Report Monkey: When It Comes to Measurement, Start Small

DEAR REPORT MONKEY,

I’m in charge of multiple marketing campaigns and wear about 5,000 different hats from development to execution. I’m also supposed to be measuring performance and iterating on results. However, being data-driven isn’t anywhere in my MBOs, so it frequently gets short shrift. I really want to be a data-driven marketer, but with everything else on my plate, I just don’t have the time! How can I make this a priority?

Sincerely,

OVERLOADED IN OREGON

DEAR OVERLOADED,

Your head must be awfully heavy from all those hats. And you’re in good company – marketers across the globe are stretched far too thin, and have no time or space to learn anything new.

So here’s the deal – start really small. Don’t try to become data-driven in everything you do right from the start, especially if your organization doesn’t recognize the value of it yet (and believe me, most don’t). Instead, find one place where you can be data-driven, and set up Webtrends to help you measure success. Here’s a couple of ideas.

• (1) Got an email campaign that’s about ready to go out? Write three versions of the email and mark each with a Webtrends campaign identifier. Work with your Webtrends admin to create a report that’ll look at the value of each one (did people hit the site from the email? Did they finish that conversion? etc.)
• (2) Getting ready to launch a new landing page? Don’t settle for one layout – test all the really cool options your creative team comes up with using Optimize. A/B tests are fairly easy to set up, and the training on how to do so is built right into the product. You’ll be launching the layout that will bring the most conversions – and you’ll have the data to prove it.
• (3) Want to figure out which type of blog posts or videos get people’s attention the most? We’ve got reports that can show you that in a jiffy! Just tell your admin that you’d like to develop some of our Content chapter reports, and you’ll have a breakdown soon. Then, you can stop wasting time developing interactive content that no one appreciates.

With all these options, you’ll have data to back up real business decisions that can help your company save or make real money – and then you can show your boss(es) why data-driven decisions have value. Get one or two instances like this under your belt and in front of the higher-ups, and data-driven decision making will become part of your MBOs.

Good luck, Overloaded! Let us know how you fare.

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