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Time series data analysis control groups can evaluate a social media direct marketing campaign’s response, profitability and return-on-investment (ROI). The analysis may measure the incremental revenue, savings or response from a Facebook, Twitter or Google AdWords campaign. A website publisher with a subscriber database might also use this analytical technique to measure marketing campaigns that aim to prevent the loss of subscribers. A control group is a random sample of individuals who do not receive a direct marketing offer. And their behaviour may be compared to a similar, randomly-selected segment that doesn’t receive one. Time series campaign analysis involves comparing two groups – before, during and after a campaign period – over days, weeks or perhaps months. Observing the control group’s behaviour versus targeted customers allows a marketing analytics professional to perform two important calculations: the incremental gain (eg. revenue, cost savings, response) and overall return on investment (ROI) for a social media campaign.

As an example, let’s imagine that a website publisher wishes to send a direct marketing offer to 500 subscribers (TARGET_GROUP). An additional 100 subscribers (CONTROL_GROUP) with a similar profile will not receive an offer. Each TARGET_GROUP subscriber is to be issued a discount on next year’s annual subscription fee: obtained by visiting a landing page on the publisher’s website within a specified one-week period. The discount offer will be communicated via a Facebook campaign targeting the website publisher’s existing base of contacts. And each TARGET_GROUP member will be required to provide his or her Facebook profile link to receive the discount offer.

A time series, control group social media marketing campaign analysis will attempt to answer the following question: Does offering a discount offer reduce the website publisher’s subscriber attrition rate? TARGET_GROUP’s rate of attrition (%ATTRITION) may be compared to the CONTROL_GROUP’s. Attrition might be measured by the percentage of subscribers who do not buy a subscription for the next year. Both groups are best evaluated on a week-to-week basis: before, during and after the campaign period.

Graphing the TARGET_GROUP and CONTROL_GROUP over time – according to the %ATTRITION variable – will provide an answer to the question: Does offering a discount offer reduce the website publisher’s subscriber attrition rate? It would be good news if 80% of the TARGET_GROUP renews next year’s subscription and only 40% of the CONTROL_GROUP does. Such a result might indicate the discount offer is effective at influencing subscribers to keep reading the website publisher’s content. If an annual subscription costs $40, every retained customer represents $40 in revenue that is not lost. For a website publisher with 1,000 subscribers, it means potentially keeping $16,000 in revenue by offering a discount offer to prevent subscriber attrition. The costs of conducting the campaign (eg. discount cost, staff time, creative costs) must be subtracted from the $16,000 incremental revenue gained in order to calculate an ROI. And this ROI result will allow a website publisher to determine the value of conducting future anti-attrition Facebook marketing campaigns.

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