Columbus, OH (PRWEB) February 22, 2010 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, and American Greetings will delve into the emerging science of attribution and how it can help online retailers improve conversions rates via all marketing channels at the annual eTail West conference, February 22-25, in Palm Desert.

Adam Goldberg, co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing, and Tessa Fraser, Senior Marketing Manager, Paid Search and Online Media, American Greetings Interactive, will participate in a number of roundtable and panel discussions designed to help etailers gain more knowledge in best practices in search marketing, attribution and advertising analytics.

ClearSaleing and American Greetings will be leading three roundtable discussions on Search Summit day, February 22. The focus will be etailers’ experience to date with attribution management, how they are putting it into practice and the benefits they have seen.

Attribution management is a method of determining which online ads lead a customer toward making a purchase decision, and determining the relative weight, or level of influence, of each of these ads. Attribution connects the dots between many types of ad spend – paid and organic search, email marketing, shopping engines and social media included – and the ‘purchase path’ a consumer travels before making a decision to purchase.

Ms. Fraser will also participate in two panels, exploring how American Greetings has used ClearSaleing advertising analytics to gauge the effectiveness of its ad spend, to refine messaging and landing pages, and to determine ROI down to the keyword level.

“Keeping Your Paid Search Program Growing Year After Year (Even Through A Recession)” Panel Discussion, Search Summit, February 22, 11:15 AM:
In this panel, Ms. Fraser will give insights into how American Greetings Interactive uses rapid A-B (and often C,D, and E) testing to continually improve ads, messaging, price points and landing page experience for the highest return.

Ms. Fraser will explain how ClearSaleing’s analytics platform enables rapid testing results, providing American Greetings Interactive with data on keyword conversion, high and low return keywords and the impact of non-paid search initiatives, such as display/rich media, affiliate, content and e-mail on its paid search and landing experience tests.

“American Greetings Interactive subscription and e-commerce businesses are occasion driven, including life-events, birthdays and holidays. Therefore, we’re never running a business-as-usual campaign. We’ve found rapid testing is the most effective process for growing and getting a return on paid search campaigns,” said Fraser.

Ms. Fraser will also discuss other best practices in growing paid search campaigns, including the need to forecast accurately despite uncertain times. American Greetings Interactive keeps historical data for its core / highest search keywords and monitors year-over-year and month-over-month changes to see the affect of different economic conditions, events or holidays on its campaigns. They also look at overall search activity, organic searches and paid search impressions, to evaluate if the trends are a defining shift or just a temporary blip.

“Examining the Analytical Side of Site Measurement for Increased Conversion Rates,” Track A, Analytics, Site Enhancements, General Conference, February 23, 2:45 PM:
In this panel, Ms. Fraser will explain how American Greetings Interactive uses ClearSaleing to measure the impact of its advertising dollars across all its acquisition and marketing programs, and how it integrates ClearSaleing with other practices, such as tagging different clickable links and images on landing pages. Attendees will take away practical advice on how they can use attribution to further differentiate their brand online and increase conversions.

“We use ClearSaleing analytics not only to measure campaign performance, but to also help us determine the marketing channels that have the most influence on conversion behaviors. Traditional on-site and advertising analytics tools give all the credit of a purchase to the last click. We use attribution management to give an accurate picture of true profit, which in turn gives us more confidence in our marketing spend allocation,” Fraser said.

About ClearSaleing
ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. The company also won the 2009 ‘Outstanding Product’ award from TechColumbus. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers and agencies identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

About American Greetings
American Greetings Corporation is a leading manufacturer of innovative social expression products that assist consumers in enhancing their relationships.

The company’s major greeting card brands are American Greetings, Carlton Cards, Gibson, Recycled Paper Greetings, and Papyrus, and other paper product offerings include DesignWare party goods, American Greetings and Plus Mark gift-wrap and boxed cards and Date Works calendars.

American Greetings also has the largest collection of electronic greetings on the Web, including cards available at AmericanGreetings.com through AG Interactive, Inc., the company’s online division. AG Interactive also offers digital photo sharing and personal publishing at PhotoWorks.com and Webshots.com and a one-stop source for online graphics, animations, and more at Kiwee.com.

In addition to its product lines, American Greetings also creates and licenses popular character brands through the American Greetings Properties group. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, American Greetings generates annual revenue of approximately $1.7 billion, and its products can be found in retail outlets domestically and worldwide. For more information on the Company, visit http://corporate.americangreetings.com.

