For many marketers, proving the return on investment (ROI) for marketing has long been a thorn in their flesh. Those outside of the marketing ­department are uniformly in favor of having marketing report its ROI. They want the same level of ROI accountability for marketing as for every other department. Those within the department tend to have mixed opinions. Some ­marketers embrace ROI calculation and reporting as the best means of ­validating ­marketing’s work. They recognize that having the ability to accurately report on marketing’s ROI creates acceptance, and if the return meets or exceeds expectations, it makes justifying budget and resources much simpler. ROI has the potential to depoliticize marketing funding and operations.

Others within the marketing team fear the expectation to measure their ROI because it could reveal low performance and expose them to repercussions. Others simply think that focusing on ROI compromises marketing’s true ­mission. Whatever the stance, marketing has been slow to embrace ROI as a metric, and as cartoonist Brady Bonus illustrates in Figure 6-1, it’s still the exception for ROI to be part of the marketing conversation.

Of the challenges marketers face, proving ROI is the top challenge, ranked well ahead of securing budget.¹ Regardless of whether marketers love or hate being subjected to ROI scrutiny, many members of the C-suite expect to see these numbers, so marketing should understand what it is and how to report it.

One problem with marketing ROI is that many marketers simply don’t understand what it is, as this Quora post² illustrates:

• Question: “What is considered a good ROI for a digital marketing campaign for a consultancy company?”
• Answer: “If you can generate sales leads for under $50 you're probably going pretty well. Especially since your contracts are probably in the thousands. A response rate of 20 percent for ‘soft conversions’ like ebook downloads would be considered good as well.”

The response to this post, though helpful, never gets around to stating anything about ROI, although it provides some data that might help in its determination.

ROI is a profitability ratio that measures the profit returned from each ­investment, with its results expressed as a percentage. Businesses use ROI as a success measure for various investments and projects. It is used to evaluate past successes as well as forecast future ones. The formula for calculating ROI is fairly simple:

In the calculation, the cost component is not hard to come by. The “gain” element of this equation is difficult to measure with a degree of precision that creates confidence in the result.

To illustrate, consider the example of attending a trade show, a marketing activity that often requires justification and reporting of subsequent ROI. The assumption in this example is that revenue from sales will ultimately result that is attributable to participation in the show. The ROI calculation seems quite simple, accounting for the hard costs and revenue, as Table 6-1 delineates.

The example in Table 6-1 makes determining ROI for participation in a trade show seem simple, and in fact, with the 114 percent ROI shown here, the return on this investment is fantastic. What this scenario doesn’t account for, however, are the soft benefits that are very real but difficult to account for. There is increased brand awareness that occurs, an enhanced reputation as an industry thought leader, competitive intelligence gathered, and new product ideas that came from face-to-face interaction with trade show attendees. None of these benefits are accounted for in the ROI calculation shown in Table 6-1, and their ultimate value could far exceed the $45,000 in sales in this example. Perhaps accounting for these soft benefits is not important when the hard costs and benefits deliver a 114 percent ROI, but when the business case is break-even or shows a loss, then quantifying the soft benefits becomes critical, yet it’s hard to do.

Despite these challenges, measuring the ROI of marketing is politically smart. Marketers cannot adopt an elitist attitude that puts them above the accountability of ROI measurement just because they feel they are a mysterious force for good that defies measurement. No other department in an organization gets a pass on meeting ROI expectations. Why should the marketing department be the exception?

The reality is this: measuring marketing’s ROI with a high degree of certainty is a serious challenge in most organizations, and some marketers feel it is impossible. What is helping make it possible are the improved systems, technologies, and the ease of using them to capture the data essential to determining ROI. However, there isn’t a system that can capture all that marketing does to create value. Even if the data were available to precisely calculate the ROI of marketing, some in the industry feel it isn’t always appropriate, and others feel it is just plain wrong.

How do you translate a better customer experience into ROI? The systems that marketers use are getting better, as is their discipline at using them, but you still can’t translate everything that marketing does into an ROI measurement. As an illustration of this difficulty, Scott Monty, executive vice president of strategy at SHIFT Communications once said, “What’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?”³ It’s difficult to know the answer with certainty, but easy to imagine the negative consequences of failing to do so. So it is with marketing: it must do some of the things it does because it just makes sense to do them—the metaphorical putting on pants in the morning—and it will therefore make no sense to capture the ROI of everything marketing does.

