The discipline of Experiential Marketing™ continues to command an ever growing share of the marketing mix. However, the tools to measure that spend have not kept pace. One common approach has been to attempt to determine the return on investment (“ROI”) by comparing the benefits derived from the campaign against the costs of deployment. Unfortunately, ROI can be a clumsy tool when looking to hone in on the power that a one on one connection with a potential customer can have. So now, over 25 years after XMC trademarked the term Experiential Marketing™, we are pleased to introduce our newest creation…the product of a decade’s worth of research: Return Per Interaction™ ("RPI”).
Experiential Marketing™, at its core, places brands and consumers in close proximity, often through the lens of a shared passion point. When that proximity moves from impression to engagement, an interaction occurs. Of course, each interaction is not equal, and must be valued based on its relative effectiveness. XMC’s analytics team considers the following types of interactions when opining on value:
1. Active Physical Engagement – typically event based engagement, be it utilizing sponsorship assets, permit based street/mall based or guerilla in nature, this powerful face to face interaction lasts more than 15 seconds and can include, surveys, contests, opt ins and sign ups 2. Passive Physical Engagement – a brief interaction (less than 15 seconds) that could include brief messaging, sampling or receipt of drive to retail couponing 3. Active Digital Engagement – whether it’s the online amplification of a physical activation or a custom built digital experiential marketing™ program, this form of interaction is highly valued and involves the sharing of content and a dialogue/comments in connection with the brand or campaign 4. Passive Digital Engagement – Minimal effort consisting of one click likes and retweets, but clearly well beyond a standard impression
In formulaic terms, the model can be displayed as follows:
RPI™=TEV/EB TEV=TI x AVI
Where:
TEV means Total Experiential Value EB means Experiential Budget TI means Total Interactions AVI means Average Value per Interaction
As the influence and popularity of experiential marketing™ continues to expand, XMC is proud to be at the forefront of the measurement and analysis of client investments in the area. Feel free to reach out for a live demo of our proprietary approach to Experiential Marketing™ and Return Per Interaction™ analytics driven approach.
