Memorable Tweets of 2012

Some have described Twitter as the water cooler of the social age. It’s the place to discuss current events in real time, build brand awareness, promote contests, etc. But no matter why your business uses Twitter or why you as an individual may use Twitter, every now and then, a tweet stands out. Here are the 20 tweets regarding marketing, social media, and leadership that caught my attention during 2012.

Brands should act like interfaces, not interrupters. Aim to be the common boundaries connecting people to info & experiences. ~@contagious

Don't do social, be SOCIAL: sincere, open, collaborative, interested, authentic, and likeable. ~@ValaAfshar

CEO Strategy: Say It! Never make the assumption that your gratitude is already known. Be humble & show appreciation openly. ~@ThinkCEO

Initiate change. Don't worry about getting credit; just make it happen. You will be rewarded. ~@MarkAMolina

Inspiration comes from our willingness to step outside (our comfort zone) and go somewhere new. ~@Sisarina

In a fast-paced world, today's popular brand could be tomorrow's trivia question. ~Wayne Calloway via @susanwaldman

Your brand has to evolve to stay relevant. Look at Apple and Starbucks – constantly changing with their customer base. ~@kimgarst

Even with a great brand promise, the customer may not have confidence until that promise is experienced, sometimes numerous times. ~@Hyken

Employees should think as owners and not renters of their jobs. ~@tibbr

A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment. ~Scott Talgo via @susanwaldman

Good leaders accept the consequences both good and bad for their decisions and leadership, even if it means going down with the ship. ~@productivity_co

Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan. ~@Culturedapenyc

What do you want customers to say about you when asked why they buy your product or service? That’s your value proposition. ~@HollyGGreen

In the connected economy, customer service is marketing and the frontline employee is the brand. ~@ValaAfshar

Brand = Culture + Customer Experience + Communication. ~@deniseleeyohn

You wouldn't buy ads in a magazine your audience doesn't read. Don't waste time in social media channels your audience doesn't use. ~@mPortray

One of the biggest responsibilities of management is to look after the corporate DNA (aka your brand). ~Andrew Rolfe via @susanwaldman

A desk is a dangerous place from which to lead. ~@OxfordLEADER

Your company is only as good as the one person dealing with the customer. ~@grafrost

There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate. ~Linda Grayson @janetblaha

What tweets stood out to you?

The Power of a Simple Thank You

In the book, The Thank You Economy, Gary Vaynerchuk offers compelling evidence that we have entered into an entirely new business era, one in which the companies that see the biggest returns won't be the ones that can throw the most money at an advertising campaign, but will be those that can prove they care about their customers more than anyone else.

He illustrates that the businesses and brands that harness the word-of-mouth power from social media, those that can shift their culture to be more customer-aware and fan-friendly, will pull away from the pack and profit in today's markets.

To this end, I received an email letter today from one of the banks where I have an account. Seeing that I had just opened an account with Simple, I anticipated the worst. Maybe my initial deposit didn't clear. Maybe I did one of my transactions incorrectly or possibly didn't activate my debit card correctly. But the subject line for the email just had the words 'Thank You'. Upon opening the email (personalized with the name I told Simple I preferred using as opposed to my 'legal' name on the account), I must admit I was surprised to see that the email included nothing more than a 'thank you'. That's right, a simple appreciation letter from Josh Reich, the CEO of Simple.

The email letter did a great job of integrating the positioning of their brand while thanking me for being a part of their growth. The email thanked those who continue to interact with the bank (most banks seem to be fearful of interaction), and even included links to several of their new innovations in a way that did not seem as self serving as it could have been. In short, it was a nice message that reinforced the reasons why I wanted to try Simple.

Simple didn't need to send the email above. I would have happily continued to use the bank as I learn more about how they can make banking easier. The revenue from my relationship with the bank, at least now, is also relatively minor since I just opened the account and my balances are low (signaling that they didn't send this to just their best customers). And, I realize that this was an email that was probably sent to all of their customers as opposed to a hand written note, but it still got my attention. It got my attention because I don't remember a time when any of the other banks I do business with ever sent me a thank you.

