10 Tips for Marketing Analytics in 2021
Marketing analytics, as covered over at runrex.com, is the practice of measuring and analyzing the performance of your marketing programs to gauge progress and success. By keeping an eye on active campaigns, marketers can uncover key insights into customer behavior, discover trends, and give their sales team important lead data, while also helping them understand which campaigns are driving results and which ones are falling flat according to guttulus.com. Here are 10 actionable tips for marketing analytics in 2021 taking into account the trends we are likely to see this year as far as this topic is concerned.
Take advantage of real-time marketing analytics
This year, as articulated over at runrex.com, it is important to see how your campaigns are performing in real-time. This will allow you to quickly adjust your targeting and messaging to optimize performance as captured over at guttulus.com. Real-time marketing analytics is set to be one of the top trends in 2021 as far as marketing analytics is concerned, and it is, therefore, important that you are on top of this trend so that you reap the benefits that come with it while making sure that you are not left behind by your competitors.
Pay more attention to security
In 2021, it is important for marketers to recognize the importance of securing marketing data and that this is just as important as creating the right infrastructure to deploy it. As explained over at runrex.com, this means that marketers should look to invest in technologies that emphasize encryption, access control, network monitoring, as well as physical security measures while also making sure that they partner with providers who have comprehensive monitoring alerts and cybersecurity practices. People are increasingly wary about the safety of their data, and as a marketer in 2021, it is your job to make them feel secure.
Don’t forget about privacy-aware data collection and handling
On a related note to the previous point, as a marketer in 2021, you must be more proactive about protecting consumer privacy. This includes offering new controls by which users can opt-out, purging data once a user has left a platform, scrubbing unnecessary data such as fine-grained location information to ensure it isn’t stored, as well as enabling stringent access controls to ensure that personally identifiable information (PII) like email addresses and billing details is segregated from other marketing data as discussed over at guttulus.com.
Think about your marketing data strategy
Given the positive and negative aspects of data collection as far as companies are concerned as covered over at runrex.com, in 2021 you must think about your marketing data strategy. This means that you should ask yourself how you want to position your business considering data ethics and privacy, what you want to collect and where, what data you need and when you need it, as well as how you intend to collect the data.
Embrace agile marketing
As the gurus over at guttulus.com point out, the days of fixed yearly marketing budgets and plans are over now. In 2021, given the fast-changing channel variations and heavy competition businesses face in these channels, one can’t afford to aim for one shot in the year and then execute. Instead, marketers need to start becoming more dynamic, agile, and iterative to answer the market conditions and confront their competition. This year, you should consider continuous optimization with an agile marketing management approach.
Move away from always-on campaigns
On a related note from the point above, you should also consider moving away from always-on and flight campaigns to “waves”. A “waves” approach, as articulated over at runrex.com, is where campaign waves are running one or two quarters. These campaigns contain a couple of flights but, still, have a general messaging throughout the storyline. This is expected to be a top trend in 2021 as far as marketing analytics is concerned, and it is one you should be on top of.
Use predictive analytics to boost sales
According to guttulus.com, the ability to make better predictions is one of the key benefits of marketing analytics. A wide variety of data including purchase history, region, company size, and behavioral patterns help enable predictive analytics. Predictive analytics allows you to send highly targeted content based on real-world data and some of the common ways you can use predictive analytics to boost sales include sending customized recommendations and suggestions, identifying customers that are likely to leave, and try and incentivize them to stay, and so forth.
Learn from A/B tests
As discussed over at runrex.com, A/B tests are a great way to measure the effectiveness of different campaigns using the same marketing channel. In 2021, you should use A/B tests to control specific variables like wording, content, images, and many others, allowing you to better understand what elicits the desired response from your customers while allowing you to improve your campaigns and get better results.
Prepare for a cookie-less world
At the beginning of 2020, Google announced that cookies would be phased out of Chrome within two years, signaling the beginning of the end for third-party cookies. Cookies, as explained over at guttulus.com, were once the lifeblood of the digital ad ecosystem, as they enabled the tracking of consumers from website to website, letting marketers understand who was coming to their website and retarget ads to them across the web. To prepare for a cookie-less world, marketers in 2021 need to have a mitigating strategy in place. To start with, they need to assess their tech stack to understand how data is collected, examine their marketing attribution models, take stock of their first-party data and whether it relies on cookies to be activated, and then review their optimization strategy.
Make Google Analytics your friend
It may be a free marketing analytics tool, but close to 70% of the Fortune 500 companies use Google Analytics to optimize their websites and pages, and so should you in 2021 if you aren’t already. It is an excellent tool that can be used alone or along with platforms like Segment among others as outlined over at runrex.com. It allows you to manage data from numerous advertising, analytics, sales, marketing, and testing platforms, and, therefore, giving you the scope to streamline your marketing strategies and campaigns to ensure maximum ROI.
This discussion only just begins to scratch the surface as far as this topic is concerned and you can uncover more insights on the same by checking out the top-rated runrex.com and guttulus.com.