Thoughts from Day 2 & 3 of IIR Measure Up Marketing ROI Conference

Guy Powell (DemandROMI) and Aneta Hall (Pitney Bowes) at MeasureUp Conference, Chicago

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While day 1 of the IIR’s Measure Up conference was devoted to measuring the impact of  social marketing, day two and three were focused broadly on marketing ROI and in particular on

• Applied marketing analytics (w/ methodical presentation by Coca Cola’s Lisa Wellington about Coke’s mix modeling strategy for marketing optimization)
• Brand equity measurements (incl. insightful presentation by American Express’ Melanie Davis on incorporating social media into brand measurement toolkit)
• Customer value measurement (incl. Alicia Rankin’s presentation on segmenting NFL fans)
• Marketing business case development (with Guy Powell as session leader)
• User experience measurement (featuring Forrester’s Megan Burns)
• Word of Mouth measurement (Ed Keller from Keller Fay’s Ed Keller’s statistics were somewhat shocking – see details later in this post)

Thoughts/Ideas I will definitely be sharing with my CMO

• From Pat LaPointe: CFOs are the ones who are really approving marketing budgets. The language they speak: numbers! They want to
  • Allocate spend strategically
  • Look for metrics that integrate with financial outcomes.
  • Due to limited resources be focused on initiatives that will truly “move the needle” Don’t bother with anything else.
  • Don’t come into their offices with non-credible assumptions!!!

• Scott Deaver from Avis emphasized the importance of online marketing campaign in this volatile economy. Why? Because online marketing is
  • Nimble for changes
  • Provides instant tracking
  • Is easily scalable

• Dominique Hanssens (UCLA): If you want to impress Wall Street in your marcom activities consider these two things:
  • emphasize creating long term customer value. Impact from long term innovation materializes in about 6 weeks.
  • Communicate the value of your brand by differentiating it against its competitors.

• When American Express (Melanie Davis) measures social media buzz they link online buzz with traditional buzz but still struggle with lack of statistical models to show how online discussion drives brand health and what’s the value of social media influencers. Sigh… so true!

• Rick Abens (ForesightROI): stop focusing on short term product management and concentrate on long term customer management. How: know your customer (with focus on methodical segmentation)

• Here is how Carnival Cruise Lines (Shannon Balliet) attributes marketing success of their campaigns 40% based on accurate prospect lists, 40% on compelling offer ONLY 20% on creative

• Alicia Rankin (link: PDF bio): At NFL 20% of fans drive 68% of revenue. By further segmenting their customer base NFL knows who their high value and negative value customers are.

• Ted Molter: Average time on site at San Diego Zoo is ~40 mins. Video content is best for increasing time on site.

• According to Chadwick Martin Bailey (marketing research agency) best practices for effective Marketing Performance Mgmt (MPM) include:
  • Secure senior level buy-in (through incrementally demonstrating value, educating through benchmarking)
  • Align w/ company’s strategic objectives
  • Make targeted investments in data, technology and people who love numbers 🙂
  • Develop clear processes for taking marketing measurement insights and making them actionable

• Rob Malcolm (Diageo/Wharton) Don’t measure for measuring sake. Make sure you measure what will give you insight and that your measuring system is simple in order to be accepted across your organization.

• Kevin Clancy (Copernicus Marketing): Must institutionalize marketing measurement by
  • standardizing processes,
  • making sure your entire organization is aligned behind the initiative,
  • setting the right tone from above,
  • hiring analytical talent,
  • rewarding staff for reaching measuring milestones,
  • not forgetting to APPLY insights from data.

• Megan Burns (Forrester Research): There are three kinds of customer experience metrics
  • Descriptive (what actually happened)
  • Subjective (cust. Perception of what actually happened)\
  • Outcome metrics (e.g. likelihood to recommend)Customer experience measuring best practice list
  • Choose 1-2 galvanizing metrics (e.g. Net Promoter Score),
  • develop simple enterprise dashboard,
  • segment data to find opportunities and insights
  • and finally train employees to use data as part of their day-to-day operating procedures.

• Ed Keller (Keller Fay): WOM breakdown: 77% off-line (face-to-face), 15% telephone, ONLY 6% online (email, SMS, blogs, social networks).
  When determining WOM value find out:
  • What’s being said?
  • Who tells the story?
  • How can brand facilitate that conversation?
  • What’s the impact?

• Ed Keller (Keller Fay): 3.3 billion word of mouth brand mentions are being made in America every day. Here are the most talked about industries
  • Food & dining
  • Media entertainment
  • Beverages
  • Sports
  • Telecom
  • Automotive
  • Health & healthcare
  • Financial
  • Personal Care and Beautyand 5 WOM brands: 1) Coca Cola, 2) Verizon, 3) Wal-Mart, 4) Pepsi, 5) AT&TDon’t hide your head in the sand worrying about negative WOM since the majority of branded WOM (65%) is positive. Only 8% is negative.

Parting Thoughts

1. Out of 31 presentations (most of which were delivered by well known thought leaders and distinguished practitioners in the are of marketing measurements) only FIVE were available to attendees to view/download afterwards. I understand the competitive nature of the content being shared, but come on, five out of 31! Here are the two that were shared using social media channels such as slideshare
   1. ViewPoint’s “Does Engagement Equal ROI?” presented by Matt Moog http://meetinnovators.com/2008/08/28/matt-moog-from-viewpoints-network/
   2. Pitney Bowes’ “Delivering Service Socially” presented by yours truly
2. Despite the fact that conference organizers did not encourage real-time user generated content (and discouraged attendees from having a laptop on during conference sessions 😦 ), several fellow tweeps and bloggers did not disappoint. Twitter stream with over 100 tweets from the event marked with #measureup hash tag. The result: when Googling “Measure Up conference in Chicago” user generated content tramps the main conference website 2:1
   

Event hosts: IIR, the Marketing Science Institute & Marketing NPV and particularly Amanda Powers – once again thank you for your hospitality and inviting me to speak.