Ok before I start let me acknowledge that I know they are not mutually exclusive !

However in the context of Andrew Lang’s famous quote “He used statistics the way a drunkard uses lampposts – for support, not illumination“ I do believe that Finance functions and accountants can help sober up the worst Marketing reveller. In fact this detox is something I’d recommend you try.

At a recent Ready Steady email event I was asked the question regarding how and who to publish information to regarding Digital and particularly email marketing performance as budgets are increasingly scrutinised.

In recent posts there has been discussions posing questions such as Is email the new direct marketing and what direct marketing offers marketers in a digital world but one trap Marketers continue to fall into is that alot of statistics posted up the corporate flagpole has little currency. Headline figures on open rates for email campaigns, email database volumes or number of twitter followers have little relevance unless presented in the correct context .

In today’s Google analytics rich world - where an array of statistics can be interrogated, extracted and presented there is a temptation to produce reports and management packs that focus on ”so wow data” - cherry picking headline figures, rather than “so what information” that informs and enables business decisions.

Given the recent economic climate I believe marketers have two options

1. Keep your head down – publish / shout about occasional campaign success and hope no one understands or notices what you are doing
2. Actively develop and distribute real KPI’s that help support the activity being undertaken – identifying and projecting future performance, measuring actual experience, and understanding and learning from variances.

The answer I gave proposed inviting someone from the accounting area to provide a sense review the Management Information produced currently and ongoing. To really develop a robust continual learning marketing function some of the disciplines necessary reside more frequently in Finance teams than marketing teams and ”In  a dog eat dog world – get yourself a big dog”.

Agree / Disagree : Please post your thoughts