While there are many formulas around ROI per campaign, ROI on your program, reduction in direct mailing costs, speed to launch to market, or even consumer engagement (I am sure there are few dozen more) - the best way to gauge the success of your own program is through some introspective questioning.
Here are five different stages of where people are with their email marketing program. Remember your goal stage is number five.
1 - Cheap
2 - Quick
3- Track
4- Personalize
5 - Multi-channel
- Cheaper than paper - your company does email because direct mail costs are higher and email helps subsidize those costs.
- Quick way to communicate - it is a very fast way to get your campaigns out of your door into the prospects inbox.
- Track effectiveness of campaigns - you are concerned about measuring success of your other channel campaigns, so you are interested in seeing what is really working effectively.
- Personalize your messaging - you want to track what people are doing, place them in segments, and personalize each message uniquely (or strive to) towards recipients.
- Ability to leverage information across channels - you are using email as a means to build preference repositories and create a two way dialogue with recipients across channel.
Assign yourself a number for each one of the bullets above - most marketers have moved from two to three and some are beginning to reach stage four. There are a few companies that are in stage five.
Usually, the higher your number; the higher the level of your sophistication.