Big enterprises that run massive campaigns end up making a crucial mistake at the very beginning and that mistake is not making a measurement plan for the campaign.
At the end of each campaign, the stakeholders are drowned with reports from marketing, sales, merchandising and campaign managers. They are flooded with all kinds of metrics like CTR, CPC, visits, video views, photo uploads, discount coupon downloads, Facebook fans, Twitter mentions…. the metrics and reports are never ending and none of them tell you in plain simple language if your campaign was a hit or not!
‘Measurement plan is a document that states all the metrics that determine the success of a campaign.’ Simply put, a measurement plan acts as a target or even as a benchmark (if you have run similar programs in the past) for your campaign.
Here is an outline of what a measurement plan should ideally contain:
Overview of the campaign:
It is a good practice to include a brief overview of the campaign. Give your audience the benefit of doubt and include the purpose of the campaign and how it works. Digital agencies usually make a campaign management manual that can help you with this step. It could also include important dates and milestones of the campaign.
Visitor Flow:
To measure the success of a campaign you need to determine the action taken by the visitor or consumer that is intended or anticipated. It should include all the steps that the visitor would follow, right from the source to the goal. This helps determine the stage where there were maximum drop offs and accordingly fix the problem.
Tracking Methods:
You’ve defined the flow of the visitor, but how can you determine the drop off without measuring each stage effectively? Determine all the tools and tracking mechanisms that you would use: Google Analytics tags, email vendor tracking, Dart tags etc.
Indicative Metrics:
Determine the metrics that would indicate if a process is not working to your advantage. E.g. click through rate, email open rate, CPC etc. If you are spending a lot of dough on a display advertisement and the CTR is very low, you would know that something somewhere is wrong. You could then check if the banners are delivered properly or see if the page you’ve chosen to advertise isn’t very popular and then apply fixes.
Success Metrics:
These are the metrics that determine the success of your campaign: ROI, conversion rate etc. It is important to have an agreement beforehand with the stakeholders and clients about these metrics.
Frequency of Reporting:
Decide the frequency and the layout of reporting to keep everyone updated about the progress of the campaign. You could decide on daily snapshots, weekly highlights report and detailed monthly reports, before the final wrap up depending on the duration of the campaign.
These are the key components which need to be put in place before we roll out a Measurement Plan. We hope it will be helpful for you. If you think there can be more, please do share with us by leaving a comment below.