There is starting to be a lot of effort to promote the concept and category of Revenue Performance Management as the next iteration of marketing automation. Companies like Eloqua and Marketo who target the largest of enterprises have embraced this phrase as part of their marketing message and are working to drive the thinking around it.
The thinking is definitely in the right direction even though the label is less than inspiring but that’s what happens to enterprise software (anyone remember “Enterprise Resource Planning?” Blech…talk about heartache).
Let’s look at the building blocks of “Revenue Performance Management” which are, not surprisingly, the right ones to consider given any on-line marketing plan and consistent with our product vision here at LoopFuse (thanks to the folks at Eloqua for laying this out nicely in a recent video).
- Reach – simply stated, this is the number of people you can reach with your message be that an email campaign, on-line advertising, organic traffic from content like your blog, social distribution and sharing, etc. This is a top of the funnel number and measured by a number across different channels (number of people reached).
- Value – this is a measure of how many people you have now engaged with and the relative value they are contributing to your sales pipeline as they move from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel and go through the various stages of the sales process. This is measured by both a number (number of opportunities) as well as dollar amount (total and per opportunity).
- Conversion – this measures how good you are at getting prospects from one stage of the sales process to the next with the most important conversion rate being the one measuring conversion to customer. Remember, if you are reaching the wrong people at the top of the funnel, your conversion rate will be disappointing. Measure this as a percentage and track it religiously.
- Velocity – once you get the above three items humming along you will see the overall velocity of your customer acquisition efforts increase. This is best measured by time in terms of the amount it takes to initially find and engage and ultimately convert someone from interested to customer.
- Return – this is where you get to celebrate your success and demonstrate the elusive return on investment from marketing activities. Was that sponsored content worth paying for? Yes, if it drove you a new customer that pays for it immediately (best case) or within a matter of weeks. Should you buy more on-line ads? No, if they generate lots of clicks but limited qualified and engaged traffic.
These are all the right things to measure and part of any optimized on-line marketing program. You don’t need an expensive solution or complex phrase to describe it. If you don’t already measure these things, start right now. If you need some help in doing that, give us a call!
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