Return on Marketing Investment Metrics Keep Evolving

Marketing campaign performance has been measured since the first ad was posted, but the complexity of return on marketing investment metrics has increased exponentially along with the complexity of campaigns. ROMI, return on marketing investment, is increasingly difficult to assess as the marketing toolbox of available marketing tactics continues to expand and as technology allows increasingly detailed assessment.

This is true for both traditional marketing and newer technology driven marketing. Traditional television advertising measurement has advanced well beyond the early days when marketers assessed return on advertising investment based on sales response over the life of a campaign and then moved into specific ad assessments such as awareness and key attribute impact (e.g. do the ads increase the "likability" of a brand.) Today we must also consider the interaction between the ad exposure impact and whether the ad drives increased web traffic (additional impressions) or measurable increases in social media activity.

As recently as a the last decade (yes, the '00's), eMail success was evalated base on click-through rates. After all, that was the objective of the typical email marketing campaign. Today there is a wealth of new data about every eMail campaign - Delivery rate, Opt-out/Unsubscribe rate, Open rate, Pass-Along rate, Time to Open, etc. and, oh yes, click-through. With the advent of multiple devices per user (laptop, home computer, office computer, mobile device, etc.) user screen eMails on multiple devices and may open an email on one device but not take action until using a different device later. (I screen eMails on my Blackberry and iPhone - yes, I have both - but often wait until I'm on a laptop to write anything other than a short reply.) The result is that savvy marketers are now looking at addtional metrics, such as Opens Per Opened (avg. times opened per opened email) to better understand customer behaviors.

As marketers, we need to continue to adpat our metrics to understand return on marketing investment as cusotmer behaviors change.