Marketers often make decisions based on data from individual channels (website metrics, for example), not taking into account the entire marketing picture. Social media data alone is not enough. Web analytics data alone is not enough. And tools that look at just a snapshot in time for a single channel are woefully inadequate. Marketing analytics, by contrast, considers all marketing efforts across all channels over a span of time – which is essential for sound decision making and effective, efficient program execution.

Marketing analytics is the practice of managing and studying metrics data in order to determine the Marketing ROI (MROI), as well as the act of identifying opportunities for improvement.