Marketers must remain dynamic, adapting to the both the changing needs of their customers and the changing nature of technology.
The benefit to this constant change is, with the development of technology and the proliferation of data, digital marketers now have more information at their fingertips than ever before, putting them in a great position to draw insights and improve the omnichannel customer experience. Closed-loop measurement does exactly that.
By utilising the data that you already have access to on-and offline, closed-loop measurement connects all of your measurement capabilities (both online and in-store), to help you understand how your digital marketing efforts are impacting key business objectives.
According to recent research by LiveRamp in partnership with Forrester Consulting by enacting closed-loop measurement, marketers can connect the dots between customers, digital devices and data and shift spend to channels more accurately speaking to their target demographics and avoid unnecessary spend.
This all sounds great, but what actually is closed-loop measurement?
Customers consume advertisements across multiple devices and touchpoints, even ones that don’t play an active role in a potential purchase. Closed-loop measurement is about understanding what that customer does offline, post-exposure, or pre-exposure, if you have that data through measurement. It can help you understand the benefits of operating across different touch points, by offering insight into what customers do offline, before or after they see an advertisement and possibly make a purchase.
Through closed-loop measurement, you will effectively be ‘closing the loop’ between your online and offline measurement, allowing you to accurately and holistically measure the impact your marketing campaigns. This is also a means to secure more budget from your CMO!
Next: How do you use closed-loop measurement to quantify marketing impact?
You know your marketing efforts are impacting in-store traffic. But, how do you prove this and measure its strength?
By linking exposure data from your online campaigns to in-store transaction data through LiveRamp, you can identify which keywords were successful and which were underperforming, before and after a customer’s purchase. Further, by including in-store spend when measuring digital efficiency, you can demonstrate the value your advertisements were delivering all along.
Linking all these back to your business objectives and sustaining the momentum
You should already be measuring your marketing efforts of individual digital channels. How else will you understand their benefits and adapt your marketing campaigns accordingly?
Closed-loop measurement allows you to improve the channel-specific marketing you are already running, and take it to the next level by proving the impact that a single channel has on not only online target audiences but also offline. By onboarding your CRM data, you can link your efforts together to understand the overall effect, rather than analysing each channel in isolation.
The core advantage to this is that you can view the impacts of your marketing efforts cohesively, and then adapt your digital marketing and advertising strategies accordingly to reap more meaningfully rewards. Put simply, you can reallocate spend from underperforming campaigns and funnel them towards those that have shown strong return. Even better, accurately showing how your marketing is improving the bottom line makes for a strong case for an increased budget.
Ready to take your campaigns to the next level and try your hand at closed-loop measurement? Learn more here.