Coremetrics Looks to Add Survey Data
Online marketing analytics provider Coremetrics is aiming to beef up its data-collection products with consumer satisfaction and customer service information, through an alliance with BizRate.com.
Los Angeles-based BizRate.com, which operates both a shopping comparison site and an e-commerce research business, will provide Coremetrics with data culled from online customer satisfaction surveys. The surveys appear after shoppers complete purchases on client e-commerce sites, or are delivered via e-mail after a transaction.
Coremetrics, based in Burlingame, Calif., plans to integrate that survey data into its Marketforce LIVE analytics platform, which builds cookie-based consumer profiles based on site activity and response to marketing campaigns.
From that new information, the firm will be able to offer e-commerce marketers new metrics with which to analyze their online shopping experiences, in addition to how consumer satisfaction ties into purchasing behavior, site usage, response to online marketing campaigns, all of which Coremetrics tracks.
The research then can be used to optimize marketing, site design, and customer service efforts.
“Until today, retailers were forced to make educated guesses about the impact of customer satisfaction on the bottom line,” said Coremetrics President and Chief Executive Scott Kauffman. “For the first time, our clients will be able to combine real-time customer feedback with behavioral data to understand how aggregate consumer attitude affects online revenues … [by determining] what customers are doing as well as what they are thinking.”
The companies say that no personally identifiable information is to be used, and that BizRate data is to be provided to Coremetrics on an aggregate basis only — meaning that the data analysis firm won't be able to match survey data to specific profiles.
The agreement between Coremetics and BizRate comes as marketers are seeking to better leverage their data assets, and to prove their return on investment from online efforts — especially as new worries loom about the pace of the expected U.S. economic recovery.
It's also one of the first times that data from consumer satisfaction is to be made a regular part of online site analytics and marketing optimization — though the offering isn't cheap: users must subscribe to both BizRate's online surveying and Coremetrics' site tracking and analytics services, in addition to a separate add-on for Marketforce LIVE that integrates the data.
