Dear WDFM Subscriber,
How much money do you invest in marketing? Do you make it all back and then some? These are probably your most critical business questions, which is why I devote this entire issue to ROI Marketing.
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Jim Lenskold has carved out a very smart niche as the "go to guy"
on ROI Marketing. We're honored to have him as this week's
Contributuing Editor.
I suggest you check out Jim's site at http://www.customerpathing.com. Read his content on marketing ROI and customer profitability. Take the marketing ROI quiz to determine your level of expertise. Also available is a complimentary ROI spreadsheet that offers a sophisticated calculator as a starting point for customizing your own ROI calculations.
Coming Attractions: Best of Search Engine Marketing Tools, Marketing Consultant's Toolbox and Best of Online Shopping (for the holidays) are some of our hot upcoming issues. But you must be a subscriber to have these upcoming issues delivered to your IN box as soon as they're released.
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"Meat & Potatoes ROI Marketing" is the topic of this week's Publisher's Note. It's right after the nine reviews on ROI marketing sites.
Now, without further ado, here's ROI Marketing Expert Jim Lenskold with the nine ROI Marketing sites you need on your radar screen. Take it away, JL...
Marketing ROI Management Tools
Marketing Today
http://www.marketingtoday.com
For those who'd like to begin with a basic ROI calculation tool, surf on over to Marketing Today and you will find a link to the direct mail/email calculator at the bottom of the home page. This happens to be one of the few ROI calculators that is actually accurate. Although there has been much improvement in the past year, many of the no-cost online calculators make the mistake of requesting total sales revenue instead of the profit generated from each sale. This inflates the ROI and could easily guide you toward unprofitable decisions. The Marketing Today website is also strong in content, with plenty of articles available on the subject of marketing accountability.
Campaignist
http://www.campaignist.com
Management of campaign ROI can get quite complex. Campaignist integrates with existing campaign management, financial and enterprise systems to centralize critical data necessary to calculate marketing ROI. A no-cost download and informative papers on marketing investment management will give you a good picture of the extensive reach of this automation. Keep in mind that one long-term benefit of marketing ROI management is the ability to leverage historical results for future estimating. Therefore, the campaign archives are an excellent feature. This is a trendsetting company in the emerging discipline of marketing ROI management.
MathMarketing
http://www.mathmarketing.com
The role of marketing is to move customers and prospects through the sales funnel, from unaware prospect status to closed sale. This can happen independent of, or coordinated with, a sales team. Hugh Macfarlane, author of "The Leaky Funnel," provides an easy-to-use approach for managing the conversion rate (or conversely the "leakage" rate) of this process. Use MathMarketing’s leakage calculator to project how many prospects you need to start with to reach your sales objectives. There is also a more sophisticated Funnel Plan Modeler application that factors in lag time, which is critical for B2B and B2C companies that have long sales and marketing cycles.
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 14 Ways to Make Your Ad Dollars Work Harder Free Download from Who's Calling. This must-read report includes:
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ROI Insights and Thought Leadership
MarketingNPV
http://www.marketingnpv.com
Packed with insightful content and a host of ROI tools, MarketingNPV is a prime destination for marketers seeking to advance their marketing ROI capabilities. Topics range from finding marketing dashboards that provide senior executives with a view of key profitability drivers to the application of six sigma principles to marketing processes. No-cost downloads include an ROI tool, simulation tools, a Bass diffusion model for forecasting and several others.
Advertising Research Foundation/APQC
http://www.arfsite.org/resources/pastresearch.html
The American Productivity and Quality Center and the Advertising Research Foundation have completed two insightful best practice research studies on marketing ROI. The 2001 study demonstrates the clear advantages that companies embracing marketing ROI processes have, such as increased profitability, faster budget approvals and better dialogue with company executives. The 2003 study speaks to the budgeting process and management of brand assets. Summaries of the reports are available at no cost.
Forrester 2004 Benchmark of Senior Marketing Executives Survey
http://www.unica.com/documents/research.html
This research conducted by Forrester and commissioned by Unica highlights the current priorities of marketing executives. The study finds that the greatest challenge facing marketers today is measuring marketing’s effectiveness and ROI. The report provides additional insight into top priorities, plans to implement new marketing channels, the outlook on marketing technology and an analysis of where companies stand with respect to becoming customer-centric. Comprised of graphic survey results, the report is available at no cost with registration on the Unica website. It’s a great view into the current mindset and position of senior marketing executives.
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Brand Valuation
Brand Finance
http://www.brandfinance.com
Brand Finance offers companies an impressive accounting methodology for calculating brand valuation. Investments into brand generate a combination of increased sales, improved competitive positioning and increased asset value. The valuation of the brand asset is essential to help guide levels of brand investments. This should be of particular interest to those companies that can benefit from having the brand value reflected on the balance sheet. This site features articles and publications that provide a well-rounded overview as well as more detailed information on accounting methodologies.
