Flytxt discusses the relevance of the Control Group functionality by narrating an experience with a mobile marketer.

Campaign analysis by tracking response rate alone is not the most accurate method.

Some of the pertinent issues most often raised by both VAS and U&R marketers are on data overflowing and customer analysis exports without concrete statistics.

Recently we were caught offhanded by a marketer with a difference.

His question which says, “How can I measure the true impact of my mobile marketing campaigns?” sounds simple, but seems to have caught the right nerve of marketing.

We observe that many marketers invest the majority of their time analysing data and coming up with the magic formula that promises eternal growth of ARPU. But when they are unable to generate any money for the company or at least can’t prove it, they approach experts.

But not this one, he begins with the end in mind. “Why do you want to know?” we asked.

“I am under pressure from my boss to create higher and higher response rates and I am not sure if that is the right way to quantify things,” was the answer.

“You are right! Response rate is not a good measure by itself for evaluating marketing effectiveness” we replied. “What you really need is to measure the net monetary impact of your campaigns by excluding the people that would have nonetheless purchased the product. You need to compute the ‘signal’ caused by your campaign above the ‘noise’ that is there anyway.”

“Ok, but how can I measure the purchases that are happening anyway?” he asked.

Further to this we added, “Heard about the Control Group? Let me explain to you in detail what Control Group is all about and how it addresses your challenge by helping you precisely measure the net impact of campaigns,” and I handed him my Control Group Cheat Sheet.

How control group helps to measure net impact of a campaign? Control Group is a standard marketing effectiveness measurement technique. Neon uses this proven technique to enable mobile marketers do an instant and accurate measurement of net impact of mobile campaigns. What is a control group? It is a randomly selected set of customers from the target recipient list of a campaign. It could be some absolute number or a percentage of the total target list. When a campaign is broadcasted, this control group will be excluded from sending the offers. At the same time, their purchases or responses are logged in using the same tracking rules as applied by the marketer to measure the response rate for other group of customers who actually received the campaign. How net impact is measured? Consider an example, a marketer sends a Top Up promotion to a target audience consisting of 5,00,000 people. Randomly selected 50,000 subscribers out of that total target list are made a control group and the campaign is sent to remaining 4,50,000 subscribers. Once the campaign is sent, conversions from both these 2 groups are tracked and compared as shown in the table below. First row is the signal and second row is the noise, and the actual net impact of this particular campaign is computed by comparing between the two.

In summary, the Control Group functionality enables automated, real-time monetary impact analysis. It helps marketers take decisions in a swift and accurate manner.

Thus for mobile marketers, measuring the net impact of campaigns becomes a dream come true. Control Group feature makes it easier for them to accurately answer several challenging questions enumerated below:

• Had I not sent the offer, would they have still bought the product?”
• What would be my monetary impact after deducting purchases by consumers who did not need the offer?
• Is the campaign with highest response rate the most profitable one?

To know more about Control Group functionality, write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it