Marketing budgets are projected to increase slightly this year, but an emphasis on seeking the best "bang for the buck" remains. Technology companies, in particular, are eager to invest scant marketing dollars in activities where they can show the greatest return on investment (ROI).

Unfortunately, it's also a reality of the technology business that measuring the true return from marketing campaigns, and the value of leads in a way that ties to actual revenue, is something of a holy grail - often sought, and rarely achieved. Even with the growing availability of sophisticated Sales Force Automation (SFA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology, most marketers find that once leads are distributed to the sales force, the data enters the tracking equivalent of a black hole. And for companies that sell through the channel, the problem is even worse.

No matter how long and complex your sales process, however, there is a standard by which almost any company can garner a reasonable estimate of the relative value of different campaigns, if not the precise ROI from those programs. That measurement is Cost Per Qualified Lead.

A case in point - we recently completed both an e-mail campaign and a program of content syndication (posting white papers on a network of technology sites) for a software client. Thanks to basic qualifying data that we captured from each incoming lead, the client was able to gauge not only the relative Cost Per Lead, but also how many leads from each program met their criteria for a "qualified" inquiry (in their case, this was based on a) company size and b) purchase timeframe.

The percentage of leads from the e-mail campaign deemed "qualified" was 25% (note: this number increased to 55% in a subsequent rebroadcast). The percentage of qualified leads from the content syndication program was only 8% (as expected, since we couldn't control the profile of those who responded, whereas the e-mail campaign targeted only those suspects meeting certain criteria).

By this measure, one could easily jump to the conclusion that the e-mail program generated a far greater percentage of qualified leads and therefore was the better investment. However, the response to the content syndication program was so great, the Cost Per Qualified Lead ended up being one sixth the cost of the e-mail program (and one-fourth the cost of the subsequent re-broadcast).

This underlines that, in the absence of being able to track leads to the sale, it's important to establish a company standard for a qualified inquiry (preferably based on 2-3 simple criteria), and then measure campaigns not on Click Rate, Response (Lead) Rate, or even Cost Per Lead, but rather the cost to generate those prospects most likely to become paying customers.