How Does Your Marketing Measure Up?

Read a great article in the latest MarketingProfs "Get To The Point" newsletter on Marketing Analytics. They recap a post from the Email Experience Blog on measuring the success of email marketing campaigns. This specifically addresses email, but the principle applies to ALL marketing efforts and the importance of pre-establishing metrics for success.

The blog post says data gathered on email marketing campaigns might not be as useful as you think. "Real danger lurks in not measuring the right factors or not measuring accurately. You could suffer lost revenue. You might not know which messages are working. And your sales team won't know what to focus on."

There are just SO many different things you can measure in marketing (especially online marketing), that it's extremely difficult to agree upon industry benchmarks in order to make effective comparisons. People are focusing on impressions or clicks or only those clicks that lead to a single sale.

The purpose of any marketing is to trigger an ACTION. Actions could include:

• Forward to a friend
• Signing up for a mailing list or additional informaiton
• Visit to a physical store location
• Attend an event
• Buy a product

It's vital to have a clear view of your client's specific goal for the campaign's marketing message and for the results on which the campaign will be judged. In order to meet those goals, tools must be in effect to capture the correct data by which effectiveness can be judged. As they say in the article... "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."