Revisiting Marketing Analytics work of years past: It’s still about strategy alignment and bottom line results

Posted on April 17, 2024

I recently had an opportunity to present analytic work that was completed a few years back, which at the time was notable in its broad scope, area of focus and earning the ANA Genius Award for Analytic Innovation the year it was completed. (Earlier blog “Finding New Venues and Champions for Business Benefit"). 

As I looked back over the earlier presentation to contextualize it for an audience of senior Marketing leaders who were interested in how to leverage analytics within their live Customer events, I was surprised at how resonant the work remained.

But wait, we didn’t have a unified platform for the 20+ data sources, we didn’t have a big data environment for the unstructured and social data, we scored all of our models offline before using them, we didn’t have a Marketing automation engine to feed the data and outputs into...and the list can go on, as you recall the state of MarTech and data in 2015.

So, what resonated and was compelling to the audience?

In short, the work was well-aligned to the Marketing strategy it supported, and it demonstrated measurable value and enabled bottom line results. Specifically, my retelling identified 4 steps followed in doing so:

• Re-framing and re-aligning typical Marketing Analytic efforts and assets for the purpose of making Customer events more effective and part of the overall Marketing mix
• Thinking end-to-end and bottom-to-top in bringing analytics to bear - addressing the “right audience” before the event, at-event attendee experience, and post event follow-up, while working in analytic layers from business intelligence, through scoring, alerting and Customer sentiment.
• Executing Deeply, from data gathering to analytic development through applying to business processes and activities.
• Making it impactful and personal in the delivery of the insights and their alignment and impact to the strategies supported.

Upon reflection, the real benefit of revisiting and sharing the work was less about a framework for what was done and how, and much more a reminder---an inspiration---to the Marketing leaders in attendance of the power of analytics in service of their Marketing goals. While the tools and technologies have improved, the clear linkage to the strategy and a focus on bottom-line results remains the essence in bringing analytics to bear.