Measuring marketing and sales results in single-channel campaigns is usually a more straightforward process: choose a goal that reflects the performance of a specific channel and, from there, calculate the ROI. But what about when the customer researches a product on your website, talks to 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 enhancing results, makes measuring return on investment much more complex.
In an omnichannel context, ROI evaluates how much a action integrating multiple channels, whether physical and/or digital, generated in financial return in relation to the investment made. However, while in single-channel campaigns it’s 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 purchasing journeys—which makes this a rather complex task for many companies.
In addition to the complexity of evaluating impacts coming from different channels, it’s also important to consider other important 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 result overlap that can happen without an integrated view, when the same conversion is counted in more than one channel, thus distorting the ROI.
And what are the damages of not paying attention to these precautions, especially in the face of 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 outcomes, 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 in a single channel and standardizing metrics, channel naming, and tracking to have a 360-degree view of the customer journey and, therefore, have a clear and objective view of how much return the company obtained from each established campaign. And, in this sense, we cannot fail to highlight how technology can be a valuable ally.
There are several tools in 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 help turn large volumes of data into easily interpretable dashboards. Many of them even allow mapping journeys and assigning weight to each channel, making this analysis even more complete 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 strategy adopted and the objectives they wish to achieve. However, there are some essential ones 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 throughout the relationship), conversion rate by channel and cross-channel (identifying where consumers advance in the journey), engagement, and retention rate.
This data analysis allows testing hypotheses continuously, 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 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 since it can compromise the entire ROI analysis and lead to misguided decisions about the business. The secret is to turn numbers into actionable insights, as by identifying which channels have the greatest impact at each stage of the funnel, it is possible to redistribute budget and efforts more intelligently and strategically to enhance the achievement of desired results.