James Archer, founder and CEO of digital, brand, and communication design firm Forty, takes an even stronger position against what he calls the metric-lust of the marketing and advertising industry: “As technology has given our industry the ability to measure more things faster than ever, there’s been a steady trend towards having metrics serve as the basis for design and ­creative work, with the idea that this will ensure return on investment (ROI) for ­marketing efforts. It’s safe. It’s predictable. It’s simple. It’s easy to show your boss. It’s easy to show the client. It makes everyone look and feel good. And it’s wrong.”⁴ There isn’t universal agreement even within the industry about measuring ROI. Some think it is imperative, others think it’s benign, and still others think it actually causes harm.

Some of the things marketers do lend themselves to simple and easy data collection and ROI derivation. For example, any website activity generated by a marketing campaign is something the average marketer can use to smother the organization with data and credibly talk about the ROI. Attributing ­revenue to lead generation activities, a major responsibility for many marketing ­organizations, is reasonably simple. With the revenue and expenses known, determining the ROI of any digital campaign is usually simple arithmetic.

Brand building and awareness, another responsibility everyone agrees is important, also falls to the marketing department. Brand equity is not so ­easily measured, and even if it were, its effect on revenue is hard to fully understand. To illustrate, imagine a group of soccer parents, because of the amazing customer experience you engineered for them, raving about your company or product on the sidelines during the kids’ match. This sentiment toward the brand is wonderful, but there’s just no way to capture that sentiment data easily. The organization will probably benefit from the advocacy, but determining its ROI just isn’t possible today, and if it were, there are probably all kinds of privacy considerations involved in doing so.

The modern marketer still faces a dilemma when it comes to what kind of posture to maintain regarding ROI. Here are some of the cultural and practical realities of ROI measurement in the marketing department:

• Anecdotes about marketing’s performance are inadequate substitutes for ROI data. When pressed, marketers are adept at pulling colorful and inspiring anecdotes out of their experience that help illustrate the value and effectiveness of marketing. This anecdotal information is often illustrative, but it’s not an acceptable substitute for real ROI information.
• Anecdotal information is sometimes very useful. When valid ROI data about marketing is presented, anecdotes are very effective for helping create context and perspective, and they add color to the data.
• When times are good, no one is giving much thought to marketing’s ROI. There are times in the life of most firms when everything is going right. New sales records are set every month, “Product of the Year” or “Best Place to Work” awards are won, and glowing reviews from customers and media flow in. In an environment such as this, not many in the firm are thinking about the ROI of marketing. Everyone just makes an assumption that marketing is doing a stellar job, and usually it is! “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is the prevailing attitude. In times like these, marketing is given a free pass on reporting ROI, but they’re foolish to take it if it is offered.
• When times are hard, the spotlight is shining on marketing, and scrutiny of its ROI becomes a corporate pastime. The judgmental question marketing gets from all corners of the firm is “What have you done for us lately?” The firm is suffering a revenue drought, and everyone looks to marketing to help make it rain. The difficult ­discussions and tough questions about marketing expense are ­inescapable, because through some amazing transformation, most people in the firm have become marketing subject matter experts. Without ROI data about marketing’s performance, everyone assumes the worst. Not only will marketing’s reputation suffer, but its headcount often does as well.

Every firm has a unique personality and culture, and this affects how they ­perceive the return on their marketing investment. Firms with dominant finance or engineering cultures often don’t “get it” when it comes to the value of marketing. Their data-oriented cultures make it difficult to accept the intangible benefits marketing provides, so it gets no credit for them. Marketing equals “fluff” in these cultures, and getting respect, yet alone budget, is more challenging. Without ROI data to prove that marketing is helping generate revenue, it is difficult for marketing to help these companies succeed. Often when it does help, the credit goes elsewhere.

Firms that have sales and marketing cultures are much more likely to “get it” when it comes to the value of marketing. Firms with these cultures place a high value on marketing, and they have an almost intuitive understanding that marketing is the oil in the sales engine—even if you can’t see it, you know it’s there doing its job, and the engine won’t run without it. ROI is helpful, but for these firms, marketing is an imperative that will exist in some form regardless of the existence of proven ROI.

