Investment in marketing measurement

It was disheartening, although not altogether surprising, to read that response analysis is in place for only 41 per cent of all companies.

Boards are having live debates about marketing budgets and the secret of marketing ROI is likely to be in the customer database. But, according to the survey, only a third of boards see customer data.

The profile of data and analytics needs to be escalated. Some board eye-openers could be as general as, “We are losing x more customers than we are gaining” or more sophisticated like, “y per cent of budget could be saved on marketing activity that was having no impact on sales”.

I appreciate that customer data is not perfect – but that does not make it useless. Multi-channel marketing has made life more complicated – it does not make measurement impossible. In measuring and justifying marketing spend, analysis teams are justifying ’ investment in data, analytics and, ultimately, in them.

Jo Young, Managing Consultant, MarketingReality