NinthDecimal Launches Toolset to Identify True Growth Metrics

The omnichannel marketing platform NinthDecimal announced major changes to its measurement platform this morning, as it launches new KPIs designed to provide insights into what’s driving customer growth and acquisition for brands.

Delivered through a self-serve measurement dashboard, NinthDecimal’s new Visit Metrics will provide store visit counts and visit rates by campaign. The launch also includes a 90% decrease in campaign impression requirements, a reduction that allows NinthDecimal to offer its measurement capabilities to small and mid-size campaigns, while still supporting multi-billion-impression campaigns.

NinthDecimal President David Staas says other attribution platforms provide just one set of KPIs, which creates a limited view of campaign performance. With this new release, NinthDecimal is offering both immediate visitation metrics for in-flight optimization and the in-depth analysis required to attribute causality to each tactic.

“It’s the first time that both incremental—Attribution Metrics—and indicative—Visit Metrics—KPIs have been brought together for advanced, real-time marketing optimization,” he says.

Designed to complement NinthDecimal’s Attribution Metrics, which calculate incremental store visits and incremental lift in visitation, Visit Metrics generate store visit counts and visit rates, parsed by campaign. Marketers will still be able to use NinthDecimal’s Location Conversion Index (LCI) to measure the impact of marketing spend by publisher, audience, and creative.

How can brands use that data in the real world? If a retailer’s campaign had high Visit Metrics but low Attribution Metrics, for example, that would indicate that a high volume of existing customers were visiting a store. It would also show that the retailer’s current marketing tactics were not driving visits from new customers, or more visits from existing or lapsed customers. With that information in hand, the retailer could adjust its campaigns appropriately.

Brands could also apply growth metrics across channels. By adding Visit Metrics to NinthDecimal’s omnichannel measurement capabilities, brands should be able to answer questions like whether television ads are performing better or worse than digital video ads, particularly when it comes to driving customer growth, visits, and sales.

Staas says the company’s new KPI was built in direct response to CMOs, heads of research, and agency account teams telling NinthDecimal what they needed to take foot traffic measurement to the next level.

“Since we introduced LCI in 2013, we’ve been focused on creating an always-on measurement platform that connects the customer offline journey to customer growth,” Staas says. “The changes and optimization we’ve made along the way have all been driven by the needs of our clients.”

Visit Metrics calculate fast for a quick read and in-flight optimization, Staas says. This allows marketers to answer important questions, like whether people who were exposed to advertising are actually visiting specific locations more frequently than people who were not. Staas believes the addition of Visit Metrics to NinthDecimal’s LCI product will enable CMOs to make multi-million-dollar decisions on how best to deploy their marketing spend. He says CMOs are focused on one thing—driving growth for their brands—and growth is accomplished by acquiring new customers, keeping existing customers loyal, and getting both groups to where the brand’s products are sold.

“We’re giving CMOs the toolset to identify what’s working on driving those true growth metrics,” Staas says.

In the larger context, Staas says the launch of Visit Metrics points to an increased focus on real business growth, as opposed to proxy or vanity metrics that don’t deliver true value to brands. He says the launch of Visit Metrics is just one example of how NinthDecimal is offering always-on solutions that actually give brands, agencies, and publishers the ability to effectively drive growth.

“Going forward, you’ll see more of this kind of innovation from NinthDecimal,” Staas says. “[We’re] helping brands unlock their most valuable assets, harness the customer offline journey, and apply that unique intersection of data to acquire new customers, keep existing customers loyal, and get them both to buy more.”

Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.