A marketing board deck should make the requested decision easy to assess. ROI.LIVE uses five slides for the main discussion: the decision and summary, financial performance, customer economics, execution, and the next-period plan. Detailed channel tables and methods belong in an appendix when the board needs them.
The editable download follows that five-slide structure. The example below is illustrative, so replace its inputs with reconciled company records before using it as an actual report.
Editable resource
Use the worksheet
The CSV opens in Excel, Google Sheets or another spreadsheet editor. It contains labeled fields; sample data, where included, is illustrative.
Download the editable five-slide deck (PowerPoint)
Download the editable worksheet (CSV)
Preview the fields
- Slide
- Title
- Required content
- Source and definitions
- Owner
- Decision
Slide 1: decision and summary
State the decision requested, the period and the main result. Include the most important constraint. A board member should not need to wait until the last slide to discover that the team needs a budget change or a hiring decision.
Example: approve a $10,000 reallocation within the existing quarterly budget to repair checkout and run a defined retention test. State what spending will be reduced, who owns the work and what result would cause the team to stop or revise it. This is a sample request, not a recommendation for every business.
Slide 2: financial performance on a consistent basis
Show net revenue, contribution before marketing, marketing cost and contribution after marketing. Define the treatment of returns, discounts, fulfillment and fees. Reconcile the totals with the finance source rather than adding overlapping channel-attributed revenue.
An illustrative quarter with $500,000 net revenue, $300,000 variable order costs and $100,000 marketing cost leaves $100,000 contribution after marketing, before excluded fixed overhead and other costs. That is not automatically company net profit.
Slide 3: customer economics and retention
Show acquired customers, acquisition cost, contribution at matched cohort ages and repeat behavior under clear definitions. A customer with $85 average order revenue and $45 acquisition cost is not necessarily profitable; the order costs and later contribution determine the answer.
Keep observed and forecast customer value separate. The cohort guide prevents a young group from being compared with an older one as though both had equal time to buy.
Slide 4: execution and learning
Report the work completed, what changed and what the evidence supports. Include failures and delayed dependencies. A busy production list does not establish business value, but it can explain why a planned test did not run or a result arrived late.
State whether a result came from a controlled comparison, an attributed report or an observation. In the sample deck, the checkout repair is a completed technical task; the retention test remains a planned experiment. Do not present its target as an achieved result.
Slide 5: next-period plan and commitments
List the decisions, owners, spending limits and review dates. Name the condition that changes the plan. A forecast needs assumptions and a lower-performance scenario, especially when the plan depends on repeat purchasing or delayed payback.
The marketing calendar holds the operational detail behind this slide. Keep the board version concise enough to support the decision, with the source records available when questioned.
Keep definitions visible
| Term | Meaning in this template |
|---|---|
| Net revenue | Revenue after the stated discounts and refunds, excluding taxes collected for others |
| Contribution | Revenue less the variable costs included in the stated model |
| Marketing cost | The defined program costs for the same period |
| Actual | Reconciled observed result through the stated date |
| Forecast | A modeled future result with assumptions |
Social followers are an audience on another platform, not a fully controlled owned asset. Email permission also has limits and does not transfer automatically to SMS. Describe access and consent accurately rather than inflating the asset slide.
Before the meeting
Reconcile the arithmetic, verify the source date and test every number in a displayed chart against the underlying table. Remove a benchmark that cannot be tied to its population. Label illustrative material and replace unused template prompts.
The companion marketing ROI presentation guide explains how to present a difficult variance candidly. Send the decision and supporting record early enough for the board to read it. The five slides should support a discussion the evidence can withstand.
Questions owners ask
Is this a five-slide or six-slide template?
Five main slides. The decision and executive summary share slide one. Optional detailed methods and channel tables can be placed in an appendix.
Does the download contain real company results?
No. It is an editable template with an explicitly illustrative worked example. Replace the sample inputs with reconciled company data before presenting it as an actual report.
Should channel-attributed revenues be added together?
Not without reconciling overlap. Use the finance total as the company revenue basis and explain the attribution method separately.
What should the board be asked to decide?
State the specific approval, budget change or operating choice, its owner, spending limit, review date and the evidence that would change the plan.
Method
This guide presents ROI.LIVE’s editorial analysis and worked methods. Numerical examples are illustrative unless expressly identified otherwise. No ranking, citation or business outcome is guaranteed.
Substantively revised September 7, 2026. Definitions, calculations, sources and internal destinations were reviewed for this edition.