MKT 574 Week 6 Marketing Analytics and Evaluating Impact Example

Did It Bring Them Back? Using Marketing Analytics to Evaluate the Impact of a Return-Visit Strategy at a Louisville Aquarium

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/574: Marketing: Social, Mobile, and Analytics

Week 6 Final Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Riverfront Aquarium, its data and its results are composites written for a model paper.

Twelve months ago the invented Riverfront Aquarium adopted a strategy to bring local visitors back. It rewrote its value proposition around seasonal discovery, close encounters and conservation, targeted local families, curious adults and young adults, rebuilt its brand on the river, reorganized its social media into four content pillars and launched a mobile companion and wallet tickets after a spring pilot. Total marketing spending rose from $1.9 million to $2.2 million. The board now asks which parts of the strategy worked and what to do next. This paper sets out a measurement framework, evaluates first-year results and recommends changes.

Linking Marketing to Value

Srinivasan and Hanssens (2009) reviewed research on how marketing affects firm value and argued that marketing creates value through customer and brand assets, such as customer equity and brand equity, which in turn drive cash flows. They called for metrics that capture these assets, not only short-term sales. For a nonprofit aquarium, financial value includes admissions, memberships and donations, and the assets are loyal members and a strong brand.

A Measurement Framework

The framework has four levels. Activity measures track what the aquarium did, such as seasonal exhibits launched, posts published and app features used. Customer measures track behavior: local repeat visit rate, membership sales and renewal, After Dark attendance and app use during visits. Brand measures come from the annual audit. Financial measures include earned revenue, membership revenue, donations and marketing cost per new member.

The Scorecard

Results compared with objectives were mixed. Attendance rose from 620,000 to 664,000. Memberships rose from 18,000 to 20,300 households, and renewal improved from 64 to 69 percent, short of the 72 percent target. The share of local repeat visitors citing social media as the prompt for their visit rose from 7 to 12 percent, against a target of 15. After Dark sold out 9 of 12 evenings, with 44 percent of tickets bought through social links. In the brand audit, river and conservation associations rose from 12 to 23 percent of respondents, and the share of locals saying they had no reason to return fell from 54 to 41 percent.

Why Simple Comparisons Mislead

Gordon et al. (2019) compared common observational methods of measuring advertising effects with the results of 15 large randomized experiments on Facebook. They found that observational methods, even sophisticated ones, often misestimated effects, sometimes by large amounts, because people who see ads differ from those who do not. Their conclusion was that randomized experiments should be used wherever possible. The aquarium's own data illustrate the risk: members who engage with its social posts visit 6.1 times a year, compared with 4.2 for other members, but engaged members were already more loyal before the strategy began.

The members who like the aquarium's posts were always its biggest fans; the posts did not make them so.

Evidence From Tests

Three tests give clearer answers. The spring mobile pilot, which randomly assigned weekend visitors to receive the companion features or a printed map, showed attendance at feedings and talks 34 percent higher among companion users and café spending 11 percent higher, with members in the companion group returning within 90 days at a rate 5 percentage points higher. The social membership offer was tested with a holdout of 10 percent of the targeted local audience who saw no offer; the offer group bought memberships at 1.9 percent compared with 1.2 percent in the holdout, implying about 900 memberships caused by the offer. Paid social for After Dark ran in half of the eligible zip codes for two months; ticket sales from the other half were 22 percent lower, suggesting the ads drove a substantial share of sales.

Return on Key Investments

The social membership offer cost about $48,000 in ads and discounts and produced about 900 incremental memberships worth $189 each, about $170,000, plus an estimated $90,000 in on-site spending, for a return well above its cost. The mobile companion cost $140,000 to build and $30,000 to run; if the 5-point gain in member return visits holds across all members, it would add roughly 1,000 additional member visits a month in season, but the evidence is from one spring and should be confirmed. Seasonal exhibits, costing $420,000, cannot be tested by random assignment; attendance rose most in the two months after each launch, which is suggestive but not proof.

Data Sources and Their Limits

The evaluation draws on ticketing and membership records, which are complete and reliable; social platform reports and tracked links, which miss people who see a post and later buy at the door; app analytics, which cover only users who opted in; and the annual brand survey, whose sampling error runs near three points either way. Weather also matters: the year had a mild winter, which may have raised attendance on its own. Each limit is noted beside the result it affects.

Effects on Different Segments

Gains were uneven across segments. Local family memberships grew fastest, explorers attended talks in larger numbers and young adults responded strongly to After Dark. Tourist attendance was flat, consistent with the decision to shift marketing weight toward locals, and it did not fall, which eases the risk identified in Week 1.

What Did Not Work

The X account and general regional billboards showed no measurable effect in a two-month pause in the spring, and the members' text alerts produced high opt-out rates when sent weekly before the frequency was reduced.

Donations and Mission

Donations rose 6 percent, with the largest gains among members who had attended a River Days talk. The aquarium cannot yet tell whether the conservation content caused that increase, but the pattern supports keeping the River Project visible in every channel.

Dashboard

Pauwels et al. (2009) recommended that dashboards hold a short list of the drivers of performance, mix leading and lagging indicators and be shared across departments so that they inform decisions rather than simply record history. Following that advice, the monthly dashboard will show local repeat visit rate, memberships sold and renewal rate, After Dark sell-through, social-attributed tickets and memberships from tracked links, companion app use per visit, cost per incremental member from holdout tests and quarterly brand association scores, each with targets.

Recommendations

Expand the social membership offer with continued holdouts. Keep the mobile companion and repeat the pilot in fall to confirm the return effect. Shift the regional billboard budget, about $120,000, to a fourth seasonal exhibit window and After Dark expansion. End active posting on X. Next year, test seasonal exhibit marketing by varying promotion intensity across regions in the drive market.

Conclusion

Riverfront Aquarium's first year brought clear gains in attendance, membership and brand associations, but simple comparisons would have credited social media for loyalty it did not create. Research on marketing and firm value and on experimental measurement supports a framework built on tests and holdouts. The evidence favors social offers, the mobile companion and evening events, and it points to tests that will sharpen the next year's plan.

References

Gordon, B. R., Zettelmeyer, F., Bhargava, N., & Chapsky, D. (2019). A comparison of approaches to advertising measurement: Evidence from big field experiments at Facebook. Marketing Science, 38(2), 193-225. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2018.1135

Pauwels, K., Ambler, T., Clark, B. H., LaPointe, P., Reibstein, D., Skiera, B., Wierenga, B., & Wiesel, T. (2009). Dashboards as a service: Why, what, how, and what research is needed? Journal of Service Research, 12(2), 175-189. https://doi.org/10.1177/1094670509344213

Srinivasan, S., & Hanssens, D. M. (2009). Marketing and firm value: Metrics, methods, findings, and future directions. Journal of Marketing Research, 46(3), 293-312. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.46.3.293