Upwave launches Customer Forecast metric
January 18, 2022
Brand analytics platform Upwave has launched its new platform feature Customer Forecast, designed to give brand marketers a comprehensive reporting metric to understand which media tactics are driving future customer growth and identify long-term media efficiencies. Customer Forecast is validated by actual sales data, without relying on short-term metrics such as Multi-Touch Attribution or Sales Lift.
According to Upwave, an everyday challenge marketers face is the inability to tie top-funnel brand investments to bottom-of-funnel outcomes. Both Multi-Touch Attribution and Sales Lift have inherent value, however, their short-termism bias prevents CMOs from demonstrating the MROI of brand investments, and prevents media execs from identifying long-term media efficiencies. This bias is now even driving a ‘race to the bottom’ that threatens TV advertising, which is increasingly being compared to lower-cost digital channels on short-term metrics for which TV isn’t designed.
“Ultimately, methodologies like MTA undervalue the longer-term revenue impact of TV, and other brand campaigns,” claims Ken Archer, SVP Product, Upwave. “Upwave’s Customer Forecast metric is really the Holy Grail of marketing measurement–proving that your brand spend leads to real customers.”
Upwave’s Customer Forecast feature was developed to give marketers a more comprehensive understanding of the paid brand media tactics driving future customer growth. Upwave says Customer Forecast metric helps fill this gap, proving that investing in brands is investing in customers for long-term growth, not just short-term Sales Lift.
According to the company, the key benefits of Customer Forecast for brand marketers include:
- Customer acquisition. With Customer Forecast, brand marketers are now able to see the number of new customers they’ve acquired or retained who have been exposed to their brand campaign. This benefit now ties top-of-funnel metrics to bottom-of-funnel outcomes.
- Minimised consideration timeframe. Customer Forecast has the ability to show the actual length of time between exposure(s) to a brand campaign and becoming a customer – helping them better understand the length of their sales cycle and measure outcomes of brand advertising in a way they couldn’t traditionally.