What you need to know: 

• Intuit Quickbooks Marketing Director Jane Merrick says limited uptake of market mix modelling (MMM) has “left the door open” for new attribution approaches.
• She says taking on big-sending rivals requires faster, sharper data on how channels are performing and what is driving sales, acquisition and retention – as well as inform strategy across the fundamental four Ps of marketing. 
• “Its very early days however there are some surprising insights coming out of our channel investment mix – data we would have been challenged to find if it was not for this analysis” – Jane Merrick.

In this series we sit down with Intuit Quickbooks Marketing Director Jane Merrick to talk all things marketing measurement and ROI, and get her perspective on how sharper acquisition funnel metrics are key to unlocking growth.

Q: Jane, firstly, you’re coming into your second year as Marketing Director at Intuit Quickbooks. What can you share about how it’s going, where you see potential and what excites you most about the year ahead?

It's been an incredibly exciting year and time at Intuit so far. I believe we have all the right ingredients to achieve our ambitious goals - right people, product and opportunities to drive differentiation for our customers.

However there is no denying that we are competing in a tough environment. Our competitors are spending big… a lot bigger than us. But with this comes a huge opportunity to challenge the status quo and do things differently - both in the way we solve customer problems but also in the way we show up in the market. Rallying a team behind this growth potential is what really excites me.

Of course magic doesn't happen without the right support, the right people and partners. We’ve done a lot of work to get this right and we’re seeing the benefits of that already across our agencies  – TBWA, UM, Ogilvy PR and Affinity –  and technology partners Mutinex. 

Q. How has the business performed in light of some of the major macroeconomic challenges in the last couple of years?

Our global network and the relentless focus on our customers has enabled us to tackle macroeconomic challenges.

All the work we do starts with our mission of powering prosperity around the world. And we deliver on that mission by working to solve the most important financial challenges of the more than 100 million customers we serve globally. Closer to home in Australia, we learn a lot from experiences and challenges in other markets and this has set us up for success locally.

I know this might be a cliched term, but I can truly say that we are customer obsessed. With a relentless focus on our customers, and a global network of tools, resources and innovations… We've managed to evolve our offering through phases of economic change and maintain a strong position that we are proud of

Q: You’ve worked across some of Australia’s most notable brands across insurance, telco, financial services and B2B SaaS, you’ve seen and heard it all – is it getting easier or harder to measure and show marketing ROI?

I’m not sure it’s getting more challenging, but there is certainly a lot more to take into account now when it comes to looking at MROI. Market mix modeling has always been the gold standard in looking at the full marketing mix and understanding ROI, but the effort, cost and efficacy of the models really limited its adoption and left the door ajar from other attribution models and approaches.

Don’t get me wrong; there is absolutely value to be gained in leveraging different types of attribution models when it comes to optimisation and improving efficiency, but when it comes to having a financial conversation regarding the impact of marketing, looking at the full mix through a framework that is well established, widely accepted and statistically (and financially) sound makes sense.

The real innovation here (and what in many ways appealed to me regarding Mutinex) is the ability to look at MROI more frequently. You can’t help but question the efficacy of a model that is 6-12 months out of date - even if you’re inputting new data, too many variables (or domains) shift and change over time; whether that’s creative, product, media habits, macroeconomic factors, competitor activity etc. The promise of being able to have models refreshed monthly and look at MROI with all those variables updated each month is going to help drive a more consistent and confident conversation about MROI, but also help find where our upside or improvements could come.

Putting MROI insights at the fingertips of our internal teams and agency partners will be how we create a common understanding around MROI, but also how we start to get sharper and more focused on revenue more generally.

Q: You have a fairly complex customer journey; some buy directly from you, I suspect others are referred either by friends, colleagues, accountants etc.

Yes, attribution marketing is always a challenge when you don’t have a short and/or linear customer journey like an ecommerce brand might have – although even the ‘top of funnel’ can still throw up its challenges, invite bias or too many assumptions into attributing some of the various touchpoints.

We see a lot of similarities with our business and other industries – there are multiple factors influencing sales, including direct sale channels. We recognise the significant role advisers and accountants and other non-media variables play in our growth. Rather than put it in the ‘too hard’ basket and focus on digital channel attribution predominantly, we’ve taken a more holistic sales funnel approach and will leverage Mutinex’s insights to help us strike that balance between brand and product marketing (or ‘top of funnel’ and ‘conversion’), as well as get the right mix of tactics, formats and messages to get all parts of the funnel working more effectively.

It goes back to the earlier point around attribution and really needing to understand the marketing mix. As cliched as it sounds, the four marketing Ps – product, price, place and  promotion – are as relevant today as ever and looking at the marketing mix is enabling us to think about and analyse our decisions across not just media, but sales channels, price etc.

Q. Marketing investment analytics and dynamic MMM is a hot topic at the minute; can you share a bit about your journey with Mutinex to-date, and types of outcomes you’re expecting from it?

Mutinex has been great to partner with so far. We’re still in the early stages, but they’ve really leant in to support our teams, and partner with our agencies to remove as much friction as possible from the process.

Their focus on leveraging automation and existing reports rather than populating bespoke templates has been a big saving of time (and cost!) when it comes to the data collection and processing procedures. It’s certainly been a much smoother process than I’d personally experienced with MMM previously, and it’s made monthly MROI insights very real.

In terms of expected outcomes, it’s really about maximising the effectiveness of our sales acquisition funnel; getting the balance right between top of funnel and bottom of funnel investment, getting the right channel mix and finding opportunities across different formats, publishers, and creative messages to test and iterate using MMM data to improve performance within channels, across tactics, formats etc.

Q. What are you hoping to achieve with your investment in dynamic MMM?

We’ve got growth ambitions, and as a challenger brand in this market we really need to ensure every dollar we invest in marketing is effective.

Looking at the sales funnel through an MMM lens will really help us understand our sales funnel better, and the impact our activity is having across all the different customer touchpoints. Importantly, it’s also going to help quantify those non-media factors, whether that’s macroeconomic factors impacting our customers, pricing, seasonality etc.

Having an independent tool to measure and quantify the impact of marketing is going to help drive both a better understanding and conversations internally around the true impact of marketing, which should also help when conversations about marketing investment levels arise too.

Q. What swayed you to Mutinex over other providers in this space?

They’ve been great to work with to-date. Their approach to data collection was streamlined and minimised cost and effort both within our internal teams and agency. They have a local team that's worked collaboratively with our teams and partners, and their ability to run MMM monthly means we don’t need to wait months for outdated data and insight.

They’re also well priced relative to other providers, particularly when you break it down to a cost per refresh, and think about the value you can drive from having more accurate and more timely marketing insights.

Q. And final one; can you share any insight into some of the early results or indicators from the modelling?

Its very early days however there are some surprising insights coming out of our channel investment mix – data we would have been challenged to find if it was not for this analysis. It's exciting to know we have some great opportunities we will be experimenting with as we move into our next phase of growth.
 

To find out more about Intuit Quickbooks products and solutions, visit
https://quickbooks.intuit.com/au/

To find out more about marketing investment analytics or request a demo, visit
www.mutinex.co