6 Ways Advanced Marketing Analytics Can Predict Better Results (Pt 1)
According to a study by eMarketer.com, online ad spending in the U.S. is projected to climb from 25.8 billion in 2010, to 44.5 billion dollars by 2015.
Marketers are increasingly reaching customers online by leveraging mobile and web applications. Digital is even infiltrating formerly offline channels like print, retail and live events in the form of scannable barcodes, RFID tracking and interactive kiosks and displays. B2B marketers that rely heavily upon mobile devices for education and selling—such as pharmaceuticals and medical device companies—are increasingly looking for ways to develop a more comprehensive view of their customers.
Yet with all of these new data-rich digital marketing channels in play, many companies still struggle with integrating data across channels to extract the insights they need to truly know their customers.
The Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2011, by Ecoconsultancy, studied the use of multichannel analytics across more than 800 clients from 2008 until 2010. According to these results, more than three quarters of businesses surveyed admit they have no current procedure for collecting and leveraging multichannel analytics.
Many companies are spending millions on mobile and web campaigns, but without any data or strategy to back-up that investment. As mobile applications and digital marketing channels continue to grow, it is paramount for businesses to integrate data across these and other channels.
Earlier this month, Nielsen, the leader in audience measurement, recognized the growing need for multichannel analytics when it acquired Marketing Analytics, Inc., a marketing analytics software firm. Founder of the company, Arthur Nielsen, had the prescient knowledge to once say, “The price of light is less than the cost of darkness."
Seeing the Light: True Multichannel Analytics Solutions
Customers interact with brands in different ways. It’s the combination of all of the channels -- web, mobile, live-events, retail and more, and how customers and prospects interact with them, that gives a 360-degree view of the customer.
To fill some of these gaps, many companies are investing in multichannel analytics software solutions that integrate with existing CRM, sales and other platforms to provide a 360-degree view of their customers. Multichannel analytics solutions will aggregate data for each customer and channel and deliver several useful categories of insights. The key is to utilize uses data and historical information to provide forward-looking analytics in these six areas:
1. Behavioral: Captures behavioral data in gestures, clicks, time spent with content to learn how customers interact with marketing content.
2. Attitudinal: Integrates demographic and other insights provided through surveys and response channels to provide a glimpse into the customer's mindset and attitudes to future products and services.
3. Propensity: Uses historical purchase and survey data to predict the likelihood of purchases and attrition.
4. Segmentation: Builds customer profiles based on demographics and user behavior and enables increased targeting and selling accuracy.
5. Geocoding: Provides location-based information to enable custom marketing messages based on audience location, language or regulatory issues.
6. Lead Scoring: Assigns value to previous customer behaviors and determines which customers have the highest (or lowest) probability of buying.
By incorporating multichannel insights, companies can gain the insights they need to increase marketing ROI and sales effectiveness. In subsequent posts, we’ll talk about each of these analytics and why they are important.
What is your experience in using analytics to improve your decision-making? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Photo credit: griraffe
