How to measure the success of automated marketing campaigns
Automated marketing campaigns have become a revenue source for many companies in various industries, from retail to IT. They help increase the performance of daily tasks, boost conversion rates, and facilitate marketers’ work. The only problem is that despite their proficiency in digital activities, some marketing managers still don’t know how to measure the effectiveness of their operations.
It turns out that many marketers have problems when it comes to defining the right KPIs or proper metrics to measure the ROI (return on investment) of their actions. In fact, around 54% of specialists have reported that measuring marketing automation’s efficiency is challenging. With that in mind, we’ve prepared a quick guide on how to approach the process and start collecting the correct data.
How is marketing campaign automation used?
Nowadays, companies use automation to facilitate their actions and be able to profit from them faster. Marketing automation is a technology that enables the automated management of marketing processes, such as advertising campaigns, across multiple channels. Using the technology, companies can target their clients by sending automated, personalized content across all communication channels. More advanced tools enable setting up dynamic campaigns that are customized based on prospect or customer behaviors.
Marketing automation can be implemented in the form of automated SMS campaigns or automated email campaigns. Popular examples are newsletters, birthday messages, new product launch notifications, or email reminders. It’s an effective way to engage with your customers and reach your subscribers at the right time to streamline conversion.
But building a campaign like this is one thing; measuring results is another.
Measure automated marketing campaigns the right way
To do it well, you need to get familiar with the four major KPIs: Acquisition, Engagement, Conversion, and Retention.
Acquisition
It refers to the number of new contacts. To present the data on the acquisition, you can collect information about the number of people who have recently interacted with your brand (active) and those who haven’t (inactive).[1] You can also base your results on prospect qualification rate, counting the number of people who have been qualified from simple contacts to prospects.
Engagement
It refers to the rate of interaction that your company has with its audience. You can measure the engagement rate by taking the total number of campaign-related interactions (clicks, downloads, page viewing, etc.) and dividing it by the total number of engaged contacts. When doing that, keep in mind that you should distinguish between negative and positive interactions.
Another metric is CTR (click-through rate). To calculate it, add up the total number of clicks on your CTA (call-to-action), then divide it by the number of times it was displayed to your audience. If your campaign is based on filling in a form, then count the number of filled forms instead of button clicks.
Conversion
It’s the process of converting contacts into prospects. To measure the conversion rate, you should know first how you define a qualified prospect for your business. By measuring this type of conversion, you will learn how many contacts you need to gain before getting a qualified lead. Also, you may want to calculate the conversion rate to determine the number of qualified leads needed to gain an actual client who’s ready to close the transaction.
Retention
It informs you about how good you are in engaging customers to continue buying products or services from your company. The first indicator is the cost per prospect. To calculate that, you can simply add up the total expenses of a campaign and divide it by the number of leads generated. Aim to obtain as low cost as possible.
If your campaign intended to sell particular products, you could measure retention by calculating the re-purchase rate. This is the number of people who made more than one purchase in a chosen period. By calculating that, you will have a picture of how loyal your target audience is.
Another indicator can be the ROI of your marketing operation. The ROI is the sum of the revenue generated by your marketing campaign minus the sum of the investments you have put in this operation. The higher the number of sales you obtained, the higher your ROI will be.
Some metrics are more meaningful than others. Based on your campaign objective (the aim), choose metrics that are more suitable for presenting reliable data. It’s crucial because this data is a basis for further decisions about the campaign and optimization.
Common mistakes during the process
Like everywhere, mistakes happen, and some of them may negatively affect your measurement process. Be careful about these few things:
- Lack of campaign objectives
- Wrong user segmentation
- Ineffective sales and marketing cooperation
- Type of data your marketing automation tool generates
- The functionality of your marketing automation software
Automate your SMS campaign
Messaging marketing campaigns can be fully automated thanks to Apifonica. Our technology enables companies to quickly set up an automated SMS campaign based on the list of subscribers. After launching automated messaging, the technology measures every message’s performance and provides you with a full operation report.
Contact our team at Apifonica to automate your marketing today!
Improve your performance following proper metrics
If you are new to marketing and haven’t tried automation yet, there are many platforms and providers that can guide you in this field. With a little bit of help, you will spread your marketing efforts across multiple channels, reach the right audience and be able to report the results without hiccups on the way.