Overview: Measuring & proving incremental impact

By now, you already know that Upside is able to drive you new volume at a better ROI than any other marketing program. Unlike other advertising or marketing models, Upside delivers proven results across the entire customer transaction journey - measuring our impact all the way from reach to profit:

• We expand your reach by putting your business in front of millions of consumers using the Upside app and our network of partner apps
• We drive attributable sales when consumers claim Upside’s personalized promotions before making a purchase
• We prove incrementality using our best-in-class measurement methodology
• We guarantee profitability (after all fees and promotions) on every Upside transaction 

Read on to learn more about how Upside measures our incremental impact - and why that’s so important.

Why you should care about incrementality

Clear attribution of impact for any marketing campaign or loyalty program you are running is a critical step in understanding the program’s value to your business - but attribution alone isn’t good enough.

Why? To put it simply, measuring attribution only tells part of the story. Knowing how many sales you got from a particular promotional campaign or loyalty offer is important, but to truly measure the success of such an initiative, you need to know how many of those sales you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. Spending money to drive sales - whether on a marketing campaign or on discounts that go straight to the customer - is only a good idea if it’s driving you new business. Otherwise, why bother spending the money?

This is why the concept of incrementality is so important. Without knowing the incremental impact of your marketing, it’s impossible to know whether all of that spending is helping to grow your business. 

At Upside, our entire program is built to measure & prove our incremental impact to your business. And, unlike any other program, you only pay for fees & promotions on the incremental sales that we deliver - meaning you never pay for business you would’ve gotten without our help. 

Think about the other marketing investments you make. Can they make the same promise?

Proving incrementality

To quantify the incremental impact that Upside’s personalized promotions have on your business, we need to measure more than just the total sales that we deliver. We need to measure the portion of Upside sales that you wouldn’t have gotten without us. 

How do we do that? That’s where our “test vs. control” measurement methodology comes into play. By comparing Upside users at your business to similar customers who don’t use Upside, we create an environment in which we can measure Upside’s impact against a “control” scenario in which Upside doesn’t exist.

This “test vs. control” environment is critical for isolating and accurately measuring Upside’s impact. Any other factors that may be influencing customer behavior at your business - things like pricing changes, the weather, inflation - impact both groups equally. The only difference between the two cohorts is that one group uses Upside, and the other doesn’t.

Any additional sales made by the “test” group - above and beyond the activity of the “control” group - is Upside’s incremental impact. 

Once you start thinking in terms of incrementality, it’s easy to know what questions to ask when evaluating the effectiveness of any marketing solution. And if your other marketing partners can’t show clear incremental impact? Stop investing in them!

Measurable incremental sales that increase utilization of your existing capacity? That’s the Upside effect.