Reality Marketing Series, Part 3: Prescription for Better Analytics

In part one and part two of this series, I introduced an e-mail dialogue between several key players within a typical marketing organization. The CMO has challenged the management team to improve accountability and get more value from the wealth of available analytics data. What follows is a string discussing the recap of the team offsite, where previous frustrations shifted toward solutions.

From: CMO
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 8:22 a.m.
To: Marketing Leads
Subject: FY07 Planning Recap — MUST READ

Recapping our offsite, Jeff is going to be the team lead on our analytics initiative. I can’t reiterate enough that we need to get aggressive on this immediately. And I’ll be looking for a detailed, 12-month plan and participation from all of you, so prioritize accordingly. Here are the things we committed to this quarter to get a solid foundation in place:

• Set up a site analysis steering committee (led by marketing with cross-departmental involvement).
• Create a financial pro forma for the value of site behaviors and goals.
• Revisit our reporting requirements and define scorecard framework based on goals and KPIs.
• Increase Web analysis horsepower; additional headcount is in the works and budget for team-wide professional development training and services is approved.
• Reevaluate current tools. We’ll invest in upgrades or new tools as needed; I’ll expect you to build these costs into the budget and ROI models.

Based on the goals you outlined in our FY07 plans for your respective areas, I want you to get with Jeff and start mapping out the metrics and reporting needs.

A key deliverable will be an enhanced marketing scorecard that will need to include an executive summary that I’ll present to senior staff for monthly and quarterly business reviews.

I appreciate everyone’s effort and focus so far. Now, let’s make it happen.

From: Customer Marketing Manager
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 8:55 a.m.
To: CMO
Cc: Marketing Leads
Subject: RE: FY07 Planning Recap — MUST READ

To get things rolling on the scorecard, the customer marketing metrics I’m looking to capture include:

• Revenue from new and repeat customers
• Average lifetime value of repeat customers
• Average lifetime value of customers with five or more purchases
• Correlation of customer satisfaction ratings to frequency of customers to online customer service content
• Conversion rate and average conversion value trended over time mapped to significant site changes

Other team leads, please send me your KPI wish list for the marketing scorecard. I’ll be scheduling time with each of your teams and our consultant to gather requirements.

–Jeff

From: Director of Advertising
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2006, 9:02 a.m.
To: Customer Marketing Manager
Cc: Marketing Leads; CMO
Subject: RE: FY07 Planning Prep — MUST READ

With us shifting 30 percent of spend to online media, we’ll need to gauge if that strategy is really paying off.

To the marketing scorecard request, I won’t get too greedy. I just need 254 metrics… Just kidding! I’d just like to see these six things each month:

• Return on advertising spend, and comparing online versus offline
• Total influence on revenue (both direct and indirect over time)
• Average cost per acquisition per campaign
• Online conversion rate per campaign (and trended over time)
• Views of our ads online trended (entertainment gauge)
• Advertising pass-alongs trended (viral gauge)

Cheers — M

From: Brand Strategist
Sent: Wednesday, August 9, 2006 9:10 a.m.
To: Customer Marketing Manager
Cc: Marketing Leads; CMO
Subject: RE: FY07 Planning Prep — MUST READ

I know I sound like a broken record, but let’s not forget about the brand. I’d like to find a way to get a perspective on brand lift. How about adding these metrics to the dashboard:

• Correlation of total brand impressions to total revenue over time
• Customer survey results: percentage brand recall and purchase intent versus competition trended over time
• Total external searches for our brand names as keywords via Google, Yahoo, and MSN trended over time
• Percentage of unique visitors to home page as direct traffic (recalled our brand.com)
• Total unique views of our brand films and percentage who later converted

That, of course, assumes we can get these metrics. Can we? I can’t wait to see the scorecard become a reality.

Rock on. — CJ

This column concludes the three-part series, but it’s really just the start of conversations many marketing organizations are currently having about bridging the analytics gap. How close is this scenario to your team’s own reality? Do you have a functional/dysfunctional Web analytics steering committee? Let me know your thoughts.