Measuring event effectiveness

31 July 2009

The 10 point service charge plan has really got the industry buzzing (click here to read a copy). From where I sit I am particularly interested in the final point on measuring marketing.

The plan calls for mall managers to, "Undertake campaigns that deliver obvious returns on investment through data capture and voucher redemption". And thats where FootPath comes in.

FootPath not only measures how many people attended your event or walked past your in-mall marketing, but - and this is crucial - it can tell you whether or not those attendees actually visited the retailers in the centre. With information on average sales per person we are then able to calculate a return on investment (the uplift in centre sales(minus the cost)/the cost of holding the event) for every single event that you run.

There are two primary benefits of running this analysis. Firstly, it allows you to give feedback to your retailers on the success of the event.

Secondly, it enables you to rank the success of your events against each other. For example, the 'petting farm' may have achieved an ROI of 2, as compared with your 'beer festival' with an ROI of 4 and your Italian food market at an ROI of 5. When you come to plan next year's events this information can feed into your decision making and you may choose not to hold the petting farm again.

Below is an illustration of this in practise from our work at Princesshay. Good luck with your events this summer.

Princesshay achieve an 8-fold return on Fashion Event for their retailers

Princesshay - Land Securities, award-winning, in-town, mixed use retail scheme in the centre of Exeter - was abuzz in April with an innovative and successful in-centre fashion event.

The ‘Spring into Summer’ fashion event organised by Catwalk UK and held on the 24th and 25th of April, consisted of two days of breathtaking catwalk shows underneath Princesshay’s architecturally- designed glass canopy. Packed with the hottest cat walk models and showcasing key looks for Spring and Summer the event ran hourly fashion shows between 12 – 4pm each day.

The fashion show was a terrific triumph for the centre. In all it generated:
 Increased footfall of 4%;
 Increased dwell time by 5%; and most importantly
 For every pound of service charge funding that was spent on the event, it is expected that retailer sales within the centre rose by £8 – an eight-fold return for Princesshay retailers!

Land Securities and Princesshay are committed to implementing the 10-point action plan for managing service charge levels. In agreement with that plan, Princesshay actively engages with data providers to analyse the return on service charge funds spent on marketing campaigns of this sort.

Princesshay utilise FootPath data – from Path Intelligence – to understand and quantify the impact that events have on shopper behaviour. Path Intelligence’s FootPath system is able to detect visitor pathways through a centre. For the first time mall owners and managers are able to not only understand what impact an event has on footfall, but to also understand whether or not the event led to increased dwell times and perhaps most importantly, FootPath is able to quantify the increase in foot traffic into individual retailers during and after an event.

Emma McLeod the Marketing Manager at Princesshay noted that “ "The Spring into Summer Fashion event provided a great showcase for our retailers' key looks this season. The shows were energetic and entertaining, featuring exciting choreography and a great team of dancers and models. We received lots of positive comments from our shoppers. However, without the FootPath data, it would have been very difficult to know just how successful the event was for our retailers. The FootPath data enabled us to assess the effectiveness of the event and provide our retailers with a detailed post event analysis that confirmed we had achieved our event objectives"

Wayne Pearce the Centre Director at Princesshay stated “We could see that the event attracted and captured the imagination of our shoppers but we needed hard data to prove just how effective the event was. The FootPath data provides us with a quantifiable way of measuring events and understanding how successful they are at driving sales in our retailers. At this time, when retailers are facing challenging times and service charges are under pressure, I applaud my marketing team
for creating an event that generated an 8-fold return on service charge investment”.

 

Time is Money

27 July 2009

There is no doubt in my mind that it is becoming increasingly difficult for mall managers to increase their visitor numbers year on year. Why? Shopper behaviour is changing in the face of an improved offering from supermarkets, retail parks and online stores.

But - whilst shopper numbers may be stagnant or falling - in many cases dwell time (the length of time that shoppers stay) is increasing.

Shoppers may not go to the mall as often, but when they do go they are tending to stay longer.

When we first introduced FootPath to the market a number of customers asked me whether they should be increasing churn or increasing dwell time. Its a great question and until FootPath was created there was no way to answer it. With no information the industry - by default - focused on driving visitor numbers which in effect resulted in a strategy of driving churn (as our research shows that shoppers tend not to like feeling over-crowded and will leave a site that is 'too' busy).

With the introduction of FootPath we now have a way of continuously quantifying dwell time. Moreover, we now have the data to answer the question of whether or not shoppers spend more when they stay longer.

The answer is a resounding YES! In fact at Gunwharf Quays our research shows that for every 1% increase in dwell time, sales at Gunwharf Quays increased by 1.3%. Now thats something to dwell on.

Read the full research report here:

Path Intelligence White Paper "Time is Money"