WebTrends Drives Results for Kettle Foods' Web 2.0 Initiatives

January 17, 2007; 03:58 AM
WebTrends Inc., the market leader for web analytics and Marketing Performance Management solutions, today shared how its solution helped optimize results for Kettle Foods' Web 2.0 initiative, the annual People's Choice campaign. With insight from WebTrends On Demand, Kettle Foods, the number one salty snack brand in natural supermarkets, was able to double critical success metrics including email registrations and vote conversion rates.

Now in its third year, the People’s Choice campaign, dubbed “Passport to Flavor,” enables consumers to choose the company’s next potato chip flavor by ordering limited edition samples and voting for their favorite at www.passporttoflavor.com. Since its inception, the campaign has evolved and grown to attract tens of thousands of visitors to its site. One key change this year involved moving the micro-site from a multi-page, HTML-based design to a rich, single page, Flash-driven interface.

According to Michelle Peterman, vice president of marketing for Kettle Foods, “People’s Choice has enabled us to put a personality behind our brand and engage fans of Kettle™ brand Potato Chips in a fun and interactive way. This year we provided a richer brand experience that immersed visitors in the adventure of the competition, and WebTrends was able to prove and improve the design’s effectiveness in meeting our business objectives.”

Flash, like other Rich Internet Applications such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), require a different approach to data collection and analysis, as key visitor activities are no longer tied to a page view. “We purchased WebTrends Analytics™ 8 and quickly and easily implemented tracking for the new Flash site,” said Garrett Gonzales, senior graphic designer, Kettle Foods. “For the first time, we were able to tell what efforts were successful in driving visitors to the campaign and what their experiences were like when they got there, which proved to be extremely valuable.”

In the first two weeks of the campaign, through insight from WebTrends 5-Point Scenario Analysis and Navigation Analysis reports, the Kettle Foods marketing team saw that they were missing out on a significant number of votes. The Flash-design had introduced new navigation to visitors, some of whom were leaving the site without voting. By making key changes to graphics and their placement, Kettle’s marketing team was able to double the vote conversion rate virtually overnight.

In addition, this year’s People’s Choice campaign was the first to be promoted through advertising. “Our top-level objectives included not only increasing brand engagement and selling more flavor samplers, but also building brand awareness,” said Peterman. “Blogs, advertisements and a robust Send-to-Friend postcard system increased the viral nature of the campaign, driving a quality audience that resulted in more than twice as many email registrations as last year. In terms of sheer numbers, we drove roughly the same amount of traffic to the campaign in two months as last year’s campaign did in seven months.”

“Going forward, we’ll continue to focus more on mechanisms to both push and pull visitors to the campaign, and WebTrends will allow us to make smarter investments, as well as better tailor our sales messages and promotion plans for our overall marketing efforts,” continued Peterman.

"We’re extremely pleased with the results Kettle Foods was able to achieve leveraging our industry-leading insight into Web 2.0 experiences,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president, WebTrends. “The comprehensive metrics and visitor-level insight that WebTrends provides, offers a strong foundation from which our many leading customers are achieving greater marketing results across all their efforts, from innovative campaigns and cross-channel initiatives to broader relationship marketing strategies.”

For best practices on measuring and optimizing Web 2.0 initiatives, including Rich Internet Applications and Really Simple Syndication (RSS), visit http://www.webtrends.com/web20tech?cid=70140000000GrXf.

About Kettle Foods

Founded in 1978, Oregon-based Kettle Foods is a privately owned company committed to producing great tasting, all-natural snacks with a caring commitment to its employees, craft and community. In doing so, it leads the industry as the No. 1 salty snack brand in natural supermarkets according to SPINS, with distribution throughout North America, Japan, Guam and Western Europe. Its manufacturing sites in Salem, Ore., and Norwich, United Kingdom produce more than 20 flavors and four varieties of potato chip offerings, seven flavors of organic tortilla chips and a variety of nut butters and trail mixes. Visit www.kettlefoods.com for more information.

About WebTrends Inc.

WebTrends is the leading provider of web analytics software and on-demand solutions for web-smart customers including General Mills, IKEA, Microsoft, Reuters and Ticketmaster. With WebTrends Marketing Lab, the company has expanded its comprehensive analytics platform to offer on-the-fly data exploration, dynamic advertising optimization and customer targeting solutions fueling relationship marketing. Thousands of enterprises have chosen WebTrends solutions and consulting services to accurately prove and improve their business and marketing results.

For more information, visit www.webtrends.com.