Kevin: thanks for all the examples. Especially revenue predictability is a big issue for public companies, which is often more important than maximizing the quarter’s revenue. So very good point.
Generally, I think there is a difference between the self-reported motivator for adopting marketing automation, and the real underlying reason. Take for example “CEO wants more reporting”: why does he want that? Probably because he thinks marketing is not accountable enough while spending a lot of money. Constantly referring to revenue may be simplistic, but it is what the C-suite AND the shareholders are most concerned about.

From these 4 primary reasons for deploying any new technology you can reach for the effectiveness and efficiency gains, which lead you to productivity gains, and in turn to lower costs, increased revenues, increased competitiveness, perhaps just the ability to tread water at lower costs (no increase in revenues), etc. Trying to make a broad statement for all industries, and for firms of all sizes, that marketing automation leads to increased revenues is reaching over all the direct gains to a conclusion that may not be the primary motivator for many! Examples I have heard:
We want to leverage embedded best practices
Marketing wants more control of their output
We want to improve our market quality
We want to be able to validate our spending
We want to improve our data quality
We have been mandated to do more reporting by the CEO
We need to monitor the effectiveness of our channel
We want to nurture leads to readiness faster
We want more predictability in our business
-Kevin
p.s. and we want more revenue

I am with you on using increased revenue as the metric. 1. Marketing departments are being forced to be accountable for more of the bottom line, instead of acting as a cost center. Efficiency gains allow marketers to reallocate time towards effective programs > driving more revenue.

Honestly, I think, at least in terms of the marketing department, most organizations don’t care about efficiency if there is enough revenue coming in, and they are maximizing their marketing spend.

David: totally agree ROI is what it’s all about (see also the title of this post). My point is: when looking at increasing ROI, do you focus on reducing cost or increasing revenue? My suggestion is to forget about cost savings and focus your Marketing Automation initiative exclusively on increasing sales.

James: the problem I have with a focus on cost-savings is that it positions Marketing (Operations) as a cost-center. I’m making the case for seeing Marketing Ops as a revenue center. But let me soften my own B&W statement: saving costs is always good, but when trying to justify a MA investment I would focus less on cost savings than on revenue.

Dale: let me see if I can find the source of this statement

I, too, would like to see this report: “There are statistics that more sales people make their target if marketing automation does a good job nurturing and qualifying leads (I couldn’t find the source, if you know who published this research, please leave a comment).”

Dale – EchoQuote

With all my respect I completely don’t agree with you. If the revenue would have been single point of measuring the Marketing Automation then then entire domain Marketing Operation would have never existed. They would have been extinct dinosors.

What I would like to bring is certain scenario where I see instead of generating revenue effectiveness in the marketing process which is one of the major objective of any Marketing Automation.

Doesn’t using improved marketing process lessen the marketing budget on agencies, or campaigns? Can’t these money be then redirected to other campaigns which could not have taken due to budgetory constraint?
How can the investment cost on Marketing Automation measured based on a single year, shouldn’t we use TCO on Marketing Automation over three years compare to no Marketing Automation.

I hope my thoughts are not radical to other thoughts.

But, in practice, you need a lot of different metrics to understand what’s happening and where the opportunities lie.