The email served to humanize the team at Simple for me - especially since they included many of the real names on the Simple team at the bottom of the letter - and helped me understand that they will continue to do business differently than the banks I have had much more significant accounts with for decades.

It may sound a bit silly, but making a customer feel appreciated, even by email, can go a long way. Especially, when this small effort is not commonplace. As a result of this simple message (pun intended), I am more likely to expand my relationship and tell others about my experience. And it appears I am not alone.

In a quick review of tweets referencing the Simple 'thank you' email, I came across the following tweets, illustrating the power of social media and word of mouth when something good occurs.

Got an email from @simplify w/ subject "Thank you." Scrolled to find the bad news. Turns out it's really just a nice thank you note. :)
— Sarah Hatter (@sh) December 20, 2012

Got a really nice "thank you" email from @simplify. I'm glad I made the switch from BofA more and more each day.
— Justin Plock (@jplock) December 20, 2012

The folks at Simple write nice holiday/thank you letters :) /cc @simplify
— Justin Thiele (@justinthiele) December 20, 2012

There have also been several positive responses to my posting of this blog on LinkedIn and positive reaction on Google Plus and Facebook. Interestingly, even though the email may feel a bit impersonal to some, I realized there was a person behind this nice email when I tweeted about my experience. In response to my showing of appreciation, CEO Josh Reich immediately responded to my tweet. Nice touch.

@jimmarous @simplify Thanks Jim :)
— Josh Reich (@i2pi) December 20, 2012

Cynics could argue that a 'thank you' email just adds to an already overstuffed email in box and that many may just do a quick scan over the email and throw it out. On the other hand, someone like me could be struck by the simplicity of the effort and amazed that other banks don't do the same.

I have a single message for the other banks I do business with and those that continuously tout their commitment to great customer service and an enhanced customer experience . . .

Don't underestimate the power of a Simple thank you!

Addendum: Never Underestimate the Power of a Simple Account Agreement

Today I received an email detailing changes to my account agreement. I was expecting the normal end of year bank adjustments that would increase fees, limit my flexibility and/or reduce my benefits.

Instead, Simple went against the norm by increasing the my account functionality without an increase in fees. They even explained a bit more about their remote deposit capture capability and how I could leverage the new changes to improve my achievement of my goals.

And while the linked account agreement was rather lengthy, the email provided me with all of the changes in plain English in 130 words *(including another 'Thank You' and 'Happy New Year'.

What a nice way to begin a new year as a customer of Simple.

Announcing the 2012 Top Contributor badge recipients

2012 was quite eventful for the AdWords Top Contributors. The year started with moving to the new home for the Community, which became the online meeting place for small business owners and online marketing professionals. AdWords Top Contributors helped tens of thousands of businesses find ways to get the best results from AdWords and provided the Community with exclusive tips and tricks. In October 2012, some AdWords Top Contributors visited the Googleplex in California for the AdWords Communities Summit. During this two-day event, they had a chance to meet with AdWords support and product management teams, to learn from each other, and to provide feedback to Google’s teams.

 

We want to thank Top Contributors for their dedicated participation in the AdWords Community and for being the true advocates of online advertising. Our annual tradition is to recognize the most outstanding “above and beyond” efforts with the annual Top Contributors badge. The 2012 recipients for the annual AdWords Top Contributor badge (English) have just been announced! Drum-roll, and congratulations to:

• Calin Sandici
• Jon Gritton
• Kim Clinkunbroomer*
• Lakatos Bela
• Moshe Avichai
• Pankaj Sabharwal
• Pete Bardo
• Scott Dunroe
• Theresa Zook
• Tommy Sands

In addition to the listed Top Contributors from the English Community, the badge was also granted to 25 other Top Contributors from our international AdWords Communities in French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish languages.

Congratulations! It’s time to enjoy the holidays, and look forward to a new exciting journey of 2013!

*Kim Clickunbroomer is now a Top Contributors alumni, but her contribution this year was and still is remarkable.

