Analysing the success of a campaign can be such a minefield. Knowing what the right metrics are to measure, the ideal timeframe to analyse and which different segments of customers to review can all paint different pictures.

 
Our Account Director, Lee Chawner, has been at RedEye for 7 years and has worked with many clients across retail, travel and finance sectors to help them with campaigns to reach their marketing goals.
 
He didn’t come to RedEye as a campaign performance expert, but it had become clear the importance of analysing data to drive answers to inform better decisions and now Lee specialises in advising our clients on how to best analyse their campaigns, and how they can gather key information to improve their campaigns to work smarter, not harder.
 
So, for this instalment of What’s stopping you we are looking at analysing campaigns effectively, Lee will advise us on how to make sure we are measuring success effectively and using the data to our advantage.

Lee, analysing campaigns can seem overwhelming, what would you say are the best reports to use for those who find it confusing or don’t know where to start?

 
Start with a report that looks at the highest level, what is most important to you? Is that driving numbers to the site, newsletter sign-ups or transactions for example, you need to be able to benchmark that on a weekly or monthly basis.
 
This will give you an overall snapshot of progress for stakeholders to demonstrate how you are performing on a top-level that you may be targeted on.
 
Then I would recommend a subset of reports that will answer more detailed questions. Sales volume by month, revenue by month and number of new customers.
 
You can also overlay campaigns looking at automated vs tactical to show how the different styles of campaigns perform and which of those campaigns have contributed to each of those results.
 
From there on you can move to be focusing more on the customer rather than campaign performance.
 
And to be honest, if you are not breaking down to segment level, you’re missing a trick!
 
Start off by breaking down your reports to look at segments of your best, medium and least engaged customers, this way you can focus on each pot to nurture them as they need.
 
It can feel like a big task when you are targeting many different segments so this is a much easier way to start and you can build upon it from there.
 
Spending the time to analyse at a segment level does take time and investment and it can be daunting to get to that level of detail initially, but it pays off to be able to focus on your customers and personalise to them more specifically, plus we have seen fantastic results from clients through segment analysis by uncovering new opportunities for campaigns or targeting.

What are the top metrics a marketer can report on, or track over time, to prove their campaigns are a success?

 
Each business will have its own metrics that are important to them, or what they are targeted on, but some baseline metrics for campaign effectiveness and understanding of performance that we use are:
 

1. Click rate – (Clicks vs Delivered) We measure against delivered rather than send total as this then gives a picture of who interacted with your email, from those who actually received it.
2. Revenue against send volume – This could be Revenue vs Send total or Revenue vs Send per 1000 to give you a rounder figure to make it easier to measure.
3. Sessions – How many sessions were created from that campaign

 
Open rates used to be a key metric, but we don’t have a huge focus on them anymore as we have seen they are inconsistent and can be inaccurate.
 
Then I would recommend tracking metrics that align against your specific marketing goals, but interesting ones to look at are things such as the number of single purchasers in your database, or the growth in customers making a second purchase.
 
This might align with a goal you have about database growth but enables you to drill a little deeper because it’s a positive if your database grows, but not so much if they are all single purchasers.

How can a marketer interpret their campaign results to inform decisions on new campaigns?

 
This goes back to benchmarking. Overall, you should be tracking where you are against your targets but also look at last year so you can see where you are succeeding or failing.
 
But in more short term you should be analysing your campaigns month on month at least, and you should have built up a picture of what are you doing that impacts these results throughout the year and how your customers respond to it.
 
Testing on your most consistent segments that tend to have a steady engagement rate is the best to test on so you can easily measure any impact on your campaigns.
 
Take your high-engagement segment for example, you can easily experiment with them and see the impact of any changes. But if you were to send it to your whole database your results would be watered down and it wouldn’t give you as clear of a result.
 
Again, make sure you are looking at your automated campaigns vs tactical campaigns, they perform differently and should be reviewed separately. A tactical campaign can be bold in its amendments to future campaigns, whereas a small tweak to automation can impact results.
 
For making decisions, analysing the performance by segment means you can form a strategy around what you send each segment using insights from commonly clicked content, browsing history, and transaction trends which will all drive personalised content.

How important is it to report on and analyse campaigns?

 
It’s vital, just creating and sending campaigns without fully understanding the effect it’s having is a waste of resources. Sending the wrong content to the wrong people will stop people from opening your emails and they may start to disengage with your brand.
 
Also, analysis isn’t something you can do once and assume it will stay the same. Something that worked a year ago may not work now. Customers’ spending habits change and so does your customer base, so marketers need to keep reviewing to make sure their campaigns stay relevant and engaging.
 
Overall analytics is a supporting tool and a key driver to learn about your customer base and drive key decisions. It will also help marketers to understand how they support their company’s objectives right up to the highest level.
 
A good marketing platform will help you to create your own dashboards to help you understand your metrics, rather than a one-size-fits-all model and will help you get to the details of what you want to measure and achieve.
 

Thanks Lee, so many things to take away and consider.

 
It’s so true that your customer base is constantly changing, their age, their spending habits and preferences will all change over time, and they will be influenced by economic circumstances.
 
So even though we can benchmark against last year to measure our successes, we need to be constantly reviewing and analysing how they interact to make sure we stay in their inbox and spending with us.
 
If you are joining us here for the first time check out the rest of the What’s Stopping You Series Here.
 
 

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