The Clickthinking Blog | Scent Optimisation

It’s with great excitement that I write this, my first blog article for Scent Optimisation, to introduce Performance Email as part of our Conversion offering at Clickthinking. A dedicated focus on one of the most powerful digital marketing channels, Email Marketing, brings Clickthinking’s Global Service Offering to new heights and is sure to enable our Clients to continue the on-going digital journey with all of their valued customers.

Let’s be honest, Email Marketing isn’t new. But as we’ve seen from continued growth across all Global markets (with stable focus on Email Marketing as one of the top 3 areas of online budget investment), it certainly isn’t dead. And with the increasing shift to mobile in both first-world and emerging markets, the 81% growth in mobile email viewership published by ReturnPath earlier in 2011 shows that people are now consuming email anywhere and everywhere.

But what about those who predicted the death of email as social stole the front page digital headlines? As the dust clears and those who zealously foretold the end of [Email’s] days recant their predictions, we now see that Email and Social have emerged as two fantastic engagement channels that not only get along, but when paired together are the life of the party that keeps people talking long after the night has ended. So, it makes absolute sense that with our proven expertise in Search; Design and Optimisation; and Conversion and Analytics, that Email Marketing is included in our [and ultimately our Clients’] digital armoury.

Keeping Updated

In line with the focus on our Performance Email offering we’ll be publishing a monthly newsletter to all of our valued Clients, Partners and Followers, starting end of November. Within this publication we’ll not only provide you with Email-related insights, but we’ll also feature articles from our Search; Design and Conversion Teams. In the coming weeks and months we’ll also be adding regular posts to the latest Industry Insights, Case Studies, and relevant articles to our Scent Optimisation blog – so stay tuned and in touch.  If you’d like to subscribe to our RSS Feed to be the first to receive new articles and updates, you can also subscribe here.

If you’d like to learn more about our Performance Email offering, please don’t hesitate to contact us at emailmarketing@clickthinking.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Until next time, stay engaged!

Last month it was officially announced that Clickthinking has been acquired by media communications and market research group, Aegis. We have become part of iProspect, the world’s leading digital search and performance network, which has a presence in the world’s top 40 digital economies.

Robert Murray, iProspect Global CEO, said: “Clickthinking not only has the regional expertise and cultural understanding, but the technology prowess to provide South African clients with world-class digital marketing strategies. The addition of Clickthinking to the iProspect portfolio, with their keen eye on customer understanding and conversions, will enable faster expansion in Southern Africa, and will offer key expertise for our globally-reaching client campaigns.”

It’s a fantastic move for our business, and we look forward to the opportunity to grow our specialist areas of search and conversion. Stay tuned for exciting developments in the coming months.

Read the full story on news-insurances.com, here.

Digital agency Clickthinking was awarded the status of Google Analytics Certified Partner (GACP) at the end of 2010. This accreditation officially qualifies Clickthinking as a Google-approved provider of Google Analytics consulting, implementation and training services.

In order to achieve GACP status, service providers must meet Google’s rigorous qualification standards. The world’s most popular search engine assesses candidates in a number of areas from product implementation to consultation and ongoing support.

Clickthinking is now one of seven GACPs certified for the Middle East and Africa regions.

This follows Clickthinking being selected to partner with ClickTale, a leader in user experience and conversion testing. The acclaimed digital agency also took first prize in the Web Analytics Association Insights Competition – a testament to the calibre of its experienced analytics professionals who are certified on multiple platforms, including Omniture, ClickTale and Google.

CEO, Peter Stewart believes that a multifaceted, conversion-driven approach is what enables the Clickthinking team to formulate unique insights, which translate into significant value for clients.

Web analytics has become key to conversion optimisation and website performance, which is increasingly important in today’s competitive online environment. As a GACP Clickthinking can provide clients with valuable insight based on analytical data, resulting in improved and sustained results online over the long term.

There was much excitement in the office last week with the news that Clickthinking’s work had been recognised at the international W3 Awards. Winners were selected from around 3000 entries, and announced at a ceremony held in Los Angeles at the end of October.

The W3s is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), and acknowledges digital excellence and innovation by agencies from all over the world. The panel consists of top-tier professionals from industry giants such as Conde Nast, Yahoo! and HBO. It is an honour to be awarded by this body considering the number and standard of entries.

We brought home no less than six W3 statuettes for work produced over the past year for two of our longstanding clients, &Beyond and Optimal Energy.

