Listening Pleasures: Why unified marketing measurement is key to Retail Media success
I recently listened to a fascinating podcast on the Omnitalk Spotlight series, where hosts Chris Walton and Anne Manzenga interviewed Beth McKigney and Troy Neidermire from Ovative about how retailers and brands should approach their media and marketing strategy.
The key takeaway: the old methods of measuring marketing campaign success, like ROAS, reach, frequency, and CPA, are no longer sufficient. Instead, unified marketing measurements that align with overall business outcomes are critical.
The limitations of legacy metrics
As Beth explained, typical media metrics aren’t directly tied to driving revenue and customer file health, which should be marketing’s primary goals. Relying too heavily on metrics like last-click digital ROAS can lead companies astray.
Troy noted that many of Ovative’s clients know their current approach isn’t right, but aren’t sure where to start in fixing it. That’s where Ovative comes in, helping them take a “crawl, walk, run” approach to incrementally improving their measurement.
A holistic full-funnel framework
Beth and Troy advocate for a full-funnel marketing strategy that measures success through “Four Pillars”:
- Enterprise Sales (online and offline)
- Incrementality
- Customer Acquisition, Retention and Lifetime Value
- Margin
Ovative rolls these into a unified metric they call Enterprise Marketing Return (EMR). Getting the whole organization aligned behind EMR enables smarter investment decisions.
As Beth shared, fashion brand Coach embraced EMR early on in their partnership with Ovative. By getting finance bought in, they were able to move to variable budgets tied to EMR thresholds. This helped drive 30% revenue growth despite headwinds.
Valuing upper funnel efforts
Many brands struggle with properly valuing upper funnel marketing tactics. But as Troy explained, the key is taking an additive approach — understanding where new tactics complement the overall strategy rather than just diversifying for diversification’s sake.
He shared the example of Duluth Trading Company, which historically relied heavily on store growth, linear TV and direct mail. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, they had to reinvent their approach. By putting the right measurement tools in place, they were able to confidently step into new areas like CTV, digital audio, video and influencer campaigns.
Generating stakeholder buy-in
Getting buy-in from finance and other stakeholders is critical for shifting to a unified measurement approach. Beth said Ovative aims to get finance comfortable with the methodology from day one. They’re part of designing and validating any tests.
Merchandising is another important stakeholder to bring in early. As Beth put it, “I think it’s important that everybody in the organization understands what marketing is trying to drive and why and how that’s helping fuel the business.”
By tying marketing to enterprise revenue and customer file health through EMR, it becomes a metric everyone can understand and get behind. This enables real-time optimization and reallocation that would be impossible without organization-wide alignment.
In summary, this conversation really underscored for me the importance of a unified, full-funnel approach to marketing measurement. While no one tactic is universally effective, putting the right measurement framework in place enables smarter decisions that drive meaningful business outcomes. I’m inspired to relook at how my own organization is measuring marketing success!
