Marketing measurement finally explained in simple way

Also - breakdown of an effective campaign ops team

In this edition:

1. Marketing Measurement Finally Explained in a Simple Way

2. Breakdown of Effective Campaign Ops Teams

3. How Three People Run Marketing Lifecycle and Automation for Calm’s Billion Message Machine (Including Podcast Episode)

4. Exclusive For Paid Subscribers: 10 Things I Learned in the Last 5 Years to Help You Level Up Your Ops Career

5. Sponsor this newsletter and reach thousands of marketing operators and decision-makers, fill out this form to get started.

6. FYI: My friend is bringing on a Martech intern this summer in NYC, check it out.

---

From Batch & Blast to Customized Journeys: How World Vision Canada Creates Personalized Customer Experiences

Looking for fresh insights on email personalization? Join us on Thursday, March 6, at 2 PM ET for an exclusive encore webinar featuring Stephen Cave, Product Manager at World Vision Canada, and Rohan Bhatt, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Adobe.

Discover how World Vision Canada uses Adobe Journey Optimizer and Stensul to streamline email creation, engage key contacts with precision, and drive greater impact—faster.

In this session, you'll learn how to:

• Reduce production costs while maximizing engagement

• Accelerate content creation—from days or weeks to just hours

• Enhance audience segmentation for pinpoint targeting

Don't miss this opportunity to hear a real-world success story and gain actionable insights - and just in time for Adobe Summit 2025! 

Register now to save your spot!

---

Marketing Measurement Finally Explained in a Simple Way

Measuring marketing is way too complicated right?

It doesn't have to be. Here are some of the core marketing measurement methodologies explained in a simple way.

🔹 Single-Touch Attribution → 100% credit goes to just one touchpoint.
✅ Use case: B2B teams tracking first-touch lead gen, e-commerce teams analyzing last-click conversions.
⚠️ Limitation: Ignores everything else in the buyer’s journey.

🔹 Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) → Distributes credit across multiple touchpoints.
✅ Use case: SaaS companies mapping the customer journey, omnichannel retailers optimizing media mix.
⚠️ Limitation: Doesn’t account for external factors like seasonality, brand awareness, word of mouth etc.

🔹 Incrementality Testing → Compares a group exposed to a campaign vs. a control group to measure true impact.
✅ Use case: Proving if a Facebook ad actually drives sales vs. customers who would have bought anyway.
⚠️ Limitation: Requires controlled testing, which isn’t always easy.

🔹 Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) → Uses historical data & statistics to measure how different channels drive revenue.
✅ Use case: Enterprise brands optimizing many channels.
⚠️ Limitation: Needs large datasets and strong analytics capabilities.

Thanks to Mark Stouse for collaborating with me and giving me advice on this diagram.

---

Breakdown of Effective Campaign Ops Teams

Campaign operators are the behind-the-scenes rockstars.

Without campaign ops you get:
❌ Random acts of marketing – Launching campaigns without a clear process.
❌ Poor coordination across teams – Marketing, sales, and ops working in silos.
❌ No feedback loop for optimization – Campaigns go live and are never adjusted.

The result? 🚨 Missed goals. Wasted budget. Frustrated teams.

The map of campaign operations shows just the tip of the iceberg of what these teams do.

📌 1. Campaign Planning & Strategy
Define objectives & KPIs (so you know what success looks like).
Segment your audience (no more spray-and-pray marketing).
Nail down value props & messaging before launch.

📌 2. Build & Setup
Develop the right assets (creative, landing pages, forms).
Set up automation & nurture flows (so leads don’t get lost).
Ensure tracking is in place before launch (ever had missing UTM data? Yeah, it’s a nightmare).

📌 3. Execution & Launch
Coordinate across multiple channels (email, paid media, social).
Activate the right audience segments.
QA everything (because broken links kill conversions).

📌 4. Monitoring & Optimization
Track performance in real time (if a campaign isn’t working, fix it fast).
Adjust bid strategies, messaging, and audience segments.
Don’t “set and forget”—optimize as you go.

📌 5. Campaign Reporting & Insights
Measure attribution & ROI (not just vanity metrics).
Document best practices for the next campaign.
Use data to refine future strategies.

If you’re running campaigns without a structured Campaign Operations framework, you’re leaving revenue on the table.

---

How Three People Run Marketing Lifecycle and Automation for Calm’s Billion Message Machine

Great lifecycle marketing isn’t about throwing more people at the problem. It’s about hiring for leverage.

Jeff’s experience at Calm and Flipboard proves that a high-output team doesn’t need 10+ people to drive impact. A powerhouse trio—just three people—managed messaging campaigns reaching hundreds of millions of users.

Most marketing teams hit the same roadblock: engineering resources. The head of lifecycle marketing at Calm didn’t accept that as a given. Instead of expanding the team with more marketers, she made a power move: she hired an engineer obsessed with marketing operations. Someone who could push the automation platform to its absolute limits. Then, she brought in a designer who codes.

That was it. A team of three. And they dominated.

Instead of drowning in production work, they rewrote the rules. Weekly digest emails went from an 8-hour slog to a 30-minute sprint. Their designer built a modular HTML system. Jeff templated everything for maximum reuse. Content teams adapted, batching materials months in advance. Campaign volume doubled year over year—without scaling headcount.

They cracked it. More output, fewer people.

This setup challenges the default marketing org chart. Instead of bloated, siloed teams, they built for scale from day one:

• 1 lifecycle strategist (to own strategy)

• 1 technical operator (to push platforms to the edge)

• 1 designer/developer (to systematize creative execution)

Most teams add complexity as they grow. This team did the opposite. They engineered their way to more reach, more impact—without the typical chaos.

Smart teams don’t just work harder. They work in a way that makes scale inevitable.

Listen to the whole episode.