Post Posted by the AdWords Communities team

Video: Remarketing Webinar and Q&A

Last Wednesday we held a webinar on Remarketing with Google Analytics. We launched this feature earlier this year to help you reconnect with your site visitors in relevant ways. Remarketing with Google Analytics lets you show ads to website visitors who have shown an interest in your site as they browse other sites on the Google Display Network (GDN). So you can reach the right audience with the right message at the right time.

Watch the webinar video here to learn more about:

• The overall benefits of Remarketing with Google Analytics
• See a live demo of the product
• Understand how to set this up for your business
• And see some key examples of what’s possible

Read on for responses to some of the top questions we received during the webinar:

Any quick tips for getting started?
Yes, our help center includes a great guide with everything you need to know to get started.

Is there a limit on the number of lists that you can create in your Google Analytics account?
No! We want to encourage you to create as many lists as you need to run an effective remarketing campaign.

How should I set “membership duration” for my lists?
The default membership duration is 30 days, but we recommend choosing a duration related to the length of time you expect your ad to be relevant to the user. Learn more about membership duration in this article in the AdWords Help Center.

How can remarketing lists in Google Analytics be edited or deleted?
It’s easy to edit existing lists by clicking on the name of the list in the main table. Visitors who have already been added to the list will be removed from the list when the list duration for those visitors expires.

Both AdWords and Analytics save lists for historical campaign reporting purposes, so it’s not currently possible to delete lists -- but often you can simply edit your old lists so they continue to be useful. That said, we are looking into ways to provide better controls for managing lists that are no longer in use such as providing ways to hide or archive old or unused lists.

Can you use Google Tag Manager with Remarketing with Google Analytics?
Yes! Google Tag Manager fully supports Remarketing with Google Analytics. When you are setting up your “Google Analytics” tag templates in the Google Tag Manager User Interface, you can choose to enable the “Add Display Advertiser Support” check box-- this will make all the tagging changes necessary to use Remarketing with Google Analytics.

Can you share lists between Google Analytics profiles? What about across different AdWords accounts?
When you create a remarketing list in Google Analytics, you must choose to base it off of a single, specific Profile (a Google Analytics Profile determines which data from your site appears in the reports; it may, for example, include filters to eliminate traffic from internal users). If you want to create a list that’s based off of two profiles, you must create that list twice -- once for each Profile. Similarly for AdWords accounts, if you want to share a list with more than one account, you must create the list once for each account you want to share it with.

Do you have examples of remarketing lists I might consider creating with Google Analytics?
Yes, you can find some examples in the webinar video and in on our product fact sheet, and we’re working on providing more examples and tips. Stay tuned!

We hope you found this webinar useful -- and that you go start creating your first remarketing lists using Google Analytics now.

Posted by Jesse Savage, Product Manager, Google Analytics

More investments for powerful, flexible, and fast reporting in DoubleClick Search

We recently introduced the availability of instant Floodlight conversion data for automatic, intra-day conversions in all DoubleClick Search reports, to bring you the freshest, most reliable campaign data. This is just one of the ways we’re doubling down in our reporting investments to help you make better decisions as the digital landscape grows broader and deeper across formats, devices and channels. Today, we’re excited to announce 4 new features that build on this by ensuring important business data is accessible and actionable within DoubleClick Search: our offline conversions API, Google Analytics data integrations, Formula Columns, and Web Query support.

With online advertising expanding across different ad formats, new devices, and multiple channels, it’s no surprise that reporting continues to be a challenge for marketers. In fact, 69% of business and technology leaders have pinpointed the inability to gather, understand, and act on all the data about their customers as a leading challenge. To answer this growing complexity, we at DoubleClick Search have been focusing on developing the right tools to power your business with all the insights you need. We want to make reporting on all your data easy, to help drive insights exactly when you want them, where you want them.

Event API for easy offline conversion integration

DoubleClick Search already lets you leverage a variety of solutions to report on conversions, including our proprietary Floodlight tag, AdWords conversion tracking, or Google Analytics goals. But we understand that online advertising also fuels offline conversions. To capture these lost conversions and bring offline into your online world, we’re announcing the open beta of our Event API for uploading offline conversion automatically. Upload new conversions to account for in-store transactions, call-tracking, or other offline activities, or edit existing conversions to account for discounts, returns, credit, or fraud through integrated API access. Today, you can combine this information with our Performance Bidding Suite to optimize your campaigns based on even more of your business data.

