Our customers usually deal with the following questions shortly before signing the contract with us:
"What is the ROI of Pinpoll?"
"What options are there for refinancing?"
"How much revenue can we generate with Pinpoll?"
At this point, our soon to be customers are usually convinced of our solutions, but begin to consider the potential "return on investment" (ROI for short): What added value do Pinpoll products deliver after deducting the costs incurred?
To answer this question, one can take different perspectives.
On the one hand, new products can be offered based on Pinpoll's solutions that generate additional revenue.
On the other hand, our customers can also use Pinpoll to make savings.
In addition to these "hard numbers", i.e., revenue and savings in monetary value, there are also "soft factors" that cannot be directly measured in money, yet add a noticeable, but intangible value, which indirectly increases revenue and thus, the ROI in the medium to long run.
Hard Numbers
Revenue
At the end of the day, for a profit-making company, only sales count to cover the running costs of operations and generate returns. If the costs increase as a result of new tools added, sales must also increase, that makes sense to everyone.
Pinpoll sees itself as a technology provider and not as a marketer. In other words: We do not generate additional revenue for our customers, but provide solutions that allow the customer to generate additional revenue. We offer advice and, together with the customer, consider which new products can be offered on the basis of the Pinpoll platform.
In the past few months, some best practices to monetise our solutions have emerged:
- Pinpoll Tools: Market sponsored polls that will be published on our customer's website. The sponsors of the poll can also adapt the poll to their corporate identity for an additional charge. For a further surcharge, the interests of the people who voted can be offered to the client in the form of a report (requires the use of Pinpoll DMP).
- Pinpoll Tools: Generate leads using sponsored forms. The clients pay our customer a fee for each data set collected with the help of Pinpoll. For a surcharge, the interests of the leads can be offered to the client in the form of a report (requires the use of Pinpoll DMP).
- Pinpoll Ads: Allow to advertise in polls. Advertisers pay our customer a fee for showing ads to the people who voted on a poll. For an additional charge, the advertiser can be offered the interests of the website visitors who have clicked on the advertisement in the form of a report (requires the use of Pinpoll DMP).
- Pinpoll Ads: In the polls that are continuously created by our customers, ad slots can be defined in order to display advertisements programmatically via the ad server. This creates new premium inventory that can be filled at higher CPMs.
- Pinpoll DMP: Offer targeting for newsletter campaigns to advertisers at an additional cost. With the help of Pinpoll, our customers learn more about their newsletter subscribers and can use this knowledge for targeted newsletter campaigns. How this works is explained step by step in the following tutorial in Pinpoll Magazine: https://pinpoll-magazine-linux.azurewebsites.net/data-the-raw-material-to-fuel-sales/
- Pinpoll DMP: Offer target group data, generated by our customers with Pinpoll, to their partners through anonymised, aggregated and thus data protection-compliant transfer into the ecosystem of the customer. Our customer's marketer can be meant as a partner, for example.
Savings
Entrepreneurs know that there is leverage for more profit not only in terms of revenue, but also in terms of running costs, if these can be reduced. Marketing budgets often contain positions and thus savings potential for lead generation and market research.
Our solutions can save money in both areas:
- Pinpoll Tools: Our customers can collect e-mail addresses using forms on their own website and thus generate leads themselves, instead of buying those at a high price through other channels.
- Pinpoll Tools: Our customers can carry out market research themselves by placing quick polls on their own website. This saves money otherwise spent on surveys conducted by market research institutes or the purchase of secondary data.
- Pinpoll DMP: Our customers get access to a current target group catalogue with proof of origin. This guarantees fair CPMs when negotiating with advertisers, since target group information can be communicated transparently and, above all, its validity can be proven, as these were collected by the customers themselves and not purchased without knowing the origin.
Soft Factors
Nobody buys Microsoft 365 because licensing and usage alone can generate revenue. The same applies to ERP and CRM systems as well as to many other “tools” that enable a company to run in the first place. These are therefore often referred to as enablers that only contribute indirectly to business success.
Of course, Pinpoll's solutions are not essential. But they still have an impact on business success:
- Pinpoll Tools: Active website visitors are better website visitors because they stay longer on the page and consume more content with each visit. Both factors, i.e., longer session duration and more page views have a direct impact on advertising revenue[1]. An A / B test showed that the use of Pinpoll Tools could increase the average session duration by 13% and the page views by 16%. Here is the case study: https://www.pinpoll.com/pdf/salzburg24.pdf
- Pinpoll Tools: Loyalty is a decisive factor, especially for online publishers who heavily depend upon returning visitors in order to display as many ads as possible. This can be increased with polls in the form of fixed formats (e.g., with a "Question of the Day"). More loyal customers generate more revenue in the medium to long term. This can have a lasting effect, especially in times of Corona, as explained in this article in Pinpoll Magazine in spring: https://pinpoll-magazine-linux.azurewebsites.net/the-publishers-dilemma-traffic-is-increasing-advertising-revenue-is-falling/
- Pinpoll DMP: "Data is the new gold" - a phrase that many of us can no longer hear. Nevertheless, it contains a grain of truth. Having sovereignty over one's own data and not being dependent upon market researchers or other data providers does not increase revenue, but it does of course increase the company value.
The possibilities for monetising the Pinpoll platform presented in this article are largely tailored to website operators. That said, it's not at all necessary that the website has high traffic. The Pinpoll platform can also be monetised in the “long tail” in this way.
We are happy to advise customers in other areas, e.g., web shop operators, upon how they can use our technology to generate more revenue and/or make savings.
Bonus
Anyone who has read this far has earned a little bonus 😉
Our long-standing customer, Regionalmedien Austria, have developed a pricing model for sponsored polls. Between EUR 230 and EUR 1,390 are charged for the product "survey tool". Here is the price list: https://www.regionalmedien.at/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RMA_Digitaltarif_2020.pdf
We are particularly proud of our customer Kagiso Media in South Africa, who managed to monetise the Pinpoll platform within just one month of integrating it. Charis Apelgren-Coleman, Market Engagement Manager at Kagiso Media, writes about this success in the following article, which contains some examples of how you can generate new revenue with Pinpoll (hard numbers), but also get to know your own audience much better (soft factors): https://themediaonline.co.za/2020/11/data-analysis-in-radio-a-new-way-of-connecting/
[1] According to a case study conducted by Ezoic, there's a direct correlation between the increase in website engagement and the increase in session earnings. In Austria, the average revenue per second (of a session) is EUR 0,000188. This value is based upon an average CPM of EUR 5, a booking rate of 25 % and an ad penetration of 4 ads per page, multiplied by the average number of page impressions and session duration, as published by ÖWA for June 2020. As a result, this leaves us with an zusätzlichen additional ad revenue of EUR 57 for every 100.000 votes, since users who vote stay at least 3 seconds longer.