.Gleansight Deep Dive
March 2011
Gleansight Deep Dive .
How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing About the Pie Chart The data presented in the pie chart is derived from the January 2011 Gleansight benchmark report on Mobile Marketing. The data serves as the basis for this Gleansight Deep Dive, which provides analyst commentary related to a particular aspect of the topic. The objective is to provide additional perspective and illuminate certain key considerations regarding the implementation of the related technology-enabled business initiative.
Mobile marketing is a relatively new phenomenon, which means that the metrics used to track and measure progress over time are also in their infancy. Top Performers, however, have begun to report back the metrics they are using to measure the success of their mobile marketing campaigns. Not surprisingly, these pioneers are using metrics that mirror those being used in other channels, most notably the Web. But mobile-specific metrics are emerging as well. This Deep Dive looks at how early users of mobile marketing are currently measuring performance and how those metrics are likely to change as companies gain more experience and the medium matures.
To learn more about Gleanster’s research methodology, please click here or email [email protected].
94% Percentage of Top Performers that view “increase return on marketing investment” as the top reason to deploy mobile marketing Marketers surveyed by Gleanster for the January 2011 benchmark report on Mobile Marketing cited increased return on marketing investment as the most compelling reason to implement mobile marketing. At the same time, 83% of companies indicated that making the case for mobile marketing in terms of return on investment (ROI) is one of the most challenging aspects of mobile marketing.
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Accurately measuring the success of mobile marketing programs is the key to maximizing investments – and convincing management to invest more in mobile marketing activities in the future.
Measuring Mobile Marketing As a still-developing medium, widely accepted metrics for measuring mobile marketing
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
success are not yet available. But that does not mean there isn’t data to be analyzed. Like other digital media, mobile allows marketers to collect large quantities of user interaction data – pages viewed, apps downloaded, emails or SMSs delivered and more. But without the proper historical data and context in which to view that data, actionable insights are somewhat limited. That will change as more and more marketers conduct mobile marketing campaigns and begin to correlate the performance of those campaigns with key business metrics such as audience growth, brand recognition and sales growth. When it comes to mobile metrics, however, it is important to understand what is unique about the medium. The fact that mobile is so different makes determining the appropriate success
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing metrics more difficult. Marketers can’t simply move over metrics from other channels. At the same time, because mobile is unique, it can offer unique insights into customer behavior and campaign success. The challenge is understanding what is unique about mobile, how to build campaigns to tap into those unique behaviors and how to define the proper metrics that can track the behaviors that lead to the attainment of key business goals.
What We Can Learn From Most Commonly Used Metrics Not surprisingly, the most commonly used metrics by Top Performers involve measuring and counting the basics: number of responses to a call-to-action trigger; overall audience growth numbers; and the number of redemptions of unique mobile coupons or codes. In the absence of more sophisticated metrics, simply counting clicks or interactions is a great starting point. The number one most commonly used metric among Top Performers (at 94%) was simply measuring the number of call to action responses for a specific period. Let’s not underestimate the value of this. Because marketers can accurately measure clickthroughs or other customer responses, they can get a good idea of the messages or offers that resonate with their mobile customer base. Comparing one period of time versus another – day-shifts, for instance – or, alternatively, tracking the percentage of responses over time can provide further insight into how customers are responding to mobile campaigns.
2
impact of a campaign, it does less to measure the full reach or impact of a mobile marketing campaign, limiting its value as a metric. Finally, 92% of Top Performers use audience growth rate as a key metric. Again, this is not an especially fine-grained metric, but it is useful data to know. It can be especially useful in measuring the effectiveness of a campaign (and especially of different A/B messages) over time. With this metric, if a mobile message increases overall audience size, it is effective. If it doesn’t, the marketer should turn to another message or tactic. Because it is so broad in nature, audience measurement doesn’t let the mobile marketer know some important things about its growing audience – such as how valuable it is or how that audience perceives the brand or company in question. All you know is that the number of people paying attention is increasing.
What We Can Learn From Least Commonly Used Metrics It is also very instructive to understand which metrics Top Performers used least often in their mobile campaigns. According to the Gleanster research, the least commonly used metric is customer acquisition cost, at 60%. This can be explained at least in part by the fact that most marketers today are experimenting with mobile marketing rather than going “all-in.” That means costs are likely low, so there isn’t as strong a need to measure how much it costs to acquire individual customers using mobile marketing. There simply isn’t all that much for the marketer to “lose.”
“Adding an explicit redemption offer such as a coupon or code to mobile marketing messages can take response measurement to the next level.”
