Motion Metrics: How to Turn Data into Dollars Web Analytics	Visited: 2188 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Dan Miller October 14, 2010

Savvy marketers pay attention to their metrics, focusing on developing a better understanding of which actions (like a new subject line) result in the desired outcomes (like an increase in clickthroughs). But if you're focusing solely on metrics that tell you only what happened, you're jeopardizing the future of your entire marketing program. Understanding what happened is certainly important, but not as important as discovering the why - the reason behind the results.

That’s where "motion metrics" come in. Motion metrics are a fancy name for diagnostics – or the causal factors behind an outcome. Motion metrics are quite simply the “why data” that explains a result. They are the "little hero" of the data world that allows you to move forward toward repeat success because you know the cause behind better performance.

Unfortunately, many marketers never discover the motion metrics for their programs. They are simply too busy taking action – or just don’t know how to diagnose. But you can save yourself a lot of late nights by knowing where to spend your time – and which activities are complete wastes of time. And that knowledge is also a competitive advantage for you and your company – that almost guarantees long-term success.

Three Types of Metrics: Activity, Results and Motion

Most marketers are familiar with two kinds of metrics: activity metrics and results metrics. Activity metrics provide you with a checklist of what you did. For email marketers this may include "developed a solid offer" and "cleaned the list before sending." Results metrics are the outcomes of those activities. In the case of email marketing this may be an increase in the number of conversions or, on the downside, an increase in the bounce rate. But the metrics that marketers often overlook are those that happen in between the activity and the results, the motion metrics.

Motion Metrics Explain the Why Behind the What

Those in-between metrics are the ones we call motion metrics. Motion metrics are the data that will help you understand why a particular result happened - so you can decide which actions to repeat and which to avoid. They're the metrics that pinpoint the reason that conversions increased, or the explanation behind higher bounce rates.

The trick to motion metrics is knowing what data to collect, the most efficient way to collect and analyze it, and what to do with it once it’s been analyzed. Then you can make better, more actionable decisions that produce meaningful results.

Motion Metrics: A "How To"

Getting started with motion metrics is similar to getting started with action or results metrics. You take the same initial steps: establish some meaningful parameters, then identify the metrics that will show you whether your campaigns have been successful. You should also review the latest dashboard report showing a variety of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) at a given point in time.

But then you take your analysis process a step further to discover the reasons why your marketing programs have been performing well or doing poorly. How? By asking “why”, “why”, “why” until you find the answer. You form hypotheses – then test them out until you find proof.

Ask Questions, Form Hypotheses, Test and Repeat

We often hear the analogy of peeling back the layers of an onion. Much like an onion has many different layers, the marketing process is similarly multilayered. Smart marketers understand that it’s part of the marketing process to keep peeling back the layers of a result – constantly asking "why?" at each stage of the process.

Imagine that you had a big drop in conversions on a specific email marketing campaign. Remember what you've learned about motion metrics, and use this event as a catalyst to start peeling back the layers - asking “why” until you can form a series of hypotheses that need answers. Think about what could have caused that drop in conversions - did you make a change to the offer, the creative, or the time of day the message was sent? Was your bounce rate higher, or did you deliver the message to a brand new list?

After coming up with hypotheses, test them out. If you hypothesize that your list wasn't clean - check your bounce rates to test whether this hypothesis holds water. If your hypothesis is that the email content was not relevant to the audience - test it by taking a closer look at your click-to-open rates. As you begin hypothesizing and testing answers to each of the questions you've identified, you'll slowly but surely rule out the hypotheses that don't work until you discover the one that does - and then you'll have your answer.

Dig Into Anomalies

Another way marketers tackle the question of why is by identifying anomalies and taking a closer look. An anomaly in this case is a sudden change in results that really stands out. If you notice a sudden change in a number that's been steady for ages, or all of a sudden see your data doing something completely unexpected, this is your sign to explore a little deeper. By identifying and exploring these anomalies, you'll be able to more quickly cut to the chase.

