Webtrends - Riding the Digital Data Wave

If I told you that digital marketing investment now equates for over one quarter* of an organisation’s total marketing communications budget, I’m confident that it wouldn’t surprise or shock you. It’s widely acknowledged that the industry is evolving at a breakneck speed and budgets are increasingly being pushed online.

Digital marketing delivers insight into campaigns and investment that is not possible in traditional marketing. While the data it provides is often staggering, it can also be daunting.

For many organisations, digital marketing data continues to be captured and evaluated in silos. The opinion seems to remain that gaining a complete view from multiple data sources is not only a colossal, but also, expensive task and if it seems to be working then why change it. If only it were this simple.

In such a fast-paced industry, data is paramount to success and innovation. Developing a strategy which ensures that the right people see the right data will, undoubtedly, demystify the effectiveness and demonstrate the value across an organisation of digital marketing.

Delivering this within an organisation can in fact be simple and cost-effective, an option being to display data in customised scorecards and dashboards. Driving ROI, this method can integrate KPIs from multiple sources into not only a single but also exciting tool. Powerful, impactful and enabling action – all vital in creating an effective digital marketing data strategy for business.

On a wider scale, bringing together the broader splinter-net of data within an organisation will also manage the age old problem of identifying the channels where spend and strategy needs to be focused. Through our experience and open approach to drawing data from numerous digital channels and integrating these with enterprise data warehouse solutions, such as Teradata, the result has the ability to attribute conversions across both online and offline channels. This capability delivers the holy grail of digital marketing for many – a single customer view and a standardised customer experience whenever and wherever they engage and encounter a brand online.

However, once the wide-spread data is consolidated in an effective and usable view actually ensuring this data falls into the right hands is often the greatest challenge. Successful data adoption is one thing but overcoming the hurdle of software adoption is another.

Many of our customers have benefited from our relationship with Monochrome, which means that we are able to collect data from across a business’ digital channels and utilise the APIs built into the solution to enable an organisation to consolidate its data into dashboards outside the product.

Developing a highly immersive, fully interactive and bespoke dashboard allows data to be effectively pushed throughout a business, ensuring a culture can be created which values and incorporates data in decision making. Providing current and relevant data in a user-friendly format, specific search functionality and cross-platform compatibility, the dashboard utilises pure Javascript and HTML to allow access to data from desktop browsers, iPads or mobile handsets, to the development of web apps or widgets that can sit on desktops. The end result is visually stimulating and consumable data which can improve, promote and drive action throughout an entire organisation.

Developing a formidable combination of usable and distributable data is the key to businesses riding the digital wave at the exhilarating speed required. Understanding your customers and remaining innovative is an amalgamation of creative minds and a single, collective data view.

Mike Baker, Director of Client Services, Webtrends