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Adding an explicit redemption offer such as a coupon or code to mobile marketing messages can take response measurement to the next level. According to Gleanster research, measuring such redemptions is one of the most commonly used mobile marketing metrics. That makes good sense, as one of the key capabilities of mobile marketing is localized marketing, or coordinating a person’s location with the marketing message sent -- for example, sending a mobile user a coupon to a local business. While coupon or code redemption helps businesses understand the direct sales
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
Somewhat surprisingly, the next least commonly used metrics by Top Performers are brand awareness (64%) and customer advocacy score (71%). Again, these metrics are most impacted by high volume, high-dollar campaigns – a description that does not fit early-stage mobile marketing. It is dangerous to make predictions, but one would imagine that these metrics would be more commonly used as mobile marketing becomes more widespread. Delivering an effective mobile campaign or, for instance, launching a popular mobile application, would seem likely to pay
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing
Deep Dive Talking Points Following are a few key takeaways: • Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, so early metrics are relatively basic: audience growth and simple callto-action response measurement. • Because mobile campaigns are relatively small, most marketers are not yet measuring their impact on overall brand awareness or customer satisfaction. They are also not measuring customer acquisition costs. • The opportunity to evaluate success on more sophisticated metrics becomes possible when marketers launch broadscale mobile campaigns.
major brand awareness dividends. As more marketers take these steps, look for them to pay more attention to brand impact metrics. As for customer advocacy scores, these tend to be of more value when viewed over time as a trend. So once again, as mobile marketing becomes more entrenched, it isn’t a reach to imagine that this might become a more widely-used metric. In fact, even in these early stages, Top Performers (71%) reported using customer advocacy scores to a much greater degree than Everyone Else (just 61%). That indicates that heavy users of mobile marketing are already seeing advantages in measuring their campaign’s impact on brand awareness and customer brand satisfaction over time.
How One Top Performer Measured Mobile Marketing Success It’s instructive to take a look at how one mobile marketer, Arby’s, measured the success of one of the industry’s more visible mobile marketing campaigns. The restaurant used talk show host Jimmy Kimmel to help promote the launch of a new sandwich, the Roastburger, by urging his viewers to text an SMS short code to receive a free sandwich. In exchange, customers shared their zip codes, which enabled Arby’s to do follow-on localized mobile marketing. The campaign proved a
Lead Author Rich Karpinski Research Analyst Rich Karpinski also serves as editor-inchief at Telephony. He can be reached at [email protected].
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
3
major success, based on the same metrics identified by Top Performers, including: Number of call to action responses / Audience growth rate: Arby’s tallied 177,745 responses from 152,280 unique users. Another 65,000 people took the next step and opted-in to Arby’s localized database (the restaurant was able to create 172 localized loyalty databases in all). Coupon/Code redemption: As mentioned, customers were able to redeem the equivalent of a mobile coupon to receive a free sandwich. Based on the success of the initial Kimmel campaign, Arby’s launched a second mobile campaign offering free Fruitea soft drinks. In each case, the ability to turn an SMS message into a free product drove large numbers of customer interactions. Customer acquisition/ROI costs: Arby’s had such great success with its TV-based SMS campaigns that it promoted the mobile tactic via other channels as well, including in-store signage, print ads and newspaper circulars. As its mobile tactics broadened, the restaurant was able to compare and contrast its different approaches, evaluate its successes and further segment customer interactions. It is at this point, when mobile marketing campaigns begin to scale, that true ROI can be assessed.
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing
4
Related Research Recently published Gleansight benchmark reports that may be of interest to senior industry practitioners include:
Headquarters Gleanster, LLC 825 Chicago Avenue - Suite C Evanston, Illinois 60202 For customer support, please contact [email protected] or +1 877.762.9727 For sales information, please contact [email protected] or +1 877.762.9726
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Business Intelligence Social Media Monitoring Customer Feedback Management Lead Nurturing Mobile Marketing Online Customer Communities Enterprise Collaboration The Gleanster website also features Deep Dive analyst perspectives on these and other topics as well as Success Stories that bring the research to life with real-world case studies. To download Gleanster content, or to view the future research agenda, please visit www.gleanster.com.
About Gleanster Gleanster benchmarks best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives, delivering actionable insights that allow companies to make smart business decisions and match their needs with vendor solutions. Gleanster research can be downloaded for free. All of it.
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
Gleansight Deep Dive .
