Most companies today measure marketing success by tracking resource outlay and response obtained on a campaign by campaign basis. The measures are point-in-time based and typically do not focus on continuous improvement —incorporating past mistakes or knowledge into future processes and campaigns. Traditional practice enterprises also tend to use very broad measuring sticks for declaring success or failure.

In the future, continuous monitoring will become the marketing norm as enterprises worry more and more about customer profitability. Internal data—as opposed to industry or enterprise wide benchmarking—yields more relevant answers to key business questions. Marketing departments in best practice companies know and monitor how much an individual customer is worth, how much each transaction changes the profitability relationship, and what marketing programs can do to change the customer’s value. Unprofitable relationships are “de-marketed,” forcing less financially sophisticated competitors to serve them. This marketing-enhanced profitability information dramatically affects marketing decisions, and allows marketing professionals to dramatically increase the enterprise’s revenue and profits.