There are two ways to measure social media ROI: (1) direct profit that results when people act on an offer you publicize on a social channel (a promo code, a coupon, or the like); and (2) the contribution to profit and value that results from people engaging on social channels to chat, research, converse, and generally form a positive impression that inclines them to buy, recommend, follow, and stay loyal and satisfied.
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We help clients focus on that second, far more lucrative metric, also known as Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV. Ever heard of that? It’s a measure of the profit you can expect to generate from a customer as long as they remain a customer. It includes initial sales, renewals, upgrades, referrals, and other sometimes non-monetary indicators of buyer satisfaction.
How do you measure contribution to CLV? The slide deck linked here offers a glimpse into some of our client work that answers the question. If focuses less on the technology that underpins the effort, although we do provide a resource list, but more on the types of things you can measure and the ways you can capture the upstream inputs to do that measurement so you can determine what works and pivot to do more of that. We hope you find it helpful.
How do you measure social media ROI? Love to hear your stories. Comment below, or really open up the chat by sharing on your favorite social channel!
Higher email conversion rates are “found money”, so why should you accept mediocre results from your email marketing? At a time when email inboxes, while still hugely relevant, are increasingly locked down by users to ward off irrelevant content, the ability to get improved email results is a complex and coveted skillset – part brand journalism, part technology, part consigliere. Our ability to repeatedly outperform marketplace benchmarks for our clients – and our own audience – underscores our expertise at leveraging that skillset.
Crushed It Again This Year; You Can, Too
In reviewing our portfolio of client sales and marketing campaigns related to events, new products, brand building, sales expansion, environmental and business development, we repeatedly find our results to be at or above “best in class” benchmarks as reported by Eloqua, a category-leading CRM software solution provider.
The free, downloadable presentation below offers a simple cheat sheet to help you monetize your email marketing, meet or beat “Best in Class” benchmarks, and turn your organization into a Fan Foundry.
Why your open rate may seem low
Like most email marketers, you are probably haunted by the question: what about the 3/4 of our list members who did not appear to “open” our emails? Bear in mind, the vast majority of people preview email. This doesn’t create a “hit” in the “Opens” bucket, but they still consume the first visible screen of your email.
Your results may vary from ours also based on what you measure. The “Best in Class” numbers pictured in the presentation above represent a combination of all email list activity across many campaigns; naturally, “raving fan” lists far outperform other general interest lists and content. Our Fan lists generally see an open rate north of 60%.
Note, too, that this article isolates email marketing from all other digital marketing we do (mobile, websites, etc.), which we measure separately. For a sampling of some of the CRM, email marketing, Sales and marketing automation solutions we support for our clients, see this site’s right sidebar.
Dollars and Cents, Illustrated
Using the “Email click rate” data in the table on slide #2 above, you might reasonably assume that if you are among those “best in class” companies and attaining a 5% Click rate, and your annual click-through sales are $5M, then just by being our client last year you might instead have enjoyed our benchmark-beating 7.37% click-through (average) results, thereby attaining $7.37M in revenue. Who couldn’t use that additional $2.7M? In fairness, there are many success factors involved and your own results may vary. Here’s how.
This is How We Do It – Year after Year (not a fluke!)
That answer to this headline is multi-faceted, but the key factors we found (see slide #4 above) were:
Put simply, you give get. Lead with a relevant offer, and follow up by exceeding expectations. In practice, we found it even more effective to give, give, and – oh yes – give again, without expecting anything in return. As one example, our success in producing the sales, marketing and digital media event series “North by North Shore” illustrates how treating even unknown remote prospects to a “friends and family” plan resulted in a tripling of the audience size and a corresponding lift in attendance. To read more about that case, click here.
Obligatory Disclaimer
We report only aggregated results. While our total activity reflects messaging in the hundreds of thousands, and the Eloqua study covers millions of messaging units, nonetheless we are encouraged by both the consistency of our year-over-year results and our painstaking methodology in capturing, measuring, reporting and verifying those results for our clients so that we can confidently report them here – and, incidentally, win some repeat business.
