Marketers are always looking for ways to improve. It’s in our blood.

The good news is, with the proliferation of data, digital marketers have never been in a better position to dig for insights and reap their benefits.

Closed-loop measurement takes advantage of the customer data you’re sitting on, so you can understand how your digital marketing is impacting sales, both on and offline.

So what is closed-loop measurement, and, more importantly, what can it actually do for you?

The “What”:

According to Ovative/group, closed-loop measurement (or what they call “online-to-offline measurement”) connects “customer behavior across online and offline touch points to inform product and marketing buying decisions and develop content that considers the omni-channel impact on decision making.”

Your customers are exposed to your ads across devices—devices they might not even use to make a purchase.

Closed-loop measurement is about understanding what that customer does offline, post-exposure, or pre-exposure, if you have that data.

For example, when Ovative/group was implementing closed-loop measurement with one of their retail clients, they knew that their search campaigns were impacting in-store traffic, but how could they prove that impact?

By linking the exposure data from these campaigns to in-store transaction data through LiveRamp, Ovative/group was able to identify which keywords were overperforming and which ones were underperforming. By including in-store spend when measuring digital efficiency, they demonstrated significant, currently unmeasured value.

The “So What”:

It’s easy to think about measuring an individual digital channel because channel comes with some built-in features that proves their value.

What if you could prove that a single channel had impact elsewhere?

You would get more budget allocated to you, and your CMO would benefit when thinking about the marketing budget overall.

Offline-to-online measurement improves upon the channel-specific marketing you are already running and takes it to the next level. With data connected by an onboarder, instead of analyzing each (siloed) channel, you can link your efforts together to understand their effects in aggregate.

This has obvious implications for you as a marketer. Understanding which channels, creative content, publishers, etc., are enhancing or hindering sales allows you to make smarter decisions in your media mix. Being able to show how your marketing is improving the bottom line makes for a strong case for an increased marketing budget.

In fact, 78% of marketing executives said they would increase digital spend if they had more budget. Odds are your executive falls into this group.

All Together Now:

Now, maybe you’re thinking, an improved quality of ad spend AND an increased digital marketing budget? What do I need to get started? Or maybe you’re thinking, this sounds great and all, but it seems like a lot of work…

Either way, I’m glad that you’re thinking that there must be more to getting started with closed-loop measurement. There is! Enough for it’s own blog post. Subscribe at the top right of this page, or check back next week for the second installment of our Getting Started with Closed-Loop Measurement blog series.

Can’t wait that long? Check out our webinar on the topic with Ovative/group, or take a look at their white paper to learn more.