How do we Accurately Measure the Effect of DRTV on a Website? - Susan Rowe

While this is an inherently difficult question to answer it can make the difference between success and failure of a DRTV campaignOur first question is why would we need to measure For many clients we are already capturing phone data so what purpose does it serve to include web data in our results We know what stations are working and those that don39t so how would incorporating web leads into the data stream that I feed into Core Direct the leader in DRTV tracking and reporting help my process The answer is rather simple Our DRTV activity is pushing more people to a website than to a call center for most clients and categories Only the 65 market is an exception to this ruleFor one client in the financial services category over the course of two years time we saw the percent shift from 80 phone volume 20 website volume to the reverse amp8211 20 call volume 80 web volume And this was years ago Using a small subset of the overall data to make decision is fraught with error We learned that fact on this account when we finally incorporated web leads into our analysis and saw that we had been overrewarding olderskewing cable networks and canceling youngerskewing cable networks One company in the Education category actually has seen their phone calls dwindle down to almost nothing and decisions are made to keep or jettison a daypart on a station based on one or two calls while over 90 of their leads are occurring online So we must incorporate web leads into our data stream My mantra is every day one more person decides to go online to check out your website instead of picking up the phoneSo let39s get started There are a number of interesting challenges in grabbing web leads and putting them into a tracking system such as Core Direct One is what data do we take from the website Luckily for us in the online world many streams of customers are from known sources such as affiliate marketing email marketing behavioral and retargeting We also can ignore people who search organic or paid in the category like car loans or insurance for example What we can capture is direct typein branded search and organic search such as queries for Mixbook Allstate and Jenny Craig DRTV will drive those areasThe second challenge is how we determine that an unidentified lead was generated from our DRTV campaign SEMSEO teams are already claiming all the leads generated through branded search so often we need to try to identify lift generated when the DRTV commenced compared with a preperiod factoring out seasonality as well and perhaps normal velocity of business Direct type in also had volume prior to commencing with a DRTV campaign so we can also employ a preperiod as well as other adjusting metrics to determine lift in order to more accurately determine the value of DRTVOver the years in DRTV I have seen a variety of online website maneuvers to effectively quotcarve outquot DRTV only leads Each carries its own inherent problems and I do not recommend employing them One way clients claim to determine if the online lead is coming from DRTV is to simply ask For one client during the application process they would ask where did you hear about usamp160At the time Internet was receiving by far the bulk of the responses When the client rotated the entities and put Television first on the list TV received the bulk of the responses Same when Magazine or Newspaper was in the first position So the position was driving the result not the media type Using the customer to provide us the answer does not give us an accurate readAnother method which is losing popularity is the TV or Radio or KABC method to bring consumers first to a microsite or at least track the visit before they go to your home page Many consumers have wised up to this and don39t bother with typing in the amp8230 unless there is an extremely compelling offer to do so Also it does not include anyone who is using search to navigate to your site and depending on the complexity of your website name determines the percentage of people employing that methodFinally and undoubtedly the most popular is to use an entirely different website name altogether to capture web leads driven by DRTV The issue with this is that it denigrates your primary brand and dilutes what branding you could be gleaning from your DRTV effortSo let39s look at how we incorporate web leads into our data stream employing Core Direct for example As mentioned above we pull data from three streams of business direct type in and branded terms from both SEO and SEM Core Direct39s URL tracking methodology allows us to look at those leads generated within a time window after a spot airs This way we can see what type of spike of volume we have brought up to the website from our efforts While we also provide drag through DRTV and that should be incorporated into our overall results the spike of activity added to our call leads should be what we optimize our media againstBringing Web leads into the optimization picture for direct response is critical Someday when IPTV really takes hold we may have the ability to quotknowquot what DRTV has provided in terms of clickthroughs Until then it is up to our industry to employ the best method possible to optimize our mediaPrior to embarking out on her own Susan Rowe held the position of Senior Partner Managing Director within the Digital and Performance Marketing media practice for Ogilvy Neo in New York and Chicago Feb 07 July 08 Her charge was to oversee Performance Marketing for a number of high profile clients including Allstate Investools TD Ameritrade Select Comfort and Six Flags She was also responsible for leading NeoVideo the video unit that works with new forms of video on TV and online She was selected to be part of a Google TV39s first panel primarily for her work in development of ground breaking research with Google TV on the effect of attentiveness on response Susan can be reached at srowe2202yahoocomRead all Susan39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Susan Rowe on ResponseDriven MediaCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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How do we Accurately Measure the Effect of DRTV on a Website? - Susan Rowe

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