
  

Price Comparison on Google Search Page - Search Query - "Hotel Bangkok"

View Through Conversion - Mostly when the campaign is running in CPM mode or if the Campaign is crafted for display advertisement, it is essential that there are two different metrics being reported. Actual conversion and View through Conversion.

Now, let us understand -  What is View Through Conversion?
Those people who are exposed via an advertisement which they actually saw during their research and purchase cycle. They might not actually click the advertisement but would later at certain period of their purchase cycle would commit their purchase via different advertisement or the same campaign. All those advertisement which they were exposed are in-fact view through conversion. And the advertisement  which they ad influence them to buy was actual conversion.

Advantage of tracking View Through Conversion -

• Justifying those advertisement which have brought traffic and played a minor role in conversion. This metrics would than help re-define the marketing campaign.
• Tracking visitor based on those people who had seen the ads and they who went forward to buy the product via different ad. These metrics wold help enhance the performance of the campaign.
• Higher click through rate doesn't actually means they are ot performing, they might be part of view through conversion (micro-conversion).

Last click attribution model has always been debated. In a natural buying cycle an end user would tend to research for the products over various networks. The user is than exposed to various campaign across Search Engines, Meta Search Engines, Content Network, Email Campaign, Re-marketing Campaign etc.

Now once the user is being exposed to various stages of product research till product purchase life cycle, he is exposed to different Campaign. The million dollar question would be Who should be credited for the Purchase made?

There are two different approach -

• Last click attribution method.
• Measure Micro Conversion.

 Usually in a natural buying cycle while research is being made often keywords search funnel could help track Keywords during buying cycle. Similar approach is to be used for tracking micro conversion. Tracking which campaign assisted in executing the conversion.

Advantage of Measuring Micro Conversion -

• Justice towards the campaign which is exposing the user during the purchase cycle. Mostly the probable consumer conducting research once exposed to the Ads would tend to return back and the probability of user returning via Brand Campaign is higher.
• Higher Click Trough Rate and Lower Conversion rate isn't an impression that Campaign is under performing.
• Not optimizing the Campaign based on the last click attribution method would lead towards increase in conversion.

How to Major effectiveness of Micro Conversion -
To measure the micro conversion a simple approach would be by measuring the impact of the traffic being send across in one particular domain via a channel should to be monitored.

For instance, several  Campaign are running across various channel like CPC, PPC, MSE, SMM etc. These should be all tracked and time stamp should be placed on the user which was first exposed to towards the campaign. Next there should also be a provision of stamping the user every-time he actually lands on the website. This will easily allow one to track the performance on the campaign which was actually responsible for the conversion. Hence the justice is given to the campaign and both micro-conversion and macro-conversion.

Practically it is ideal to attribute the campaign based on the micro-conversion and macro-conversion. A value could be assigned to the type of conversion. And based on the conversion the total value attributed by the conversion could be measured. Now, when everything looks good there is always a hurdle and this hurdle is known as View through Conversion. Let us discuss the View through Conversion and its importance in next blog.