Google Analytics website data, with the rest of your search

Couple this with the integration of Google Analytics metrics, which incorporates statistics including bounce rate, page views, transactions, and revenue from Google Analytics, to get a clear picture of how search influences customer interaction on your website. These recent developments in reporting mean faster decision making with all your data holistically captured in DoubleClick Search -- all without mashing up and matching reports or worrying about the potential data drop off of reporting from separate tools. In the next few months, we’ll introduce the ability to use bid strategies with your website metrics, ensuring your campaign’s bid optimization is informed by important user engagement metrics.

Formula magic, directly in the interface
With this wealth of data at your fingertips, how do you more easily make sense of it all? In the past, you’d need to use a spreadsheet tool like Excel to create these calculated columns. Formula Columns lets you create your own customized columns, based on calculations that you apply to existing columns. Now, apply formulas directly in DS and streamline your workflow: track custom KPIs, re-express columns in your own terms, and calculate customized fees, costs, and weights, among other applications.

Web query for data, where you want it
And finally, when it comes to easily accessing all your important data right where you want it, we’re introducing Web query support: instead of scheduling or downloading a file to access your reports, DoubleClick Search now provides a URL that you can use to automatically download and refresh that report’s data -- directly in Excel. This makes it even easier for you to create common report templates in Excel and populate those with the latest DS data, removing the need to manually download and import reports.

Formula Columns, instant conversions, and Web Query support are are available now in DoubleClick Search. To learn more about the Event API or Google Analytics integration, please reach out to your Technical Account Manager, or our support team at ds-support@google.com.

Extract Insights Across Datasets with SumAll

Businesses collect and rely on data that exists in silos across the web - from site analytics to inventory numbers, social media to sales data, there’s more important data available today than most are able to aggregate and analyze themselves.

SumAll is a connected data platform that enables business operators from companies of all sizes to visualize their mission-critical data through one centralized location.  Users of SumAll can extract insights across datasets by combining and analyzing the metrics that matter most to them.  “Put simply, our vision is to democratize information by making it beautiful, affordable and accessible to all.  In doing so, the visibility and insights that SumAll brings enables business operators to turn data into dollars,” says Catherine Gluckstein, President of SumAll.

One of SumAll’s customers was having a very difficult time making sense of his eCommerce, Google Analytics and social media data.  He knew there was a story to be told about how each was influencing the other, but being a small business owner, he lacked the resources to dive too far into them himself.  He decided to give SumAll a try and within a few minutes and even fewer clicks, was able to integrate all of his key data and view it in one uniform dashboard without having to work with his developers.

For the first time, he was able to see what was happening across his business and understand the relationship between his social media posts, web traffic and transactions.  This made him more comfortable continuing to invest his limited resources in social media because, for the first time, he could see that it was working.

SumAll integrates with all major components of the eCommerce ecosystem including payment processors, social platforms, shopping carts, online marketplaces and, of course, Google Analytics.  “It only took us about 6 weeks to complete our integration with Google Analytics, from concept to go live,” according to Catherine.  “After our customer completes the authentication and authorization process, we ingest their data into SumAll and normalize it to make it available to all SumAll applications across web, mobile and email.”

SumAll is free to try and is incredibly intuitive and straightforward to set-up.  Sign-Up today to break down the silos around your data and empower your business’ data-driven decisions today.

Posted by John Milinovich John is a Developer Program Manager working to build the ecosystem around the Google Analytics APIs. In his spare time he likes to explore San Francisco and cheer loudly during UCLA games.

AdWords Express holiday offer extended for a limited time

Still scrambling to stay ahead of the holidays? We want to help you make the most of the last 2 weeks of the year, so we’re extending our offer to double your AdWords Express investment. Just start using AdWords Express to attract new customers to your U.S. business, and you'll get a free advertising credit in January worth what you spend on AdWords Express ads between now and December 31, 2012.*

Reaching potential customers online is a snap with AdWords Express. Just select your business category, write an ad, and set your budget. Where and when your ad appears is managed automatically, and you only pay when potential customers click on your ad for more information. And in mid-January, you’ll receive a free advertising credit for that amount you spent on AdWords Express ads in December.*

Get started today at http://www.google.com/adwords/express/.

