it turns out I give good spreadsheet after all

I’ve been working with a new client for a few months that, by virtue of their business model, have to be very focused on a few KPIs.

They do a lot of digital activity and are also pretty hot on tracking where other incoming leads are coming from, so you can tweak an element of their marketing activity and quickly see the effect it has.

I used to be a bit negative about the digital enthusiasm for all things spreadsheet, feeling that it concentrated too much on the science of marketing, at the expense of the art.  But I have to say I’m now a convert.  Assuming you start with a decent injection of proper qualitative insight, keep topping this up and overlay with a sanity check, I now officially love spreadsheets (so long as I don’t have to do the tricky formulas to make them work properly).

It’s allowed me to really understand the back end of this particular business and see how my insight can add value not just to what we’d traditionally term marketing activity, but also to the way the phone is answered, their customer satisfaction surveys and even how the business deals with customers who don’t turn up.

In short, I’m now Mrs Brand Touchpoint.  Thanks to a combination of qual and KPIs, I’m loving working out where the bottlenecks and heavy attrition points are to start thinking about how to help improve them.  It obviously helps that that everyone working at and for the client is really nice and that we all agreed to start with the proverbial clean sheet of paper.  So ideal conditions really for a marketing revolution.

Like Rob hinted in a post a few weeks ago, I’d already be thinking about an IPA Effectiveness Awards paper, if only I could find a spare £2k down the back of the sofa…