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Marketing Is Measurement
Measurement goes beyond tracking an email or counting website sessions. Measurement should tell you about your brand, product and audience. It is a yardstick and a guidebook. There are a lot of metrics out there. Using them correctly is what marketing is all about.
First, measure.
As we discuss in 6 Steps for Improved Measurement, the first step in measuring your marketing initiatives is to get the data and understand the data. You should be measuring email renders and clickthroughs, opt-ins, forwards. Figure out Web metrics as well, such as impressions and downloads. And keep an eye on server data: monitor CPU load so that your server doesn’t bog down in the middle of a big marketing promotion.
Second, refine.
Once you have the basic metrics in place, use and refine the data. Don’t just track email renders, take a look at conversions. At Email Transmit, we’re big proponents of tracking conversions, whether that means a purchase or conference signup, since conversions are your bottom line metric. See Metrics that Matter. Figure out your abandonment rate. Look at reach versus frequency. A campaign with low net reach but high frequency can over-expose some audience groups and miss others entirely. For social media marketing efforts, you may want to look at share of voice, the “conversation index” of your product or brand. B2C marketers will want to assess your market share and compare it to that of your primary competitors.
Third, standardize.
It’s difficult to understand your marketing data let alone make it actionable if that data isn’t standardized. If you can’t compare apples to apples, then metrics quickly unravel. That’s why we are proponents and proud adopters of the new set of email marketing measurement standards called the Support Adoption of Metrics for Email (SAME). Email Transmit was one of the first two ESP’s to adopt the new metrics standards.
As you begin to compare results across media, it becomes important to standardize the bottom line reporting metrics as well, such as cost-per-conversion, cost-per-click or cost-per-point.
Fourth, prioritize.
Don’t wait to measure, and don’t wait to review your metrics. Part of good measurement is figuring out what data you need, what are the vital metrics.
Fifth, make it fast and frequent.
Your core measurement metrics should be easy to access and benchmark, so that you can track results continually to revise your current campaign or build the next one.
Sixth, use it or lose it.
The data you collect and metrics you put in place need to be actionable. Track results and apply what you’ve learned. Those metrics are a compass for today’s marketing campaigns and a guidepost for tomorrow’s plans. The future of your brand may hinge on how well you understand metrics and how you translate that knowledge into opportunities. As Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer and Reibstein write in Marketing Metrics, “Marketers must understand their addressable markets quantitatively. They must measure new opportunities and the investment needed to realize them.”
Tags: metrics marketing email metrics clickthroughs conversions reach frequency SAME
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