Posted by Richard Holden, Product Management Director, AdWords Express

*Terms and conditions

New column makes keyword management easier

We recently launched a new keyword column in the search term report to let you see exactly which keywords matched particular search terms. With this information at your fingertips, you can quickly and easily make better keyword and bid management decisions. But don’t take our word for it. We’ll let Top Contributors Calin Sandici and Moshe Avichai from the AdWords Community explain why the column is an important part of a healthy AdWords diet.

What’s so special about this new column?

Calin: You can now see in one simple table which keyword matches which search terms, for all the keywords in an ad group, campaign, or even the whole account, and you can act accordingly. It's cool, it saves time, it’s zero calories and it’s good for your health.

Moshe: Finally, there’s no need to guess which keyword triggers an ad.

What were your first thoughts when you heard the column was available?

Calin: For the first time, I can stay within AdWords and decide whether I should delete or pause a keyword altogether, or keep it and use some negative keywords to block unwanted impressions for irrelevant search queries. In the past I had to resort to the Analytics API to achieve the same effect. That’s no longer the case, because we now have access to a lot more information right in the AdWords interface.

How does it change the search terms report?

Moshe: Now the report is much more transparent. A campaign manager can see, at one glance, the complete funnel that triggered an ad: the original search term a user was searching for, through the keyword that matched the search term, and finally the ad group of the ad shown, all on the same page.

Calin: You no longer have to guess which keyword matched which search terms if you’re looking at more than one keyword. Previously, you could select one keyword at a time, and see the search terms that it matched. Now you can look at a whole ad group, campaign or account, see all the search terms that have caused your ads to show during a certain period of time, and right next to them, which keyword is "responsible" for a particular search term.

And finally, what do you hope to see from AdWords reporting in the future?

Calin: It could be great if we could import the Google Analytics metrics in the Keywords tab into the search terms report. Even if a search term doesn’t convert directly, if it leads to visits where one can see a large number of pages per visit or a low bounce rate, it may prove useful. In the absence of those metrics, we can only judge the search queries in terms of conversions.

Moshe: I am a great fan of the 80/20 Pareto principle: “You can draw roughly 80% of the conclusions from 20% of the data.” I have as much data as I need to run effective campaigns. As Calin suggested,  a better integration of presenting data from both Analytics and Adwords in a “unified report” could be helpful.

Discuss the new column in the AdWords Community, or check out the search terms report article in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Cindy Meyers and Virginia Roman, Editors, Online Help

Discovering Recyclebank.com

On my personal blog I recently shared a few eco-loves of mine.  I discovered an eco website that I thought you would really enjoy called Recyclebank. I think you’re going to love the site…especially the perks they offer.

To put it quite simply, you get eco-educated in exchange for Recyclebank points that are easily redeemed for free products and services. Trust me, the freebies are worth it.  Great discounts at restaurants and stores, plus totally free products and services.  Think InStylemagazine and $15 off purchases of $30 at vine.com, to name a few.

The beauty of Recyclebank is that the eco-education you get (whether well-intended or simply to earn discounts) starts to have a measurable impact on your life and the choices you make.  Speaking for myself personally, Recyclebank has truly elevated how eco-conscious I am as I go about my routine.  I am delighted that the information I’ve read on the site is actually impacting my day-to-day activities and decisions.  At first, the shift was slight but present.  The more I explore (and the more points I’ve accumulated), the more eco-minded I’ve become.  I have a long way to go, for sure, but I’m excited to be making changes.

With the holidays just around the corner, now is the perfect time to create an account! It’s completely free and you can start earning points right away. 

Here’s an example of one of their holiday games (below).  Each snowflake presents a points-earning and educational opportunity.  Read, interact and earn. 

 

There are times you’ll notice advertising on the site.  Personally, I don’t mind it.  I’d rather support a company for spending ad dollars on an eco-minded website than putting those dollars elsewhere.  I have also begun to recognize a few of the products I’ve seen on the site (like Meyer’s) and make more an effort to switch to those eco-friendly products when I come across them.  Seems like a solid ad/site strategy.

Happy Holidays!

Laura is a marketing professional and blogger who has been active in social media since 2005.  If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to this blog via Email or  RSS. Laura can also be found on Twitter (@LauraCatherineO), Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Modcloth and Inflection Drive Performance with Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting

Advertisers use contextual targeting on the Google Display Network to reach new customers as they browse content related to their products and services. In March we launched Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting, which enabled our display advertisers to manage their contextual campaigns with the same level of precision and granularity as search. In a few short months we’ve been delighted to see how it’s translated into real results for our customers, and today we’d like to shine a light on two specific examples.

Modcloth, an online retailer selling vintage inspired clothing, had been using contextual targeting on the Google Display Network as a way to scale their message across a wide variety of sites. Their challenge was figuring out which keywords were triggering which conversions across their multiple product lines. With keyword level reporting and optimization levers, Theresa Rockovich, Modcloth’s SEM Manager, was excited to finally put her SEM skills to work. “Before the ability to target and bid on keywords, we were barely making these campaigns profitable. Now that we’ve been able to adjust our bids and see which keywords are driving performance, margins are the healthiest they’ve ever been.” In nine weeks, their keyword-level optimizations helped turn three unprofitable contextual campaigns into some of their highest performers. Their jewelry lines saw a 460% increase in click-through-rates and their dresses campaign saw a 700% increase in ROI.

Andrew Wong, Marketing Director at Inflection, similarly took a search-focused approach to managing their contextual campaigns. “We took the shell of our search campaigns and copied them onto the Google Display Network” and created specific page URLs for each product line. After a few weeks of generating traffic, they turned on the Display Campaign Optimizer – the Google Display Network’s auto-optimization tool that automatically manages targeting and bidding – and the results were phenomenal. With the help of DCO, they increased conversions by 480% at a cost-per-action 10% lower than the rest of their display campaigns.

Keyword level targeting is one of the many reasons why our Display Campaign Optimizer  has improved in both accuracy and efficiency the past year. We've seen advertisers are usually able to reach their target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) in about two weeks, versus the two months it often took before these changes. Coupled with new bidding capabilities, such as real-time bidding, MaxCPC and Enhanced CPC, DCO is now available to use on ‘hybrid’ search and display campaigns.

And it gets even better

In addition to keyword targeting, bidding and reporting, today we’re announcing  new keyword status messages to assist advertisers troubleshoot for more effective and consistent keyword matching and delivery. Now you’ll know if a keyword is pointing to a suspended site, has been disapproved, or if it matches too few pages (Few Page Matches). We’ve also added a notification that alerts users with display-only campaigns when a Display Network bid - which overrides keyword bids when ads are shown on the Google Display Network - is in place. We recommend removing the Display Network Bid in display-only campaigns to take advantage of keyword level bidding. Click here to learn how.

Learn More

We look forward to seeing even more success stories as we continue to roll out these new features! To learn more about how to implement these strategies into your display campaigns, download the Google Display Network Guide here!

Posted by Katie Hamilton, Product Marketing Manager Google Display Network

Google Analytics in Real Life: What would your customer experience look like?

With the holiday shopping season in full swing, it’s important to ensure your website and digital marketing are running on all cylinders. Your potential customers should be able to find what they need on the digital shelf as easily as in real life. Sadly, many sites leave visitors frustrated - losing potential customers. However, the advantage of your online storefront is that you can understand where you’re losing customers and work to improve your shopping experience.

For the holiday season, our team at Google Analytics thought it would be helpful (and fun) to demonstrate how missteps on the digital shelf play out in real life.

What’s distracting your customers?
Have you accidently placed obstacles directly in the path of your customers buying what they really want on your site? Watch Nick's journey to finding what he wants. Play Video
Improvement Tip: 
Always make sure your landing pages meet your users' expectations. Be sure your ad text leads visitors to a page that matches what was featured in the ad. Here is a helpful article on ways to improve the performance of your landing pages.

How can it be so challenging to find your favorite type of milk?  