Columbus, OH (PRWEB) February 22, 2010 — Clicks are great but the best clicks are those that move customers to a conversion in a reasonable timeframe. Advertisers and agencies have been looking for a means of setting time limits on clicks to see which ones truly influence a conversion. ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, heard the call, and is now providing expiration dating for clicks and impressions, the latest enhancement to its award-winning advertising analytics platform.

Marketers using ClearSaleing’s platform can determine their own timeframe and set expiration flags for each individual lead source. The window can be different for a branded search than a banner impression. For example, if a person doesn’t act after six hours of seeing a banner, that banner will get no attribution credit. However, a branded search may stay valid for six days.

“ClearSaleing has developed the industry standard for attributing proper influential weight to all ad sources along a purchase path. Adding expiration dating to clicks and impressions along the path provides advertisers with an even more precise analysis of which elements of their ad spend are contributing to profit,” said Adam Goldberg, ClearSaleing co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer.

Being able to distinguish between impressions and clicks is particularly useful for banner ads, which tend to be undervalued in typical web analytics, adds Goldberg. “Now, we can differentiate banner clicks from impressions to provide a richer analysis and can assign an expiration date to banner clicks as well as banner impressions.” ClearSaleing users also have the advantage now of a banner ad screen for an easy-to-read snapshot of these impressions and their purchase influence.

This latest enhancement to ClearSaleing’s analytics platform follows on the heels of the company being named an interactive attribution leader in Forrester Research Inc.’s report The Forrester WaveTM: Interactive Attribution, Q4 2009.

Build To Suit
Along with expiration dating, ClearSaleing is also announcing capability for customers to build their own data reports, based on their specific needs. Customers can now streamline the data to focus just on social media sources, for example, or on a specific campaign and all marketing channels.

“Customers want to be able to look at ROI by day, week or month and were seeking a ‘build to suit’ application to do this, and we delivered,” ClearSaleing President Randy Smith said. “ClearSaleing’s custom reporting enables them to focus only on the level of data they need to assess their spend.” ClearSaleing’s new feature also allows customers to export their reports to their own templates, creating efficiencies and saving them time.

About ClearSaleing
ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. The company also won the 2009 ‘Outstanding Product’ award from TechColumbus. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers and agencies identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

2009 Innovation Awards: Outstanding Product – ClearSaleing from TechColumbus on Vimeo.

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ — TechColumbus today announced winners of its annual Innovation Awards, which recognize Central Ohio leaders and companies for their outstanding achievements in technology leadership and innovation in 2009. Thirteen business leaders and two high school students were recognized at a ceremony last evening at the Columbus Convention Center. More than 1,000 people participated in the awards celebration.

“For the past 13 years, individuals, companies and technology teams have come together to nominate and celebrate the best in technology leadership and innovation in Central Ohio,” said Ted Ford, president and CEO of TechColumbus. “These awards showcase the incredible contribution that companies, both large and small, are having in our community and beyond.”

A panel of volunteer judges, made up of leaders in the field of technology and innovation, reviewed each set of nominations by category. The following are this year’s winners:

Innovation Award Winners:

Executive of the Year (Less than 50 Employees):

Alan Arman

Founder & CEO, 3X Systems

Columbus, OH 43212

Executive of the Year (More than 50 Employees):

David Blom

President & CEO, OhioHealth

Columbus, OH 43215

Green Innovation:

Estech USA, LLC

Canal Winchester, OH 43110

Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery:

Hilliard, OH 43926

Inventor of the Year:

Joseph Heremans

Ohio Eminent Scholar and Professor; Mechanical Engineering & Physics Dept. The Ohio State University

Columbus, OH 43210

Minority-Owned Business Enterprise:

Moody-Nolan, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43215

Outstanding Product (Less than 50 Employees):

ClearSaleing, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43212

Outstanding Product (More than 50 Employees):

Veeam Software

Columbus, OH 43017

Outstanding Service (Less than 50 Employees):

Exacter, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43235

Outstanding Service (More than 50 Employees):

Progressive Medical, Inc.

Westerville, OH 43082

Outstanding Start-up Business:

Exacter, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43235

Outstanding Tech Team:

Weigh in Motion Business Leader, Mettler-Toledo, Inc.

