In order to thrive in today's competitive marketplace, smart companies know it's important to get the most out of every business investment. Big dollar expenditures are rarely made lightly, with companies typically using a number of criteria to justify whether or not an allocation is financially responsible. More often than not, businesses rely on a return on investment (ROI) analysis as one of the most important decision-making tools.

To help you fine tune your marketing efforts, we've organized the research findings into 5 primary categories: ads, customer satisfaction, loyalty, e-mail and direct mail.