Over at Direct, Ken Magill lets email marketers know “Why the CMO Thinks You’re an Idiot,” taking the industry to task for failing to measure results. Magill bases his dim view of the field on findings from a recent Jupiter Research study (fee required) that found at least half of email marketers fail to regularly track basic key performance indicators (KPI’s) such as revenue per subscriber, average order size, and click-to-conversion rates.
BtoB Online reports similar observations from a study conducted by Marketing Management Analystics for Financial Executives International. Fewer than 20 percent of the financial executives surveyed were happy with the quality of the metrics they get from their colleagues in the marketing department. Poor communication was a problem, but the lack of a budget specifically for measuring marketing effectiveness was also blamed — fewer than 10 percent of the companies surveyed had one.
Perhaps not coincidentally, a new article at MarketingProfs.com reports on the emergence of new role in organizations: Marketing Operations. Its function is “to drive the connection between marketing strategy and execution and actual results.”
On the lighter sider: Get a glimpse of the online version of the Nashville Zoo’s attention-grabbing new direct mail campaign urging patrons to “get behind” the zoo.