1. ROMI Best Practices Roadmap
Upper Quadrant, Inc.
8135 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 200
Reston, Virginia 20191
703.476.1992 sales@upperquadrant.com

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Overview
Marketers today are consistently asked to outperform last year’s results with fewer resources and less
money. We are expected to produce the next winning creative and strategy, while we drive down our
costs and generate more sales for our company. The intent of this paper is to provide a framework to
implement ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment) for direct response marketing that will assist
marketers as they work to live up to these heightened expectations.
The following six steps represent a best practices roadmap for the implementation of a Direct Response
ROMI methodology.
Step 1: Start Small, Define Your Goals and Clearly Define Your Metrics
Choosing to pursue a ROMI project can feel overwhelming at the start. Take time to clearly define goals
and objectives and plan with the end in mind.
 Define the End Result – As you begin, on the back of a napkin, define which questions need
answers daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. What actions will be driven by these
answers? This information guides the development of your media plans, and data requests of your
vendors. Later in the process you can determine and create the full range of tools to use to
simplify your analysis and get the answers you need in a timely manner.
 Start with the low hanging fruit – First, choose objectives that you can implement rapidly and that
will have clear benefit to the organization. This will help to get buy-in for larger initiatives and
energize the team by building on successes. Work with your team to standardize calculations or
the definitions of commonly used terms. Is there a new, beneficial report or view of results that
can be delivered easily? Is there a simpler, more efficient way to gather and share results data
from multiple vendors or locations?

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 Identify the key players in the process -
A typical ROMI rollout includes the following team. Anything you can do to include these people
and their needs will make the process go more smoothly. Identify your go-to team members and
communicate with that team regularly.
 CMO/VP of Marketing
 Campaign Coordinator
 Channel Manager/Director
 IT
 Marketing Analytics
 Media Agency
 Creative Agency
 Contact Center.
 Clearly define goals
“We expect to decrease our Cost Per Sale from $250 to $215 by Q3, and aim to hit a Cost per Sale
of $200 by the end of Q1.”
You will need clearly defined metrics and standardized definitions and calculations in order to
truly benefit from ROMI. All costs should be considered in this exercise. Set specific targets for
Media and Production Costs that consider the results driven by your active programs. Determine
depression thresholds for your Creatives, Offers, and Formats, to know when any aspect of a
program needs modification or sunset. And determine target dates to ensure that these metrics
are monitored and addressed regularly.
Once you have clear goals and metrics, a team in place, and everyone working toward the same vision,
jump in with both feet and make things happen.

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Step 2: Build a Collaborative Media Planning Process
Your Media Plan is the cornerstone of your ROMI initiatives. Whatever information is collected in the
media plan becomes available for future reporting and analysis and should be considered carefully by you
and your team. Creating a media plan that crosses channels requires slightly different thinking than
developing a plan that meets the needs of one specific channel alone. Based on the metrics and key
answers defined in Step 1 above, determine the information that is required for immediate and future
analysis and build those requirements into your media plan.
Be sure to capture information in a standard and consistent fashion across all channels. A system with
standards will ensure more reliable analytics. All team members: internal, agencies and vendors should
adhere to consistent conventions for naming, time and date, tracking tags and other pertinent data in
your plan to ensure that analysis and comparisons are comprehensive and reportable.

