Data sources for campaign evaluation

You can use a range of data sources to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and make great data-driven decisions. In this reading we will cover the common data sources that you can use to get insights into the different aspects of the campaign's performance.

Website analytics

Website analytics is collecting, measuring, and analyzing data related to the performance and user interactions on your website. Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, and Mixpanel give you a wide range of metrics and data points that you can use to make informed decisions about your online presence.

To use website analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaign:

1. Set key performance indicators (KPIs): These could focus on traffic, conversion rates, lead generation, and sales. KPIs should be measurable and linked to your business objectives.
2. Set tracking tools: Add tracking tools to your website and other channels (e.g., email, social media, and paid advertising). Google Analytics is a common choice, and there are many other options.
3. Monitor your traffic: Identify your number of website visitors, pageviews, and bounce rates. This helps to assess the initial impact of your campaign.
4. Analyze sources: Use website analytics to find out where your traffic is coming from. Try to understand which channels are sending visitors to your site. Is it organic search, paid ads, social media, email marketing, or referrals?
5. Track conversions: Use conversion tracking to learn about the actions customers take on your website. This could include sign-ups, downloads, or purchases. Look at conversion rates from different marketing channels.
6. Assess behavior: Look at customer behavior on your website, including pages visited, time spent, and the path taken. This can help you identify areas of interest and potential bottlenecks.
7. Segment your audience: Split your data to understand how different segments of your audience are responding to your website. This could include demographics, location, and device type.
8. Calculate return on investment: Compare campaign costs to revenue generated. Your website analytics can help you track and attribute conversions to different areas of your marketing.
9. Study A/B tests: Some analytics tools enable you with functionality to test different elements of your website, for example, headlines, images, calls to action, and landing pages. Again, your website analytics can help you compare different variations.
10. Review and adjust: Continuously monitor your analytics and website performance. Try to spot trends and issues, and make timely adjustments. Compare your website performance against historical data, industry benchmarks, and competitor performance.
11. Share insights: Communicate your website insights to your team and stakeholders.

Website analytics is an invaluable tool for evaluating your campaign's success and making adjustments. Use it to understand customer behavior, measure ROI, and check your marketing efforts are aligned with your goals.

Social media analytics

Social media analytics is collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data from social media platforms to learn about the performance and effectiveness of your campaign. It helps you understand how your content is performing and how your target audience is engaging with it.

To use social media analytics to evaluate your campaign performance:

1. Set social media KPIs: These could focus on increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, generating leads, or boosting sales.
2. Choose platforms: Think about what’s most relevant to your audience. Different social media platforms have distinct user demographics and engagement behaviors.
3. Use analytics tools: Use the analytics tools provided by your platforms (e.g., Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and Instagram Insights) or other tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Google Analytics. These offer a range of data on social media performance.
4. Track metrics: Compare benchmark data with engagement metrics (e.g., likes, comments, shares, and retweets), reach and impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates, and follower growth..
5. Look at your audience: Find insights into your audience's age, location, interests, and online habits to help you refine your targeting.
6. Analyze sentiment: Are people reacting positively, negatively, or neutrally to your social media? Understand how your campaign is perceived.
7. Adjust and optimize: Make data-driven adjustments to social media.
8. Learn: Use your social media analytics to improve future social media campaigns.

Social media analytics can provide valuable data to assess the impact of your campaigns and guide your decision-making.

Email marketing analytics

Email marketing analytics is used to collect, track, and analyze data from email marketing campaigns. You want to gain insights into the performance of your email campaigns, understand how customers are connecting with your emails, and make data-driven decisions on future campaigns.

