Return on a campaign — overall, or modelled from an email send.
Take the revenue you attribute to a campaign, subtract everything it cost, divide by that cost, and express the result as a percentage. A result of 200% means the campaign returned twice its cost in profit. This is distinct from ROAS, which compares revenue to ad spend only and reports a multiple rather than a profit-based percentage.
Campaign: a campaign drove $30,000 in attributable revenue at a total cost of $10,000. ROI = (30,000 − 10,000) ÷ 10,000 × 100 = 200%, a net profit of $20,000 and a 3× ROAS. Email: send to 20,000 recipients, 2% click through, 10% of clicks convert, at a $60 order value. That's 400 clicks, 40 orders, $2,400 revenue; on a $500 send the ROI = (2,400 − 500) ÷ 500 × 100 = 380%.
Positive ROI is the floor — the campaign made back more than it cost. Past that, the right benchmark depends on your margins and channel, so the useful move is to compare campaigns against one another and against your own targets. Guard the inputs: over-generous attribution inflates the revenue side, so only count revenue the campaign genuinely caused. For a customer-value view rather than a single-campaign view, pair this with the LTV:CAC ratio and a CAC calculator.
How do you calculate marketing ROI? (Attributable revenue − cost) ÷ cost × 100%. For example $30,000 revenue on $10,000 cost is 200%.
ROI vs ROAS? ROAS compares revenue to ad spend as a multiple; marketing ROI compares net profit to total cost as a percentage. A strong ROAS can hide a thin ROI once all costs are counted.
What is a good marketing ROI? Any positive figure clears the floor. Beyond that it's margin- and channel-dependent, so compare campaigns and keep attribution honest.