How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing About the Pie Chart The data presented in the pie chart is derived from the January 2011 Gleansight benchmark report on Mobile Marketing. The data serves as the basis for this Gleansight Deep Dive, which provides analyst commentary related to a particular aspect of the topic. The objective is to provide additional perspective and illuminate certain key considerations regarding the implementation of the related technology-enabled business initiative.
Mobile marketing is a relatively new phenomenon, which means that the metrics used to track and measure progress over time are also in their infancy. Top Performers, however, have begun to report back the metrics they are using to measure the success of their mobile marketing campaigns. Not surprisingly, these pioneers are using metrics that mirror those being used in other channels, most notably the Web. But mobile-specific metrics are emerging as well. This Deep Dive looks at how early users of mobile marketing are currently measuring performance and how those metrics are likely to change as companies gain more experience and the medium matures.
To learn more about Gleanster’s research methodology, please click here or email [email protected].
94% Percentage of Top Performers that view “increase return on marketing investment” as the top reason to deploy mobile marketing Marketers surveyed by Gleanster for the January 2011 benchmark report on Mobile Marketing cited increased return on marketing investment as the most compelling reason to implement mobile marketing. At the same time, 83% of companies indicated that making the case for mobile marketing in terms of return on investment (ROI) is one of the most challenging aspects of mobile marketing.
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Accurately measuring the success of mobile marketing programs is the key to maximizing investments – and convincing management to invest more in mobile marketing activities in the future.
Measuring Mobile Marketing As a still-developing medium, widely accepted metrics for measuring mobile marketing
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
success are not yet available. But that does not mean there isn’t data to be analyzed. Like other digital media, mobile allows marketers to collect large quantities of user interaction data – pages viewed, apps downloaded, emails or SMSs delivered and more. But without the proper historical data and context in which to view that data, actionable insights are somewhat limited. That will change as more and more marketers conduct mobile marketing campaigns and begin to correlate the performance of those campaigns with key business metrics such as audience growth, brand recognition and sales growth. When it comes to mobile metrics, however, it is important to understand what is unique about the medium. The fact that mobile is so different makes determining the appropriate success
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing metrics more difficult. Marketers can’t simply move over metrics from other channels. At the same time, because mobile is unique, it can offer unique insights into customer behavior and campaign success. The challenge is understanding what is unique about mobile, how to build campaigns to tap into those unique behaviors and how to define the proper metrics that can track the behaviors that lead to the attainment of key business goals.
What We Can Learn From Most Commonly Used Metrics Not surprisingly, the most commonly used metrics by Top Performers involve measuring and counting the basics: number of responses to a call-to-action trigger; overall audience growth numbers; and the number of redemptions of unique mobile coupons or codes. In the absence of more sophisticated metrics, simply counting clicks or interactions is a great starting point. The number one most commonly used metric among Top Performers (at 94%) was simply measuring the number of call to action responses for a specific period. Let’s not underestimate the value of this. Because marketers can accurately measure clickthroughs or other customer responses, they can get a good idea of the messages or offers that resonate with their mobile customer base. Comparing one period of time versus another – day-shifts, for instance – or, alternatively, tracking the percentage of responses over time can provide further insight into how customers are responding to mobile campaigns.
2
impact of a campaign, it does less to measure the full reach or impact of a mobile marketing campaign, limiting its value as a metric. Finally, 92% of Top Performers use audience growth rate as a key metric. Again, this is not an especially fine-grained metric, but it is useful data to know. It can be especially useful in measuring the effectiveness of a campaign (and especially of different A/B messages) over time. With this metric, if a mobile message increases overall audience size, it is effective. If it doesn’t, the marketer should turn to another message or tactic. Because it is so broad in nature, audience measurement doesn’t let the mobile marketer know some important things about its growing audience – such as how valuable it is or how that audience perceives the brand or company in question. All you know is that the number of people paying attention is increasing.
What We Can Learn From Least Commonly Used Metrics It is also very instructive to understand which metrics Top Performers used least often in their mobile campaigns. According to the Gleanster research, the least commonly used metric is customer acquisition cost, at 60%. This can be explained at least in part by the fact that most marketers today are experimenting with mobile marketing rather than going “all-in.” That means costs are likely low, so there isn’t as strong a need to measure how much it costs to acquire individual customers using mobile marketing. There simply isn’t all that much for the marketer to “lose.”
“Adding an explicit redemption offer such as a coupon or code to mobile marketing messages can take response measurement to the next level.”
