Connecting the Dots of Your CRM Marketing Strategy
In my last three blog posts (see part 1, part 2, and part 3 of my series), I’ve explored the topic of understanding how marketers are using CRM data to meet the needs of the modern day customer. In this fourth and final installment of my multi-blog series, I’ll wrap it all together by discussing a few ways that marketers can attribute CRM marketing strategies to content downloads, leads, or sales.
Online Engagement to Online Measurement
One of the easiest ways to measure the impact of your marketing strategy is by tracking online activities. In many cases, marketers can simply embed a pixel onto their website from an advertising provider that will be running their ads and targeting against the on-boarded CRM pool of customer or prospects. A pixel is essentially a beacon that monitors web behavior. When a person that has been on-boarded from a CRM file is targeted with the ad, that ad view is tracked, and when that person takes an online action on a website such as filling out a lead form, scheduling a meeting, or making a purchase, it is also tracked. Using just a few pixels, marketers can easily associate each content download, lead or sale to the the different aspects of the CRM marketing strategy.
Online to Offline Measurement
OK, so that sounds easy enough. But what happens when the desired outcome is not something that the customer or prospect can do online? Measurement gets much more difficult when the desired prospect activity takes place offline, such as phoning a call center, visiting a local office, or making a purchase in a physical store. This type of attribution can get complicated very quickly and the methodology really varies case by case. I’ll discuss consumer marketing vs. B2B marketing measurement separately.
In the consumer marketing world, there are many ways that transactions can be tracked in-store, such as through store loyalty cards, credit cards, or even location on a mobile device. There are a few measurement vendors that have access to this type of data including the on-boarding companies I mentioned in my previous blog (LiveRamp, DataLogix). Through a sophisticated matching process, these data on-boarders can take CRM data provided by the marketer, information about advertising exposure to that pool of people via pixels, and the information that consumers provide when applying for store loyalty cards or credit cards (name, address, email, etc.) and attribute actual sales impact from digital marketing on a one-to-one basis or sales lift compared to a control group. Online to offline attribution is the key for marketers to show the true value of CRM and digital marketing strategies.
In B2B, it requires a little more creativity. If the desired outcome is that the prospect reach out to a call center or visit a local office, the prospect information can be captured when that action occurs by an operator or sales representative. Marketers will need the participation of the entire company to collect the data and accurately measure the impact of their efforts. Assuming the prospect information is available, that data can be provided back to the measurement or on-boarding vendor and can then be matched back to the original CRM file to track if that person saw a digital ad via digital pixels.
While it sounds cumbersome, the ability to measure marketing effectiveness is pivotal for organizations to determine how to accurately budget for marketing and distribute those dollars across different channels. As technology continues to advance and data becomes even more readily available, I’m excited to see what marketers will dream of next. I hope you stay tuned in with me!