This weekend I introduced my children to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. The original movie with Gene Wilder, quite possibly the funniest man ever. There’s a scene when Willy Wonka first emerges from the factory. I always found this scene to be rather bizarre (much like the entire movie I guess), but as I was reading this weekend I learned something very interesting about this part of the movie.
In an interview, Wilder said he was initially hesitant about taking on the role, but finally accepted the role under one condition:
"When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself… but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”
The interviewer asked why.
Wilder replied, “because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”
And he was correct. Throughout the movie you’re never really certain what is real, and what is illusion.
This is also true when evaluating marketing performance. Numbers can be deceiving, and they require analysis and discussion to get to the truth. Below are steps I recommend taking when evaluating marketing campaign performance. Putting aside “leads” and revenue, these analytics provide some insight into your campaign engagement. These actions will allow you to better separate illusion from reality.
The actual Eloqua Insight Reports I reference are as follows:
- Campaign Analysis Overview
- Campaign engagement report
- Form Submission Overview
- Form Submission Data
- Form Submission Trends
- Email Click-through Link Breakdown
- Email click-through with query strong breakdown
- Email Analysis Overview
- Overall Trend Metrics Dashboard
- Campaign Activity Performance Dashboard
- Form Performance Dashboard
- Benchmark Dashboard
- Database Health Dashboard.