MM: Just from what you know directly or indirectly from what you’ve read, have you seen much activity in terms of taking web analytic data and correlating it into more traditional analytic database of customer records needing transaction histories and so on?

BK: There’s often a conversation about integration of web analytic data into business intelligence systems for improved holistic reporting but very few organizations that I’ve dealt with are actually doing this. The question becomes “what is the value of this data to ERP, CRM, BI and other existing data structures?”

MM: We’ve seen tremendous progress in that area from the direct marketing side of the marketing ecosystem. Those are the big database compilers—Epsilon, Experian, Targetbase, Axiom, Merkle and so on—who have compiled huge, very rich databases on households, car ownership, as well as credit card history and transaction reports.

They’re now putting them into special analytic databases. Then integrating these really rich customer masters to a lot of this more transient web behavior stuff, and starting to develop more meaningful multi-channel marketing analytics. They really start to describe who this customer is. Not as a transaction point, but as more of a multi-dimensional relationship over time.

BK: So that’s different that the response I just provided. ‘Yes’ there is a desire to capture specific customer interaction data for use by the organizations you’ve mentioned and others including ComScore and Nielsen. Since most companies will see their visitor data as proprietary they’re more than likely not sharing it with an outside information provider. DoubleClick is an example of one company that captures some of this data via their ad services and I’m sure there are many others that aren’t coming quickly to mind.