The ROI of introducing a Marketing Automation software

While all marketing automation OEMs and technology consulting partners like us are vocal about the importance of a Marketing Automation or an Enterprise Marketing Management system with which an organization can improve the ROI on their marketing spend and make the ROI measurement more transparent, these organizations are worried about how to fit in the investment required for introducing such a system. Mid Market and upto a certain extent Large enterprises are worried about how they would calculate the ROI on the spend which they would incur on introducing an Enterprise Marketing Management system.

Introducing an Integrated Marketing Management system involves a lot of initial investment, like training, hiring experienced resources, implementation and configuration of the entire environment, consulting charges apart from the licensing fee. So how do a CMO measure the return on investment of all these expenses. What is the duration he should consider to measure the ROI. Normally marketing budgets are called out for a quarter or at max for a financial year. But it is very difficult to measure the impact of a Marketing Automation system in a quarter or in one year.

So how shall a CMO look at various aspects while calculating the ROI on the spend the organization incurs in introducing an Integrated Marketing Management system.

1. The consolidation exercise the marketing department undergoes in adopting a marketing automation system and the process alignment that happens out of that.
2. The value addition that happens to the entire marketing team from the trainings and marketing transformation exercise that they undergo
3. The co-ordination that comes about between headquarters and local marketing teams in terms of approval system, digital asset sharing, maintaining campaign calendars and much more.
4. The perfection in timeliness and quality of campaigns executed thus uplifting revenue per campaign which in a cumulative way will return positively on investment of the marketing automation system.
5. The uplift of the brand image and relevance of marketing communications by making the marketing initiatives a service to the customers and prospects.

As Albert Einstein once said “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” The value addition and brand empowerment an Enterprise Marketing Platform will bring about by enabling the CRM system of an organization integrate with various touchpoints like Websites, IVR systems, Lead management systems , Social Media platforms and help create channels of dialogue with the customers and prospects is phenomenal and cannot be counted in terms of money straight away to measure ROI. This will eventually help the organization move to a social CRM platform from a traditional CRM platform which in today’s customer centric world is priceless.