Analytics is more important to marketing than ever. It’s the factor that allows marketers to make meaning from an ever-growing torrent of data. Using those insights, marketing goes from “best guesses” to a scientific endeavor where you constantly improve.
In the new year (and the next decade!), the ability to interpret and act on analytics will increasingly decide which marketers succeed and which fail. Luckily, it’s not too late to implement best-in-class analytics that scale to meet your needs.
Render Your Business Visible Through Digital Transformation
In 2020, parts of your business not connected to your online efforts will develop into “black boxes.” Devoid of data, you’ll be unable to improve your operations around these issues.
To avoid this, all parts of your business that include customer touch-points must collect data. From there, systems should talk to one another. Analytics is no longer only about user behavior on your website; It illuminates the entire customer ecosystem.
That includes:
- Purchase history from which analytics can glean buying patterns
- Email engagement to optimize subject lines, text, and images
- Social media behavior to focus on the most effective content
- Customer service to see where customers are lost or upset
- Embrace Machine Learning as Part of Continuous Improvement
Collecting this data, making sense of it, and acting on it may seem like Herculean work. The secret is marketing automation, and automation is being driven by machine learning. Through artificial intelligence, analytics systems can compare millions of transactions and find patterns even the savviest marketer would be unable to spot by using the same information.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to have the latest analytics tools: Those capable of taking the mass of data and combing through it using AI before your marketing team needs to interpret anything.
Close the Loop With Proactive Customer Relationship Management
Traditional marketing analytics focuses on the visible aspects of the buyer journey, but most of that journey takes place under the surface. Customer Relationship Management software can provide total visibility into lead behavior between major events in the sales cycle.
Think of a CRM tool as the bridge between all your other analytics efforts, as it gives team members a granular view of when to follow up with individual leads.
For more insight into the power and value of comprehensive digital marketing analytics, we suggest you read our blog Understanding Predictive B2B Marketing Analytics.