Features of marketing automation reporting and how it measures marketing ROI more effectively than CRM reporting.

Key excerpt...

Already have CRM reporting? That’s great, but you may not be getting the marketing numbers you need. Consider the following 4 reasons from Prashant Kaw of Opfocus for using marketing automation reporting over CRM reporting for the measurement of marketing ROI:

• Capturing web-based conversions
• Showing newly acquired names/touches in a given time period (vs. Salesforce’s splitting contacts and leads)
• Storing touch-point data more cheaply than Salesforce, where it may not be that useful for sales anyway
• Tying marketing spend to ROI

There is very little excuse (other than it is hard to do and takes work) for digital marketing not to be business-performance-obsessed. The fact is, way too many marketers may no longer be counting HITS, but they are still measuring with that philosophy. By the way, HITS stands for "How Idiots Track Success."

Marketing measurement should never be about how many views, likes, +1s, retweets, shares, etc. you have. All marketing efforts, and especially digital marketing efforts and their metrics, should flow directly and intelligently into the C-suite's financial statements. That is, if we want to stay relevant to what matters to the CEO and CFO.