How did the promotion perform? Let’s take measurement for digital music download promotion as an example. The first inclination is to jump right to redemption rate as a means test for success when in fact, that is one of the poorest possible metrics on which to judge efectiveness (unless the goal was to influence redemption as much as possible). Take a look at a CNET article that discusses results from a Pepsi-iTunes promotion (theory of “redemption as barometer”?). Interesting…
What about finding out the result of the campaign from a marketing perspective ever happened to information on performance in market?
- How much extra leverage did Pepsi distributors get in the field as a result?
- Did Pepsi meet their sales targets (Pepsi was the primary sponsor after all, not iTunes)?
- For Pepsi, how far did the iTunes partnership go in effectively re-asserting itself as THE brand that best utilizes music?
- For iTunes, what was the increase in user base for the iTunes music store?
I admit that there is a challenge involved in obtaining answers to the above questions, as parts of the data required may be spread over various parties, none too eager to discuss their results with others. My contention is that in the Pepsi-iTunes promotion specifically, the benefits from that partnership were substantive for everyone involved, even though the redemption rate was what I would classify as modest.
Artificially weighting of something like redemption rate is not a good way to solely judge effectiveness. Let me give you a better example (the names and industries changed to protect the guilty):
A software company gave away music CDs to consumers that purchased multiple software titles. When the promotion was over, the company instructed it’s agency to analyze the promotion by contacting as many participants as possible to determine how many times each one had listened to their CD. That metric, it was determined, would be used to judge whether they would run a similar promotion the following quarter.
Sounds crazy right? the digital equivalent of this happened. last. year.
If I was the software company, I would be more interested in things like:
- Of people buying the software, how many saw the CD offer and chose that brand over a competitor?
- How many incremental software units were the field sales teams able to ship because of this promo? How many displays were they able to get?
- How many people went in to buy one title, and ended up buying more than 1 to get the CD?
With digital content, the redemption rate is much less important than what the incentive did in the market. A better question for a sponsor is whether the incentive was effective in grabbing attention and creating action. Better questions lead to better answers, and the better the answers, the better the marketer.