Bahh! How Do We Solve Social Media ROI Measurement Holes?

How do you account for measurement holes when considering social media ROI?

Marketing automation software company Eloqua recently analyzed its clients’ traffic data, pulling data from brands like Johnson & Johnson, The Miami Heat, and Rosetta Stone.

What they found — that opened emails drove 1350% more traffic than social media — seems like a big blow to social media evangelists everywhere.

However, it may just be evidence that it’s still difficult to tell the extent of a social media post’s true reach.

“We found that while social referrals are growing fast, email is still pulling in more eyeballs and traffic,” Eloqua explained. In reality, though, it’s difficult to compare email and social, especially when measuring “eyeballs.”

While we can douse our tweets with bitly links and embedded tracking codes, the stats just don’t not account for views via dashboards, timelines, RSS feeds, or other methods of passive readership.

What do you do to account for this ROI measurement problem? Any tricks worth sharing for working with partial data? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, KEXINO