The holidays are right around the corner and if you work in the retail industry you’ve likely already determined your holiday digital marketing strategy and will spend the next few weeks finalizing all of the campaigns. But what happens once it’s time to start deploying those campaigns and bringing in holiday revenue? Is your team set up to not just track Marketing ROI and KPIs but potentially adjust your strategy on the fly if goals aren’t being met?
The data and metrics relevant to holiday campaigns are typically the same as they would be for campaigns throughout the year, the stakes are just a little higher. If you’re relatively new to Salesforce Marketing Cloud or just want to make sure you’ve got all your boxes checked, we’ve previously shared tips for measuring marketing ROI with Marketing Cloud.
Quick Reporting Wins in Marketing Cloud
There are a couple relatively simple yet somewhat underutilized functionalities in Marketing Cloud to consider implementing ahead of the holidays if your team is not already doing so.
Campaign Tags
Campaign Tags can be accessed through the main dashboard or during campaign setup. This feature allows the user to bucket emails and content under a specifically named Campaign in order to keep track of all the associated pieces of a campaign. The main benefit of leveraging this feature is that it also allows the user access to a Campaign report that displays only the emails in a specific campaign, clearing out the clutter of non-relevant campaigns and easily displaying which emails are the highest or lowest performers within the campaign. Additionally, if you already have or are planning to add on Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama), utilizing the Campaign functionality can provide additional insights within that tool as well. Just keep in mind that the Campaign feature is not retroactive, so be sure to place emails into a Campaign prior to any emails sends.
Web Analytics Connector
The Web Analytics Connector can be used to extend your third-party web analytics service such as Google, WebTrends, or Coremetrics in order to track and analyze data from your Marketing Cloud sends. Although some email production teams still choose to add in parameters and variables manually when coding an email, the Web Analytics Connector can often help make that process more efficient.
The connector allows Marketing Cloud to automatically tag target links in your emails with specific variables which the analytics tool can then use to identify which URLs belong to which email. Although this can also be handled manually, using the connector can help make the process more consistent and streamlined and ensure that all the data flowing to your analytics tool is correct.
This functionality is not enabled in Marketing Cloud by default, so activating it within your Marketing Cloud instance will require that a ticket be opened in the Help and Training portal.
Take Holiday Reporting to the Next Level with Marketing Cloud Intelligence
Collecting the right data and reviewing the Key Performance Metrics is a start but marketing teams need to be able to see relevant insights and take corrective actions quickly if campaigns are underperforming. Fortunately, Salesforce has the perfect analytics tool to help marketers do just that, Marketing Cloud Intelligence.
Here are a few ways that Intelligence can help make an impact on your company’s reporting and ROI this holiday season:
Unify data across marketing channels, campaigns, and platforms. Odds are that your marketing team will be running more than just email campaigns throughout the holidays. Intelligence can be configured to bring in multiple data sources so that your team can see the big picture of how all of your various channels and campaigns are working together.
Easily visualize and analyze data and share insights across teams. Intelligence doesn’t just bring in all of your disparate data, it allows you to create powerful, easy to understand dashboards that tell a story, allowing your team to more quickly establish insights and make key strategic changes, if necessary. Intelligence also makes it simple to share reports and dashboards out to all the stakeholders who are keeping a close eye on holiday numbers.
Real-time alerts. Intelligence allows marketers to set up alerts based on KPIs or set measurement goals. Let’s face it, retail marketers are going in a hundred directions during the holidays. Wouldn’t it be nice to let your analytics tool take some work off of your plate and monitor the key metrics for you? With triggered alerts you can be notified of a red flag instantly rather than finding it hours later, after you’ve gotten through your long list of to-dos.
Wondering if Marketing Cloud Intelligence is right for your team? Review this list of questions to consider as a starting point.
Ready to step-up your reporting capabilities in Marketing Cloud?
After all of your hard work planning holiday campaigns, don’t let any impact of your efforts go unrecognized. ListEngage’s Marketing Cloud experts can help ensure that your ROI and KPI reporting is fully optimized. Please contact us if you’d like to leverage our expertise for a conversation and a free assessment.
