What are the benefits? What’s the overall impact on sales? How much additional revenue is generated? On what should efforts be focused?
In a context where marketing initiatives and budgets are put to the task, the need to assess outcomes has never been greater. If the performance of an initiative can’t be quantified, it’s unlikely to be repeated or enhanced. Performance assessment is more than a necessity, it’s an opportunity generator. By continuously measuring ongoing initiatives, an organization can focus on what is working well and set aside less profitable initiatives to increase overall performance.
"Of course, intuition is still a factor in the decision process. However, the ability to measure and assess performance are key factors to be able to deliver the perfect experience."
The multitude of communication channels and technological advancements have had an impact on the quality of available data. Whether it comes in the form of a page seen on a website, a product abandoned in a cart, a click on a newsletter link or a social media “like,” a huge amount of information is generated, often on different applications and platforms. It’s important to avoid two major pitfalls at this point:
To perform a successful assessment and avoid these pitfalls, it’s important to follow a methodology.
Establish a link with strategic goals to determine what you want to assess (e.g., impact on customer retention, purchase frequency, the average basket amount and size).
Based on the answers you need, identify the required transactional data from online/store sales as well as behavioural data (e.g., website visits, behavioural email, mobile application).
Validate that data is in fact accessible per segment or customer attribute, so the assessment is customer- centric rather than focused on the organization’s products or services.
Interpret the quantitative indicators to better understand customer segments and the business opportunities and issues to be addressed.
Make sure that results make sense and match those of past or concurrent analyses.
Ask questions about form and content, i.e. the number of indicators to be presented and the structure of the dashboard.
Make sure that the assessments presented are actionable (e.g., identification of high-value customer segments/customer at risk to be able to reach out to them personally).
Draw up a hierarchy of assessment indicators and use them to communicate what you want (a budget increase for a high-performing initiative or providing a team with reinforcements as part of a corrective action when something isn’t working).
Newsletter mailings:
Value generated by a newsletter program:
Setting up a control group is the best way to assess the impact of a marketing campaign.
To avoid bias, it’s important to follow these two guidelines:
In brief, the benefits of assessing ongoing marketing initiatives continuously and systematically are as follows:
In brief, the benefits of assessing ongoing marketing initiatives continuously and systematically are as follows: