Ecosystems: The Social Visit

Most of us analyze online / digital information in the context of a campaign or a visit. How can we improve email? Did remarketing drive business? Why does a tablet visitor have a low conversion rate?

Each digital interaction is part of the ecosystem you manage. You cannot see that you are managing an ecosystem when you analyze campaigns - campaigns are point-in-time activities with visit-centric ROI windows, or time-based ROI windows. Campaigns blind you to all of the magic that happens in your business!

Here's a recent analysis - the customer visited one time last month, via a social source. My job is to measure how this customer evolves/changes in the next month. Does the customer purchase? Does the customer utilize other channels. Here's a sampling of the ecosystem analysis.

• 10,000 simulated visitors, only one visit, from a social source.
• 4,015 visit again next month ... 40.2% active rate.
• 11,025 unique days visited ... nearly three days visited per active visitor.
• 5,729 days of direct-load visits.
• 285 days of visits from affiliates.
• 1,128 days of visits from remarketing.
• 2,511 days of visits from social sites.
• 326 days of visits from paid search.
• 773 days of visits from search engine optimization.
• 899 days of visits from branded content.
• 209 days of visits from triggered strategies.
• 438 days of visits from email marketing.
• 464 visitors purchased.
• $53,388 sales.
• 522 total orders.
• Each visitor last month was worth $5.34 next month.

This user looks pretty tame, to me. Reasonably low value, unlikely to use search in the future (paying a toll), unlikely to use an affiliate next month (paying a toll).

The story doesn't always look like this. In an ecosystem analysis, we frequently see visitors who migrate to many paid channels, multiple times a month, running up tolls. This customer is most likely to use direct load, not running up tolls, and therefore, is a customer we like (even if the customer has low value in the next month).

What are you seeing in your ecosystem analytics? What does the customer do next month, given what the customer did last month?