Step 5: Redefine Conversion and Costs

A necessary next step in optimizing your analytics is to place into focus one of the most commonly-tracked performance indicators…the conversion rate.  In its purest form, a conversion rate gauges what % of individual visits result in purchases where commerce is conducted.   To gauge conversion effectively, brands are adopting a more holistic view across the overall consumer experience versus a single-engagement assessment.  Some of the ways in which this trend is playing out inside corporate marketing and our own agency hallways include:

• Email and/or mobile messaging signups
• Assign values to each signup
• Use values that correspond to typical industry conversion rates or designate a value based upon a potential sales order from an email marketing effort
• Employ cross-channel content markers
• Assign individual values to different pages on your web site such as direct clicks to a store locator feed or a promotional page about your brand’s mobile presence
• Leverage insights from these value analytics to determine the amount of revenue generated from visits to those pages and assign that content a value
• Build in customer reviews
• Engaged buyers who contribute reviews represent potential brand advocates whose WOM recommendations can attract new business
• And tracking which products attract reviews can reveal whether marketing campaigns are effectively drawing attention and interactions
• As with cross-channel content pages, use eventual contribution to revenue to determine value on customer reviews
• Extend value assignments to your social media networks
• Factor in costs of staffing directly related to posting and responding to comments —- as well as the # of customer service calls or emails that originated on social media to gauge costs of maintaining a social media presence
• This figure can be used to derive cost per acquisition – giving brands a means for measuring social media effectiveness against other forms of inbound marketing

Step 6: Experiment With New Segments

Use data from a variety of consumer touchpoints armed with campaign goals and objectives to determine another layer of data segmentation to reveal precise purchase behaviors.  Many brands already use segmentation to view their site analytics data by acquisition channel – i.e.: calculating conversion rate from paid or natural search, or click-through rates on a message link.  Other segmentation filters such as Device Type or Visit Number can serve to underscore other unique takeaways.  By layering segments, brands can gain an ever more precise picture of consumer behavior and can adjust their strategies accordingly. Optimizing analytics to capture behavior across customer touchpoints can seem like a daunting task.  But by expanding the range of data available for analysis, defining goals beyond single-session sales, and segmenting the numbers extensively, marketers can assemble a very clear picture of how consumers interact with their brands.  wedü specializes in cross-channel marketing optimization.  Give us a call to learn how we can help you generate powerful return from your customer analytics.   Image Credit: Mediajon