“Closing the loop” in business jargon refers to reporting clearly defined results to the CEO, the boss or whoever is at the top.
Closed loop analytics are a variety of evaluation tools that measure which marketing efforts were most productive in acquiring leads and conversions.
These analytical tools have been developed along with inbound marketing techniques to give more incisive insights into the actions of online visitors responding to specific content offers and/or promotions.
Closed loop analytics are just one important part of your marketing strategy. To learn some of the other steps involved in a successful marketing strategy, click the link below!
The three distinctive steps and tools used to measure the potential lead moving down the sales funnel are:
- User visits to website: In order to begin the analytical process, a cookie is enabled on the visitors computing device which can transmit information about what website they visited prior to arriving on your landing page.
- Submits contact information: If the visitor takes the next step and provides their email or other contact info, it enables you to enter them into your database of leads.
- Complete a purchase: This is the final stage of the sales process and the key metric for closed loop analytics.
By having tools to measure this process, you can tell which customer originally came from where.
These stages include an array of possible actions, which may detail a termination point in the relationship with a visitor. Closed loop analytics help correlate the termination point with the marketing platform that prompted them to visit your website. These relationships can easily be converted into an informative assessment as to which marketing initiatives are performing well.
While the basic concept of closed loop analytics is not new, utilizing it well in the age of digital marketing requires adoption of these techniques:
Timely analysis: In the past, closed loop analytics have been used within a timeframe of a year or longer, but most companies expect reports about the efficacy of their inbound marketing strategy much more often than that. Quarterly or monthly reporting can be implemented relatively easily for most businesses.
Software tools: The use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and marketing software are essential to the effective implementation of an accurate CLA plan. Most companies employ CRM to organize their clients, but it is important to marry the two systems. A sales conversion can then be effectively analyzed by the marketing team for its origin, time required, and what factors may have compelled the close.
Persuasive reporting: There are few facts more compelling than a statistical chart detailing results. Using closed loop analytics, marketing teams can better persuade the decision makers in your organization to devote resources to more productive channels.
Effective tweaking: Using the conclusions from closed loop analytics to modify your marketing strategy requires careful consideration. Marketing teams should identify underperforming initiatives and then make several proposals to bolster performance or re-allocate resources to more successful techniques.
Analyzing marketing efforts is essential to refining strategies so they produce the greatest return on investment. Using timely, insightful closed loop analytics, your company can quickly prune away unproductive marketing methods and replace them with strategies to engage your target markets.
