Reporting is the base of a marketing analytics pyramid. What lies above?

Analytics reports are great!

But is reporting the sole raison d'être of analytics platforms?

Reports are structured to convert data into concise information to perceive insights from. They are only one of many outputs to the marketing analytics processes. Analytic platforms do a lot more than just report performance.

This article lists a few of them. The important impactful ones. Do check if you are using your Analytics platform comprehensively. And that you are pushing your platform to make the best of it. If that’s a negative, give us a shout. We get paid to do this stuff for people.

A data conduit to equip real-time CDP build a 360° view of digital behavior.

360° customer view of is no longer a myth. Thanks to Customer Data Platforms (CDP). But, not integrating your analytics platform with CDP limits the view. Especially, when it comes to anonymous sessions.

90% + website visitors are anonymous or pre-logins. The behavioral information you can gather from such visitors is valuable. 

Your analytics platform must tap customer behavior as-it-happens–across touchpoints and across channels. Build new profiles with the first available markers. Then iteratively attribute every successive touchpoint to valid customer profiles. 

Thereby sequentially morphing anonymous data into consolidated user data.

Let Analytics power your CDP. Give top management up-to-moment customer databases to create 10,000ft big picture strategies. Let product teams tweak customer experience based on behavioral trends that are now apparent. Award marketing with a composite 360° perspective for tactically focused campaigns.

Generate personalization data and integrate with the targeting platform.

Did you know your analytics platform is at the intersection of data management and personalization platforms?

It can take data from multiple sources, pass it through your personalization layers, couple it with your communication, and directly drive audience targeting platforms.

The analytics workflow then circles around to measure the performance of your audience targeting campaigns. Insights from which go back into tweaking data and personalization for the next iteration.

Ideally, it is a seamless, time efficient, plug-play or mix-match workflow, configured on the fly for any of its components. Powering both the data for personalization and focused targeting. Get to the right person, on the right channel or device, and use the ad budget effectively.

However, make sure your analytics platform has the flexibility to add new data sources. While marketing analytics, web and mobile analytics have established data sources, the new frontier of individualization is smart connected gadgets, wearables and IoT. Tracking this data allows personalization that is almost intimate.

Targeting is no longer channel centric. It’s person centric. If boosting customer experience is your thing (and it should be), a good analytics platform imbibes the data, and then looks beyond at the person behind the persona. Understand, even anticipate needs and behavior. So that your marketing message resonates personally and perfectly.

And we are not even talking about AI and ML based models yet. Though that’s already here.

Supporting constant CRO

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is not a batch process. Not anymore.

Which CTA layout is most sticky? Which copy version resonates? How best to structure the flow of a form, so prospects don’t get stuck? Which gets a better response – emails triggered by events or behavior?

The testing of hypothesis is endless. And constant.

Customer experience separates a hopeless website from one that’s hopping. CRO, however, is not limited to websites alone. CRO extends to every marketing initiative that seeks to improve customer experience and conversion.

No insight gets written in stone either. Constant testing is the only way to ensure your marketing decisions remain data driven. But is your analytics platform agile enough to support this effort with relevant and timely data?

Analytic platforms track multiple elements across your website. Generating visitor-based CRO analytics to classify them on discernable behavior, and test accordingly. Generate insights that incrementally add to making informed data supported decisions.

The top CRO testing techniques are:

1. A/B Testing
2. Copy optimization
3. Heat maps
4. Session recording
5. User survey and feedback

These methods generate tons of data. Is your analytic platform configured to process this to understand user behavior?

• Your analytics application compiles, tags and reports a standardized comparison of results from each iteration.
• Measures the parameters of a successful round of CRO. Variations the work and those that don’t.
• Highlights areas of material deviations from the implemented variation so they could be tested further.
• Do the analysis to convert data into actionable insights that boost conversion rates.

Audience profiling from Data Management Platform (DMP) data

A Data Management Platform (DMP) is like a famished kraken, with tentacles grabbing data from every source within reach. Think Pirates of the Caribbean.

Data sources like:

• Website APIs or servers, social data, email, mobile devices, smart tv, smart speakers, IoT gadgets.
• 1st- 2nd and 3rd party audience lists, CRM, chatbots, enterprise data, purchase history, CDP.

The kraken feeds on,

• IP addresses, session cookies, device ids, mobile identifiers, PPID (Publisher Provided Identifiers),
• social and online behavioral data, psychographic data of Interests, Attitudes and Values, etc.

DMP efficiency is a function of how well it models audiences based on these markers.

Your analytics platform applies a host of processes to this data to create segments both for personalization and CRO. All the while looking over at data security, including obfuscating IP addresses based on primary location demographic.

• It creates, manages, activates, and anonymizes customer identities for targeted omnichannel messaging.
• It dissects the much-maligned 3rd party lists for unique look-alike traits to refine 1st and 2nd party lists for optimum conversions.
• It looks at purchase behavior from Sales and CRM feeds to discern audience demographics that show a greater propensity to buy different products.

Final Thoughts

Reports are good to start with. But you can go only so far with them, and no further. To win at the analytics game, go beyond reporting. 

Use your analytics platform to the core. Integrate with surround systems. To capture data. And to pass information or insights to integrated specialty systems. 

Do this, and the customer view will turn your marketing on its head. 360°.