Web analytics can play a key (albeit expensive) role in personalized email campaigns, writes InternetRetailer, citing JupiterResearch, according to which targeted email campaigns using clickstream data on average produced open rates of 33 percent, as opposed to 20 percent for mass mailings; click-through rates of 14 percent, vs. 9.5 percent; and conversion rates of 3.9 percent, vs. 1.1 percent.

But costs are higher. For one, applying web analytics is labor intensive, and average total salary budgets for campaigns using clickstream data are 2.5 times higher than for mass-mailing campaigns.

However, at least in one case (that of retailer Newport-News.com), there was a six-fold increase in revenue in various product categories after using web analytics to target those who browsed those categories.