A story about marketing techniques and analytic tools that appeared in Monday’s Globe and Mail highlights Delvinia’s work with the Canadian Opera Company (COC). In “Spammer Techniques Worth a Steal,” writer Lynn Greiner reports that Delvinia, which recently completed a refresh of the COC’s website, used Google Analytics to review site usage since the website’s initial revamp two years ago.

“The analysis showed what people click on, what information they access, and how they navigate the site. Delvinia then surveyed the opera company’s subscribers and its user community for their input and combined it with the analytics results to come up with a more usable site,” writes Greiner, who interviewed Delvinia C.E.O. Adam Froman for the piece.

“The Canadian Opera Company is Mr. Froman’s poster child for smart use of analytics,” Greiner reports. “The company was struggling to understand the digital habits and behaviour of its subscriber base, with little information to go on. But it did have postal codes, and those provided the starting point – when overlayed on Delvinia’s demographically segmented databases – for a subscriber profile that it has continued to build on. And it turns out opera customers are more digitally inclined than most.”

The article points out that with the help of analytics, Delvinia was able to determine how and where people were leaving the COC site, revealing dysfunctional or confusing areas that were fixed in the refresh.

“The COC also took advantage of the new knowledge on its tech-savvy customers and designed and produced a live online production that included not only the actual opera, but background material from those who worked on it and the ability for viewers to interact with fellow opera lovers,” Greiner says.