For some organizations, ROI is quite possibly the most important metric for their marketing analytics process. For others, it’s neither a fit nor a ­requirement. It’s never safe to assume that ROI is a must-have metric or key performance indicator for everyone. To assume that it is puts the cart before the horse. What is more important than achieving objectives? As discussed in Chapter 4, part of the analytics process is to understand the business objectives, execute a marketing strategy that helps achieve them, and select metrics that provide indicators of success in that endeavor. Isn’t it possible that marketing can achieve its objectives without using ROI as one of its metrics? The honest answer is “yes.” It’s not always a requirement to have ROI in the metrics portfolio to guide marketing in its work, but the rest of the organization may not see it this way.

Marketers have to keep the proper perspective about ROI. It should never become the tail that wags the dog. At the same time, marketers can’t be cavalier about ROI, because there are times when the ability to demonstrate a return keeps the marketing function intact. One of those times is when management hands the marketing department a mandate to slash its spending. The marketing department that can show the kind of return it consistently delivers has the ability to defend its spending, perhaps even expand it if it truly functions as a revenue center.

When troubled economic times hit a company, CEOs and CFOs are often compelled to cut expenses. Most experienced marketers know that frequently the first place the executives look to cut costs is in the marketing department. However unfair the characterization, many in the organization, including the CEO, assume that marketing harbors waste and excess. When the ROI isn’t measured and reported, marketing is a victim of this characterization. Measuring ROI, therefore, can provide marketing with a shield to help deflect attempts to gut marketing during rounds of budget cuts.

So how should marketers feel about reporting the ROI of their work, and what stance should they take on this matter, which is a source of some interdepartmental friction in many firms? The primary pursuit of marketing isn’t producing a return, it is helping the business achieve its objectives. Although there is almost always a return associated with doing that, when marketing organizations start to obsess about ROI, they can lose their focus. As Gordon Wyner, executive vice president at Millward Brown says, “Linking marketing to financial performance is not now—nor has it ever really been—solely about return on investment (ROI). Quantifying the return achieved by marketing activities is a necessary step in the process of connecting marketing to finance, but is not, in itself, sufficient for understanding how marketing helps to achieve business objectives or how its contribution can be improved.”⁵

Marketing’s focus should remain firmly fixed on achieving business ­objectives. When marketing properly derives its own objectives from the business ­objectives and measures progress toward achieving them with relevant metrics, it’s not always necessary to force ROI into the metrics portfolio. Sometimes, it will make great sense to include ROI as a metric. Other times, using ROI as a metric won’t really help marketing execute its plan more effectively. One of the greatest shortcomings of ROI as a metric is it’s inability to diagnose the root cause of low ROI. In this sense, it’s a bit like a “check engine” light on the marketing vehicle dashboard that only tells you there’s a problem somewhere, but without telling you where. For this reason, knowing the ROI of marketing doesn’t directly help marketers improve their effectiveness.

At the same time, marketers have to remain politically astute. There are ­situations, economic times and company cultural influences that make ­reporting ROI a necessity. If ROI is the yardstick that the CEO and CFO use to measure departmental contribution and determine funding, then ­marketing must participate. This is particularly true in firms that have organizational silos, where one department or silo views another department as ­competition for resources. In such environments, ROI may be used as a lever to gain an advantage over another department in negotiations for resources and favor.

In truth, there’s a healthy level of competition that should exist between departments within companies because it spawns innovation and efficiency. In companies with strong, healthy cultures, this kind of rivalry benefits everyone. In companies with dysfunctional or unhealthy cultures—particularly where that dysfunction manifests itself as organizational silos—the ROI metric can become a weapon, not just to advance one department’s agenda but to harm another.

So is ROI the ultimate metric for marketing? It really isn’t, but that doesn’t mean marketers can ignore ROI. Marketers should use ROI in their metrics portfolio when it helps them measure real progress toward objectives or when it serves as a tool that helps manage the journey. Anything that marketing does to generate revenue, such as demand generation and lead generation campaigns, should probably have the ROI metric attached to it. If marketing is able to track the revenue they help create, then the ROI calculation is just a step away.

Marketing will also find that reporting ROI is useful when it’s necessary to position the value that marketing creates for the organization. Reporting ROI provides proof that marketing is not an expense but a revenue center. The need to report ROI can also arise as a result of internal, political pressures, such as when marketing’s budget or existence is threatened, or simply because it is the best way to justify marketing spending. The case for measuring the ROI of marketing will vary from one organization to another, so each one must determine what makes sense and not assume that it’s always the right or wrong thing to do.

