#MetricsThatMatter - Visit Lift Index

Footfall attribution is a way of measuring the impact of digital campaigns on store visits. If brands could understand these footfalls in terms of visitors exposed to digital campaigns vs visitors not exposed to the campaign, they would be able to measure campaign effectiveness much better. Visit Lift Index, our very own footfall lift metric with Lifesight’s look-alike modeling at its core, has set out to achieve this for stronger and more reliable ROI measurement.

What is Visit Lift Index?

Visit Lift Index is a metric that indicates how many more incremental visits occurred from audiences that were exposed to an ad. To achieve this measurement, we utilize the control and exposed group study methodology. This control group is algorithmically derived using Lifesight’s look-alike modeling, and is similar to the audience segment that is exposed to the digital campaign.

*Normalization in this context means that instead of taking absolute visit numbers, we take number of visits per device to perform the study.

How does Lifesight calculate the Visit Lift Index?

Stage 1: Mobile Ad Exposed

• At this stage, Lifesight pixels are activated across multiple mobile channels, and an exposed group is built using Mobile IDs.
• Through the campaign, the exposed group is observed closely to understand campaign effectiveness and Visit Lift Index

Stage 2: Exposed & control groups

• This happens at the end of the attribution window. A control group is derived using look-alike model on the exposed group.
• The control group (approximately 10-20%) is derived from exposed group using attributes such as past visitation, location, age, gender, brand affinities, geo-behavioral segments, online content consumption, categories of apps used etc…

Stage 3: Visit Uplift Study

• Control group is analysed for their in-store footfall data.
• Lift is calculated by comparing normalized footfall data of control group against the exposed group.

What makes Visit Lift Index Analysis a critical metric for new-age marketers?

Visit Lift Index allows marketers to benchmark their campaign effectiveness in terms of store footfalls vis a vis if there was no campaign running at the time.  It also allows them to answer other critical questions such as –

• Are my campaigns driving visits to my physical stores?
• Which ad channels are driving most visits from my campaigns?
• How much does it cost to drive a visit to my stores?
• Are my physical stores getting more footfall because of the campaign?
• What was my visit share compared to my top competitors?

Visit Lift Index at work – A case study

Last year, a QSR brand ran an exciting promotion during Back To School season. These were advertised heavily across social media and other digital channels. During an early stage evaluation, Visit Lift Index revealed that despite the high investment promotions and ads, there was only a 2% lift in visits vis a vis the control group. A deep dive revealed that many of the exposed visitors were regular visitors to the QSR outlet anyway. This helped the brand tweak their segmentation and targeting strategy to gain new footfalls and new customers during the promotions.
Within a week, the brand observed a marked difference in Visit Lift Index, going from 2% to 17%.

In conclusion

Visit Lift Index is rapidly becoming a trusted metric for campaign effectiveness. In 2019, as more and more brands demand ROI-based outcomes, competition continues to get rife, and the demand for hyper-targeted campaigns reaches unprecedented decibels, forward looking marketers are warming themselves up to Visit Lift Index.
Our customers who use it, love it! If you too want to be ahead in the measurement curve, shout out for a demo.

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