ROI-Generating Resources
Tremor
http://www.tremor.com
The often elusive marketing channel that everyone loves but cannot easily manage is word-of-mouth influence. For companies targeting mothers and teens, take a close look at Tremor as a resource for generating ROI. Yes, Tremor is part of Proctor & Gamble serving internal P&G clients, but a significant portion of its business is with external clients. Tremor applies tested screening processes to identify "influencers" and then leverages a long-term online relationship with this base of influencers to run carefully crafted promotions. The results have been quite impressive in boosting sales, capturing market intelligence and running market tests. Tremor's work in the teen market has been running successfully for several years and the mother segment was just launched this year.
Sample Size Calculators
UCLA Department of Statistics
http://calculators.stat.ucla.edu
Keep this link on hand for the ultimate list of statistical calculators. The site features good basic sample size calculators as well as calculators for more advanced research methodologies (see Power Calculators or Correlation and Regression Calculators). Remember that market testing and research are at the heart of good marketing ROI practices. The more insight you can gain into what marketing activities, campaigns, offers and segmentation are driving your profitability, the better to improve your returns. For the more sophisticated calculators, you’ll need to have a good understanding of statistical terms, since these are student projects and there is no documentation to guide you. On the other hand, the site even offers a tool for those creative folks with "mathphobia" -- check out the RGB calculator, which will show you Web colors and the corresponding hexadecimal code.
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Where Can You Find the Best of Web Digest For Marketers? Go to Larry Chase's Search Engine For Marketers. There is no cost. It features "best of" reviews in 40 marketing categories, including: Best of Online Marketing Calculators, Search Engine Optimization, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, CRM & Best of Google Tools & Tips for Marketers. |
Publisher's Note
Meat & Potatoes ROI Marketing
This is the age of accountable marketing. Everyone pays it lip service. But how many firms really get down to it and track what leads and prospects are coming from where? Do you?
The Internet is making it much easier for companies to get a handle on which marketing campaigns are paying off -- and which ones aren't. The cost of tagging, tracking and analyzing everything is dropping so far and fast that no one should excuse themselves from performing this most basic function of direct marketing. WebTrends has been an advertiser in my Web Digest For Marketers email newsletter for some time. Their Web analytics offerings help firms track traffic patterns to their website and on their website, as well as such neat things as showing you what search terms people used in order to find you in the first place.
Another advertiser found in Web Digest For Marketers is Who's Calling. This firm's offering lets you quickly and easily assign phone numbers to every single ad, email, Web page, direct mail package, and so forth. You may say, "So what? That practice has been around for years." And you would be right. But the Who's Calling solution lets you track response rates from a log-in account using your Web browser. You can pull up and monitor actual sales calls from the archive and see if a sales rep is closing sales properly. Furthermore, you can chart the effectiveness of campaigns and download the results to spreadsheets and charts. Pretty nifty stuff, for not a lot of money.
There was a time when this type of sophisticated tracking was only available to the largest of corporations because it took huge amounts of technical, human and capital resources and infrastructure to make it work. What was once reserved for only the largest enterprises is now available to just about anyone, in large part due to the Internet.
This distribution of technology and the savings it brings to the marketing industry is one of the blessings of the Net. Now the Internet is more than just slapping up a Web page and getting listed in the search engines. That was Internet marketing 1.0. Now we're throwing marketing into hyperdrive with the second generation of Internet marketing. It's exciting and stimulating.
Many marketers rue the day that technology and especially the Internet shook up the marketing landscape. But you know, anyone who styles themselves as a marketer better have an irrepressible sense of enterprise and view technology as an opportunity, not a threat. LC
Web Digest For Marketers, 29 John St., #102, New York, NY 10038 © 1995-2004 Chase Online Marketing Strategies, All Rights Reserved.
To cancel your subscription to Web Digest For Marketers and FYI From Web Digest For Marketers simply click on the link at the very bottom of this document.
11/04/04IN THIS ISSUE
* Best ROI Marketing
Calculators
* ROI Marketing
Dashboards
* Word-of-Mouth ROI
* Leaky Funnels
* DM Tip of the
Week
* and more...
Recapture Your Expires
In many cases, your most likely buyers or respondents are
those that just left you. Ask them why they left. Give them
an incentive to return to the fold. Some firms even have
preventative expiration programs in place. When you tell
them you're about to leave, they offer you an unbeatable
deal that they don't reveal until you're one step out the
door. LC
DM Tip of the Week
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About WDFM
Larry Chase's Web Digest for Marketers (WDFM) is a free weekly email newsletter featuring mercifully short reviews and links on marketing-oriented websites.
This newsletter reaches over 40,000 decision-making marketers. Started in April 1995, WDFM was the first email newsletter about marketing on the Internet.
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