As a quantitative market researcher – earlier in my career – I learned a couple of key lessons about research design which have held true as a direct/database marketer. Foremost, that you have to know what results you need, and what business decisions you need to make, before ever crafting a question. Call it a hypothesis, if you love science, or a set of decision points, if for business.
So, what does this have to do with selecting the right marketing metrics? I was reading a great article “E-Mail Metrics That Matter ” and, while the whole article is worth reading, what made it great was the assertion that before selecting any metrics, it is crucial to know “what business goals you are trying to attain and what problems you are trying to solve.”
This is really the point, isn’t it? How can you measure the success of a marketing program without establishing its business purpose and the metrics to measure that? I’ve seen many a post-campaign analysis that failed to answer the question “did my campaign achieve my business purpose?” because right success metrics were lacking. Remember to ask: what am I trying to achieve, how do measure success and what data will be available to me to use?
Read the article and take the time to craft a short brief prior to each and every campaign!
Best, Ann McCartan, DBMCatalyst
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