Best Stat to Drop in a Business Case:

Shari Storm Verity Credit Union, said that 1% of its new members named the blog when asked how they heard about Verity; the new members had an average of 2.7 accounts with $9,000 in deposits and $11,500 in loans (excluding mortgage); furthermore, the CU’s blog, launched in Dec. 2004, now has 1,000 readers (see here for Colin Henderson’s complete notes on this session)

My take: While I don’t recommend trying to turn this single data point into an ROI calculation, it’s the first time I’ve heard a financial exec say something about blogging that the finance folks will appreciate

Online Banking and Marketing Statistics from Net.Finance

Since I’m a numbers junkie, whenever I’m at a conference, I try to note as many meaningful statistics as possible. By meaningful, I mean a number that provides an outsider with some insight into the business. Merely saying, “we beat our expectations by 63%” does NOT qualify, unless the speaker also shared their expectations.

The flow of numbers was about a bit below average during the three days I attended Net.Finance, but the two professional researchers on the agenda, Jim Van Dyke of Javelin Strategy and Asaf Buchner of Jupiter Research, delivered slides chock full of statistics. I will check with them to see if they are willing to share with our readers.

Free stock market game!

Max’s Investment World assists financial services and media companies acquire, retain and cross-sell customers by using the Internet to build interactive relationships.

Our personal finance tools, such as investment simulations, planners, tutorials, e-mail newsletters and other interactive content, induce prospects and customers to take action, including opening accounts, by educating them in a compelling way.

We have linked customers to clients since 1995 when we operated a personal finance forum on the Microsoft Network.

Sales Marketing and Finance

In every business, the Sales Team can be its greatest asset and they alone hold the key to a successful and profitable future. If they are inadequately briefed, under skilled or unprepared to deal with client requests, then others will take the advantage. Our Sales and Marketing Programmes (Customer Care, Account Management, and Customer Relationship Management) are designed with this in mind. We know that a company’s commercial performance is inexorably linked to the professional ability of its sales team and deliver our courses with this focus.

About Marketing Management Analytics, Inc. (MMA)

MMA pioneered the use of marketing mix modeling to help companies plan, measure, validate, and optimize their marketing performance. Since that time, MMA has conducted more than 1,000 studies on hundreds of brands and businesses in more than 20 countries. MMA’s clients include many of the most recognized marketers in the world. MMA has been a unit of Aegis Group, PLC, London (AGS.L) since 1997. For more information about Avista DSS and other MMA services, visit www.mma.com .

About the ANA

The ANA’s mission is to provide indispensable leadership that drives marketing. communications, media and brand management excellence and champions, promotes and defends industry interests. The ANA is the industry’s foremost and recognized source of marketing communications best practices. It also leads industry initiatives, influences industry practices, manages industry affairs, and advances, promotes and protects all advertisers and marketers. The trade association represents 400 companies with 8,000 brands that collectively spend over $100 billion in marketing communications and advertising.

Goals for marketing accountability varied greatly in the survey:

* Forty percent of respondents said that marketing ROI goals were based on internal benchmarks within the marketing department.
* Approximately one-third reported that marketing ROI goals were closely aligned with overall corporate goals.
* However, one-third indicated that there were no written goals for marketing in their companies.

Marketing & Communications Manager/Finance/Hedge Fund

Increase brand awareness and drive sales, marketers are still struggling to create accountability programs that effectively measure the impact of marketing efforts, according to a new study from the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and MMA (Marketing Management Analytics). Although the majority of companies with a marketing accountability process tend to house this function within the marketing department, there is growing collaboration between marketing and finance. The 2008 ANA / MMA Marketing Accountability Survey, fielded by CoActive Marketing, surveyed 128 senior-level marketers in May 2008, following similar studies conducted together since 2005.

Overall, marketing accountability has a presence in nearly every company; however, a growing number of these programs are siloed within marketing departments. Forty-five percent of respondents indicated that their accountability programs were based within the marketing group, a jump of 14 points over the prior year.

Despite accountability programs becoming more entrenched within marketing departments, this year’s survey showed progress in improving the relationship between marketing and finance. Thirty-three percent reported “full cooperation and an open dialogue” in establishing metrics and methodologies for marketing ROI – up from twenty-two percent in 2007 – and nearly half of respondents found “some cooperation.” Increasingly, participants in the survey said they believed that marketing and finance “speak with one voice” or “share common metrics.”

“In demonstrating the value of marketing as a contributor to business growth, it is important for marketers to engage their counterparts in finance and throughout the organization,” said Bob Liodice, President and CEO of the ANA. “We are pleased that marketers are moving in the right direction, but there is still much work to be done.”

“To truly realize the value of marketing metrics, companies must move beyond backward-looking metrics to forward-looking insights that guide business decisions,” said Doug Brooks, VP, MMA. “This requires making the analytics accessible, transparent, easy-to-use and timely for marketing, finance and research.”

Finance vs. Marketing

Companies are still struggling to measure their returns on marketing investments, and two recent studies shed some light on why. For one thing, marketing and finance disagree as to how well current programs to measure the ROI of expenses such as advertising and direct mail actually perform. At many companies the two functions do not work together to develop measures; sometimes they battle one another.

One study, by Marketing Management Analytics (MMA), finds that just seven percent of finance executives are satisfied with their companies’ ability to measure marketing ROI. A higher portion of marketing executives, 23 percent, think they are doing a good job of measuring returns.

“Marketing executives are under a lot of pressure to show exactly how investments in the brand translate into sales,” says Ed See, co-president of MMA. He believes that chief marketing officers who still think marketing is about brand awareness, with only a loose connection to the bottom line, won’t last very long in their jobs.

Some industries are way behind others. A survey by Lenskold Group finds that companies that sell through retailers are almost four times more likely to measure marketing ROI than those that sell through a sales force (39 % to 11 %). Jim Lenskold, president of the firm, says packaged-goods companies pioneered marketing metrics in the early 1990s and are well ahead of most industries, but many others are now developing programs. Nonetheless, “I’d say most programs are in the toddler stage,” says Lenskold.

Marketing Finance System (MFS): Automate Core Marketing Operations Processes

Marketing organizations face increased pressure from the C-suite to show accountability for brand building, customer acquisition and retention investments. Additionally, Sarbanes-Oxley stipulations require marketing to document its spend and the processes involved in executing on those plans. Finally, marketing also finds itself competing with other line of business investment opportunities. Marketing must demonstrate a reasonable ROI for its investments and differentiate itself from competitive investments from elsewhere in the company. Marketing executives who can implement financial processes that define objectives, enforce a rigorous process and then measure their performance will set themselves apart from the rest of their counterparts.