Using an Analytical Approach to Ride out the Economy, Part Three

To continue on our theme of riding out the economy by utilizing an analytical approach, think about all of the things that you measure.  We’ve already discussed going through and assessing what you are measuring and ensuring that every element does have an impact on overall corporate profitability goals.  Now, let’s dig a little deeper to ensure that we aren’t missing anything that could be important.

Part of the goal of this exercise is not only to ensure that you are capturing everything that is important . . . but also to check out if your systems are tied together in order to link together the information captured and measured efficiently.

So, how to accomplish this? You’ve already taken a hard look at the right things to measure.  Within those things (i.e., each direct marketing campaign), are you measuring all of the aspects that will contribute to your profitability?  Sure, you’re measuring response rates . . . but are you taking it the next step to see how many of those who responded actually converted or spent dollars with you?  Of those that convert, are you looking at what they purchased?  You may have a myriad of product offerings, for example.  So, those responders/converters that were driven to your website and purchased, which product did they buy?  Was it a profitable conversion?

I’m not trying to be a nit-picker, trust me.  However, these are very important questions.  Let me give you a clearer example of what I mean.  Let’s say you sell products on your website that range from $5 to $100.  And, you also offer free information in the form of documents that people can download.  If you received an outstanding response rate of 5%, yet all of those folks that visited your website bought only $5 items and downloaded the free info, your campaign may not have been as profitable as you desired.  It may be that it was — I’m just saying take a look at all of the elements so that you can measure the ROI.  This way, you can accurately report on how successful each campaign was and you can tweak it for the future to make each upcoming campaign even more successful.

Make sense?

Part of this means that you have to ensure that all of your customer touch-point systems work fluidly together.  In other words, if you are driving prospects to your website and to your call center, make sure that you have the analytical tools in place to track that campaign from both places.  This way, when you roll up your results, you can get a true, overall picture of the campaign effectiveness.  In addition, it allows you to measure another piece — which direct marketing channel performed better at getting customers to convert — was it your website or your call center?