The Future of Analytics: Key Insights from a Google Commissioned Study
At White Box Analytics, we love data, and we love great insights.
So when we came across the Future of Analytics study from Forrester, as commissioned by Google, we got excited to see some of the broader trends unfolding in the wake of what has been an unpredictable, and frankly, crazy, 2020.
Here are some highlights from the study to be aware of when planning your marketing, and broader operational strategy as we approach the end of the year.
Key findings from the research
“Firms Seek Advanced Tools To Improve Customer Experiences And Marketing Outcomes.”
This broader theme transpired in three key findings:
Cross-platform analytics, despite its known value to organisational leaders, is still not the norm for 57% of businesses
Privacy is the key feature that increases willingness to unify data across multiple platforms
Digital analytics is being utilized for customer experience optimization
Analytics Driving Improved Customer Experiences
The top marketing priority found in the study is to improve use of data and analytics over the next 12 months.
Of those utilising data and analytics, there were many associated benefits:
These findings ring true for us as a consultancy as well, with clients greatly improving campaign outcomes and other key metrics related to customer activation, retention and loyalty, among other benefits.
Key struggles
These struggles are again consistent with some of the key issues many of our clients come to us with; data that is siloed, high in volume, and under-utilised (therefore becoming outdated over time).
Alarmingly, more than half of the decision makers are using tools that don’t surface insights quickly, which we would argue is one of the most important elements to any modern marketing campaign.
Given the rapid takeover of e-commerce based businesses, responding to consumers’ interactions across your brands’ multiple touchpoints in real-time allows you to keep your messaging personal, relevant and timely.
It also enables your business to capture and convert interested visitors into paying customers in a far more efficient manner.
Interestingly, 52% of respondents found that when using cross-platform tools, the lack of flexibility when it comes to customizing to suit the individual business makes it a lot more difficult to meet their specific analytics requirements.
Getting on top of these trends
To be a leader in these newly emerging trends, the answer from this research piece seems relatively clear - get on top of your data assets, and let the insights gained from these assets drive better decision-making.
This will come about from a multi-step process, starting with an audit of your data, including sources, how it’s stored, how it’s generated, and whether its worth using in your analysis and reporting. This should be followed by cleaning and transformation, to make those assets useful and working in unison to start painting a picture about your business and its customers. Once the brunt work is done, and your primary reporting is set-up, you should be looking at creative analytical approaches to extracting nuggets of ‘insightful gold’, the information that’ll allow your strategies to differentiate yourself from competitors in the eyes of your customers.
We make it sound simple, but the truth is that for many, it’s far from simple.
If your team or business is struggling getting a grip on the seemingly endless sources of data being created across your operation, get in touch with us today, we’d love to chat about whether we could help.
You may also be interested in our Customer Data Platform, UniFida Australia, which simplifies the entire process this article talks about by unifying all of your online and offline data in one interactive, easily accessible portal which is customised around your preferences.