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Adding an explicit redemption offer such as a coupon or code to mobile marketing messages can take response measurement to the next level. According to Gleanster research, measuring such redemptions is one of the most commonly used mobile marketing metrics. That makes good sense, as one of the key capabilities of mobile marketing is localized marketing, or coordinating a person’s location with the marketing message sent -- for example, sending a mobile user a coupon to a local business. While coupon or code redemption helps businesses understand the direct sales
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
Somewhat surprisingly, the next least commonly used metrics by Top Performers are brand awareness (64%) and customer advocacy score (71%). Again, these metrics are most impacted by high volume, high-dollar campaigns – a description that does not fit early-stage mobile marketing. It is dangerous to make predictions, but one would imagine that these metrics would be more commonly used as mobile marketing becomes more widespread. Delivering an effective mobile campaign or, for instance, launching a popular mobile application, would seem likely to pay
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing
Deep Dive Talking Points Following are a few key takeaways: • Mobile marketing is still in its infancy, so early metrics are relatively basic: audience growth and simple callto-action response measurement. • Because mobile campaigns are relatively small, most marketers are not yet measuring their impact on overall brand awareness or customer satisfaction. They are also not measuring customer acquisition costs. • The opportunity to evaluate success on more sophisticated metrics becomes possible when marketers launch broadscale mobile campaigns.
major brand awareness dividends. As more marketers take these steps, look for them to pay more attention to brand impact metrics. As for customer advocacy scores, these tend to be of more value when viewed over time as a trend. So once again, as mobile marketing becomes more entrenched, it isn’t a reach to imagine that this might become a more widely-used metric. In fact, even in these early stages, Top Performers (71%) reported using customer advocacy scores to a much greater degree than Everyone Else (just 61%). That indicates that heavy users of mobile marketing are already seeing advantages in measuring their campaign’s impact on brand awareness and customer brand satisfaction over time.
How One Top Performer Measured Mobile Marketing Success It’s instructive to take a look at how one mobile marketer, Arby’s, measured the success of one of the industry’s more visible mobile marketing campaigns. The restaurant used talk show host Jimmy Kimmel to help promote the launch of a new sandwich, the Roastburger, by urging his viewers to text an SMS short code to receive a free sandwich. In exchange, customers shared their zip codes, which enabled Arby’s to do follow-on localized mobile marketing. The campaign proved a
Lead Author Rich Karpinski Research Analyst Rich Karpinski also serves as editor-inchief at Telephony. He can be reached at [email protected].
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
3
major success, based on the same metrics identified by Top Performers, including: Number of call to action responses / Audience growth rate: Arby’s tallied 177,745 responses from 152,280 unique users. Another 65,000 people took the next step and opted-in to Arby’s localized database (the restaurant was able to create 172 localized loyalty databases in all). Coupon/Code redemption: As mentioned, customers were able to redeem the equivalent of a mobile coupon to receive a free sandwich. Based on the success of the initial Kimmel campaign, Arby’s launched a second mobile campaign offering free Fruitea soft drinks. In each case, the ability to turn an SMS message into a free product drove large numbers of customer interactions. Customer acquisition/ROI costs: Arby’s had such great success with its TV-based SMS campaigns that it promoted the mobile tactic via other channels as well, including in-store signage, print ads and newspaper circulars. As its mobile tactics broadened, the restaurant was able to compare and contrast its different approaches, evaluate its successes and further segment customer interactions. It is at this point, when mobile marketing campaigns begin to scale, that true ROI can be assessed.
Deep Dive: How Top Performers Measure Return on Investment for Mobile Marketing
4
Related Research Recently published Gleansight benchmark reports that may be of interest to senior industry practitioners include:
Headquarters Gleanster, LLC 825 Chicago Avenue - Suite C Evanston, Illinois 60202 For customer support, please contact [email protected] or +1 877.762.9727 For sales information, please contact [email protected] or +1 877.762.9726
Rate & Review Related Research Tell a Friend Note: This document is intended for individual use. Electronic distribution via email or by posting on a personal website is in violation of the terms of use.
Business Intelligence Social Media Monitoring Customer Feedback Management Lead Nurturing Mobile Marketing Online Customer Communities Enterprise Collaboration The Gleanster website also features Deep Dive analyst perspectives on these and other topics as well as Success Stories that bring the research to life with real-world case studies. To download Gleanster content, or to view the future research agenda, please visit www.gleanster.com.
About Gleanster Gleanster benchmarks best practices in technology-enabled business initiatives, delivering actionable insights that allow companies to make smart business decisions and match their needs with vendor solutions. Gleanster research can be downloaded for free. All of it.
Entire content © 2011 Gleanster, LLC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use or reproduction is prohibited.