For example, imagine that you're looking at your standard email deliverability reports and notice a huge change in your email bounce rate. Whoa - time to do a little investigating! Upon further examination, you realize that one ISP is rejecting any email messages sent in bulk that exceed a certain size. In this case, you realize that solving the issue is a matter of simply running your email through a content analyzer, then setting the email messages to send at specific intervals rather than all at once. Both of these simple actions will get your deliverability rate back to normal and will cause the data anomaly to disappear, too.

By exploring anomalies in your indicator data, you're doing two very beneficial things: First, you're using your existing diagnostics to their fullest potential, allowing them to help you discover the why behind the what. Secondly, you're saving time and money by quickly solving problems and improving results - a real-life example of turning data into dollars.

Motion Metrics for B2B Companies

The concept of motion metrics is pretty clear for companies that are selling online. But what about B2B companies that are using their Web sites to generate leads? Use of motion metrics still makes sense whether you're selling direct to consumers or generating business leads. Here's an example:

Imagine that your B2B company sells software-as-a-service (SaaS) products online and wants to generate qualified sales leads. You notice that your lead generation efforts simply aren't delivering the ROI you expected. Your initial hypothesis is that you need to scrap your current lead generation program and start again from scratch. After all, if the ROI isn't there, then why keep going down the same path?

Then you remember what you've learned about motion metrics and resolve to spend time discovering just why your ROI isn't performing. Upon further digging into existing data, you realize your lead-generation campaigns are actually delivering plenty of new leads, and that those leads are converting into new customers. But your average revenue per new customer is much lower than desired. Aha - now that's a totally different issue that needs to be addressed! Taking a closer look at your data, you realize that deep discounting seems to be present for all closed deals.

Based on this information, you draw a completely new hypothesis. You don't need to revamp the entire lead-generation process, but you do need to discover a way to increase your revenue per new customer. This doesn't call for a complete program revamp, but rather an addition to your existing program. And more importantly, it allows you to pinpoint the areas of your campaign that have been successful - in this case your lead generation efforts - as well as areas that can benefit from improvement.

In the above scenario you got lucky, because it's much easier to increase the value of an existing customer than to convert a brand new customer. By taking a closer look at the issues, peeling back the layers of the problem and getting to the heart of what was really happening – you ended up with an easier action path than you anticipated. And you just increased your effectiveness to your company to boot!

Motion Metrics for Customer Retention, Acquisition

While we're taking a look at motion metrics in action, let's explore another scenario. This time you're the lead marketer for an online e-tailer focused on keeping current customers and acquiring new ones. Imagine that you've recently sent an email marketing campaign to a list of past purchasers but only achieved a mediocre result in terms of dollar revenue generated. You first assume that your offer was off or your list was suffering from fatigue, but a quick check of the corresponding metrics show that neither of those is the case. So what gives? Is your campaign a certified failure?

Hardly. Upon further investigation, you discover that a few things are occurring. First, your email campaign achieved an incredibly high response rate among those recipients whose purchase cycle is short - in other words, the people who tend to react quickly reacted quickly and positively to this offer, and made a purchase. However, your overall numbers were dragged down by the majority of your recipients who have much longer purchase cycles - it simply takes them a longer time to decide.

Your original conclusion may have been that your email marketing campaign was simply not a success. But by digging deeper into the diagnostic data that's right at your fingertips, you can validate the portion of your email campaign that was a success, and you can modify future campaigns to turn around the unsuccessful portion. In this case, you may choose to repeat this same campaign, but segment email recipients based on the length of their average purchase cycles.

Focusing on Motion Metrics Leads to Confident Decisions and Actions

As the final step, don’t stop short of actually putting your analysis into action. That’s the motion part of motion metrics. By arming yourself with truly meaningful diagnostic data and conclusions, you can now confidently take actions and make decisions – with support proof! You've gathered valuable information about what has and hasn't worked in the past – and why. Now you can start testing new options. You have likely identified at least one offer, message or segment that is a clear champion for your company. Use that as a benchmark against which to test future marketing campaigns. And start the analysis process all over again – ensuring that motion metrics continue to be part of it. Then take a moment to congratulate yourself on measuring what really matters – and knowing how to define a progressively improved path forward. It won’t take long before you’re a certified Motion Metrics Master!