5 methods to supply quantitative suggestions to artistic groups

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“Mission critical.” That’s how important it is for creative teams to receive both qualitative and quantitative feedback, according to senior marketing directors including Helen Baptist.

She saw the problem firsthand as she rose the ranks of marketing during her career. Today she is Chief Operating Officer at PathFactory, where she is responsible for marketing, sales and customer experience.

I think she is right; Yet there is a divide in many modern marketing departments.

As digital transformation took hold, marketing has developed an arsenal of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure digital efforts. This includes metrics like engagement, clicks, downloads, and user intent, among other things.

More mature marketing departments take measurement one step further: they are able to track and apply attribution techniques down to the pipeline and sales level.

So where is the gap?

It arises on the creative side of the house. Whether the creative team is an integral part of marketing or acting as a separate team, talented professionals who bring marketing efforts to life visually and conceptually are often blind.

According to an annual survey my team conducts in collaboration with InSource, 55% of creative content teams say they never receive quantitative feedback on how well an asset is doing with customers and prospects.

In other words, the people CMOs rely on to do a lot of the heavy lifting – graphic designers and copywriters – never know if their job will get the result it should.

How to give creative feedback: It’s not “I don’t like blue”

My thesis is that creative work works best when it is aligned with marketing around business goals. I believe including them in the measurement feedback loop is an important way of achieving this alignment. As a little review of the idea, I have brought this topic up to several senior marketing executives.

“Given the way marketing teams are measured – in terms of business results, sales pipeline, and revenue – creative teams should be in the same feedback loop as teams working on on-demand generation or product marketing,” said Adam Kaiser, senior vice president for marketing at OpenAsset.

Amy Barzdukas, WiTricity’s chief marketing officer, agrees, “You need to be able to provide feedback that isn’t ‘I don’t like blue’.” She emphasizes that as quantitative measurement improves, marketing managers need to find a way to involve creative team members.

A common operational profile for measuring results also has upstream effects on the organization. According to Lacey Miller, director of marketing at LoudCrowd, this is key to making sure the team is working towards the same goals. She says creatives need to understand their impact on business results just like an email marketer, for example.

However, Lacey also admits that sometimes this is easier said than done, since quantitative measurements are usually not something that creative talent can take for granted.

“Creativity is difficult because you push them out of their comfort zone with quantitative measurements,” she says. “But when creatives look around the organization and everyone else has specific figures and creatives don’t, they can feel left behind.”

Five tips for getting creative into the quantitative feedback loop

Adam Kaiser notes that there is a “direct impact” between “high quality creatives” and the performance of digital marketing. “The better the creative, the better the results.”

Measurement is the way to gather the data needed to improve creative content outcomes. Here are some tips offered to marketers on building a process to achieve this.

1. Help your team see what you see

Share your measurements with creative team members so they can see what you see. This may sound obvious, but I’m surprised how often it is overlooked.

One way to do this, according to Adam, is to make metrics available to all team members. It requires that metrics and an overall company performance report be presented at every “team stand-up meeting” so that the two are connected.

One way to make metrics accessible is through a collaborative self-service medium. Simple examples are an intranet, a portal or a shared table.

2. Change your mind about teaching creatives to measure

One of the advantages of having creative talent by your side is that creatives often think differently about marketing problems. They also absorb information and learn differently. This is an important consideration when designing a system to include creatives in the quantitative feedback loop.

Amy Barzdukas recommends thinking about the best data visualization and using the creative team for their expertise. For example, creative people help with the creation of their presentations on marketing results for the company’s board of directors. This interaction is an opportunity for professional development for your creative team.

“A creative who can visualize data is more analytical and becomes a real talent to hold onto,” she adds.

3. Gamify the testing of creatives

Some of the marketing directors I spoke to suggested involving creative teams in designing tests – in addition to testing. This fosters a shared interest and sense of ownership, and provides an opportunity to build relationships between creatives and marketing.

Measuring can also be fun. Amy noted that she had “good success with a weekly A / B testing challenge” for “website and email drip campaigns”. She encourages her teams to develop a different text or visual test each week. The team that wins the challenge will receive a small reward, such as free coffee.

“Making it a challenge and making it playful gets the teams to test and think more analytically,” she says.

4. Partnership with sales operations

Helen Baptist found that operations departments – like Marketing Operations or Revenue Operations – have proven invaluable in her organization for several reasons.

First, business economists have technical expertise. You are instrumental in sourcing and implementing the right technology to measure success.

Second, Revenue Operations is adept at “turning quantitative results into visualizations that tell a story”.

Operations also acts as a sort of organizational diplomat who helps check “egos at the door”. Decision-making must be “balanced between quantitative feedback and the customer’s qualitative feedback”.

“Proud of work is one thing; pride in delivering exceptional creatives that drive business results is another,” she says. “The sales business plays the role of ‘Switzerland’ in an unbiased, business-like manner.”

5. Protect your creative team’s time

Creativity doesn’t happen at the push of a button. Creatives need space to be creative.

The same goes for the measurement. Creatives need space to measure, because for many it is a new and additional task that initially feels overwhelming.

One way to protect creative teams’ time, according to Lacey Miller, is to have the right project management tools in place. She says creatives need automation and workflow so they can keep track of projects in detail and easily report progress to decision makers.

“Make sure it’s something public so they don’t get distracted by the team who want a random t-shirt,” she adds.

Perhaps even better, these tools can both measure creative outputs and help feed performance data back to the creative team.

More resources to provide creative and quantitative feedback

Four ways marketers and creatives can work together better

Five tips for getting the right feedback on web design

Visual design: data-driven tactics or qualitative strategic asset?