Data Driven : Dashing Toward Data

Improve performance and communication among all departments with weekly multichannel dashboards

• The Open Rate is calculated by dividing your opened emails into your delivered emails. This is a significant metric in determining both the power of your headlines and the targeted list used.
• The Unsubscribe Rate measures the impact of the frequency of your email campaigns.
• The Conversion Rate is Orders/Delivered emails. It is the online equivalent of the print campaign RR%.

Pay Per Click Campaigns
The PPC dashboard also measures unique metrics that establish campaign efficiencies:

• CTR (Click Through Rate) is calculated by dividing total Clicks into total Ad Impressions.
• CPC (Cost per Click) is Cost/Clicks. This metric should be constantly monitored to ensure profitable guidelines are maintained for the PPC program.
• Bounce Rate measures the total clicks that visit only one page on the website, or “bounce” away due to finding non-applicable material. It is an important metric in determining how targeted your keywords are to the customer.
• The Cart Abandonment Rate provides insight into how many potential customers are leaving during the checkout phase. An unusually high rate can potentially point to either a Cart design issue or higher than expected shipping charges. It is also an opportunity to design a triggered email campaign to recapture a portion of the lost sales.

Dashboard Importance
Catastrophic results can occur if all key business stakeholders are not privy to the corporate dashboard, and are instead using their own individual results to measure success.

For example, a multichannel direct marketer in the apparel industry failed to deliver a dashboard to the merchandising department. By forgetting to include email campaign sales and orders in its department results, the merchandising group established holiday inventory buys assuming that certain styles were well below plan.

The reality, however, was that through targeted emails, the styles in question were actually selling above plan. Significant potential sales were lost during the holiday period due to lack of available inventory.

Providing all key business stakeholders with a weekly dashboard of current results allows for a uniform understanding of business trends, the ability to rapidly affect change if necessary, and efficient planning for future campaigns. It needs to be maintained as a priority in someone’s job description.   

Philippe Graner is director of marketing strategy at the Mission Kan. direct marketing agency J. Schmid & Associates. Reach him at philippeg@jschmid.com.

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