Unlike any other channel, the Internet provides a rich dataset of information about each visitor. Even a new visitor, arriving at your site for the first time, can be profiled.  Provided you have the right tools in place, you’ll know the prospect’s IP Address, geo-characteristics, traffic source, onsite activity, day and hour of visit.  If that visitor happens to be a customer, you can enrich that profile further with information like what products they own and how profitable they are.

The challenge is: What to do with all this data?

For most marketers the answer begins with business rules.  We attempt to increase visitor engagment and ultimately revenue by changing the site based one or two customer characteristics.  If the user comes from Google and has performed a search containing “trenchcoat”, we may display trenchcoat images prominently.  If they search on “winter coats”, then we may choose to display something else.  For each search, we have to define the rule and select the content to display.

The business rule approach has some limitations:

• It’s manual – The marketer has to define each business rule and associated content.  This can be resource intensive both for the marketer and for creative.
• It’s limited - Business rules leverage only part of the customer profile.  Other predictive data is missing.
• It’s not always data-driven – Business rules need to be tested to see if they are producing the desired impact.  Marketers initially have to guess at what profile characteristics are going to be most predictive.

Automated behavioral targeting with Test & Target provides a solution for marketers who want leverage the entire customer profile and deliver an automated, personalized experience.

Leverage all the data

Omniture’s Test & Target leverages all the data while automating the delivery of personalized content.  Test & Target creates a rich profile of each user and determines the optimal content for that specific user.  It’s an automated approach to creating the most engaging experience possible.

I’m leading a breakout session at Summit in March where I’ll take you through our approach to one-to-one automated behavioral targeting. I think this is one of the most exciting technologies in online marketing today.

Here are some of the topics that I’m considering:

• Why targeting is important
• What is predictive data?  What variables do we consider?
• How Test & Target automates behavioral targeting
• Best practices for automated behavioral targeting

I would love to get your feedback whether you’re attending or not.  What automated behavioral targeting topics interest you? Please let me know.  We can start our dialog here and hopefully continue it in Salt Lake in March!

Brian