I had the pleasure of meeting some of the best analytic minds in marketing and listening to their stories of analytic wins and losses last week in American Marketing Association's analytics conference of the year, AMA 2015 Analytics with Purpose. As marketers from companies like The Charles Schwab Corporation, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, The North Face and more, shared their experiences of what worked versus not, certain messages were consistent.
1. Data Matters, Insight Even More: Considering that the conference theme was "Analytics with Purpose", it wasn't surprising that all the speakers honed in on the importance of monetizing data. Interesting though was how many organizations, irrespective of their size or type, spoke of too much data, collected for collection's sake without knowing "the end-game." Many struggled with ability to pull all data together for timely insight. As many of you know, Alteryx makes data preparation easier, reducing prep time significantly, allowing marketers to focus on analysis and driving decisions rather than getting the data set ready. Download our white paper "The Definitive Guide to Data Blending" to see how we can help.
2. Know the Current State of Marketing Programs: Be it for the adage that "what gets measured gets managed" or for the fact that till one knows what the baseline is, measuring uplift is a non-starter -- speakers agreed that measuring current state of marketing programs was a must for future success. This was consistent per our findings in "How Shopper Insights are Fueling Retail Growth" paper which showed that 69% of the companies that were measuring the impact of shopper insights initiatives showed a positive ROI vs. only 28% of those that weren't measuring.
3. Don't Fall Prey to Averages: Building on the previous message of knowing the baseline, industry experts warned against getting satisfied with just average growth/ uplift number. The emphasis was on understanding the drivers behind the growth so you can focus on events/variables that matter and rid yourself of extraneous factors to improve the return. One good example that brought to my mind was the Delhaize America story wherein the Grocer used Alteryx to A/B test its Sunday Flyer Program and found that even though the average uplift from the program was positive, urban stores were actually dragging the profitability of the program down. Access the full presentation for details.
4. Focus on Stability of Signals over Time: Chief Data Officer of Wells Fargo, A. Charles Thomas talked about it in terms of "accuracy" versus "precision" describing accuracy as hitting the target correctly one time and precision as hitting the target correctly time over time, inspiring a good debate during lunch hour amongst many statisticians. Regardless of how you define the term, the bottom line message was that one-hit wonders don't matter. When investing in marketing programs, marketers need to look for persistency and effectiveness of the programs i.e., ones that offer stable but sustainable growth over time.
What are you seeing and experiencing in your marketing organization? Share your thoughts.
Read more about Alteryx Marketing Analytics here.
