What is closed loop reporting and why does my startup need it?

It’s simple really, closed loop reporting means tracking a lead from first visit to closed customer and even repeat customer. Think the equivalent of “from farm to fork” when it comes to knowing each step your steak took on the way to your plate. Each step can and should be tracked and analysed.

Pretty picture marketing should be a thing of the past

Can you believe there are organisations out there who still believe that all digital marketing does is provide “pretty pictures” and doesn’t really influence the bottom line? Well, there are a lot of them. For marketing managers this is particularly frustrating the moment they are looking for budget for a new campaign and have to justify spend. Wouldn’t it be easier to be able to show a simple table that proves digital marketing’s contribution? The base you need has just five columns:

Armed with this information based on a particular timeframe or for a particular campaign, any marketing manager will be able to justify spend. Data is power.

Know what works and get better at it

Not just for startups but organisations in general, digital marketing managers need to know which elements of their conversion funnel work and which don’t. And we need to know it fast. The contribution of marketing to revenue is substantial and without a good lead pipeline there are simply no sales. By measuring conversion right through to customer, it quickly becomes apparent whether you are attracting the right audience or not, whether your lead conversion is up to scratch and how your lead nurture is performing.

Here’s an example, you see that your conversion rate from visit to lead is continuously dropping, however your website visitor number is relatively constant. My gut would say that if you converted before, then it’s time to review offers and lead entry points like landing pages and call to actions. If you have never seen a strong number of leads you might not be attracting the right audience and it’s time to look at your SEO and personas. So instead of wondering why you are not getting any new customers at the end of your funnel, you are actually focussing on the problem that is occurring much earlier.

Closed loop reporting allows you to consistently improve your conversion funnel and ensure you spot peaks and troughs quickly; understand what worked to do it again and understand what didn’t and improve.

Campaign closed loop reporting

Closed loop reporting works well to monitor your marketing performance overall and measure against set goals. In addition, you will want to apply closed loop reporting to your campaigns also.

Here an example, if you are running a social media campaign that drives traffic through organic Facebook posts and is supported by ads, you will want to quickly know whether you are getting the expected number of visits to your site (and conversion page), what kind of numbers you are converting to lead and whether sales is satisfied that these can be closed. Not spotting issues early on means that you are spending ad budget while not getting a return.

The same as described earlier applies to campaigns, find out fast where your funnel is excelling and where it needs work before you spend more time and effort that may lead to an undesirable result.

Close the loop

Closing the loop on this post, let’s have a quick look at the two reasons you should apply closed loop reporting:

1. Understand and improve your conversion funnel - fast
2. Add actual $$$ value to marketing

We would recommend measuring on a monthly basis at least. If you have a short sales cycle, consider a shorter timeframe such as weekly. Shorter timeframes also lend themselves to closed loop reporting for campaigns.