ROI Measurement Challenges

Even when there is complete agreement within the organization about the need for understanding the ROI of marketing, it isn’t easy to do. Teradata, a provider of big data analytics solutions and integrated marketing applications reports that 75 percent of marketers who attempt to calculate ROI report some kind of problem or challenge in doing so.⁶ Even when the will to report marketing’s ROI is present, significant challenges stand in the way.

One of the challenges of measuring the ROI of marketing is determining the scope or level at which to capture data and report ROI. Should marketing report the ROI of the entire marketing function, providing a single metric that represents the macro-view? Or should marketing take a micro-view of ROI and report it for certain aspects of its work, such as demand generation? What about developing an ROI-based business case for some of the investments marketing wishes to make, such as acquiring important technology or executing a campaign? Determining the scope of marketing ROI measurement efforts is one of the first challenges the marketer will face.

Why not report the ROI for the entire marketing function? Why not just determine the return percentage for everything that marketing does? Conceptually, it’s a brilliant idea, but practically, it is difficult. The grander the scale on which metrics are reported can sometimes make those metrics less meaningful. A single ROI measurement is likely to underrepresent marketing’s true value in some areas and overrepresent it in others. The caution here is much the same as it is for using averages. As an old statistician’s saying goes, if your feet are freezing and your head is in an oven, on average, you’re comfortable. Broad or high-level measures, therefore, aren’t always that helpful and at times are unintentionally deceptive.

Understanding the impact on revenue for each thing that marketing does—and capturing the data for these things—is still an impossible task even in today’s digital marketing era. For those things marketing does that have a direct relationship to revenue, such as a digital campaign, measurement is pretty easy. Marketers can link specific revenue transactions to the campaign, enabling precise calculation of ROI. If all that marketing did was execute easily measured campaigns, then determining the ROI for the marketing function as a whole is pretty straightforward.

Obviously most marketing functions don’t just run digital campaigns. They provide a broad scope of services to their organizations, many of which defy revenue impact measurement. For example, how does marketing calculate the revenue impact of promotional items given away at events? How does the keynote address an executive gave at a conference influence revenue? What about the impact of advertising and other brand awareness activities? Everyone can agree that these things have influence and value. But it is difficult, for example, to connect the awareness created by the local sports team sponsorship to the subsequent actions of interested fans who later click on a banner ad because they recognized the sponsor’s brand. These challenges of attribution, which Chapter 10 explores more fully, make precise calculation of marketing’s ROI difficult.

If marketing takes only the measurable aspects of its work and determines their ROI, and then somehow extrapolates that ROI across the entire marketing function, the resulting ROI percentage is almost surely too low, accounting for some of marketing’s revenue-generating activity but not all of it. This approach ends up diluting the ROI calculation for all of marketing by including all marketing costs in the calculation but only the directly attributable revenue. It does not present a true ROI picture.

Some might argue that the flaws with the ROI calculation approach just described don’t matter if the resulting ROI meets minimum requirements. Perhaps they are right much of the time. But this approach to calculating ROI is still an estimate and therefore is at risk of acceptance internally. If the stakeholders inside the company know that the marketing ROI estimate is just that—an estimate—marketing may not see that ROI estimate enjoy full internal support. Even if it is a conservative estimate, marketing should expect some resistance to attempts to use ROI derived this way to justify marketing investments.

It would be ideal if it were possible to calculate the ROI of the whole, ­complete marketing function. The reality for most marketing organizations is that the data just isn’t there or the cost to obtain the data to enable this calculation with some degree of precision is simply too high or too difficult. For this reason, knowing marketing’s ROI at this level has to come with a disclaimer. Marketing must continually educate the rest of the organization on how it creates value and why all of that value isn’t measurable. It’s not wrong to try to report the ROI of the entire marketing function, but that ROI information needs to come with an explanation.

What’s much easier is to look at some of the individual components of ­marketing. With the proper data tracking, it’s not difficult to determine the ROI of a pay-per-click campaign, or exhibiting at a trade show, or just about anything marketing does to generate, qualify or nurture leads. There’s value in knowing the ROI from these activities, particularly for comparing one ­campaign to a like campaign. But even this approach has its flaws, and the main one is this: measuring the ROI of a single marketing channel ignores the true, ­multichannel nature of modern marketing. Marketers use a plethora of ­channels to do their work. Ascribing all the credit for a conversion as a ­customer goes through the buying cycle to just one channel completely ignores all the other channels that influenced that conversion. So calculating the ROI for individual marketing components or channels isn’t ideal either.

