What I took from ITB Berlin Day 2 is that systematic testing and analytic pays. Haven’t we mentioned that before on the odd occasion? 
Testing pay as you go mobile ticketing
It was fascinating to learn about dBahn’s – Germany’s national rail provider – development and testing of mobile ticketing. They already have electronic ticketing for book ‘before you travel’ journeys. Travellers can receive their ticket in the Form of a 2-D-Barcode via MMS (Multi Media Message). The code is scanned like an online-ticket from the telephone screen by the conductor (read more).
But dBahn are also running a highly sophisticated test of pay as you go mobile ticketing, utilising the phone as a wallet. The ticket and payment is entirely integrated into NFC enabled mobile phones (NFC is a new, short-range wireless connectivity technology – more here). Users get a monthly bill for travel as with their phone bill.
dBahn have integrated all public transportation between Hannover and Berlin and are using real paying customers to test the service. If it works then in 2011/2012 it will be rolled out across Germany. If it doesn’t – or if NFC phone adoption does not reach critical mass – they will “review strategy”, potentially walking away. Now that’s an efficient test.
Site optimization…. more than middle or side, green or blue
One of the business case examples that most impressed me was Mr & Mrs Smith, the boutique hotel specialists focussing on romantic getaways for couples. (Check out their blog and see if you can resist spending!)
Utterly focussed on their specific target market, meticulous in understanding that market and their needs, testing and analysis seems like the oxygen their business breathes.
They are using multi-variant testing and high end web analytics (Omniture) to test and retest the critical elements of their site. This is to ensure that every part of the site – from forms, to descriptors – are converting into business at the highest possible rate. This is a serious approach to online optimisation – something that I fear the industry generally can often lack the knowledge, or perhaps confidence/skills to really attempt.
Every aspect of their marketing campaign activity is measured and its performance judged carefully according to tangible conversion factors such as new membership and revenue per member. The information gleaned informs their subsequent actions and means that as a relatively small business, they can be as lean and profitable as possible.
Tamara and James, the driving force behind Mr & Mrs Smith, modestly reflected that there has been a huge amount of learning on the job, particularly in terms of developing and bringing in-house the skills they required. But I strongly believe (well I would, wouldn’t I??) that their efforts in this area demonstrate conclusively how using data intelligently can establish a business as a real market ‘player’ and have a distinct advantage in these difficult economic times.
And on the subject of measuring Twitter…
PhoCusWright at ITB was twittered with great aplomb (with the bloggers to thank for that I think). In fact, Twitter was used so heavily during the event to share comments and ask questions of the panels that the hashtag #ITB09 ranked as high as the 5th hottest Twitter topic of the day. Lots of hype for the tool of the moment.
But – are your Twitterings generating results or wasting time? Are you influencing or invisible? Well at last you can find out.
Eric Peterson has come up with a great tool – Twitalyzer – specifically for Tracking Influence and Measuring Success in Twitter. You can even combine your own exported data from Google Analytics with Twitalyzer. Twitter addicts and sceptics alike should check out the Twitalyzer blog – you’ll be able to judge whether its worth your business’ attention based on hard evidence!
So what might PhoCusWright at ITB in 2010 bring?
Well I hope it will bring a lot more tangible examples like this. Businesses using tools and technologies – not for technologies sake and not because of the hype – but to systematically improve customer experience and business profitability. Those firms that will best emerge from these challenging conditions are those who know where to cut and where to spend – and that requires data and smart analysis.
Posted by Vicky
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under Conference learnings, Data, Research tools, Social media measurement, Web analytics and web measurement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.