Columbus, OH 43240

Outstanding Woman in Tech:

Cheryl Herbert

President, Dublin Methodist Hospital

Dublin, OH 43016

High School Student:

Alburuj Rahman

Junior, Metro High School

Columbus, OH 43201

High School Student:

Margaret Yatsko

Senior, Columbus School for Girls

Westerville, OH 43081

About TechColumbus (www.techcolumbus.org)

TechColumbus is a nonprofit organization that focuses on technology-based economic development in the 15 counties of central Ohio. TechColumbus accomplishes this by:

• Providing professional development and technology business assistance to both large and small companies that rely on technology for business success
• Managing a 62,000 square foot technology business incubator that has been recognized as one of the best in the country
• Managing TechStart, the $22.5 million Central Ohio Entrepreneurial Signature Program, with a mission to create, finance and launch new tech companies in central Ohio
• Assisting in the development of facilities for tech companies
• Working with state and local organizations to attract new tech companies to the region

About ClearSaleing
ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers and agencies identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

Register Now

Join ClearSaleing CIO and Co-Founder, Adam Goldberg, along with VP of Biz Development, Dustin Engel, as they discuss various approaches to Attribution Management. As the need for implementing an Attribution Management solution has continued to increase, it is important to understand the various offerings available to decide which solution is the best for you.

Join us for this free webcast to learn:

The various approaches to attribution, with pros and cons for each offering:

• Ad Servers
• Web Analytics
• Consulting Groups
• Technologies
• The difference between Operational (day to day) vs. Project-based (strategic, high-level) attribution
• On the back end, what do you do with the data?
• Which solution would be best for you given your current environment need

Register Now

Attribution management is a practice that is starting to get more attention from online marketers, fueled partly by the pressures they are under to make smart decisions on online ad spending.

Attribution is a method of determining which of your online ads lead a customer toward a purchase decision, and pinpointing the level of influence of each of these ads. Traditional web analytics has been helpful in determining which sites are “sticky,” and which sites draw qualified traffic, but attribution goes a step further…  continue reading on DM news site

I found it interesting this week to read What Celebrities Make For Twittvertising, which discussed the heavy payouts celebrities receive for tweeting about various products and brands. After reading this, I couldn’t help but think about how this relates to valuing a Facebook fan, so I decided to have some fun by identifying ways to truly value these celeb tweets…

Read the entire article on the Search Engine Land Blog…

Columbus, Ohio (PRWEB) January 26, 2010 — ClearSaleing, a technology and thought leader in attribution management, announced today it has closed its Series C funding round with a $1.7 million investment from NCT Ventures Fund I, L.P., a Columbus, Ohio-based venture capital fund. The company also announced Jeff Bell, industry leader in interactive marketing, and former Microsoft executive, has agreed to join ClearSaleing’s board of directors, along with NCT Ventures Partner Bill Frank.

The announcements follow on the heels of the company being named an interactive attribution leader in Forrester Research Inc.’s report The Forrester WaveTM: Interactive Attribution, Q4 2009.

“NCT Ventures has increased its investment in ClearSaleing because we believe strongly in its attribution management technology and have watched as it is rapidly becoming the gold standard by which major advertisers manage and measure campaign success,” says Bell.

“ClearSaleing is delighted to expand its business partnership with NCT Ventures Fund I, L.P. and we are pleased that Jeff Bell is joining our board. His track record in interactive marketing is second-to-none. We look forward to working with Jeff on new product ideas and pursuing strategic relationships with top tier agencies as we continue ClearSaleing’s leadership position in advertising analytics and attribution management,” says ClearSaleing CEO Mike Lanese.

“The NCT investment closes out a $3.75 million combination debt/equity funding package that was put in place to ensure the Company could continue to make strategic investments in product development, marketing and sales,” said ClearSaleing President Randy Smith. “ClearSaleing is entering 2010 with a strong cash position, a lot of marketing momentum and a robust sales pipeline that bodes well for another strong year,” Smith added.

About Jeff Bell
For 20 years, Jeff Bell has been growing and turning around businesses in Corporate America. Most recently, as Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing for the Interactive Entertainment Business, Jeff was responsible for leading Xbox to its first profitable year, and launching the Games for Windows business.

On the creative front, Jeff’s team has produced the launch campaigns for Gears of War, Halo 3, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Scene it! and Grand Theft Auto IV, and implemented the first global and vertically integrated Xbox marketing campaign.

Before Microsoft, Jeff was largely credited with helping revitalize the Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler businesses, returning them to profitability in a significant turnaround from 2000-2006 with the Dodge Ram, Jeep 4-door Wrangler and the Chrysler 300 product launches.

Jeff’s efforts around social media, web, direct marketing and video games led to Jeff being named Interactive Marketer of the Year in 2005 by Advertising Age.