Other challenges exist for the determination of marketing ROI beyond just the scope and granularity of doing so, such as the data challenge. This ­challenge is multifaceted, representing the skills, alignment, organizational issues, and even cultural issues surrounding the access to or integration of data needed to determine ROI. In fact, the Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey reveals that marketers’ number one barrier to ROI calculation is lack of data integration.⁷

Part of marketing’s challenge with data is ownership: many marketing ­organizations don’t control their data destiny, because they don’t have primary responsibility for their own data. In fact, less than one-third of marketers claim to own or control customer data, and over half indicate that they rely on the IT department to gain access to their data.⁸ If marketing doesn’t have unfettered access to its data in real time, it will hinder any kind of analytics process, let alone the calculation of ROI.

The data access challenge is frequently made worse by an old nemesis: ­organizational silos. When these exist, the interdepartmental cooperation needed to share data and information for any reason, not just ROI determination, becomes an unproductive diplomatic exercise. Suspicion abounds and turf battles are waged over data, information, and who controls it. Attempting to gain access to the data marketing needs for ROI calculation may require the expenditure of more political capital than marketing has or is willing to spend.

Another factor that impedes marketing’s access to needed data is organizational misalignment. When marketing’s goals are not well aligned with sales goals, or other key organizational goals, chances are quite high that problems exist in a number of other areas, not just in the determination of ROI. Specific to ROI, however, when two closely related functions such as sales and marketing have different goals, they will collect different data. The implication of this alignment problem is that the data marketing needs to do a proper, accurate ROI calculation may not exist.

In some cases, marketing doesn’t have access to the data it needs because it has abdicated responsibility, washing its hands (so to speak) of the ­matter because it requires technical skills not found within the department. The ­trajectory of marketing’s work is unmistakably toward the technical, as Figure 2-1 depicted. Marketers can no longer maintain technical ignorance, simply outsourcing any technical functions to IT or other groups. Even if marketing isn’t going to manage an analytics process or calculate its ROI, it still needs technical skills to do its work. The marketing department that doesn’t have the necessary technical skills is surrendering control of a growing part of its destiny to someone outside the department that may or may not have ­sympathy for marketing.

The complexity of the sales process, as well as its length, can challenge marketing in its efforts to know its ROI. It’s quite common in the B-to-B environment to see long, complex sales cycles. When this is the case, what’s typically known with certainty is when the process began—at the point a qualified lead was collected—and when the process ended—when a sale was made. In between these two end points there are many influences through many channels that help move a lead toward an eventual sale. Some are easy to track, and others are simply unknown. Longer sales cycles generally involve more of these influences. These influences are things like brand impressions and nurturing activities, and it’s all too easy to lose track of which ones have occurred in any given customer sales cycle or which ones were effective.

The challenges of determining the ROI of marketing are many. What is the CMO to do in the face of pressure to report it? The answer depends on where an organization already is with respect to marketing analytics and ROI. Any marketing organization that desires to report its ROI should focus on the precision of that metric, because with precision comes credibility. The use of ROI as a metric or key performance indicator for marketing is a lot like running a marathon: if you haven’t done it before, you can’t just lace up your shoes and run 26.2 miles your first time out. Instead, start by going shorter distances and slowly build your way up. To keep from getting overwhelmed when starting out with marketing ROI determination, follow an evolutionary path.

