Subject: Calculating a Meeting's ROI

From: Chief Marketer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Feb 2005 09:30:03 -0600

February 8, 2004 | A PRIMEDIA Property |

Table of Contents
Events: The Quest to Formulate a Meeting's ROI
Direct Marketing: Mail Drives Retail Traffic
Cause Marketing: "Sincerity That Can't Be Planned"
SEO: Accommodating MSN Search
Demographic Targeting: Gays Favor Gay-Specific Marketing
Advertising: Super Bowl Post Mortem

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This Week's Stories
Events: The Quest to Formulate a Meeting's ROI
By Dave Kovaleski
CORPORATE MEETINGS & INCENTIVES
Even longtime meetings pros and event marketers find it difficult to qualify and quantify a meeting's success. Yet today's new atmosphere of accountability demands quantifiability. Executives are being asked to measure the business impact of their meetings -- from the sales generated to the skills learned to the productivity improvements made -- in dollars and cents. Jack Phillips, Ph.D., founder of the Birmingham, AL-based ROI Institute, has developed an ROI measurement methodology that shows promise but also raises questions because of its complexity.

Collecting data for the Phillips ROI model data can be done in a variety of ways, including pre- and post-event surveys, focus groups, and follow-up interviews. The data are then plugged into a six-step process called the "chain of impact," which leads to an ROI calculation.

The next question is: What can be monetized? Sales, productivity improvements, quality improvements, time-savings, and employee and customer retention? "If it's in hard data categories of output, quality, cost, and time, we can convert it to monetary value," Phillips says. Things such as job satisfaction, stress reduction, teamwork, improved public image, and employee engagement fall into the intangibles column. While it may be difficult to convert these benefits to dollars, their impact should be analyzed and reported to management.

To read more about the Phillips methodology and its effectiveness, visit CORPORATE MEETINGS & INCENTIVES.

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Direct Marketing: Mail Drives Retail Traffic
CATALOG AGE
A new study supports what many multichannel marketers have long known: Direct mail drives retail traffic.

According to the Customer Focus 2005: Retail Direct marketing study from Baltimore-based marketing services provider Vertis, 24% of adults who received direct mail from a retailer that they don't typically shop from subsequently visited one of the retailer's stores.

As to the types of direct mail that recipients are most likely to open, 51% said that a special offer or a discount will persuade them to open a mail piece. Sixty-three percent said that an "interesting-looking" package makes a difference as to whether they will open a piece.

Among the respondents that have opened direct mail, 72% said they've responded to coupon offers, and 70% have responded to "buy one, get one free" offers. Discounts on a single item have generated response from 62% of those who opened direct mail, while 54% responded to percentage-off offers.

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Cause Marketing: "Sincerity That Can't Be Planned"
By Betsy Spethmann
PROMO
Marketers spend $1 billion on cause marketing, on top of the $12 billion that corporate philanthropy programs donate to non-profits. Increasingly, that money is reaching consumers in their neighborhoods. The Home Depot helps KaBOOM build playgrounds and Habitat for Humanity build houses. The History Channel supports local historic preservation, including a $19.5 million deal signed in December to spiff up New York City landmarks. Procter & Gamble parked mobile mammography vehicles in grocery store parking lots in Texas and invited shoppers in for free X-rays.

But local execution of a national program takes a lot of arms and legs, from the marketing staff at headquarters to employee and nonprofit volunteers in each market. The trick is coordinating everyone; the benefit is a sincerity that can't be planned.

Marketers are increasingly partnering with nonprofits that have national recognition but do all their work via local chapters (think America's Second Harvest, Habitat for Humanity, Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation). Most corporate donations are channeled back to local branches. To get the full benefit of that local halo, brands need to activate their tie-ins in each market. Marketers have three assets to do that: retailers, volunteers (including their own employees), and consumers themselves.

To read more about making cause marketing work, visit PROMO.

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SEO: Accommodating MSN Search
By Stephan Spencer
CATALOG AGE
MSN Search has finally officially launched its own search technology. Soft-launched in November, the new proprietary engine officially debuted on MSN.com at the beginning of the month. MSN Search had previously been powered by Yahoo!'s Inktomi.

A lot is at stake here for Web marketers. MSN Search currently has a 15% share of the search engine market, behind Google and Yahoo!. But that share will no doubt grow over time as Microsoft leverages its installed base of Windows users, embedding MSN Search into users' desktop in a new edition of Windows codenamed Longhorn. What's more, MSN Search is already in beta for integration into MSN Messenger, its instant messaging application. Microsoft also has access to PDAs, mobile phones, and interactive TV. You can be sure that the new MSN Search will start to appear on all these devices.

Recently Microsoft president/CEO Steve Ballmer stated that his company is "hell-bent and determined" to challenge Google for leadership in Internet search. Given Microsoft's resources, it has as good a chance as any of achieving this goal.

Happily, it doesn't appear to be difficult for search engine optimizers to achieve high rankings on the new MSN Search. A number of tried-and-true optimization tactics appear to work quite well. To learn more about how best to optimize your Website for the new MSN Search engine, visit CATALOG AGE.

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Demographic Targeting: Gays Favor Gay-Specific Marketing
DIRECT NEWSLINE
If you want to tap into the gay/lesbian marketplace, it's worth your while to invest in gay-specific advertising. Almost two-thirds (64%) of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) adults say they are likely to consider purchasing household products and services from companies that market directly to gays and lesbians over competing brands that do not, according to a new survey by Harris Interactive.

Nearly half (48%) of all GLB respondents say they find it most important or very important when considering products or services to see advertising that is clearly tailored to a gay audience with gay imagery, people, or copy that speaks to them as a gay person and that appears in both mainstream publications and gay publications.

According to the survey, the most common ways GLB adults become aware of a company's reputation for gay-friendliness is by word of mouth (45%), gay Websites (29%), and gay magazines or newspapers (29%).

To read more, visit DIRECT.

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Advertising: Super Bowl Post Mortem
By the PROMO Staff
PROMO XTRA
Through star power, humor, and an offer to win a trip to outer space, marketers showcased their wares in full force during Sunday's Super Bowl extravaganza.

Brands that paid the $2.4 million for a 30-second spot on Fox took fewer risks with their airtime, giving viewers far more toned-down commercial content compared with previous years, in particular last year.

Volvo Cars of North America used its 30 seconds to unveil a product and launch a sweepstakes. In its first-ever Super Bowl spot, Volvo directed viewers to Boldlygo.com for a chance to win a seat on Virgin Galactic's commercial passenger-carrying spaceship.

Another car company, Cadillac, had the two shortest commercials of the night at five seconds each. Both concluded with a CadillacUnder5.com banner directing viewers to a sweepstakes of the same name.

Directing viewers to the Web was one trend among the Super Bowl advertisers. Star power was another. To read more about the strategies behind and the likely effectiveness of the Super Bowl ads, visit PROMO.

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