Industry Voices: Retailers' Most Measurable Marketing Channels

Article by Rimma Kats | Oct 1, 2019

Measurement is a hot topic in marketing and for good reason. Marketers need to work hard to demonstrate the effectiveness of their efforts, but oftentimes they’re confusing what's easily measured with what's usefully measured.

We recently sat down with several retailers, including Knix, Enjoy Life Foods and Article, to discuss their current marketing efforts, their thoughts on first-party data and how they define digital transformation. Last week, we dug into the marketing channels they rely on. In today’s “Industry Voices: A Focus on Retail” video, we delve into the role measurement plays in their ongoing efforts. View the full video below, made possible by Bluecore.

“Just because a dashboard gives you a number, it doesn't mean that that number actually means anything,” said Duncan Blair, director of marketing at direct-to-consumer (D2C) furniture retailer Article. “It's equally important to not only measure that you’re doing the right things, but also that you're doing those things correctly.

“You need to think about the overall mix. Are we doing the right activities? Are we helping build awareness and brand preference? But also are we helping convert those consumers into customers? Those are two different pieces of the measurement puzzle. It requires a really disciplined approach to documenting your planning and thinking: How do we set objectives at every level? And how do we measure against those objectives in the short and long term?”

For some brands, like Enjoy Life Foods—a wholly owned subsidiary of Mondelez—measurement can be tricky. “We look at things like open rate, conversion rates, and because we have a large D2C portion of our business, we look at what's resulting in sales," said Joel Warady, general manager of chief sales and marketing officer at Enjoy Life Foods. "Measurement is very difficult when you're looking at how are you selling product within brick-and-mortar stores.”

For others, such as D2C brand Thinx, it’s important to know which channels can provide the key insights they need. “We get so much data on our customers and customer trends through [our] digital ads,” said Hilary Fischer-Groban, brand director at Thinx. “Some other channels that have been really impressive recently with their trackability would be TV and even direct mail. The insights that we're able to get on those and then layer back into our customer channels are really, really impressive.”