Know the No

Marketers focus on duplicating successful conversions. It makes sense, after all; when and where you’re successful, you should seek to do more of whatever drove that success. It’s the low hanging fruit, and it shows clients an ability to drive sales. But even the most successful campaigns convert a relatively low percentage of those they engage. You never see 50, 60, or 70 percent take rates.

That leaves the majority of the audience that didn’t convert. What about these people? Why did they say no? Did they actually say no, or just “Not right now”? Could a different message/call to action/creative have pushed them to a yes? In a shotgun digital or traditional campaign, marketers rarely even know who they are marketing to, so understanding why those people didn’t take action is impossible. Additionally, without a targeted, segmented set of data to start with, these campaigns fail to understand if entire segments converted, or worse, didn’t convert. These missed opportunities, if identified, provide secondary and tertiary conversion opportunity. In plain language, “knowing the no” gives marketers the path to get more people to say “YES!”