Measuring marketing and sales results in single-channel campaigns is usually a more straightforward process: choose the goal that reflects the performance of a specific channel and, from there, calculate the ROI. But what if the customer searches for a product on your website, clarifies doubts with a salesperson in the physical store, and completes the purchase through the app? In omnichannel, every touchpoint matters — and this channel integration, although valuable for boosting results, makes measuring return on investment much more complex.
In the omnichannel context, ROI assesses how much financial return an action that integrates multiple channels, whether physical and/or digital, has generated relative to the investment made. Still, while in single-channel campaigns it is possible to directly correlate investment and return, when there are multiple targeted channels, the return comes from the sum of interactions at different touchpoints, often with longer and non-linear purchase journeys – which makes this a quite complex task for many companies.
In addition to this complexity in assessing impacts from different channels, it is also important to consider other significant challenges of this journey: data integration, as each channel collects information in different formats and metrics; visibility of the complete journey, since often parts of the experience are not recorded in a traceable and measurable way; and the overlap of results that can occur without an integrated view, when the same conversion is counted in more than one channel, thus distorting ROI.
And what are the damages of not paying attention to these precautions, especially in a highly digital and connected market? According to a survey by ILUMEO, about 20% of media investments do not show a statistically significant relationship with business results, such as sales or lead generation. This means that without proper measurement, one-fifth of the marketing budget could be wasted.
This data reinforces the importance of centralizing information from different sources into a single channel and standardizing metrics, channel nomenclatures, and tracking, so that there is a 360º view of the customer journey and, with that, a clear and objective understanding of how much the company gained in return for each established campaign. And, in this sense, of course, we cannot fail to highlight how technology can be a valuable ally.
There are several tools on the market capable of assisting with this measurement, such as integrated CRMs that help track all interactions throughout the customer lifecycle and consolidate behavioral, transactional, and engagement data; as well as BI solutions that contribute to transforming large volumes of data into easy-to-interpret dashboards. Many of them even allow mapping journeys and assigning weight to each channel, making this analysis even more comprehensive and reliable to support future decision-making.
In this sense, there is not just a single indicator to be used by companies; everything will depend on the adopted strategy and the objectives they wish to achieve. Despite this, there are some essentials to be prioritized, such as the overall ROI of the campaign, CAC compared before and after the implementation of omnichannel, LTV (which measures the total value a customer generates over the course of the relationship), conversion rate by channel and cross-channel (identifying where consumers advance in the journey), engagement, and retention rate.
This data analysis allows for continuous hypothesis testing, adjusting messages, segmentations, and formats to create more personalized experiences, increasing engagement and, consequently, this return on investment. Perform these checks frequently, as consumer behavior changes and this directly impacts the performance of channels within the omnichannel campaign strategy.
The most important thing in all of this is to ensure the quality and constant updating of this data, as it can compromise the entire ROI analysis and lead to incorrect business decisions. The secret is to turn numbers intoinsights acionáveis, já que, ao identificar quais canais têm maior impacto em cada etapa do funil, é possível redistribuir orçamento e esforços de forma mais inteligente e estratégica para elevar a conquista dos resultados desejados.
