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// formulas and metrics

Return on Investment (ROI)

GlossaryFormulas and metricsUpdated March 23, 2026

Definition
A financial metric that measures the profitability of an investment by comparing the gain to the cost.

Return on investment is a fundamental financial metric that evaluates the efficiency of an investment by comparing the net gain to the cost. The formula is straightforward: subtract the cost of the investment from the gain, divide by the cost, and multiply by 100 to get a percentage. In B2B sales and marketing, ROI is used to evaluate everything from outreach campaigns and tools to hiring decisions and marketing channels.

Measuring ROI is essential for justifying sales and marketing spend. Executives and stakeholders want to know that every dollar invested in growth activities generates a measurable return. By tracking ROI across different channels, campaigns, and tools, teams can allocate budget to the highest-performing areas and cut spending on activities that do not deliver results.

Teams that track this metric often find that data quality tools deliver some of the highest ROI in their tech stack.

Key Points

  • Calculated as ((gain - cost) / cost) x 100, expressed as a percentage
  • Used to evaluate the efficiency of sales and marketing investments
  • Enables data-driven budget allocation across channels and tools

How It Works

You identify the total cost of an investment, including direct expenses and associated overhead. You then measure the revenue or value generated as a result of that investment. The difference between the gain and the cost, expressed as a percentage of the cost, is your ROI. Positive ROI means the investment generated more than it cost.

Best Practices

  • Attribute revenue to specific channels and campaigns to measure their individual ROI
  • Use ROI data to reallocate budget from underperforming areas to high-return activities

Free Tools

// 02 · in practice with tomba

The API calls behind this term

Size a domain before you prospect it: Email Count returns how many addresses Tomba holds for it, by department and seniority.

GET/email-count1 email count credit

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  1. 1Create a free account25 searches a month. No card.
  2. 2Copy your key and secretFrom API keys in the dashboard.
  3. 3Call the APIPaste the request; the answer is JSON.
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curl "https://api.tomba.io/v1/email-finder?domain=piedpiper.com&first_name=Richard&last_name=Hendricks" \
  -H "X-Tomba-Key: $TOMBA_API_KEY" \
  -H "X-Tomba-Secret: $TOMBA_SECRET_KEY"
Response
200 OK· 1 search credit
{
  "data": {
    "email": "richard@piedpiper.com",
    "first_name": "Richard",
    "last_name": "Hendricks",
    "full_name": "Richard Hendricks",
    "website_url": "piedpiper.com",
    "company": "Pied Piper",
    "pattern": "{first}",
    "department": "executive",
    "type": "personal",
    "position": "CEO",
    "country": "US",
    "gender": "male",
    "twitter": null,
    "linkedin": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-hendricks",
    "score": 100,
    "accept_all": false,
    "phone_number": true,
    "verification": {
      "date": "2025-01-15T10:32:00+01:00",
      "status": "valid"
    },
    "sources": [
      {
        "uri": "https://piedpiper.com/blog/engineering",
        "website_url": "piedpiper.com",
        "extracted_on": "2024-06-01T09:14:07+01:00",
        "last_seen_on": "2025-01-10T17:02:44+01:00",
        "still_on_page": true
      }
    ],
    "phone_data": []
  }
}