Making Customer Touches Measurable

Last week, Marka and the FEI tribe discussed a potential pitfall faced by many market researchers and how to avoid it. This week is the first in a series of conversations on how tracking a marketing program’s success can allow FEI (and printing companies) to modify their activities to achieve better results. Remember, fire = print.

Lunchtime in the FEI conference room was a noisy, often disgusting affair, with Zoot, Org and others scarfing down lamb pizza at an alarming rate. Marka knew it would take a bold statement to get the tribe’s attention.

She cleared her throat. “I’m concerned that FEI doesn’t have a tracking system in place to monitor which sales and marketing activities are most effective in terms of ROI.”

Org perked up at the mention of ROI. “What would you do differently if you had this information?” he asked.

“If we’re getting lots of leads from the O-web, for instance, we could put in an additional CSR to field queries in that area,” Marka replied. “If our ‘Olympians Day’ mailer garners fantastic response and conversion rates, then we could pick up our direct mailing efforts.”

Org tugged his ear the way he always did when a subject held his interest. “So you’re suggesting we align our promotional activities with results and match cost outflows to revenue inflows.”

“Yes,” Marka continued. “But, first we need to put a system in place that tracks [listing the customer touches off on her fingers for emphasis]:

• Sales calls
• Telesales efforts
• Coordinated O-mails
• CNP mailings
• Social O-media campaigns
• Collateral effectiveness
• Networking leads
• O-web leads
• Airwave and print advertising
• Search engine advertising

“In addition, contacting prospects and customers via different channels—O-mail, direct mail, etc.—should mean tracking these sources of referral as well,” Marka explained.

“After we’ve tracked this information, Numo can crunch the numbers and determine the total cost and ROI of each activity,” she continued. “Over time, these measurements can help us establish guidelines of what works and make more strategic business decisions based on this knowledge.”