Measuring Again and Again
by Jerry Hart
Best practice campaign management, regardless of the channel used to touch the customer, is a closed loop journey, meaning that the results of the last campaign are captured, analyzed, and applied to improve return on the next campaign. Such learning requires more than knowing how many customers
responded favorably.
Knowing more about the customer, not just the positioning of the campaign, is also part of doing better next time. In essence, there are two components to this best practice: enriching individual customer records and conducting post-campaign research to enrich those records.
Best practice companies model the data supporting campaign management in such a way that new subjects and elements can be added when there is a business need for them. They also tend to acquire or upgrade their data mining and analytics tools to match the knowledge, skills and abilities of users in marketing as they develop. With that in mind, here are the types of data and skills that support continuous improvement of campaign management:
Capture and keep detailed information about the customer, known among data mavens as granular data. Detailed information can be summarized quickly and flexibly, but summarized data cannot be deconstructed quickly, easily or cheaply (if at all). Companies who keep detailed integrated customer data derive greater value from it over time because the data can be quickly combined and analyzed to answer new unanticipated business questions. Summarized data can only answer the business questions that drove the summary report.
Capturing context data is as important as capturing transaction detail. Part of campaign context is data about the offer and the criteria used:
- Modify assumptions
- Analyze results
- Target customers
- Prepare offer
- Execute campaign
- Plan campaign
Generally, consistent experience with a brand associates a unique quality of customer experience with the company’s products and services, and trust in the brand results when the experience is consistently superior (based on the customer’s notion of superiority). Trust in the brand theoretically results in customer loyalty and supports value (as opposed to competitive) pricing. Research indicates that loyal customers will tolerate a 25% price increase for a trusted brand before they consider switching.
Customers who only hear about offers that they perceive to be relevant to their current needs and desires are more likely to consider the company a “trusted advisor” than they would if most offers were irrelevant or mistimed. Demographic information about the individual customer may be very relevant; the less demographic information is tied to the individual, the less value it has for measuring “propensity to buy,” which means the likelihood a customer will accept the campaign offer.
Summary data (often purchased at a premium from third parties) about age groups, zip codes, and even education levels reinforce stereotypes that may be leaving potential customers out of the segment. At a minimum, marketing cannot refine its ability to target offers unless they can relate demographic detail with purchasing detail about an individual customer.
Providing unique inbound e-mail boxes to receive campaign responses can help get customer e-mail regarding the campaign into the right hands faster. However, be prepared for customers who read the campaign, then go to the website to respond, and therefore send the campaign-related mail to a different inbound mailbox.
Similarly, customers may use the campaign mailbox to submit complaints, suggestions or questions that have nothing to do with the campaign. If your company is concerned with maintaining and enhancing customer relationships, the system will resort inbound mail to assure it gets to the person who can act on it. I encountered this problem with a customer who had a third party hosting their e-mail service. Sure enough, when they checked with their provider the provider had a policy against bulk e-mail. We were able to deal with the issue before the e-mail contact system went into production.
The trend is to in source e-mail marketing. In 2001, 72% of companies sampled reported outsourcing email marketing (per Forrester), whereas only 38% were doing so by 2004 (per Boldfish). The difference could be due to sampling error, but the trend is probably toward in sourcing.
Poor practice companies tend to build infrastructure and purchase tools that are far beyond the immediate needs and abilities of the end users. As a result, the investment far exceeds business value, and implementation is complex so business users have to wait for the capabilities and tools they actually need. They tend to treat CRM, of which campaign management is a component, as a point-in-time project whereas best practice companies treat it as a program that grows and evolves over time.
# # #
Jerry Hart is CEO of Hart Creative Marketing and an Associate Partner of Marketing Operations Partners.
To find out more about Marketing Operations Partners' measurement-related services , please call 408-243-7881 or e-mail sales@mopartners.com.