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Step 3: Build a Reliable and Timely Response/Sales Data Process
Most direct response marketers seeking comprehensive ROMI reporting will need to gather data from
multiple sources. Build reliability and timeliness into the processes for gathering, accessing and sharing
this integral data:
1) Define the level of data needed for your analysis - Determine if you need detailed or summary
level information.
2) Identify data sources – Which vendors provide which data, and who is responsible for data
delivery?
3) Determine Data Formats – How will data be delivered and what attributes will be included. Think
of the end in mind and don’t forget the tracking tags!
4) Schedule Data Deliveries - Define regular delivery times and the data date ranges needed.
5) Establish Delivery Mechanisms - Will data be manually uploaded or automatically integrated?
6) Incorporate Data Validation Rules - Define data failures and a process for addressing
corrupted/bad data, and missing data. Establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with vendors.
7) Test, Test, Test - Get sample data and validate that it accurately represents what you need.
8) Hit the “Go” button!
Call Center
Call centers are often the primary response vehicle for direct marketing campaigns.
As such, getting data from your internal and external call centers is critical to
understanding the response and conversion rates of your campaigns. Additionally,
understanding abandonment at your call centers could limit your risk at cutting
campaigns that are actually working but had poor results due to a problem with the
switch or under staffing at a center.
Web
The web represents a marketing channel as well as a medium for prospects and
customers to buy your products and services. Typical companies that house this data
include Atlas, Double Click, and Omniture. You will want to get data on both search
and banner advertising. Typical metrics would include impressions, clicks, and
conversion rates to name a few. If you are using more than one ad server,
standardization will be absolutely critical.

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Orders/POS
Most order systems capture the same general information - the who, what, where,
when and how much regarding a customer transaction. This information is critical in
crafting your ROMI analysis and reporting. The Order Entry system is usually where
the dollar amount of each transaction is captured which will be used to generate
rollup reports and metric calculations.
Step 4: Campaign Set-up - Define Linkages (Hint: Tags are Key)
During this stage, you will need to define the linkages between where you spend money and where you
make money. This involves the usage of URLs, 800#’s, Promo Codes, Coupon Codes, etc. As part of this
process, you will need to make a decision on how you will use the Tracking Tags. Will they be reused?
Will you intentionally use a tracking tag on multiple campaigns at the same time? Two scenarios for
tracking tag usage are outlined below.
Crafting a repeatable and structured process will ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes
to the tag setup. Often tags represent the call to action on a marketing piece. They appear on marketing
literature, websites, TV and Radio commercials or inserts. There are also downstream impacts of tags
that need to be coordinated prior to kicking off the campaign. You will also need to make sure that when
someone responds, that all response channels are set up in advance. In the case of a call center you will
need to confirm that:
1) the IVR (if one exists) is set up for that 800# with the appropriate options,
2) the 800# is activated and set up at each call center going to the appropriate queue/skillset,
3) the call representative answers the phone with the appropriate script and offer, and
4) the order entry system is able to handle that offer and complete the transaction.

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The same type of flow will be required in the online world as well as retail locations accepting coupons. If
any of these stages of the campaign setup and customer response process fail, it could be embarrassing to
your company or worse; it could result in an unhappy prospect that is unwilling to buy from you. That
would mean lost revenue and wasted marketing spend due to faulty processes.
Step 5: Define Your Allocation Logic – Eliminate the Black Box
Assuming you have all of the kinks worked out of your campaign setup process and response channels are
ready to go, we will now proceed to the Allocation Logic phase of the ROMI implementation. During this
phase you will need to determine how to bucket your
sales and responses. You will define what percentage of
your sales can be directly attributed to marketing efforts
through best practices media plan management and tag
setup processes and what will be thrown into the
“Not Directly Attributable” bucket. At this stage, you will
define what is acceptable for your organization. Every
company is different, but the goal remains the same: get
as close to the truth as possible by directly linking as many responses and sales to the exact campaign that
caused them. The remainder will be deemed “Not Attributable” and will require a different allocation
methodology.
Many companies choose to use different types of models to allocate the remaining “Not Directly
Attributable” sales back to a particular media channel or campaign. Below are three proposed methods
for Direct Attribution and Indirect Attribution of sales to marketing initiatives.

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The Unique Approach defined above assumes you will use unique tags and re-use logic such that all sales
that occur using a response channel using those tags can be attributed to a specific campaign with
complete confidence. These sales will fall into the “Directly Attributed” bucket.
The Shared Approach assumes that overlap will occur in using tags and that split logic will be applied using
proportionality, projections, geo allocation or a combination of all of the above.
Vanity/Generic allocation can be attributed by asking prospects a series of self-qualifying questions to lead
you to understand what induced them to purchase from you. After that, many companies choose to use
models to fill the gaps.