Learn More about the “How”
Subsequent blog posts (and some previous ones – see Related Articles below) will cover the other “How We Did It” success factors in greater detail. Use the “Keep in Touch” button (above, right) to get those updates. Meanwhile, if you have a question, or would like to have us present our case to your organization, or to explore ways we might help you succeed, feel free to contact us.
In 2012 I co-developed and produced the North by North Shore (#NXNS) digital media event series, and proved a few content marketing concepts along the way. Starting from zero in April, the program attracted a capacity, on-target audience in June – just 90 days – and attained an over 90% program satisfaction index, based on survey responses. We repeated the event in September, with a few audience driven improvements, and again achieved that result. Another success indicator: two-thirds of all event attendees paid less than full price to attend, driven by an assortment of social promotional programs that let each attendee run their own “friends and family” plan. Anyone who says you can’t prove the ROI of social media…well, have them call.
How did I target various micro-audiences to get these results? We could talk about the usual suspects like speakers, topics and location, but, speaking more broadly, I attribute the success of NXNS to the use of Choice Architecture and a Value Exchange framework in guiding program and content development. Now with two successful events in tow, we continue to engage our audiences to tune the program further to better address their challenges and learning needs:
SBO – small business owner
PRO – career professional, practitioner, specialist or solo-preneur
MSO – marketing services organization or consulting firm
CXO – senior executive
Understanding Motivation
We Content Marketers talk a lot about the buyer’s decision journey, the buyer persona, landing page optimization, and the like. All of this seems to assume we are adept at understanding motivation and that we use this knowledge when we develop content. Frankly, considering the repeated high demand for relevant content, I thought it would be nice just to ask the question: how good are you at building motivation into content? Often a simple “buy” button just doesn’t cut it. We’ve all felt a bit pushed at times by out-of-synch content. Here’s how to fix it.
The Value Exchange Continuum
The Value Exchange Continuum
I created this graphic to help decide what type of voice to use to appeal to different target audiences. Executives, for example, act, think and decide differently than other audiences. If you’ve developed a buyer persona or two to help you think about the frame of reference your micro-audiences are using when they encounter your content, then you are probably somewhat familiar with these concepts.
Keeping it Real
It’s helpful from time to time to ask: What do you want? What do you seek? What does any of us want out of life? If you think those questions are unnecessarily broad or existential, consider this: Neuromarketing experts suggest that up to 90% of decisions are made unconsciously, guided by our value frameworks.
This is a job for the Choice Architect, the User Experience (UX) practitioner. These are great people to have on your team when you are designing a website, a sign, an event, a white paper, a presentation, or just about any type of audience-focused content.
Next up (You In?)
If you like the NXNS concept and want to participate, by all means use the handy links at the NXNS site to get started as a speaker, sponsor, media partner, attendee or content contributor. Let me know some specific event or other opportunity you might have in mind. And if you are interested in Sustainability topics, consider attending the Sustainable Network Summit, another new event series I am co-producing.
Your Take
Do you have a content development framework that guides your content creation? Do you have an experienced Editor on your team who is tasked with hewing to a particular point of view or tone of voice that personifies your brand? Love to hear your stories. If you’d like to have this case study presented to your audience, contact us.
In preparing case studies for my talk titled “Be a Big Data Voodoo Daddy” at Boston’s October 2012 FutureM conference, I noticed that almost half of our 40+ client projects over the recent years had to first devolve from “Implementation” projects to “Readiness” projects – equally valuable, and absolutely necessary. How’s yours going?
Is your marketing automation, CRM, analytics, email marketing or other automation project going to deliver your desired payback? Here are my top 3 warning signs that it may take longer to pay off than you think.
Stated differently, here are 3 must-do’s to ensure near-term ROI.
