Parta Dialogue, a social media agency based in Montreal, has announced that Rona and Air Transat have been added to the list of brands using its social measurement tool, e-Value.

The software allows its clients to evaluate the cost-efficiency of their social media campaigns by comparing earned media with the amount of resources the brand invests in promoting and maintaining the campaign.

“Most brands are paying to drive fan base and there are always human resources costs of producing content,” Tom Liacas, VP social media, Parta Dialogue, tells MiC, adding that the company will take the campaign costs into account when developing the brand’s “engagement score.”

That numerical score will show the amount of interactions that consumers have with the brand’s social content, he says, using Facebook users commenting on brand posts or the number of retweets by its Twitter followers as examples.

After the brand’s engagement score has been calculated, the company will then compare it with its benchmark list of social media accounts from 1,500 global brands.

“[A brand] will be able to tell if the efficiency or performance of its campaign is situated in the upper or lower percentile of the 1,500 compared campaigns,” he says, adding that a score of 87 would mean that the brand is sitting in the 87th percentile with only a small number of brands more efficient in their social media efforts.

“A high efficiency value essentially means that for the [resources] you are putting into your social media campaign, you’re reaching as many people as you could be,” he says. “If you have a mark of near 100 you are doing exceptionally well without spending too much money.”

Parta Dialogue also tests social media campaigns for companies including Post Foods Canada Corp., Van Houtte and Koodo Mobile and he says that the e-Value tool is different from others in the market because it can calculate what brands are getting out of the resources invested in their campaigns.

“There are a lot out there that measure sheer performance, but within those measurements, the expenditure is lumped into the same place as engagement,” he says.

“And all that means is that you are pumping more money into your Facebook account so that you grow your fan base and engagement, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can tell the brand manager that the campaign is actually performing well or not.”