&Beyond India

Gold: Website Features – Photography

Gold: General Website Categories – Travel

Silver: Visual Appeal

Optimal Energy’s dontbeapassenger

Gold: Video Features – Design

Silver: Video Features – Writing

Silver: General Website Categories – Energy

It’s great to be rewarded after a year of hard work! Read the story on Bizcommunity and view our award-winning websites for &Beyond India and dontbeapassenger.

International Customer Experience Analytics service ClickTale has appointed Clickthinking as one of their five global recommended consultants. We were thrilled when ClickTale approached us to join their list of associates, which also includes Semphonic, i.a. consultants, Summit Media and Webalytics – all four big industry names.

ClickTale is a well-established business which boasts a solid and extensive international customer base of brands such as Hallmark, Mint.com, and European telecommunications company O2. As one of five recommeneded consultants we will work with ClickTale, specifically in the regions of Africa and Australasia.

Web analytics are a vital component of what we do here at Clickthinking. In order to design and build websites that facilitate perfect online customer journeys we need  to observe and measure user behaviour, and web analytics enables us to do this.

ClickTale’s cut-above-the-rest analytics

ClickTale’s advanced in-page analytics service is more specialised and insightful than any of its predecessors, offering exclusive features such as heatmaps and video recordings of invidual user journeys, and combining these with formal analytics.

The videos which document each user’s time on a site are a particularly handy feature. They allow us to watch how individuals navigate and engage with each page on a website so that we can identify weak points in the customer journey.  enabling us to optimise the usability of our clients’ websites like never before.

Riana Meyer, Clickthinking’s Head of Conversion, will be integrating ClickTale’s solutions with our conversion-focussed strategies.

“ClickTale’s in-page analytics provide the critical information missing from regular analytics tools, namely what happens between one page view and the next. The real-time videos are the perfect complement to regular quantitative analytics data, delivering insight into the ‘why’ of online user behaviour.”

We anticipate a long and successful relationship with this renowned leader in the analytics field!

Read the full press release on BizCommunity, or visit ClickTale’s website to find out more about them.

A few weeks ago we featured exclusive insights from the eMetrics Optimization Summit in San Jose California, courtesy of our COO Niel Bornman who attended the event.

What we didn’t mention was that Niel was flown to the conference to accept a prestigious award from the Web Analytics Association.

As chairman of the WAA’s Examination Committee, Clickthinking’s COO was instrumental in the development of the Web Analyst Certification Program, the first official global certification for web analysts.

He was presented with a Presidential Award in recognition of his significant contribution to the WAA and the global web analytics field. Needless to say we are very proud to have Niel on our team!

Read the full story on BizCommunity.

Today the team at Clickthinking launched the Dontbeapassenger.com campaign. Optimal Energy, South Africa’s first and only electric car manufacturer is getting ready to bring the Joule to South African roads. With this comes a fun and exciting way to get people talking about the amazing things that South Africa has achieved and the role we can play in limiting greenhouse gases.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had the privilege of visiting Washington recently for the Africa US-Business Summit.

One of the projects that we worked on (&Beyonds web strategy) was showcased and presented by Frances Mendoza from &Beyond.

Without question, the highlight of our trip was the appearance of Hillary Clinton as she addressed the audience regarding trade relationships between continents and within Africa. She also highlighted the need for strong government leadership both from within Africa and from those investing in Africa.

Key takeouts:

Time to move beyond stereotypes that paint Africa as a land of poverty, disease, conflict and the treatment of Africa as a charity case. I see this as pertinent to us and similar service providers where we need to challenge perceptions that services and delivery out of Africa are inferior to companies operating within developed markets.

The need for strong African leadership. It is unrealistic to expect companies to be attracted to the States with failed or weak leadership, crime or civil unrest. We also need to play our part here by acknowledging and highlighting the success stories.

Finally, the international agency who represents South African Airways also presented which lead to me to the following question. Why is our national carrier utilizing skills outside of our borders? Are the local online marketing and digital agencies not up to scratch?

Considering some of the awards and accolades of late as well as reviewing their organic search campaign, I would seriously question this policy.

A large group of the Clickthinking team attended the Loeries. It’s the first time that we submitted work for the awards and were fortunate to have all three projects qualify as finalists (The conversion team are happy with the 100% conversion rate).

&Beyond won a Bronze Loerie following the accreditation that the project received as a Webby honouree and nominee in New York. With the main focus on usability and conversion, it’s great to also get acknowledged from a creative perspective. Well done to Jo and the creative team.

Draft FCB won a silver Loerie for Vodacom’s Player 23. Clickthinking were responsible for the digital modules and digital strategy. Well done to Grant and his team at Draft FCB!