Benchmarking FTW
Early on at Airship, Stephanie Capretto suggested creating a benchmark report. We had some of the biggest brands in the world as customers, and they had some of the biggest mobile audiences.
It was a genius idea. Benchmarking is about identifying gaps in performance and uncovering opportunities to improve. I collaborated with our data science team to bring aggregate brand and user-level data into Looker for analysis. The strategy team took turns analyzing and creating the reports and insights.
Quarterly reports gave us:
a significant differentiator from our competitors; we were first to market, and had the largest data set,
a public relations hook to engage the media with,
a value-add for new business to use as thought leadership,
validation of the strategy team’s best practices recommendations,
a low cost, but valuable gift for customers, which let us up-sell strategy engagements and suggest new campaigns and messaging improvements.
From 2013-2019, the strategy team produced annual Holiday Retail Benchmark reports, quarterly industry data sets, and special reports on topics such as retention and open rates.
I’ve always loved the media industry. I created 2017 US Media Insights Report. report during my spare time because I wanted to see what the data might reveal. For current customers, I included their own data interspersed with the broader trends and specific recommendations. This bespoke reporting and strategy offering helped our account management team retain customers and we also sold a lot of additional consulting!
