Internet World

I am currently reading a gem of a book, “Super Crunchers”, by Ian Ayres. It’s a book that’s not a million miles from Steve Levitt’s “Freakonomics”, but in my humble opinion makes a more cogent and compelling case for learning to live by numbers and statistics.

For a digital marketer, and indeed anyone involved in marketing, customer service or sales (anyone involved in communication with customers and prospects), Chapter 2 of this book really sets the framework for a fascinating look at the competing demands of “magic” and “logic” in making decisions about how to market, who to target and how to target them. From an Internet World standpoint, what is really very interesting is how the internet opens up so many new possibilities for optimizing a marketing message, and offers and promotions, almost in real time. There are ramifications for e-commerce specialists here as well of course in terms of website design and how this can minimize abandoned shopping carts, but, if you’re not already looking into website optimization, read this book (or just Chapter 2) and you soon will be.

We were fortunate to have a presentation from LOVEFiLM at this year’s Internet World show, where Craig Sullivan spoke about how his organization optimizes their website to maximize revenues. Craig is a client of Optimost (now part of Interwoven) – if you would like to find out about more examples of this “multivariate optimization”, make sure you join us at Internet World 09 (where Interwoven will be exhibiting), or check out this book. It’s had me thinking all weekend about how we can do things better, and new content for next year’s show. Do you have examples of organizations who have applied this methodology and achieved measurable results? If so, please share…!

On a separate note, we’ve now got power points and audio files for most of the presentations from Internet World 2008. Click here to view…