What do we mean by "The Last Mile" of Marketing? We're referring to that extra effort required to actually achieve what you set out to do, without which all the miles travelled so far are wasted.
Unless you learn from marketing, and unless the learning makes a difference in the next campaign, may as well not bother and save your money. A lot of money gets spent on IT teams, CRM Systems, data,creative, marketing staff, consultants and more and yet how many of us are sure we are getting ROI from this spend?
Here's a popular myth - "email is cheap" - what about the hidden costs of lost customers? Just because its cheap doesn't mean "more is better"! Quality of communication seems to losing the battle to quantity, with the result that not only is the value of any single piece of communication diminishing, but in customers are disengaging, which means lost opportunity for both businesses and customers on what may have been a valuable exchange.
It's not a matter of getting a campaign out the door - it's making sure it's executed well, correctly targeted, followed through, responses captured, results analysed, lessons learned - and executed again with the wisdom of lessons learned (phew!)