The Future of Digital Analytics - What Will We Measure Next?

Right now we tend to associate big data and big data analytics with the online and tech industries. Big data helps businesses improve customer experience through remarketing, user-specific promotions, and understanding user behavior to cut back on what is making users unhappy with their experiences. As big data continues to grow, other businesses will begin to adopt big data into their strategic marketing plans. According to Daniel Gutierrez, a writer for Inside Big Data, the industries that will see the most growth in big data are telecommunications, healthcare, insurance, and real estate. A Bloomberg video from 2014 states that big data analytics is the future of everything we are doing. The video is older, and discusses examples of how big data moved us beyond the old demographics of “soccer moms” and “nascar dads” and gives us real definitive people and user demographics we can use to hone in on target audiences. The video was more than correct, in 2015 alone big data was worth $122 Billion dollars and is projected to reach $187 billion by 2019.  Here are some future trends we can expect to see in regards to big data analytics.

Personalized User Experience

According to Haris Saeed from Customer Think.com, companies are personalizing the online experience for users. Big data allows companies to see their most loved products and web pages, and can take advantage of that by creating specific content around popular products and services. Online brands have enhanced customer experience by cutting down on waiting time, site speed is the fastest it has ever been, and same day and next delivery of products and services is becoming more normalized. As we gather more and more data about our users, we are personalizing their experiences through remarketing efforts and user-specific promotions. Being able to retarget content to users who have spent time on a webpage for a product or service is ingenious and revolutionary. As commonly stated, your best prospect is a current customer.

New industries

As big data analytics grows, new industries will begin to optimize and use big data. It is projected that we will see growth in the telecommunications, healthcare, insurance, and real estate industries. Big data utilization in telecommunications, healthcare and insurance are not surprising. Doctor’s offices are now offering online apps and services for patients to use, and insurance companies have been gathering data for decades. Some interesting things are actually happening in real estate right now. Facebook is already able to differentiate which users own homes, rent homes, are looking to buy homes, and who have recently moved. New apps like Sumu are helping users find new apartments. Sumu is an app that works similar to tinder, users looking for new apartments can set parameters to meet their location and budget needs. They swipe left or right when they see potential apartment matches, and the algorithm in the app recognizes patterns in what users like and dislike and will begin to show a user only the types of places that will seem appealing to them.

Better Measuring

Of course, we wouldn’t be able to do so much with our data without a way to collect and analyze it. Adobe and Google are shaping the future of data analytics measurement. Device Co-op and Google Analytics 360 are giving marketers the ability to recognize users that are logged in on different devices. Seamlessly measuring users on different devices will help improve user experience, data has helped marketing become more and more customer-centric. Google and Adobe may have the upper hand in measuring analytics now, and other big brands are beginning to join the bandwagon. Amazon launched Kenesis, a data streaming service that allows users to integrate data within the Amazon Web Services cloud for analysis and app development.

Monetization of Analytics Data

According to Barbara H. Wixom and Jeanne W. Ross, principal research scientists at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, businesses can monetize their data in three ways. Businesses can use their data to improve internal processes, use it to sell core products and services, and sell the information to other businesses. Since companies have the ability to measure analytics internally and externally, they are able to apply the data to their policies, procedures, and products to turn a profit. According to Information Week, “Companies that leverage data to drive the performance of their organization’s decisions are winning at a faster rate than their competition.” Basically, it is crucial for companies to use and monetize their data to stay competitive in the market. Let’s explore the ways companies are doing this.

Improving Internal Processes

The effectiveness of an internal team can influence an entire company. Do policies and procedures have employees focusing too much on the process and not enough on the actual work? Recording internal data can help companies take a look at their internal processes and see what is what is working and what is inefficient. An example of companies using big data to improve processes is call recording for help centers. When you call a company with a question you often hear that the call is being recorded for quality purposes. According to Open Source Recording, a call center employee provides 95% of a company’s value. Being able to listen to calls and use them to train employees is a fantastic investment for companies will call centers, especially when the cost of storing data is becoming negligible. Maybe analyzing calls can help companies reduce the time the customer is on the phone. It is possible that analyzing call data can help companies discover why people call and can help improve the dial menu. As big data gets even bigger, companies will find even more ways to use their data to improve their processes. 

Improve/Sell Products & Services

Gathering Data on company products and services is another way companies can monetize their data. Discovering the top customer wants and needs can help a brand take their product to the next level. For example, if an ecommerce website sees an uptick in certain products being bought during certain timeframes, the company can make note and be sure to keep up with supply during that time of year. Another way companies can use data to improve products is to look at comments and site reviews on Amazon and social media. If a brand analyzes their reviews and social media comments, they may see patterns and trends, like consumers saying “this product is okay, but it would be really great if it had x.” Brands can use this data to add those features to their products in the future.

Selling Data

So many brands underestimate the value of their user data. Selling data is an efficient way to make a profit. Companies will buy all types of information, from user demographics to what type of device a user is accessing a website from. According to the Harvard Business Review, one of the best ways to get value from your big data is to sell it. The Harvard Business Review describes how “Data can be the ‘missing link’ for a company that has never had access to the side of your customers that only you can see.” While brands are busy using their websites for ecommerce, content management, etc. a useful byproduct of user information is being cultivated on the back end. Brands should use this data and take advantage of the value their data has.