About NCT Ventures Fund I, LP.
NCT Ventures Fund I, LP is an Early Stage, Early Growth Investment Fund with a focus on Ohio-based companies. NCT invests in and develops leading-edge organizations with promising opportunities. NCT’s investment strategy focuses on technology companies with an emphasis on marketing, logistics and disruptive business models. In addition to NCT’s institutional and private investors, they are an Ohio Third Frontier grant recipient. NCT and its partners have a long history of promoting the central Ohio region, the Ohio State University and entrepreneurship in general. The NCT core management team has operated together for nearly 10 years, and offers significant operating experience to all NCT portfolio companies. For more information, please visit www.nctventures.com.

About ClearSaleing
ClearSaleing has been named “Technology Platform Search Marketers Can’t Live Without” at the SES (Search Engine Strategies) Awards. ClearSaleing’s advertising portfolio management platform helps marketers and agencies identify ways to more effectively and profitably allocate ad spend across a complex mix of online advertising investments.

ClearSaleing is a thought leader in the growing scientific field of attribution management and publishes www.AttributionManagement.com that provides a rich repository of ClearSaleing and externally published articles, white papers and other material focused exclusively on attribution management.

ClearSaleing’s unique ability to give marketers telescopic insight into their online ad investment is attracting major brand customers such as American Greetings and Nationwide Insurance. The company was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. For more information, please visit www.ClearSaleing.com.

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Read the entire article on the Search Engine Land Blog…

Background

Back in the good old days of marketing, marketers made decisions solely based on their gut feelings. They’d create their marketing and media plans, and then print out a huge spreadsheet filled with marketing launches, ad buys, and creatives for the year.  The agency and the client would gather around the conference room table and debate one approach versus another until they came to an agreement on the marketing plan for the year.   The campaigns would be launched, budgets would be depleted and next year, it happened all over again.

But there were very few ways to accurately gauge the success of a particular campaign and to correlate it to increases in sales.  The marketers’ own experience and gut feelings were about the only criteria on which marketers based their decisions, as there was no effective way of gathering credible information on who actually saw their ads and campaigns and what they did as a result.  Basically, you spent the budget, and next year, if the company was still around, the budget was renewed or maybe even increased.  And then the planning process repeated itself.

Enter Web Analytics and the Last Click Mentality

Thankfully, things changed when web analytics entered the marketing picture early in the 21^st century.  Web analytics is great for helping marketers make decisions, especially those decisions related to improving the user experience once a visitor gets to your Web site.  One way that web analytics does this is by showing you the sites that are driving traffic to your Web site, also known as the referrers.

Web analytics also does a decent job of evaluating the success of your online marketing campaigns, but the information it is able to provide in this area does have its limitations.  Because most web analytics packages were built to monitor traffic once it arrives at your web site, they do not give you the full picture of everything that happened before a visitor got to your Web site-these packages can only show you the ‘last click’ referrer.

The reality is that only a small portion of your visitors do one thing-like visit one Web site, click on one ad, or do one search on one search engine–before they get to your site and convert.  The average visitor is likely to take several steps on the way to your website.  Unfortunately, web analytics is incapable of showing you the full path your visitors took before arriving on your site.

Attribution Management Widens the Funnel

By focusing only on the last click analytics that typical web analytics programs provide, savvy marketers may inadvertently be strangling the top of the funnel.  Consider a common trend of user behavior within a conversion process.  The graphic below shows hypothetical funnel statistics for a site with a well-designed checkout process:

Step 1 – Step 2                 Less than 10% conversion (add to cart)

Step 2 – Step 3                  Greater than 70% convert from this point (begin checkout)

Step 3 – on                         Greater than 90% convert from this point

Think about this:  If you could get even a slightly higher conversion rate from Step 1 to Step 2, you could exponentially increase overall conversion rates based on the conversion rate of the subsequent steps.

By counting on last click attribution that typical web analytics packages provide, most marketers cannot justify widening the top of the funnel with general keyword ads or banner buys.  This is because last click analytics focuses on the last thing that a visitor did before he/she converted.  Generally this is either clicking on a branded search result or coming back directly to the site by typing the URL into the browser or having the site bookmarked.

But smart marketers, armed with accurate attribution knowledge, can make the case for the more general keywords and the banner buys.  They know that many people need to do research before they make even a small purchase online, and they recognize that often, this research starts off with a very general search or an exposure to a banner.  Then, as the potential customer learns more about your brand and company and gets closer to making a purchase decision, they are more likely to get back to your site via a branded search when they are ready to purchase or convert.

Attribution Data Helps You Catch them Early

When the stakes are high and competition is fierce, marketers must seek out any advantage you can find.  Accurate attribution data presents one such advantage.  By having access to visitors in their early steps in the research, marketers who use attribution data are able to widen the top of the funnel AND market to potential customers earlier in the sales cycle.