Interesting findings by Columbia Business School and NYAMA study in 2012

Sample findings:

• 91% of senior corporate marketers believe that successful brands use customer data to drive marketing decisions

• Yet, 39% say their own company’s data is collected too infrequently or not real-time enough

• And 51% say that a lack of sharing customer data within their own organization is a barrier to effectively measuring their marketing ROI

• Large firms are much less likely to collect new forms of digital data like mobile data (19%), than they are to collect traditional customer survey data such as on demographics (74%) and attitude (54%)

• 85% of large corporations are now using social network accounts (e.g. brand accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare) as a marketing tool

• 65% of marketers said that comparing the effectiveness of marketing across different digital media is “a major challenge” for their business

• 37% of respondents did not include any mention of financial outcomes when asked to define what “marketing ROI” meant for their own organization

• 57% are not basing their marketing budgets on any ROI analysis

• 22% are using brand awareness as their sole measure to evaluate their marketing spend

In order to leverage the opportunities of big data, marketers need to improve their ability to:

• Collect meaningful customer data from a variety of sources, including real-time data

• Link that data to metrics developed for measuring marketing ROI

• Share data across the organization, linking datasets together at the customer level

• Utilize this shared data to effectively target and personalize marketing efforts to customers

In order to effectively harness the capabilities of new digital tools, marketers need to:

• Set clear business objectives for any digital marketing effort

• Develop a variety of metrics for new digital tools—from audience metrics, to engagement metrics, to financial metrics

• Develop models that link channel-specific digital metrics (like retweets or Facebook interactions) to universal metrics, including your key performance indicators (KPIs)

• Continuously innovate new measurement models, as new digital tools and marketing rapidly evolve

Above all, get started. Start with the basics of determining marketing ROI so you will create the largest impact on your organization:

• Make sure you’re using some kind of metrics on most of your marketing.

• Be ready to invest in getting some kind of data relevant to your measures.

• Make coordinating your traditional and digital media campaigns a goal.

• Set specific measurable objectives for all your campaigns.

• Put ROI in stated objectives for all your vendors (so they know your expectations to retain them or to cut them loose).

• Link marketing ROI to employee compensation, perhaps a bonus.

• Start today… as the pay off and learning curve will likely take a few years.

Then, move on to ROI best practices:

• Make sure your marketing metrics are accepted by finance.

• Make sure your data is: timely, actionable, linked at the customer-level, used to personalize marketing and target customers.

• Share your data across your organization.

Thanks to pramanicks