The Sagebrush Solution

Some things in Nevada never change. Death Valley has great natural beauty and stultifying heat. Wisenheimers persist in describing Red Rock Canyon as “simply gorges!”

And the Nevada Commission on Tourism (NCOT) is still paying $4 per lead for online banner ad clicks — the same price as two years ago.

So what's different? Fulfillment costs. Of 20,000 leads that came in during September, 7,177 were fulfilled digitally. And that should lead to annual savings of $317,000, according to Jolyn Laney, NCOT's deputy director of marketing and advertising.

Even better, NCOT is getting a lot more than the lead.

For one thing, the names are now being put through data hygiene by Ruf Strategic Solutions. And they're being augmented with data from Ruf's clustering system.

What has the commission learned from data analysis?

One big surprise was that the Sagebrush State attracts families with five or six persons per household. The average U.S. family has 3.14 people.

“We just received this data, and are looking into it,” Laney says. “We'll be adjusting all of our marketing efforts. We might be looking at attitudinal print publications.”

NCOT also found that paid placement generates higher-income inquirers than TV and print.

How does the commission link its Web site, call center and fulfillment house? With Navigator, Ruf's online CRM system. Daily batch processing feeds into a dashboard that allows Laney to make near-real-time decisions about ongoing campaigns.

This will prove especially helpful as NCOT migrates from a print advertising schedule to the Web. Online advertising is more likely to benefit from rapid data turnaround than magazine ads that are booked months in advance, says NCOT's senior research manager David Peterson.