The data you collect on email campaigns can include the following:

• Open rates: This measures the percentage of recipients who open your email. It helps you gauge the effectiveness of your subject lines and deliverability. If you send out a promotional email and notice a low open rate, you can experiment with different subject lines.
• Click-through rate: This measures the percentage of recipients who click on one or more links within your email. It's a critical measure of the engagement and effectiveness of your content. If you're running an email campaign to promote a new product and your CTR is low, you might need to improve the content or create a better call to action.
• Conversion rate: This measures the percentage of recipients who take the desired action after clicking on a link in your email. If you're running an email campaign to drive sales and the conversion rate is low, you may need to optimize your landing page or the checkout process.
• Unsubscribe rate: This tracks the percentage of recipients who choose to unsubscribe from your email list after receiving an email. A high rate can indicate issues with your content or frequency. If you see a sudden spike in the unsubscribe rate after sending a specific email, review the content and consider whether it was relevant or valuable.
• Bounce rate: This measures the percentage of emails that were not delivered successfully to recipients' inboxes. If you have a high bounce rate, you may need to clean your email list.

To use email analytics to evaluate your campaign performance:

1. Set email marketing KPIs: These could focus on increasing sales or leads, boosting website traffic, or improving engagement.
2. Track metrics: Identify the key metrics that you will use to measure your email marketing performance (see above).
3. Test: Run A/B tests on different email elements, including subject lines, email copy, and visuals. Find what leads to better results.
4. Segment: Use email segmentation to target specific audience groups with personalized content. Analyze how different segments respond.
5. Analyze email devices: Find out which devices your subscribers use to open emails. Then optimize your email design for compatibility.
6. Track engagement over time: Identify when your subscribers are most active and schedule your emails accordingly.
7. Monitor spam complaint rates: High spam complaints can harm your reputation, leading to emails being sent to the spam folder.
8. Measure return on investment: Evaluate your email campaign's financial success by comparing the cost of the campaign to the revenue generated from email conversions.
9. Create heatmaps: Use tools that provide heatmaps and click tracking to visualize where recipients are clicking within your emails.
10. Iterate: Test different email strategies, adapt to changing trends, and refine your approach based on the data. Compare your campaign results to industry benchmarks.

By regularly assessing email marketing analytics, you can refine your campaigns, improve engagement, and achieve your marketing goals more effectively.

Customer relationship management systems

Customer relationship management (CRM) systems are software tools and platforms that organizations commonly use to manage and analyze their customer interactions, data, and relationships. While not typically thought of as marketing campaign analysis tools, they play a crucial role in marketing by providing valuable data and insights that can inform and enhance marketing campaigns.

Example: A marketing manager at an e-commerce company uses their CRM during campaign evaluation. This includes:

• Segmenting their customer database based on purchase history, demographics, location, and website behavior
• Personalizing email content based on the customer's past interactions with their brand
• Setting up automated email workflows triggered by specific actions or events
• Monitoring email open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue generated from each campaign
• Assigning a lead score to each contact in the database based on their interactions with their brand
• Collecting and storing customer feedback, such as surveys and reviews
• Integrating with other marketing channels such as social media, advertising platforms, and customer service

Surveys and customer feedback

You can use customer feedback tools like surveys to collect the thoughts and opinions of your customers to gauge how well your marketing efforts are achieving their objectives.

You can use surveys and customer feedback at various stages, including:

• Before starting your campaign — to understand their preferences, needs, and frustrations: This will help you target your campaign.
• During the campaign — to track your progress against their needs and make adjustments
• At the end of the campaign — to assess overall results against their need, the return on investment, and get insights for future campaigns

Example: A confectionary company has a new marketing campaign to promote a range of fruity gummies.

Before the campaign it created an email survey for subscribers, asking questions about snacking habits, preferred flavors, and price points. The company used the results to understand its audience's preferences and tailor its product and campaign messaging.

During the campaign the company set up a feedback form on its landing page and asked visitors to share thoughts on the campaign's design, messaging, and overall appeal. The company used A/B testing to compare different campaign elements and identify which ones worked best.

After the campaign the company sent out a survey to customers who visited its website. The company asked about the customers’ purchase decisions and if they encountered any issues during the buying process.

Summary

Remember that to effectively evaluate your marketing campaign, you need to collect data from a range of sources to get a full view. Think about your goals and the channels you are using; you may need to combine data from several of these sources for a comprehensive evaluation.