How do You Really Measure Success?

Over the years Mitto has really come to understand just how much the worlds of Enterprise and Wholesale differ. The language used in both differs markedly. How we pitch and […]

Over the years Mitto has really come to understand just how much the worlds of Enterprise and Wholesale differ. The language used in both differs markedly. How we pitch and sell has had to be altered accordingly.

Being successful in Wholesale does not automatically translate over into an easy, stellar entry into the Enterprise domain though. Indeed, the opposite can actually be viewed as holding true; you need to view Enterprise with a fresh set of eyes and a whole new outlook. Wholesale has been good to many Aggregators but Enterprise is where the future of our industry really lies.

According to Brand Finance 2018, 52% of overall enterprise value for all publicly traded companies worldwide is attributed to intangible assets such as trademarks or copyright. Being able to measure the tangible accurately has therefore become hypercritical and something we are involved with intimately. To be successful with this, it is a definite requirement to understand exactly what makes Enterprises tick and to understand what they value and how they define success.

For years, the success of an SMS campaign was only measured in terms of the percentage of messages successfully delivered to their intended recipients – the SDR, successful delivery ratio. Anything not tracked as having been successfully delivered then falls into one of two other camps: failure (FDR – failed delivery ratio) and the great unknown (UDR – unknown delivery ratio).

The Aggregator industry was created from sparks of ingenuity and creativity has remained. Some of this ingenuity is however not always for the greater good. The concept of making a quick buck can be lurking there somewhere and it is tempting for aspiring entrepreneurs to manipulate things somewhat so that the SDR appears unrealistically high given the low quality routing actually being used. It is an open secret that delivery receipts can be faked by the unscrupulous.

The late Zig Ziglar (author salesman and motivational speaker who passed in 2012) was one of the most respected modern-day experts on success, motivation, and leading a balanced life. In his book Born to Win!, he argues that success cannot be defined in one sentence, rather being comprised of many things. One could argue that the definition depends on the individual and one size does not fit all but in the Mobile Engagement industry this simply does not wash; we have needed to find another more accurate way of demonstrating the value of what we deliver to Enterprise clients. And it has actually been Enterprises driving this change by being interested in and asking to see high conversion and click-through rates generated for them by using Mitto as their connectivity partner of choice. In the Enterprise world, conversion and click-through are fast becoming their criteria of choice for measuring their connectivity partners’ success.

Conversion and click-through rates are the new Kings. But what are they?

Conversion rate (CR) is a metric, shown as a percentage, that displays how many website or app visitors complete an action out of the total number of visitors. Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric, shown as a percentage, that measures how many people clicked an ad to visit a landing page or website.

Conversion rates are frequently viewed by many marketers and organisations as the most important metric to track on an ongoing basis because conversion directly impacts their overall sales and revenue. They are at the middle and bottom of the sales funnel, measuring actions that people take when they’ve already downloaded an app or been on a website. Our Enterprise clients are clearly telling us that conversions more important than simply the volume of traffic. High traffic alone does not automatically result in a spike in sales. It may be that a website’s content does not accurately reflect the offerings. Lead capture forms could be broken or wrong keywords could in fact be attracting the wrong kind of traffic.

Click-through rates sit at the top of the sales funnel, measuring how many people perform an action before they get to a website.
It is safe to say that the world of Mobile Engagement is in reboot mode – and with good reason. To paraphrase Marshall Goldsmith’s iconic words, companies that were leaders in the 20th century can see that “what got them here won’t get them there”. They need to change and are doing so. As is Mitto.

This is all not unexpected though. At the turn of the century, McKinsey predicted that no more than a third of big corporations would survive the following 25 years. To survive, Enterprises must learn to run companies more like markets. In a market the only indicator of success is how fast things are flying off the stalls. Moving people who are showing a basic interest in a product or service to actually getting them to sign on the line and start using something is the key metric today. With unparalleled global reach and a network of high throughput fully redundant connections, we are perfectly placed to help you increase your organisations’ conversion rates and therefore ROI and profitability.