Who’s familiar with
Triggers
A trigger can take the form of a campaign, like an email, micro-site, voucher, event, flyer, advert, article, blog post, social media message or offer.
Before we create any of these campaigns, we need to first consider causality and the effect on the audience.
- What are we hoping to achieve in terms of an action (goal)?
- Who are we hoping will take this goal?
- Are there any considerations (sensitive topic, vulnerable audience, competition, ethical consequences, legal consequences)?
- Who else might see this?
- Desired actions
Taking into account the questions above, you can now create your campaign with a goal in mind, such as:
- Booking
- Enquiry
- Sign up
- Read more
- Comment
- Increased interaction
And double-check at the end:
- Is branding clear?
- Is the message transparent?
- Are ‘calls to action’ easy to find?
- Have I included terms?
Effects/Consequences
We hope that the effect will be a desired action (goal), however, we also need to allow for an action that isn’t our desired goal.
- Taking legal action (no opt out, no policy,incorrect information, misrepresentation, misuse of data, illegal use of photography)
- Complaints (intrusive emails,prior opt out, spam)
- Competitive response (counter-attack, negative remarks)
- Campaign not being seen (Facebook stream, bounced emails, shared in wrong place)
- Campaign not being recieved (email hard bounce, incorrect email)
Measuring the effects
Web – Micro sites and offers
If you are sending to a selective audience or wish to capture the effects separativily, then use a web
address with limited access – that means only share with your target audience and don’t add it to another page on your website (or your navigation). This way you can track the hits to that particular page. Especially useful for flyers/loyalty/premium offers.
Google analytics
You can measure the visits, source of visits and geographical information in analytics.
If you add an anotation to your graph, then you can note if the campaign had a direct effect.
Either within Adwords or via Google analytics, you can see the response from adwords campaigns.
Advanced reports can slice the data so you can segment this traffic and drill down.
If you track your campaigns with tracking code, you’ll see the specific actions.
Google alerts
These will catch any attention online and mentions of the keyword you are following
Emails
Email statistics will show you the hard and soft bounces (failed attempts).
Also the % recieved, opened and clicks.
Note all your unsubscribes and keep a master list to double-check against in future.
Social – Insights
Facebook insights will shed some light on the amount of times an update has been featured in the stream for fans/friends. Plus, show you your interaction level
@ mentions and re-tweets
will indicate the reach of your campaigns and interest level. It will also catch negative mentions.
How do you measure causality in your marketing?
“Image from tanewpix /Shutterstock.”
