About Us

The Genesis of DataDriven MarCom, Inc.

Working at a Fortune 500 company in the 1980s, Merry Elrick, now president of DataDriven MarCom (DDMC), saw a need to deliver communication metrics.

"I was responsible for the corporation's advertising and sales promotion," says Elrick, "and I reported to the CFO. I noticed every other department, even HR, could come to the C-suite with stats to prove their worth. But we in communications could not, and we were treated accordingly. I think we were considered a necessary evil, and maybe not so necessary."

Later Elrick founded an integrated marketing communications firm and discovered her clients had the same experience—a need to measure ROI. "It's really the only metric that makes management sit up and take notice," says Elrick. "It shouldn't be that way. Management should also care about building brand equity because it generates long-term shareholder value. And this is something companies ought to measure. But determining ROI of communications in the immediate short-term seems a more pressing need."

ROI and IMC. Determining ROI is especially important to those companies attempting to integrate their communications, because when using multiple tactics, like advertising and PR, for example, the only way to know what works best in the mix is by measuring. "We had a client who said she had a 'gut feeling' that a promotion worked," says Elrick, "and that's when I decided we had to do something. We wanted marketing communications driven by data, not by gut feeling."

Working with a team of database designers, Elrick developed a Web database tool that links communications to leads and sales. This gives marketers the vital information they need to determine ROI. "We created it as a Web tool to give multiple users easy access and a platform for instant information exchange. And we made the tool easy-to-use. It's so intuitive, you can just sit down and start using it. But we also provide a comprehensive help file so marketers can get the most out of this powerful tool."

The Web database tool is at the core of DataDriven MarCom's service, which provides clients with ongoing management of metrics they need to demonstrate ROI of their marketing communications.