As big data changes over time, more ways to monetize will definitely surface. Right now the three big ways companies can monetize their data is by using it to improve processes, using it to improve products and services, and selling it to other interested companies.

Using Percentages in Analytics Reports

An earlier article discusses using percentages to help audiences understand the data in an analytics report. Percentages help people reading a marketing report put the numbers into perspective. If your average Facebook relevancy score  increases from 6 to 7 over one month that is an absolutely fantastic achievement and something to celebrate. Despite that, an increase of one may not seem like a big leap to someone not as familiar with relevancy. Saying relevancy increased by 16% can have more weight than saying that average relevancy score increased by 1. Here are a few ways to use percentages (in addition to whole numbers) in in reports to give the audience a better idea of the magnitude of the numbers.

General Percentages
Percentages can show parts of a whole. Using a percentage calculator was can calculate "x is what percent of x." For example if your competitor had 80 sales last month and you had 100, your report can assess that you sold 20% more than a competitor.

Percentage Increase and Decreases 
Showing number changes over time is effective with a percentage increase or decrease. If your sales increased for 340 to 475 in one month, that is a 39% increase. Saying that sales increased from 340 to 475 is impressive, but the 39% adds an extra punch that helps the person reading your report quickly gauge the success without really having to think.

Making Sense of Marketing KPIs and Metrics

When it comes to measuring our marketing impact we already know we need to start with goals. Creating SMART goals – ones that are Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic are even better. But once those goals are established marketers need to make sure we are able to accurately measure these goals to indicate results and performance. Defining the correct Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, and metrics will ensure you and your team have a streamlined process.

KPIs vs Metrics

Remember the saying “all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares”? This applies to KPIs and metrics. All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs. Examples of metrics include visits to your website, adds to shopping cart, purchases, bounce rate, new vs returning visitors. Metrics are valuable when assessing the performance of your marketing, but they do not necessarily provide in-depth insights into the performance of your brand. KPIs provide more insights into high-level brand goals. For example, purchases on a website would be considered a metric. It is important to know how many products consumers are buying, but that doesn’t really tell you very much about your brand. A key performance indicator would be something like purchases per hundred visits to your website – that gives you more insight into your brand goals and performance.

Identifying KPIs and Metrics

When your team decides what indicators to measure, keep in mind the high-level marketing goals for your brand. An example of a high-level marketing goal can be increased brand engagement on social media. Some metrics that could be used to measure that would be post clicks, likes, comments, shares, and page follows. Social media KPIs could also include factors like relevancy score. Because Facebook uses a variety of factors like who is clicking off the posts, how long users interact with the post, and if users are responding positively or negatively to the posts to measure relevancy, it would be considered a KPI.

Measuring Marketing
Once your team has identified the metrics and KPIs that they will track to gauge performance, it is time to gather the analytics. Tools like Google Analytics, Facebook for Business, and Twitter analytics can provide metrics for your campaigns. Generally the analytics tools provided by the native platforms themselves are a great option, they are designed to measure the best data that relates to their products. There are also benefits to using third party platforms as well. Third party platforms may allow you to see metrics from different platforms at the same time, or allow you to see comparisons beyond with the native platforms allow. Using services like DashThis or SocialBakers to gather data on social media interactions can provide new insight into your data. DashThis is a useful tool that allows marketers to plug data from your tracking platforms directly into your account to create dashboard of your analytics that automatically updates.

4 Tips for Creating a Killer Analytics Report

Putting together an analytics report doesn’t have to be s struggle. Here are some go-to tips to help prepare the best report for your data. 

1. Explore the Analytics

Figure outage angle you are using to tell your story. Examine your analytics tracking tools for relevant changes in data form month to month.  Obviously some metrics are always going to be reported to the client, but that doesn’t mean we can’t tell stories with other relevant data. Prepare to report on impressive or interesting insights along with the typical metrics and KPI’s. 

2. Map It Out

Get sketchy - once you know what data you are including in your report, create thumbnail sketches of how you plan to organize the data. Are you presenting a monthly dashboard or are you preparing a full-fledged analytics report? Map out the hierarchy of the information. Hint: place impressive and positive trends in more visually prominent areas of your report. You never want your report to mislead anyone, so always include the less impressive metrics as well. Balancing out bad and good news will give your client a holistic idea how their campaigns are performing. 

3. Use Percentages

Did visits to your website increase from 9,598 to 12,870 in one month? Fantastic! That figure is impressive, but it is difficult to analyze relationships quickly with whole numbers when reading a report. Saying “Website traffic increased 34% from March to April” with a graphic displaying the ratio will give your client a better idea of what your numbers are doing. Utilize tools like PercentageCalculator.net to calculate percentage, increases, decreases, etc.

4. Get Visual 

Use tools like Piktochart, Canva, Tableau, and Microsoft Office to create visuals and charts. Hubspot has a fantastic templates for creating infographics in PowerPoint.