Tasty Targeting: Jelly Belly Jellybeans & Web Metrics

Capitalizing on Individuality

The Jelly Belly jellybean was created back in 1976 by David Klein as a gourmet alternative to the traditional jellybean. At the time, the shear distinctiveness of the product was enough to propel its marketing efforts to the next level – and despite its high price per-pound, Jelly Belly jellybeans became a rock star in the candy industry. (Rogers, 2011). With over 50 flavors of jellybeans (and counting) the product offerings are as unique as the individuals who are purchasing them.

Fast forward a few decades, and the website for the revolutionary candy of the 1970s had not kept up with the times. In 2007, Jelly Belly hired a new eCommerce Marketing Manager, Jason Marrone, who capitalized on the opportunity to use web metrics to turn the company’s dated ecommerce platform into a personalized sales machine. The company began using a solution (MyBuys) which mined behavior including order history, site-navigation and cart abandonment activity to create customized recommendations. Personalized recommendations were also implemented via email alerts (to users who opted-in) to follow-up with information on products of interest based on a customer’s past activities. Customers on the email list receive information on sales, discounts and special offerings that are of most interest to them. The website’s search function was also improved to allow for searching by color, flavor category, package size, etc. and the intelligent search design logs information to increase the relevance of the search results. (Smith, 2009).

On a personal note, I recently used the site to design favors for a friend’s “Spice it Up” themed bridal shower. I found having the ability to search by “taste” (in this case, hot and spicy) and color (red and orange to match the themed décor) allowed me to track down the PERFECT beans in a matter of minutes: Sizzling Cinnamon and Chili Mango. About a decade ago, I had to spend in excess of 30 minutes on their site, trying to track down my father’s favorite Jelly Belly treat, Champagne Bubbles.

The site improvements garnered major results for Jelly Belly. Highlights include:

• Site transaction volume up by 26 percent
• Traffic up by 25 percent (due to improved SEO)
• Email alerts are garnering conversion rates of 11 percent
• Orders on email alerts have an order value which is 27 percent higher than standard website purchases.
• Nearly 16 percent of the users act on onsite, personalized recommendations
• The order value for customers responding to a recommendation is nearly 23 percent higher than those who do not. (Smith, 2009).

Going Mobile

Jelly Belly also used analytics data to drive its decision to create a mobile-optimized website in 2010. They found that 10 percent of their website traffic was coming from mobile devices, but conversions on mobile devices were low. According to Jason Marrone, who was the eCommerce Marketing Manager for Jelly belly when the mobile site launched, they saw an increase in conversions, a decrease in bounces and an improvement in their overall order value.

Room for Improvement

The above mentioned website updates were made back in 2008, and though the updates made huge improvements to the site’s functionality, Jelly Belly is about ready for another facelift.

One way the company can improve its website is by using customized URLs through their email marketing program to deliver highly targeted custom landing pages to their customers. According to Jason Ellis, president of the cross-media marketing solutions company, the e.f. group “Customized URLs lead prospects to personalized web landing pages with information relevant to the prospects and provides an opportunity to begin information-rich dialogue with potential customers through a variety of media, including direct mail, email, and text messages. Implemented effectively, these tools allow clients to hone their marketing messages and increase response rates, sometimes by 30 percent or more.” (MarketWatch, 2012).

Another way the site can improve is by integrating more (or at least some) social aspects. There is an icon for Facebook, but no areas for people to share their product preferences easily to their Facebook pages, no visible links to their YouTube account (despite the fact that they do have a YouTube account) and no Twitter account (or at least not one that I could find) and no blog. They could even do well with their own recipe board on Pinterest or video contests through Vimeo.

It seems that Jelly Belly is not alone in their delayed adoption of social media. According to a study by InSites Consulting, only 11 percent of companies in the United States have “fully integrated social media into existing business programs.” (Belleghem, 2012).

Jelly Belly has just barely scratched the surface with social media marketing. With an integrated social media strategy and an investment of effort, I estimate that they could see another surge in web traffic and a large improvement in search engine optimization.

References

Rogers, J. (2011, October 30). David Klein, Former Mr. Jelly Belly, Looks For A Comeback. Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post. Retrieved July 9, 2012, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/30/david-klein-mr-jelly-bell_n_1066126.html

Smith, K. (2009, July 28). Marketing Case Study: How a User-Focused Website Boosted Sales at Jelly Belly. MarketingProfs: Marketing Resources and Strategies for Marketing Professionals. Retrieved July 6, 2012, from http://www.marketingprofs.com/casestudy/150

Finacchario, P. (2010, August 12). Jelly Belly ups conversion, bounce rates with smartphone shoppers. Mobile Commerce Daily. Retrieved July 9, 2012, from http://www.mobilecommercedaily.com/2010/08/12/jelly-belly-converts-more-smartphone-shoppers-with-mobile-optimized-site

The e.f. group lands UTSA Alumni Program business with record-breaking retention results- variable messaging and personalized cross-media works! - MarketWatch. (2012, June 15). MarketWatch. Retrieved July 9, 2012, from http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-ef-group-lands-utsa-alumni-program-business-with-record-breaking-retention-results-variable-messaging-and-personalized-cross-media-works-2012-06-15

Belleghem, S. V. (2012, June 28). Social Media - Brands Failing to Tap Potential of Social Media. MarketingProfs: Marketing Resources and Strategies for Marketing Professionals. Retrieved July 9, 2012, from http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2012/8295/brands-failing-to-tap-potential-of-social-media#ixzz1zUCsq9aH

