eHarmony’s Romain Bertrand on measuring performance and path to purchase

Romain Bertrand, UK managing director of dating site eHarmony, discusses the challenges associated with measuring digital marketing and the most reliable metrics.

Romain Bertrand

What are the challenges you face with measuring digital marketing?

There are multiples challenges and new ones appearing all the time. They include attribution, tools, expertise and transparency.

Attribution: understanding the value of each channel and the interaction between channels, both offline and online. Tools: deciding which tools to pick and which results to use, while avoiding duplication. Expertise: making sure you have the right talent, both in-house and via partners, to implement, analyse and optimise your measurement. Transparency: Programmatic and mobile can be very opaque when it comes to the quality and standards in place so we need more consistent definitions and granular reporting to be implemented.

What do you consider the most reliable and valuable metrics?

The metrics for digital need to be the same as for the rest of the business – sales, costs of acquisition and retention, funnel attribution and brand metrics. It’s absolutely key to focus on outputs versus inputs, return on investment and also ensure your media and agency partners are aligned with your expectations and measurement metrics.

EHarmony twitter stats

How do you link up your digital metrics and understand customers’ path to purchase between devices?

Vendors and partners across various platforms and channels often like to measure in different ways, so it is essential to have a consistent way of measuring performance and path to purchase, while using the micro-insights each platform is able to offer. It sometimes takes courage to decide on one method and stick to it, but that’s the only way to benchmark within the vast portfolio of platforms and channels at our disposal.

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