• Getting started: don’t try to “boil the ocean” when it comes to measuring ROI. Get your feet wet by selecting some aspects of marketing’s work for which to determine the return. For example, determining the ROI of paid search or other digital campaigns is within the ability of even those marketing organizations just getting started, because the data is readily available. Here’s the catch: many of the “starter” ROI measurement areas within marketing may have little or nothing to do with the organization’s goals. In the beginning, this misalignment is okay for the sake of learning how to measure and use ROI.  Just make sure that the measurement efforts don’t stay here. In this early learning stage, the ROI measurement results should probably stay within the marketing department.
• Expand: apply the ROI process and metric to a broader array of marketing’s work. Once some proficiency is gained at measuring and using ROI, it’s important to apply it to things that matter. Align the ROI measurements with goals—both marketing’s and the organization’s goals. As this chapter has discussed, data availability or accessibility is often a challenge in doing this. In this expansion stage, you will also test the cultural waters by beginning to expose marketing’s ROI results to those outside the department. This is still a learning process for marketing, but it also becomes a teaching experience. Marketing needs to help the rest of the organization understand how to use and interpret the ROI data marketing provides. In this expansion stage, marketing shouldn’t be too ambitious by trying to express the ROI of everything it’s doing. The goal here is to gain acceptance for ­marketing’s use of ROI in some strategically selected areas of its work.
• Integrate: Use ROI as an integral part of the marketing analytics process, applying it as broadly as common sense dictates. The use of ROI as a metric has become integral when it serves as a key influence in decision making. As the organization reaches this stage of maturity, all the caveats to using ROI discussed in this chapter should apply. Use ROI in the proper context, which is as a metric or tool for improvement, not a referendum on marketing. Ensure that there is complete integrity surrounding ROI derivation: don’t use speculative data or estimates in calculations. Make sure the cultural environment is accepting, as ROI can become the sole judge and jury (and sometimes executioner) of marketing’s work, because at this stage, there is full transparency of marketing’s ROI results.

ROI Is Not Enough

As this chapter discusses, there are pros and cons to using ROI as a ­marketing metric. One extreme in the argument is that ROI is the ultimate marketing metric. The other extreme is that ROI isn’t important and in fact is even harmful as a marketing metric. Neither of these positions represent the place where marketing should live with respect to the ROI metric. As is true for many polarizing arguments, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Set aside for the moment all the challenges of accurately determining the ROI of anything or everything that marketing does. The ROI metric tells ­neither marketing nor the rest of the organization all it needs to know about ­marketing’s performance or how to improve it. In fact, there isn’t a single metric that serves this purpose. Marketing analytics done properly requires multiple metrics that provide a complete and accurate view. It’s unreasonable to view ROI as that one metric. The financial pragmatists who want to see marketing live and die based on its ROI must realize that other metrics reveal more about true marketing outcomes. Some of these metrics include market share, customer lifetime value, retention rate, and cost of customer acquisition.

Those that feel that ROI has no place in the catalog of metrics must reconcile themselves to the fact that ROI can provide real value. For some marketing activities, ROI is a great performance indicator. True, there are important intangible contributions of marketing that are difficult or too expensive to measure—an ROI metric is clearly not appropriate for these things. But most campaigns and lead generation efforts easily lend themselves to ROI determination and scrutiny. Where it makes sense, marketing should embrace ROI. Furthermore, the marketing idealists must recognize that sometimes it’s simply expedient or politically wise to play the ROI game. If reporting ROI is the path to securing resources or the future of marketing, then marketers should not hesitate to do it.

The right position to take with respect to ROI and marketing is this: use ROI where it makes sense. It is an important metric, but it is a means to an end, not the end itself. Marketers should own the process of determining and reporting ROI, not let that process own them. Recognize that it will take time to gain maturity in using ROI as a marketing metric, because of the challenges of doing so that this chapter discusses. It’s not hard to foresee, however, a day in the not-so-distant future where improved systems for tracking, collecting, and reporting on the needed ROI input data that now is elusive becomes standard and easy to obtain. As marketing technology continues to mature, the ability to precisely know the ROI of the entire marketing function will come within easier reach.

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¹“State of Inbound 2014,”, Hubspot, p. 31, http://www.stateofinbound.com.

²http://www.quora.com/What-is-considered-a-good-ROI-for-a-digital-marketing-campaign-for-a-consultancy-company.

³Phil Johnson, “What’s the ROI of Putting Your Pants on in the Morning? The Dilemma of Measurement and Accountability,” Advertising Age, October 20, 2009.

⁴James Archer, “Metric-lust: How Well Can You Really Measure Marketing ROI?,” http://forty.co/metric-lust-how-well-can-you-really-measure-marketing-roi.

⁵Gordon Wyner, “Marketing Effectiveness: It’s More Than Just ROI,” Millward Brown blog, February 2008.

⁶“Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, Global,” 2013, Teradata, p. 28, http://teradata.com.

⁷“2013 Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, Global,” p. 8.

⁸“2013 Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, Global,” p. 13.