Data and analytics are essential for any marketer who wants to optimize their communication tools and deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. In this article, you will learn how to use data and analytics to improve your marketing communication tools, such as email, social media, web, and content.
Before you start collecting and analyzing data, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your marketing communication tools and how you will measure your success. For example, if you want to increase your email open rate, you need to define what is a good open rate for your industry, segment, and campaign, and what factors influence it, such as subject line, sender name, and timing. Similarly, if you want to boost your social media engagement, you need to identify what types of posts, platforms, and audiences generate the most likes, comments, and shares.
With the widespread advent of artificial intelligence in 2023, data and analytics are going to become more focused. B2B businesses will need to focus on lead generation, prospecting, and closing of clients by becoming an influencer on LinkedIn including article syndication. In addition, press releases will become key critical. B2C consumers will need to focus on becoming an influencer on either Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok with engagements that move prospects to purchase products off of their eCommerce site.
Once you have defined your goals and metrics, you need to collect and integrate data from various sources, such as your website, email platform, social media accounts, CRM system, and analytics tools. You can use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Mailchimp, or HubSpot to track and report on your marketing communication performance. However, you also need to integrate your data across different channels and platforms to get a holistic view of your marketing communication effectiveness. You can use tools like Zapier, Segment, or Data Studio to connect and visualize your data in one place.
After you have collected and integrated your data, you need to analyze and interpret it to gain insights and identify opportunities for improvement. You can use tools like Excel, Tableau, or Power BI to perform data analysis and create dashboards and reports. You can also use tools like Google Optimize, Hotjar, or SurveyMonkey to conduct experiments and surveys to test and validate your hypotheses. You need to look for patterns, trends, correlations, and anomalies in your data and ask questions like: What is working well and why? What is not working well and why? How can you improve your marketing communication tools based on your data?
Data is often used retrospectively to demonstrate whether something has been successful,or not. Using data to evaluate the success of a campaign (or tactic) regularly allows for testing that may identify more of the why. For example, if you’re launching a new video asset, and after a week you see fewer completions than expected, look at the video start numbers and average view time. If you you’re only getting 25% completions, and the average view time is 3 mins, create a 3 min version. If you’re completion rate goes up, your original video was too long, if it doesn’t, its more likely the subject matter. Data is far more useful as an optimization tool, than just a reporting tool.
Based on your data analysis and interpretation, you need to implement and optimize changes to your marketing communication tools to achieve your goals and metrics. You can use tools like WordPress, Canva, or Hootsuite to create and update your web, content, and social media communication tools. You can also use tools like Mailchimp, HubSpot, or ActiveCampaign to create and automate your email communication tools. You need to monitor and measure the impact of your changes on your marketing communication performance and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Finally, you need to learn and iterate from your data and analytics to continuously improve your marketing communication tools. You need to review your results regularly and compare them with your goals and metrics. You need to celebrate your wins and learn from your failures. You need to keep testing and experimenting with new ideas and approaches. You need to keep collecting and integrating data from different sources and channels. You need to keep analyzing and interpreting data to gain insights and identify opportunities. You need to keep implementing and optimizing changes to your marketing communication tools.
When Markets and Industries are changing fast we need analytical tools that provide and incorporate Insight into a good Marketing system or Strategy in real or near real time. Accurate attribution tracking is one challenge. With the advent of low cost RFID, Digital tracking, GeoFencing and other technologies this is now easier to do and allows for robust analytics. The next challenge is converting raw metrics into Insight. Through Ai, ChatGPT and other platforms quickly coming online will allow quick analysis and near real time Insight. Here is the gap, finding ways to integrating this data with automated Marketing Systems and Marketing Strategies and tactics for a responsive marketing system.