CHAPTER EIGHT eight Be better at ROI reporting. Many marketing leaders still feel like they’re under THe BenefITS Of CLOSeD-LOOP the microscope when it comes to proving the worth RePORTInG of their entire department — and unfortunately, If you have a marketing automation system with closed- they probably are. You may remember the following loop reporting capabilities, you can solve a common statistic from 2012: 80% of CeOs don’t trust the work issue among B2B organizations: revenue attribution. done by their marketers (to put this in perspective, Closed-loop reporting allows you to tie closed deals 90% of those same CeOs trust and value their CIOs back to the campaigns that originally sourced them, and CfOs). giving you the ability to attribute revenue to specific Although it’s been three years since that statistic marketing campaigns, prioritize your marketing went mainstream, marketers are still having a difficult programs, see where your best leads are coming from, time demonstrating their ROI. In fact, Omobono and forecast for future initiatives. conducted a recent study that found that almost half Here’s how it works: of respondents (48%) feel they lack the analytics and reporting skills to measure their return on investment. 1. A prospect visits your site for the first time. 2. The prospect is assigned a unique identifying fortunately, with the widening adoption of closed- tracking cookie. loop reporting systems like marketing automation, it’s getting easier to track and provide the numbers that 3. The anonymous visitors takes various actions on the C-suite actually cares about. This chapter will walk your website. through a quick overview of closed-loop reporting 4. The activity is tracked and recorded. and provide B2B marketers with a list of valuable ROI metrics to track. 72 / Pardot