It's easy to see what Canadian consumers got from a recent Bank of Nova Scotia sweepstakes. More than 90 who registered at a special Web site won free plasma television sets.
The bank got something that was more intangible but no less valuable. It figured out how to measure the impact of its brand advertising.
It already had a handle on direct mail and e-mail, both of which it used to drive consumers to its “Plasma-a-Day Giveaway” Web site. But it wanted to gauge the success of its TV, print and outdoor ads, so it also included the URL on them.
How did it determine their success?
On an elementary basis. Since there was no direct mail or e-mail to prospects, entrants who weren't already in the bank's database were credited to the TV spots.
“What we've done is try to use technology to link mass and direct marketing,” says Jonathan Huth, vice president for direct and digital marketing at the bank widely known as Scotiabank. “If [sweepstakes participants] were not already customers, they would have only heard of the contest through word of mouth or mass communications. We plan to be more granular in the future.”
And so Scotiabank has joined the parade of brands that's trying to bring direct marketing's accountability to brand advertising.
In some instances, industry groups are taking the lead. The Traffic Audit Bureau for Media Measurement is developing a system that will measure both the traffic and the effectiveness of billboard ads. The latter will be done through intercept and recall studies. But the system isn't due until late 2008, and even then it will provide only part of the solution.
Many marketers aren't waiting for trade groups to help them.
“Consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical firms are very focused on being able to measure brand,” says Carol Meyers, chief marketing officer for sales management firm Unica Corp. “They want to know how well the brand is recognized, as well as its impact on revenue and corporate value.”
Case in point: Pharmaceutical firms. For 10 years they've been allowed to market prescription products straight to the public, and so they now have the data to compare channel performance and conduct media-mix analysis.
But the metrics relied on by drug firms aren't necessarily those used by DMers. Instead of RFM, for example, pharmaceutical marketers are likely to measure whether patients are staying with their medication regimens, according to Meyers.
Then there are financial services firms. Are their branding ads effective?
“It's not just about attracting new customers, but retaining existing ones and increasing the wallet share,” Meyers says.
Similarly, travel and hospitality companies employ dashboards like those used by direct marketers. But unlike DM dashboards, which may measure open rates, gross responses or net sales, travel consoles strive to paint a fuller picture of visitors both on an aggregate and individual level.
Among other things, they track visits to different properties within a brand, changes in visit frequency, and survey and attitudinal data on things like brand preference.
“Knowing how customers cite the attributes a marketer is trying to put into the marketplace can be very important,” Meyers says.
And packaged goods firms evaluate the crossover of their online and offline campaigns. “Ultimately they want revenue, but they can do some interim measurement to determine whether people notice their ads and connect it with their brand,” Meyers says. “BMW did this well when it enticed consumers to follow an ongoing story from television to online.”
Still others try to measure an element that's rarely considered by most direct marketers: equity. What does the company really mean to its customers?
Electronics retailer Best Buy is straddling the line between high-level measurement and analysis of individual behavior. “Brand awareness is a metric you can extend across a population,” says Matt Smith, the chain's senior director of customer insights. “But a direct marketing metric gets to a granular level — [for example,] did I do something to move a particular household?”
However, Best Buy looks at more than the return on a specific marketing effort. It's also concerned with share of wallet.
Consider someone who visits a Best Buy store three times in a single year, spending a total of $2,000. The next year he visits 12 times, but rings up $1,000.
“In which year is the customer more engaged with the brand?” Smith asks. “Was his change in shopping pattern because he was not as engaged in the consumer electronics space, or does he not have the money he had previously?” Or, more disturbingly, does he not have a deep relationship with Best Buy?
Following these shifts allows the firm to focus its marketing. If a former big spender has lost his passion for home electronics, Best Buy can offer other products or services like the “Geek Squad,” its 24/7 computer support task force. If he has the passion but not the money — let's say he only has $1,000 but spends it all at Best Buy — the chain will recognize and reward that. And finally, if he has $10,000 but only spends $1,000, the retailer needs to find the disconnect in the brand relationship.
“We have traditionally looked at standard brand metrics, such as top-of-mind awareness and unaided recall,” says Smith. “We're migrating that thinking to customer loyalty and engagement.”
If there is a true common metric it is some variation of Frederick Reichheld's net promoter score — the likelihood of a customer to recommend the brand to another person.. “If you want to capitalize on word-of-mouth advertising, you want to work on that score,” Meyers says.
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