Benchmark data can serve as your company’s guiding light, but only if you know how to interpret it. Using the right metrics and choosing the right KPIs to evaluate will provide you with valuable insights to boost your ROI.
What Your Benchmark Data is Telling You and How to Turn it into ROI
WHY IS BENCHMARK DATA IMPORTANT?
Benchmark data gives you an idea of how your business is performing compared to the industry standard. It’s important to dive deeper than the surface level so you can evaluate the performance of specific campaigns and the engagement rates of particular segments of your audience.
DATA SOURCES AND METRICS MATTER
When you look at benchmark data, you need to be sure that you’re truly measuring what you think you’re measuring. Know where your data originated and take a look at the methodology that was used.
For example, if you’re looking at benchmark data that provides a campaign-weighted rate, don’t use your company’s aggregate rate to evaluate your performance. The numbers will be skewed and won’t give you an accurate picture of your campaign’s performance.
Similarly, if you don’t segment your audience, you may miss out on key insights. Without segmenting your audience, it may initially appear that your brand is outperforming the industry standard, but segmenting allows you to break data down by target audience to get a clearer picture.
Say your company produces video games and has recently launched a promotional campaign. When you look at your data, you see that the average industry open rate is 65.6%, and the open rate for your campaign is 69%. Time to celebrate, right? Not so fast.
If you break that rate down by members who pay for a monthly subscription and customers who only pay for an initial download, you see that the average industry rate for subscribers is 90%, and your company’s campaign averaged 85%. Among those who only pay for an initial download, engagement rate is at 47%, and your company’s rate is 40%. On closer inspection, your company is underperforming, and you realize you have a higher percentage of customers who only pay for an initial download than the industry does as a whole.
WHICH ELEMENTS SHOULD YOU BENCHMARK?
Choosing the right elements to benchmark is critical. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time and may invest in areas that won’t return. It’s important to identify the elements that have the most significant impact on your profits.
There will be some benchmarks that are specific to your particular industry, but some, such as profitability and user experience are ubiquitous and should be benchmarked by all companies. Don’t be afraid to look outside your industry, too. Maybe another industry’s approach is performing well and can be successfully applied by your company.
TURNING BENCHMARK DATA INTO ROI
Loyalty and customer experience go hand-in-hand today, so those benchmarks are essential for increasing your ROI. 33% of elite marketers say having the right technologies for data collection and analysis is the most useful in understanding customers.
Having a 360-degree view of your customers is vital if your business is going to provide the kind of personalized experience customers want. The majority of marketers believe they are providing a personalized experience, but customers tell a different story, but over 50% of consumers say brands’ personalization is underwhelming. Obviously, having good benchmark data on how your customer experience compares to the industry standard is critical.
Customers also expect a smooth multi-channel experience today, and they reward brands that can provide it with their loyalty. Companies that have successfully implemented multi-channel marketing retain 89% of their customers, but 87% of customers believe companies need to work harder to provide a seamless multi-channel experience. It should be evident that being above the industry standard here gives your company the potential for boundless increases in ROI.
At Blueshift, we believe access to real-time data is essential. When you know exactly how your campaign is performing with your target audience at any given point in time, you can make rapid adjustments to increase your ROI. Furthermore, our AI predicts which campaigns will be most successful with which customers and allows you to personalize at scale.
Are you interested in learning how Blueshift can demystify your benchmark data and turn it into ROI? Contact us today to schedule a demo.