1. The Right Stuff (Value based Goals).
Let’s first assume that you’ve already connected with the concept of Marketing as Moneyball. Still, you may find that you are not gathering useful, relevant data to help you accomplish your stated strategic goal and implement the right CRM or analytics solution. This may stem from having broad, imprecise goals. For example:
“Grow revenue” is a great goal, but the paths are varied and nuanced.
“Increase Partner Channel Revenue” is, well, getting warm.
“Double Partner Channel Service Contract Revenue” is more like it. Now you have a specific channel, identified players, and a specific product/service element attached to a numeric goal. Specific, measurable goals and then measuring the right things are both essential elements if you are to to yield any meaningful analysis to motivate and support change. No matter how efficiently you automate the wrong data, you risk stretching out the time horizon for any meaningful payback or, worse, running in multiple or wrong directions and wasting effort. Strategy comes first.
2.) The Stuff, Right (Data Analysis and Process Maps).
Typically, your data is not homogeneous and some necessary processes don’t exist yet. Data often exists in a variety of formats ranging from locked spreadhseets and various departmental databases to unstructured documents, such as paragraph text and visuals. Processes that don’t yet exist can’t be mapped to a system; you can’t automate a vacuum.
Significant effort is involved in standardizing and preparing data for upload into your new automated solution, as well as selecting the right tools to enable you to access and mine insights from unstructured information. At Fan Foundry, we are familiar with an array of powerful tools, and can develop custom, reusable upload frameworks to help clients address current and future needs for unstructured data.
This is where the scope of a project almost always expands, as additional valuable information repositories become included, because we often discover additional insights using all available data that just would not be possible otherwise. You never know where the breakthrough “aha” discoveries may lie. If you don’t have the luxury to expand your analysis, though, then rigorously insist on only analyzing the most salient data.
3) The Players (People).
The talent shortage is legendary. If you are inadequately staffed or trained to assume the role of data manager, analyst and strategist, or transformational leader, let alone carry on administratively after implementation, you shouldn’t start the project. The time to assign roles is up front. Get any necessary talent aligned first so they can be involved in the project. Some of your team can adapt; sometimes you need to extend your team to include a capable partner. The single most effective way to stretch out the payoff time horizon is to not involve its eventual owners and primary users, or not have the stomach to lead a transformation effort. Be prepared to change, or else don’t start.
The full list of must-do’s is extensive, but if you tend to these three first, most of the rest will fall in line, and you’ll enjoy a successful implementation.
Toward a “Measurement Culture”
You’ll know you are succeeding when you have established a “culture of measurement” in which the right things get measured, the data supports meaningful analysis, all meaningful data is reflected in a single, integrated, centrally accessible “record of truth”, and you are using the insights you have gained to achieve transformations like improve margins, speed to market, pricing accuracy, supply chain efficiency, sales growth, and other incremental and transformational improvements.
Finally, it must be stressed that human judgment is not taking a back seat to data. Interpreting analytics in light of pragmatic experience and using that knowledge to take calculated risks is a hallmark of success.
QR Codes work well, except when they don’t – but they can! Following my New Year’s Resolution to stop doing dumb things (wish me luck), and coming on the heels of multiple successes in which QR codes have helped my clients win new customers, I offer herewith my take on the value of QR codes.
What’s Cool
I love QR Codes and all 2-dimensional (“2D”) codes for two reasons. First, they help to combine the best of the physical world with the best of the digital world. Second, they make life easier by eliminating the need to memorize, type, or otherwise manually translate a URL in order to render content digitally. The highest use of 2D codes is to bridge an excellent real world experience to an excellent online experience.
As of this writing, however, we are in a place where their use is not widespread, so be aware of situations in which your printed content and your online content probably should not substitute and, rather, might need to be a bit redundant. Each version must still stand on its own, since many people just haven’t added the QR code app on their phones and are thus not yet acclimated. As businesses continue to slowly adopt QR codes, the inflection point where more widespread adoption occurs will probably come when a large consumer market play embeds it into the way they do business. Think: retail.
Marketers love QR codes because they make interaction with the physical world clickable and, therefore, measurable. I get to do more of what I love, too: obsess about large CRM data sets, mining and combining it to detect the faint signals of user behavior that can help our clients personalize the customer experience and delight people. Everybody wins!