Are you making it difficult for users to browse or search your site by the way you categorize your products? Watch as Oli struggles to find his breakfast essentials. Play Video 

Improvement Tip:  
A search box can be a goldmine of information because each time visitors search your site, they tell you in their own words what they are looking for. Here is an article on insights available from your Google Analytics Site Search reports to learn what your visitors want so you can improve your website to better meet those needs.

When do visitors check out from your online buying process? 
We shared this last year, but it’s too much fun not to share again. Great example of the importance of having a simple easy to use checkout process on your website. Watch for the humor, stay for the insights.  Play Video
Improvement Tip: 
Are there some product pages that consistently send higher traffic through your shopping cart than others? See if there are differences between the page designs that might be driving the difference in traffic volume. Do the better performing pages offer more information about their products, more customer reviews, explain shipping options or provide more options for visualizing the products before adding them to the shopping cart? The Google Analytics goal flow visualization can help to identify these better performing pages to repeat their success.

Ready to learn more about how to improve your online customer experiences? Check out these Google Analytics resources:
 - Article: Improve the performance of your landing pages
 - 5 questions to ask of your Site Search data
 - Understand the path or missteps visitors take to completing your goals with flow analysis

We hope this helps you to find more way to use Google Analytics to make your customers' lives easier, and generate more happy and loyal customers for you - now that’s a holiday present worth giving.

Posted by Clancy Childs, Google Analytics Product Manager
& Jon Day, Google Product Marketing Manager

Pull Analytics Data Into Tableau With New Connector

The following is a guest post from Ellie Fields. Ellie is the Director of Product Marketing at Tableau Software, responsible for new product launch, industry solutions and Tableau's community. Her data geek credentials come from time served in technology and finance companies. She works with people from all over the world who are trying to tell stories with data, from journalists to hospitals to high tech companies. 

Over at Tableau Software we’re big Google Analytics users. That’s why we got so excited for Tableau’s new Google Analytics connector, which uses the GA API to pull data right into Tableau. 

If you don’t know Tableau, consider checking it out today. It’s a useful, new way of working with data: you simply drag & drop to create sophisticated analyses. Anyone can create powerful dashboards without needing to know programming or be a specialist. Tableau was spun out of Stanford about 8 years ago, and it’s the technology developed there—a visual interface into data—that makes Tableau different. 

So what can you do with GA data and Tableau? Well, for one thing you can connect directly to GA to get your data. You can create custom dashboards. And you can extend GA data with new calculations. Here’s a video of how we used the Tableau GA connector along with some Excel data to understand our own website better:

You might have noticed one special feature in there: the ability to blend Google Analytics data with other data, like data in Excel or a database. This opens up a whole new world of insight. Your website is a great asset, and of course it doesn’t work alone. Mashing up web data with offline data, demographics and more tells you more about what’s working and what’s not. 

This is just a preview of the Google Analytics connector. It’ll be in beta very soon. If you’re a customer you can join the v8 beta when it comes out. If you’re not yet using Tableau, try it out (for free). 

Posted by Ellie Fields, Director of Product Marketing at Tableau Software

Education and training opportunities this week

With the holidays rapidly approaching, check out our lineup of educational opportunities this week to maximize your advertising effectiveness through the end of the year:

• Grab your eggnog for the last Learn with Google webinar of the season. On Wednesday, December 12th at 10:00AM PST, join us for the final session in our Remarketing Series to learn how to use Google Analytics to target website visitors interested in your products and services in the new year. Get more info and register now: http://goo.gl/tI0tl 
• Looking for an edge during the Holidays?  Join us on December 13th at 11:00AM PST and learn how to create stand-out ads during the competitive holiday season.  Get more info here: http://goo.gl/2FwSp
• Attention EMEA!  We are hosting a Holiday Hangout on Air on December 13th at 11:00AM GMT. Join us at this special time to learn how to get your ads ready for the Holiday season.  Get more info and register now: http://goo.gl/wrHgc

Hope to see you there, and make sure to stay tuned for additional education and training as we close out 2012!

Posted by Rob Newton, Inside Adwords Blog Team.