You send a lot of marketing campaigns. But you have no idea if they’re effective or not. Sure, you’ve seen an uptick in customers—but why?
While great marketing is certainly an art form, a good marketer knows that the true success of marketing campaigns can’t be determined without doing a little math. Something creatives tend to shy away from!
Don’t worry. We’ve broken down exactly how you can measure the success of your upcoming marketing campaigns in 11 steps.
1. Determine S.M.A.R.T. goals
What are your marketing goals? While you may be quick to say something like, “Earn more revenue” or “Be the most popular retailer on Smith Street” these goals are more idealistic than measurable.
Instead, you should consider setting S.M.A.R.T. goals, meaning:
- Specific: What do you want to accomplish?
- Measurable: How will you know you accomplished a goal?
- Attainable: Not too easy—it should push you.
- Realistic: Don’t go for pie in the sky.
- Timed: Give yourself a timeline to reach your goals.
Need an example? Here are four:
- Increase # customers in Q2 by 5%
- Increase loyalty program sign-ups by 25% this year
- Create and send one (1) email blast per week
- Increase ad clicks by 5% in Q4
2. Set a timeline
You’ll notice in the above examples that a timeline is included. Often forgotten but ever so important to measuring marketing campaigns, establishing the when rather than just the what is paramount to achieving your marketing goals.
After all, if you want to increase your customer base by 15% but as to when is up in the air, you can’t actually measure progress or pivot your plans to reach your goal.
3. Identify KPI’s
KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are metrics that can help you determine whether or not your marketing campaigns are seeing success. Here are some popular KPI’s to help you get started:
Average Session Duration: How much time visitors are spending on your website.
Bounce Rate (Email): The percentage of email addresses that your campaign couldn’t be delivered to.
Conversion Rate: How many of your leads are taking the action you want them to take.
CPA (Cost Per Action): How much your business spends on a single conversion.
CPC (Cost Per Click): How much money you are spending in exchange for a potential customer to click on your advertisement.
CPI (Cost Per Impression): An impression is an individual that sees your ad. So, your cost per impression is how much you’re spending as leads view your ad.
CPL (Cost Per Lead): Are you running a cost-effective marketing campaign? Divide your total marketing spend by the total number of new leads you received to find out.
CTR (Click Through Rate): The number of clicks generated per number of impressions (users that see your ad, email campaign, etc.) received.
Impressions: The total number of views your content or ads are getting.
New Versus Return Visitors: A higher number of return visitors can suggest people find your website content valuable. Lower return visitors may suggest some changes are needed.
Page Views: How many pages of your website are viewed by a visitor within a single visit.
4. Set up tools and tracking
It’s no good to have goals for marketing campaigns if you don’t have a good way to track them. Valuable data isn’t usually stored forever on email or social media platforms, so ensuring you have your own CRM and general tracking system set up in your company’s cloud is imperative to success.
You’ll also want to work out all of the new kinks that come along with better tracking of your campaigns. From creating tracking URLs and phone numbers to ensuring you have pixels set up to track conversions, taking the time to get it right before you launch will help you to better measure your success.
5. Test, test, test!
Before you send anything out to your list, send it to people within your own team and ask them to review everything.
What folder did your email appear in? Did your ad’s headline pull them in? Did the links work? Is the Call to Action clear on your direct mailer?
Make modifications or adjustments as necessary to your marketing campaign to ensure your list gets exactly what you want them to receive.
6. Start small
Rather than sending something to (or targeting) your entire list, choose a small, segmented group of customers. This way, if anything goes wrong or doesn’t work quite like it should, you have the opportunity to pivot and make adjustments before marketing to a wider audience.
7. Measure Performance
Give your marketing campaigns about one week before you review customer marketing analytics. You can certainly take a look earlier, but don’t take anything to heart.
A week gives your recipients time to not only see, but act, upon your email campaign. While we’d like to think customers will have an immediate response, the reality is that there are a variety of things that can prevent immediate action. From family vacations to school or sports schedules to being overwhelmed at work, there will always be prospects who want to act—but won’t do so immediately.
8. Try retargeting
For digital marketing campaigns, it’s important to attempt re-targeting, especially if your campaign didn’t get the response you hoped for.
In the case of email, many platforms will let you re-send your email to individuals that didn’t open it the first time it was sent. In general, this has been proven to increase open rates from an average of 20% to an average of 29%.
You can also try adding online display advertising which places your message on sites your prospects are already visiting, reminding them you’re there.
9. Review your costs
A marketing campaign is a lot more than the campaign itself. There are copywriters, designers, coders, email experts, strategists, and more that contribute to the overall cost of your marketing campaigns. And each one of these individuals has a cost associated with their work.
In addition to the ROI you determine based on your spend, don’t overlook the costs it took to produce it. A marketing campaign may see remarkable results, but what did it cost to produce?
Do the results match the amount of output by your team?
If not, take that into consideration for your next campaign.
10. Get feedback from your team
When it comes to creating marketing campaigns it’s important to let your team shine in their areas of expertise. This not only helps them feel like valued contributing team members, it will encourage better work and potentially better results for your marketing campaigns.
Ask for feedback from your team during and after the launch of each marketing campaign. What went well? What didn’t? Would they like to see anything done differently? Is there a different path to try?
Have everyone work together to implement the feedback as it makes sense to do so.
11. Shift gears as needed
Sometimes your marketing campaigns will perform better than expected. Other times, what you think will succeed may be a complete flop. Yet nothing is a total failure. There are valuable lessons to be learned, whether your marketing campaign works or it doesn’t.
By continuing to shift gears, refine, and tweak not just your campaigns but your tracking of them, the more effective you’ll become at sending marketing campaigns. So don’t give up!
