You Have Marketing Data, Analytics, Dashboards. Now What?

ROI, dashboards, CRM, analytics ... Did I miss any of the overused buzzwords we hear as marketers? Once you have access to your marketing data, what are you doing with it? Are you making more informed decisions or are you afraid of what you will find?

Or worse ... are others in your organization worried a world of accountable marketing will cause various slush funds to be redirected to marketing? I am going to demonstrate what you can gain by spending just 30 minutes analyzing your data.

The Marketing Analytics Test

With the cooperation of one of our clients, I embarked on a challenge to take a deep dive into data. As marketers, we all have very little time, so I am going to spend no more than 30 minutes in the data.

The Resources

• Access to Google Analytics for the client's website
• Access to two years of focus group test results (from another partner)
• Access to two years of email marketing reports (from another partner)
• Resources freely available on the Internet: Alexa, Quantcast, Compete and other consumer data aggreators
• 5 minutes of time on the phone with the client
• Access to 8 years of historical email usage data from clients in the same industry

The Findings (in 30 minutes)

• Mobile users interacting with company are primarily using Apple products with the iPad coming in as the #2 source for the website.
  • Studies show that mobile users will continue to grow as tablet usage increases in 2012. The site should be optimized for phones and tablets.
• 49%+ of the 54,853 unique visitors during the time period came from a search engine.
  • This has steadily been rising since the site launched with a minimal investment in an organic SEO test pilot.
  • Further investment in organic SEO should continue to increase traffic. Traffic from organic SEO is an extremely affordable method of increasing usage of the website. Especially when a site currently has momentum and good conversion points.
• Facebook.com is the #3 referring traffic source for the website in the past 3 months. With email being the #2 source.
  • We can conclude that people are sharing the site with their friends via the Facebook platform and people are following those links back to the website. An investment in the use of social channels to promote the website could reap big dividends in terms of more exposure and traffic. Development of a Facebook page and a targeted ad campaign are highly encouraged.
• CNN featured one of their financial calculators in an article a few months ago which drove 1,400+ visitors to the site in a few days. Blogger outreach should be considered as part of the organic SEO program to leverage their good content.
• Several local associations are beginning to link to and drive traffic to the website as well. Reaching out to other associations and encouraging the behavior could help more. These links will prove invaluable for the organic SEO campaign.
• The email reports and our own historical data suggested that there were clear trends in the type of content email subscribers clicked on. The client should consider segmenting the email newsletter based on life stage and popularity of content as measured by unique visitors to the website from Google Analytics data.
• The attendees of their latest conference loved the a custom animation the client shared. Posting videos like these on the site and creating a few additional ones is a great way to engage website visitors.
  • The focus group data and high % of unique visitors to the video pages further suggested the videos on the website were a hit.
• Data from the focus groups, the website and third-party sites suggested that while the site was rich in content, it was not always easy to find content relevant to life stage/situation.
  • Implementing custom views based on life stage would effectively allow for personalized experiences.

What's Next?

In a few months, I will report back on what changes the client has implemented and we will take another deep dive into the data.

This blog post was originally published on the Priority Blog at priorityresults.com/blog. Priority Integrated Marketing is now BlueSpire Strategic Marketing.