OfferWise has answers. Shoppers love coupons, but those pesky pieces of paper have proven inefficient. And what if the marketer wants to see — gasp — actual, measurable redemption data? It’s one of many questions that comes with connecting offline and online commerce.
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David Ogilvy, commonly referred to as the Father of Advertising, once said, “Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” He was referring to marketers who relied on “gut feel” or personal experiences to make strategic decisions about creative execution, positioning and budget allocation. His criticism seems particularly relevant to the challenges merchants face regarding the management of today’s online offers.
Click here to download a free copy of A First Data White Paper.
Yet for all of this incredible popularity and growth, most merchants and marketers struggle with measuring the impact of online promotions, including daily deals, coupons and location based offers. Which new customers made purchases specifically because of an offer or campaign? Was the offer overly generous? Would they have responded to a lesser offer? Did they make ancillary purchases? Did they come back? How often? Was the promotion profitable?
The ability to answer these questions is at the core of Going Beyond Redemption: Closing the Loop with Card-Linked Offers—in short, it’s the ability to create and deploy customer acquisition or loyalty-driven offers, and then apply precise and insightful analytics to measure the effectiveness of each offer or campaign. Measurement is clearly only half of the equation, however. Leveraging the data collected to make budgeting and pricing decisions—as well as tactical marketing choices—is critical for success.
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The inability to close this loop is a common pain point for merchants and marketers of all sizes. A March 2012 survey by CMO.com shows that fewer than 20 percent of marketers have full confidence in their fundamental ability to measure campaign effectiveness and, subsequently, even less confidence in their ability to allocate budget and communicate campaign ROI to senior leaders. A similar survey conducted by Forrester Research reveals that 86 percent of marketing leaders rate measurement and accountability as their top challenges when it comes to planning and budgeting.
The CMO.com survey reported that the complexity of channels—along with an overwhelming flood of unstructured data—left marketers using “guesstimates” to determine the effectiveness of online promotions and reverting to “gut feel” when deciding where to place their bets when it was time to allocate marketing budgets.