What’s Broken – Why QR Codes Disappoint
According to Forrester Research, however, those who do click on QR codes – primarily young, affluent males – generally hate them. This is mainly due to the bumbling mis-steps of marketers.
Firstly, QR codes are ugly – – although plenty of people have found ways to fix that (read on).
Secondly, many people are confused about how to scan them. This is exacerbated by the walled gardens created by competing companies. Microsoft (just one example) has/had its own unique 2D code technology, which require(d) its own unique reader app. How lovely.
Third: the various free downloadable apps required to read QR codes don’t all function the same way, although that condition is improving.
Last and worst: user disappointment. Simply being redirected to the same byzantine website available via large screen device is uninspiring, to say the least. People typically avoid browsing websites on a small phone screen, so why use a QR code to force them? Effective QR codes don’t link to ordinary websites. Instead, they link to an instantly satisfying, sharable experience – on a par with music, photos and email, or content that is uniquely useful wherever the QR code is displayed.
Try thinking of a QR code as new type of “share this” or “dig deeper” button, a way to augment enjoyment of the real world, and a delightful sharable experience. That thinking alone should keep you out of the weeds, but to be thorough, here is a list of best practices.
How to Fix It – Turn QR Codes into a Viral Experience
Here are some basic items to consider when contemplating use of 2D and QR codes.
1. Audience awareness. Again, most people are not acclimated. Do the obvious: include instructions to help new users engage. Even savvy users need to be informed on what rewards to expect. Include a caption below the QR code explaining where it leads. For some examples, see the last page of this QR Code usage guide I created for a print / QR code campaign promoting an iPhone app.
2. Usage patterns. If you plan to use QR codes multiple times for multiple campaigns, treat each as its own campaign – complete with strategy, goals, success measures, etc. Then, for each instance, caption each code with the URL, app instructions, Call to Action and reward info. Set the stage for fulfillment by setting user expectations before they scan your code. See the example linked in section 1 above.
3. Size and placement. Your 2D code must be of sufficient size, placement and proximity to be easily scanned. This excludes TV (too fleeting), subway (no wireless signal means no way to access the online content) and Billboard (too distant; depending on which reader software you use, your own pulse may cause your handheld phone/camera to shake too much to reliably scan the code). Ideal: printed material or flat surface, within arm’s reach, up close and personal.
4. Visual Appeal. You can beautify a QR code, either through free experimentation, or for a price using a reputable designer. It’s not just a nice touch, it’s also a branding opportunity, so we can expect this beautification trend to increase. Whereas the lowly barcode has faded like a footnote into the borders of package labels, the comparatively prominent physical placement of a QR code could harm the beauty of your content or its location – a slippery slope, indeed. Who wants a future where a physical, beautiful world is obscured by electromechanical codes? Fine for robots, not for me. Moral: beautifying and right-sizing your QR code makes it buzzworthy and increases sharing.
5. Mobile-optimized. Create an experience that is based on portability, location, SMS, sharing, or instant fulfillment and feedback – anything but an ordinary website. The destination content must be consumable on a mobile device and, preferably, enrich the user experience or advance the user toward fulfillment of an expectation or promise that motivated their interest.
6. Convenience. Think: Is a 2D code the fastest, easiest and/or only way to access the content, share it, and/or fulfill some need? If so, great; go for it. If not, think about other ways to deliver content more effectively. Again, an ordinary website is not a value-add experience and not a fulfilling one. Please stop that.
7. Engagement. Make it memorable. Reward users, rather than disappoint them. Make your destination content instantly useful and satisfying. Include share buttons so your audience can tweet, email, post and rave about the cool experience you provide. Give users an experience that makes them feel connected, excited, curious, interested and productive. Want viral? Do that!
My take on QR codes: end of a fad! They are here to stay. QR codes and 2D codes can help you create a satisfying customer experience and, done well, convert sales.