Setting My Goals Low: Hoping for Something, but Expecting Nothing

I read a lot of articles on marketing topics. A quick scan of the headlines of MarektingProfs.com articles shows a trend: “Three Tips for High-ROI Calls to Action…Make a Picture Worth a Thousand Conversions…Why Content Marketing Across the Revenue Cycle is Crucial…” – in a marketer’s world, sales goals, ROI and conversions are critical. But this is a blog – a blog for a Web Analytics class. I never intend to sell anything on here nor do I intend to use this blog to drive traffic from here to sell something somewhere else. This is just a blog where I wax poetic about various web analytics topics about once a week. So, how do I select and create non-monetary goals? And what are my goals for this blog? I’m quickly learning that measuring intangible goals is a little tough.

Lessons from Avinash Kaushik

Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 and the wildly popular blog, Occam’s Razor, explains that although his blog has no advertising, consulting hours or ecommerce, he still has goals for his blog which are built into his analytics tool. His goals are mostly focused around building engagement (which is important for this blog); however he can tie a monetary amount to booking speaking engagements. Avinash explains that you should direct your focus toward the “critical few” and “focus on the handful of things that matter.” (Kaushik, 2010).

Applying Kaushik’s Advice

What are my “critical few” and what “handful of things that matter” should I focus on? According to Google, an analytics goal “represents an activity or a level of interaction on your website that’s important to your business.” My business (or place of employment) provides educational training and resources, so by applying this principal to my company, I would set goals on the number of conversions on training program registrations, whitepaper downloads and even researched news stories. But for the purpose of this blog post, I need to focus on this blog.

There are four types of goals in Google Analytics. Let’s review:

1

URL Destination Goals – These goals track specific URLs, which trigger a conversion each time somebody lands on the URL. For example, you may set a URL Destination Goal as a “thank you” page which appears after a purchase, since it signals that the purchase is complete.
Although I don’t plan to use this goal as a measurement of success for this blog, I do plan to revisit this goal later – and possibly set some destination goals on my work website.

Time on Site Goals – The explanation is pretty much in the title of this one. For time on site goals you can set the parameters as ‘greater than, equal to, or less than.’ At first, I couldn’t understand why you would set a goal as “less than,” but as Google explains in this super helpful tutorial, sometimes the goal is to move people quickly through a website.

Since I need to measure engagement, I have set this as a goal. I estimate that it takes around 4 minutes to read a 500 word blog post and a little more to read the 1000 word posts. For this reason, I set my time on site goal at over 4 minutes.

Results. I set this goal one week ago on Monday, June 25. After one week my conversion rate is 9.09 percent. Translated into real numbers, four visitors spent 4 or more minutes on my blog and the visits were divided (one each) between the following posts: Deconstructing LC’s Blog Using Google Analytics; The Battle for the Crown: Is Content or Conversation King?;  Google AdWords or Facebook Advertising. What’s the best Strategy for Hitting Your Target?; and You Don’t Have to do the Math to Use the Math. Although I realize only four visitors staying more than four minutes is nothing to write home about, I’m quite pleased to see that anyone actually stuck around for four or more minutes. Below is the pie chart showing the breakdown.

(The smiley face is my addition – although I think it’s something Google should consider this as a self-confidence booster.)

Pages/visits Goals – This is another goal that needs no explanation. For page/visit goals you can also set the parameters as ‘greater than, equal to, or less than.’ For me, any visit that goes beyond one page is viewed as a success. In last week’s blog post, I discussed the fact that I was a little disappointed by the fact that this blog has a bounce rate of 64 percent. Professor Wells reminded me that with blogs, people generally read the information they were seeking out and then move on, so a higher bounce rate may be OK. This made me feel better, but I still would like to see more page views per visit.

I set a goal of 2+ page views per visit one week ago and had a conversion rate of 6.82 percent – or 3 visits. Not earth shattering, but I’ll take it.

Event Goals – Event goals are tied to “event tracking” in Google Analytics. I don’t plan to use either, but will offer this explanation cited from Google’s Analytics Blog:

You can use Event Tracking in Google Analytics to track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to page views. It's a great fit for tracking things like:

• Downloads of a PDF or other file
• Interaction with dynamic or AJAX sites
• Interaction with Adobe Flash objects, embedded videos, and other media
• Number of errors users get when attempting to checkout
• How long a video was watched on your site

Events are defined using a set of Categories, Actions, Labels, and Values. Once an event is created, you can select any event as a goal. (Mihailovski, 2011).

Funnels

I also learned about funnels this week, although I have not had the chance to apply funnels to my selected goals. Funnels are the steps you expect your site visitor to take on their way to completing a conversion. This is critical on ecommerce sites as it helps to diagnose issues (like cart abandonment) and helps to create a streamlined process to improve your site. It is also important because it allows you to see where your visitors enter and exit the conversion process. Once I learn a little more about analytics, I may suggest some funnels for my company website. 

Low Expectations

I’m actually surprised to find that I had anything to measure in my established goals, so I’m fairly pleased this week. I’m excited to start using my new skills on a website that actually generates traffic.

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web analytics 2.0: the art of online accountability & science of customer centricity. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. 

Mihailovski, N. (2011, April 10). The New Google Analytics: Events Goals - Analytics Blog. Analytics Blog. Retrieved July 2, 2012, from http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-google-analytics-events-goals.html