August 12, 2010

Lifecycle Marketing Series Part 4: Measuring Success

By:

Hostway Team

By Buffy Cranford

Measuring the success or failure of a product’s lifecycle marketing program is more involved than running a few reports and glancing at revenue. Producing an actual sale takes three or more contact attempts with a consumer, and tracking those connections can reveal the validity of the marketing program. Consequently, determining marketing success requires multiple key metrics. These measurement tools include return on investment, email tracking and determining which pages of your website receive the most traffic and sales.

ROI

When examining the success of your lifecycle marketing program, take a look at your return on investment (ROI). In terms of email marketing, the ROI should be broken into marketing creation hours (how long did it take your staff to create the campaign), plus the number of mails sent.

Once those resources are calculated, you can examine the return (revenue). If the lifecycle program resulted in a positive revenue generation after an aggressive marketing campaign, this measurement reveals success.

Email Campaigns

With advanced analytical tools, you can track email results, such as which email campaign received attention or generated a sale, and compare the results to overall revenue.

Tracking email offers a visible result for monitoring your lifecycle marketing campaign. If one campaign receives mediocre response, you can quickly alter the campaign and target a group of consumers.

Companies using email marketing typically create variables and extract trends. These variables may include the number of emails the customer read, and how many times the customer followed a link from the email to the website. Also, companies analyze the number and amount of purchases made.

If consumers read the marketing emails but never purchase, your marketing campaign might be eye-catching, but you may need a different marketing angle to close the sale.

Eventually, as you release more email campaigns, you can tweak messages for content appearance, and you can also begin seeing long-term reports. You will be able to track when customers typically cease purchasing the product and begin making goals for maintaining the customer.

Web Site Tracking

Web site tracking analytics offer an in-depth view into consumer behavior. You can track when consumers are visiting the product website and if the website was opened via a link in a marketing email.

When you launch a new email marketing campaign, you can track the increase or decrease in website activity. Then, using IP geolocation, you can even determine the location of the potential customers. This is helpful when you launch a campaign for a specific geographic audience, such as sending promotions for Nebraska Huskers clothing goods to potential clients in the Nebraska area.

With ROI, email campaigns and tracking website traffic, you can easily monitor the success or failure of an email marketing campaign. When your company begins tracking results, reviewing the data and understanding the alterations needed in the marketing program, you can begin generating profits. Confer with your analytics provider for a full list of the available measurement tools available to your company.

Read the full series:
Part 1: Getting Started
Part 2: Email Design Elements
Part 3: Honing Your Message
Part 4: Measuring Success
Part 5: Why It Works for Small Businesses

About the Author

Buffy Cranford has over 20 years of experience in writing and publishing. Her writing background includes newspaper journalism and reviewing and researching computer software and hardware for Smart Computing and PC Today magazines. She has worked with established companies such as Dell, IBM and Acer.

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