Connecting with Coremetrics

Here in Fort Worth, Texas at Coremetrics’ “How the Web Was Won” client summit, the theme is all Western. The keynote featured some Cowboy fun along with classic Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford video clips. But yesterday, the company was all business, announcing the introduction of their new technology integration platform, called Coremetrics Connect. While some may view this as playing catch-up to Omniture’s Genesis program and WebTrends’ Open Exchange, data integration is not something to rush into.

The platform was built on four tenets of closed loop marketing, which include: Extensible data delivery, Core APIs, Flexible reporting and Integration Wizards. Perhaps the most novel concept of the integration partnerships are the clearly defined documentation processes, integration briefs, best practice examples and full disclosure on what the integrations entail. This level of detailed explanation will be available for all technologies included in Coremetrics Connect, making the qualification process stringent, with hopes that this will pay off for ease of integration for clients. There are currently 25 qualified participants in the program, and more on the way. The Integration wizards (available in the Spring 2008 release) will allow marketers to simply select certified technologies from a list within the user interface and walk through the set-up process.

Coremetrics is careful to point out that Connect is not just another partner program, but a process for marketers to acquire behavioral data from adjacent technology applications, analyze the data and make actionable decisions. However, the differentiators between Connect, Genesis and Open Exchange are subtle, and they are not likely to cause clients to jump ship for another web analytics vendor. Yet, there’s quite enough going on within the Web analytics market to cause anxiety among clients. Coremetrics just Cowboy’d up to the Optimization table with their own integrated Digital Marketing solution.