Leveraging analytics to manage and improve ROI

1. Leveraging analytics to manage and improve ROI ROI Analytics are being increasingly used to transform businesses and give them an edge. Organizations are slowly realizing the value of analytics in managing and improving the return on investments (ROI) of business initiatives (BI). There are often debates on how the field of marketing is really benefitting from analytics, because organizations obviously won’t be willing to increase their marketing budget until and unless they are sure about the returns on investment that the raise could bring. Measuring ROI basically means figuring out whether an organization gained more than it spent on implementing an initiative aiming at raising ROI, or whether the initiative is even working for it at all. How does a company know the actual ROI on a new strategic initiative? How does it establish this base of information, to make it profitable by improving on it? For this, it needs to calculate the entire costs and revenues related to that campaign, which in turn can’t be done without reporting ROI analytics.This fact is enough to establish the significance of analytics in a business. When applied efficiently, analytics help a business gain visibility across its operations and processes, finances and efficiencies, marketing and sales, and also

2. analyze the data it gathers. It sorts out the collected data to convert it into relevant information that helps decision makers. The information can be analyzed to find out various ways of applying the data to the processes which have been affected by the initiative. The information thus obtained helps the company to examine whether the initiative’s resultant ROI has been positive or negative, and whether the company should pursue in case any similar opportunities come up in future. Let us take a more practical instance of how ROI analytics can help evaluate if a business is, in fact, benefitting from a campaign. In case of advertising, analytics, when properly applied, help in refining the customer acquisition strategy, after analyzing customer data in the following ways: -Examining the advertising channels and their effectiveness -Identifying the channels that are most beneficial -Deciding on how to use these channels for promotional spends Analytics also bring vital insights into customer behavior for sales and ad departments, which helps them determine the approach for adverts and sales. With analytics’ help, businesses can even assess which adverts attracted most of the click-throughs and what type of customers it brought. Such analytical scrutiny reveals if those channelsand adverts brought positive or negative ROI. In this way, an organization can check the viability of itsbusiness initiative, or the benefits it can bring, by applying ROI analytics. By looking at the realized ROI as against expected, the business can take decisions regarding the potential of the initiative and its further application. There are smarter applications with which analytics can be used for an individual customer. With these, an organization can actually tailor an advertising offer to a customer’s perceived interests by analyzing his buying behavior. This can please the customer and make him loyal, as well as help the organization to manage what it offers so that it remains within profitable limits. Employing analytics, therefore, turns out to be a direct approach with which a business can make sure that it closely meets and manages the expected returns onadvertising, marketing, and other promotional initiatives. Because of its relevance to any given business, analytics are fast becoming an integral part of every field. Therefore, if ROI analytics are not applied and reported on a particular

3. data that is obtained by a business, it will be deprived of the best insights that lead to accurate decision making.