Definition

Closed-loop marketing is a form of marketing analysis to improve ROI. It is a closed loop to describe how sales and marketing work together.

Description

Marketing analysis is always backed by data that provides sufficient insights to make decisions. Working in a closed-loop gives the team a deeper understanding of how marketing activities impact sales.

Closed-loop marketing can be summarised in four steps which helps both the sales and the marketing team to understand the customer’s journey. It will answer questions like when was the first time when customers interacted with your brand. And, it also tells which part motivated them to make the final purchase from the website.

To drive a company’s results successfully, it is important that the two departments work collaboratively without a division. It helps the two departments to share data and create wealth for benefit.

It helps to optimise marketing performance, taking business goals close to revenue generation. It makes the conversion rate better, further adding to revenues.

Example

Sharp Minds Publication deals into selling books (of all kinds) online. The company used multiple channels to make the sales online. They captured the information about the client’s purchase and browsing data.

The company used the data to optimise the marketing initiatives. Using the information, the customers who showed interest in downloading e-books, were given a special discount for buying. The data driven approach helped the marketing team to make better sales.

Essential steps of closed loop marketing

These are the important steps of closed-loop marketing:

• Their aim is to attract website traffic.
• Track website traffic origins.
• Monitor online consumer behaviour and note their areas of interest.
• Trigger automated content delivery for specific targets.
• Analyse results supported by data.
• Continuously evaluate the sales funnels to drive more profit.
• Calculate return on the leads.

Who uses closed loop marketing?

These are the people who require CLM:

• Companies with multiple sales platforms need closed loop marketing. They require highly skilled employees to deliver the required strategic output.
• Retailers, manufacturers, and service providers may require closed loop professionals. They will have to expand the sales through multiple channels to drive business profitability.

Also Read – How to Create a Digital Media Strategy That Gets Results?

Four Steps of Closed Loop Marketing

These are the four steps of CLM:

Step1: A customer arrives on your website. A cookie is set on the referral source.

When a customer comes to your website for a visit, it can be from email, another link or another website. Once they click a cookie sets on to their referral source enabling you to trace the origin of the traffic. This way the data is compiled to find out what makes the traffic on your website.

Important is that you create your website as the hub of all marketing activities like email marketing, reference links, social media marketing, etc. You need to assign a tracking URL at the end of the website link. It enables you to track the origin of the traffic.

For example www.thrivehive.com/blog is a normal link. And attaching a tracking url to it makes it www.thrivehive.com/blog/xyz123.

Step 2: Visitors browse your website and cookies track the visitor’s action

After the visitor visits your website, you will then have to monitor their behaviour like which pages they visit and what is the trajectory of their actions. It will help you optimise the path of visitor-to-customer conversion.

You can use softwares for this or get serious with the backend programming.

Step 3: Visitors convert into leads by submitting the lead-capture form

To monetize the traffic, you need to convert visitors into leads. And for that you would require customer’s information in detail. The best way to get intel from the customers is to redirect the incoming traffic to the landing pages with a submission form. It is called the lead-capture form.

More than telling about the behaviour of the customer, it tells about who the customer is. And this information prepares the lead database for the marketing and the sales team in the company.

Step 4: Lead ultimately becomes a Customer

Establish a customer relationship management system to take care of the customers you have converted from the leads. You can further track down the source of origin of the lead and how you converted it.

Tools required for Closed-Loop Marketing

To set up your CLM, it is necessary that you map all the marketing activities to drive profit after sales.

These are the tools that will be required for Closed Loop Marketing:

• Marketing Software: Softwares that help you to optimise your marketing activities like campaigns, lead conversion, and monitoring results. Some of the best marketing softwares include Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, and Zoho CRM.
• Customer Relationship Management Software: Customer Relationship Management keeps all the activities like sales, marketing, and support teams in synchronisation.

FAQs

Which are the top tools that will help in data tracking in CLM?

Some of the tools that can help in closed loop marketing include:

• Google Analytics
• Nutshell
• Marketing Cloud FX

What is closed loop reporting in marketing?

Closed loop reporting in marketing is a system in which data and information collected through closed loop marketing is shared by marketing and sales professionals. It helps both the teams to use the data for their deliverables.