When it comes to allocating your 2026 budget, every decision your finance department takes will be data-driven, which means there’s no hiding place for marketers when they need to justify spending, optimize strategy, and build trust with stakeholders!
But despite knowing how important data is to their decision making – a staggering 83% of marketing leaders now consider demonstrating ROI their top priority, up from 68% five years ago (Firework, 2023) – only 36% of marketers say they can accurately measure ROI, and 47% struggle to track ROI across multiple channels – a clear sign that their legacy marketing analytics and reporting tools just aren’t fit for purpose!
Why are Data and Analytics so Important for Marketers?
1. Justifying Budget and Resources
Marketing departments are under increasing pressure to prove their worth. A report from Gartner reveals that CMOs are seeing their budgets shrink, dropping from 11% of total company revenue in 2020 to 9.1% in 2021 (Gartner CMO Spend Survey). Without transparent ROI data, marketers risk losing even more ground.
That’s why unified dashboarding and analytics tools are so essential. They bring all your metrics into one place, letting you prove the value of campaigns and justify continued investment.
2. Improving Campaign Performance
74% of marketers say detailed analytics reports help them allocate resources more efficiently, and 65% say they improve decision-making (Forrester via Marketing Evolution). Tools like Campaign Automation allow you to build, test, and refine campaigns across email, social, and web—all while tracking performance within your CRM.
3. Aligning With Business Goals
Leadership teams demand marketing accountability. According to a 2023 Report, 71% of marketing teams that exceeded revenue goals were those that aligned closely with sales teams. Integrated marketing platforms help you bridge the gap between sales and marketing, helping to tie your marketing analytics directly to pipeline, conversions, and customer lifetime value.
4. Enabling Cross-Channel Attribution
Email, social media, cold calls, website visits – your buyer’s journey spans more touchpoints than ever. A typical B2B buyer engages with 6–10 pieces of content before making a decision (Gartner). Determining ROI across multiple touchpoints is almost impossible without proper analytics tools that can track multi-channel attribution!
5. Enhancing Customer Understanding
80% of customers are more likely to purchase when brands offer personalized experiences, yet only 33% of marketers feel confident in their ability to segment and personalize journeys based on behavior (Epsilon, 2022). It’s clear that you can’t even begin to offer the personalized journeys that your buyers expect without analytics tools that can measure behavior, much less track the ROI that needs to be assigned to activities!
The Hidden Benefits of Better Reporting and Analytics
Improving your reporting, marketing analytics, and dashboarding doesn’t just provide better data—it enables strategic action. With the right tools in place, you can:
- Prove the impact of every marketing dollar to leadership
- Identify high-ROI campaigns and replicate success
- React quickly to market and customer behavior shifts
- Align marketing, sales, and service to a “single source of truth”
According to a Deloitte study, companies that use data-driven marketing are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year (Deloitte Digital). That’s the kind of performance that proper reporting and analytic can unlock—especially when powered by the right technology.
Where’s your ROI at?
If you’re still manually pulling together your marketing reports from various (reliable and unreliable) sources, using spreadsheets to track campaign data or guessing at attribution, be in no doubt that you’re leaving ROI on the table. What might your reputation and budget look like if you were able to capture it all?
Click offers marketers a unique advantage: a fully integrated solution built for Microsoft Dynamics 365, combining automation, social marketing, email marketing and more, all under one roof to give you visibility—and control—over your marketing performance.
Marketing isn’t just about creativity anymore, it’s about credibility. That starts with better data and reporting. And better data and reporting… starts with Click.
