If you haven’t checked out the first two parts in our series on creating an implementing successful acquisition campaigns, you can read about creating your prospect profile here and how to use messaging and marketing channels effectively, here.
This week, we’ll be diving into the last part of our exploration into acquisition campaign building: how to measure results, success, and implement post-campaign analytics to quantify your ROI and understand how your campaign affected your goals and targets.
Setting Benchmarks
Before your campaign even begins, you’ll want to have set benchmarks in order to measure your campaign results and monitor over time to see where you’re landing in comparison to your goals, both throughout the campaign and afterwards. Benchmarks help keep you and your team on track with strategy, adjustments, and improvements continuously throughout a campaign. Some things you may want to consider setting benchmarks to measure include:
- Growth Rate
- Site engagement
- Customer Acquisition Cost
- Lead Conversion Rate
- Revenue Targets
Any of the above benchmarks work, as long as you make sure they hit the following key principles of marketing measurement and goal setting criteria:
1. Specific – You want to be able to quantify as much as possible. There are some simple formulas to get at the driving numbers, as you never want to just pick a random number and expect your company to be able to reach an never-before-seen goal in an unrealistic time frame. Here are some examples of how to calculate the most common marketing goals:
The first step is determining your desired revenue, based on the time frame you’re working with, as well as the data you already have from your current sales and marketing funnel about customer spend and projected spend:
Next, you’ll want to understand the conversion rate from lead to customer. Make sure you’re working closely with the sales team on this one for the most accurate figures and estimations:
Finally, use these calculations to predict how many leads and impressions you can reasonably expect to see from your campaign:
With these numbers in mind, you’ll be able to come up with some great, specific goals based on your business goals and customer data. You do also want to measure quality as well as effort, such as increasing reach; improving response rates with revised and versions of different creative; and improving conversion rates.
2. Measurable – you’ll want to set goals that are easily and objectively measured. Again, knowing the quantities derived from above will significantly help you send benchmark goals that are easy to quickly glance at and understand the impact you’re making versus the impact you’ve determined is a goal to make. You’ll also want any benchmarks set to build on each other over time. Your benchmarks for the fourth quarter should be significantly higher, than those set for the first quarter when you’re at the beginning of implementing a new campaign.
3. Achievable – Work with your team to determine what is reasonable when it comes to lead generation as well as content creation and customer conversion. It may be that certain lines of services and products are more easily sold than others, but either way, your marketing efforts should be concise and team-oriented, and everyone should be aware of your timelines, as well as goals in order to keep everything on track.
4. Relevant – Your goals shouldn’t be just about numbers (although that is a priority), they should pertain to exactly what you’re trying to accomplish: whether it’s promote a new service you’re offering, or create a campaign to attract new movers to your business.
5. Time-Bound – Always set goal discussions to happen bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, or whatever you believe to be necessary. Your team’s ability to meet these goals will always rely on the time frame they have to achieve them in. Set your goals in too short of a time frame, and your results will be skewed.
Post-Campaign Analytics
The difference between benchmarks and post-campaign analytics is fairly simple: benchmarks are your goals, and the post-campaign analytics will be the reality of your results. It’s important to have a good data infrastructure in place before you begin any campaign, so you can compare your customer data post campaign to your pre-campaign data.
A great way to do this is to compile your current customer profile and data processing pre-campaign, and have it ready to measure against the updated data from your campaign end date. If your campaign is constantly ongoing, it may be best to set up a monthly timeline, so at the end of the month, you can work with your data to see how you’re measuring up against your benchmarks and keep on top of any discrepancies or unusual data that begins to trend, as well as make sure your ROI is equitable, and hopefully, very profitable.
For example, we measure one of our clients’ new mover campaign on a monthly basis, to track who they’ve targeted and marketed to against who they already obtained of a client, so that they can see the monthly progress and increase in visits and revenue on a one month, three month, six month, and yearly basis for each marketing campaign that they mail to their prospects.
By using that kind of real time data, incorporated with your goals, you’ll be in a better position to adjust your benchmarks as needed; as well as see the immediate effect and value of your marketing campaigns. This can also allow for A/B testing, as previously discussed, to compare how campaigns are standing up in comparison to each other — allowing you more flexibility and giving you insight and knowledge into your market’s trends and attitudes.
This post-campaign data is also extremely valuable once you’re ready to launch a new campaign or unveil a new offering to your audience, as this data can be stored and used to create response models that can pull in predictive attributes to give you a prospect pool that are the most like the top respondents to your marketing efforts and business offerings. Partnering with a data analytics firm who helps you target initially, measure incrementally, and then offer post-analytic findings and trends in the data will give you a solid footing for the next campaign; as well as provide you with valuable insight about what in your campaigns are drawing in the biggest response rates for your best customers.
In summary, using benchmarks and data to evaluate, analyze, and continually keep your campaigns up-to-date and running efficiently and effectively, are one of the most important parts of acquisition campaigns. Your team should always be looped into the results, and by pairing data with smart creative and great offers, your ROI will be much higher than targeting just anyone with just any messaging and hoping for the best.