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Step 6: Create Visual ROMI Reporting That Drive Results
Reports and word walls are not helpful. What you need to strive for is valuable insight to drive ROMI
based decisions. ROMI is not a one-time decision. It evolves over time and therefore needs to be
evaluated on a continual basis.
Reporting for ROMI should be flexible and allow
you to slice and dice the data across the key areas
of interest to your organization across all
channels that you are spending money. The
following chart represents a high level view of the
minimum types of dimensions and channels that
reporting should cover.
The following types of reports should be part of your ROMI solution.
Summary reports will provide a quick snapshot of what is working and what is not
based on ROMI calculations.
Trend reporting allows you to determine how well you are doing over time. It helps
to answer questions about spend, response and performance at particular times of
the year and to figure out if creative burnout is occurring. Using trending analysis in
addition to summary level analysis is the optimal solution. Using one alone can lead
to major analytical mistakes. For example, a summary report for the year could lead
you to believe that the “Creative 1” creative is doing fantastic, it has a $250 CPS. But
peeling back the onion using trending shows that the first half of the year, it had a
$100 CPS and the second half it had a $500 CPS. Give this additional insight, you
would probably choose to cut spend on this activity as soon as possible.
This type of reporting allows you to clearly rank anything by any metric. This ordinal
type of analysis make it easy to see what is the best and what is the worst
performing channel, campaign, media vehicle, agency etc.
Compare period over period with variances in order to determine how you did this
month versus the same month last year. You should be able to compare Days,
Weeks, Months, Quarters and Years easily within the interface.

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Performance bands are a terrific way to evaluate performance of individual elements
while comparing those elements to others at the same time. Good performance
banding will enable you to create bands that are specific to your business as well as
your target goals and metrics. For instance, a company running 100 campaigns per
month evaluating performance based on CPS could establish three performance
bands (Great = $1 - $100, Ok = $100 - $200, and Bad = $200+). A report with this
capability would allow you to see in one place all 100 campaigns and let you rapidly
identify the campaigns that are underperforming with a CPS greater than $200.
This type of a report is a meeting ready report that will allow you to print and go
right before a meeting. It will include charts with visual representations of your
marketing performance as well as ranking, comparisons and areas to enter
comments or a personalized synopsis.
Summary
ROMI for direct marketing is an extremely valuable tool for marketers. With a clearly defined process,
active participants and dedication any company can make ROMI a reality. The marketing team that
commits to gaining a clear understanding of not only ROMI but the underlying factors and components
that drive it will be able to enjoy a strategic advantage over other companies in their competitive space.
As we hope you have found through reading the outline above, by leveraging our years of work with some
of the world’s largest marketing agencies and direct response companies Upper Quadrant has developed a
best-in-class approach to determining ROMI. The six steps outlined above should provide a good roadmap
for you and your team to take the ROMI challenge head on. Good luck!
About Upper Quadrant
Upper Quadrant is a marketing technology company. Since 2001, Upper Quadrant has been dedicated to
the development of marketing analysis, collaboration and campaign setup products that give marketing
departments and agencies of all sizes the tools and information needed to drive results by facilitating the
capture and understanding of ROMI, call center KPI and other key online and offline marketing data.
How we do it
Using UQube™, our web-based application suite, our customers gain instant visibility into the success, cost
and effectiveness of marketing campaigns, providing the insight needed to manage their channels and
continually improve results. Coupling best in class applications and processes with a dedicated team of
experts, Upper Quadrant is able to quickly deliver game-changing insights for clients. We work with our
clients to leverage UQube to fast-track initiatives geared towards extracting required information from
various internal and external groups while automating a proven approach that provides “always on”
access to insight and results.
To discuss integrating UQube for world class ROMI and marketing insight within your organization, please
contact UQ Sales at 703.476.1992 or via email at sales@upperquadrant.com.