The Paramount Budget Priority: Reporting & Analytics Tools in Modern Marketing

In an era where data is king, marketers understand the importance of not just collecting data but also harnessing its potential. Reporting and analytics tools provide a comprehensive view of campaign performance, customer behavior, and market trends.

Glenn Burgess

Whether there’s a recession or not, marketing budgets are shrinking, and marketers are expected to achieve more with less money.

The good thing about this situation is that it helps marketers focus on what’s most important with the budget they have. It’s a bit like having a limited amount of time and money – you can’t do everything, so you need to prioritize.

We had informal chats with marketing leaders from over 20 different companies in various industries. We asked them about their challenges, what bothered them, and what they wished they could do with their budgets.

We specifically inquired about their top priorities when deciding where to allocate their budgets.

One strong preference emerged as the top choice – Reporting and Analytics. When given the freedom to spend money on anything they wished, improving their reporting and analytics capabilities consistently ranked at the top of their wish lists.

The Wish List of Marketers

Here are the top 10 priorities, ranked in order of importance, as shared by these marketing leaders. These priorities were not pre-set options but were voluntarily provided and grouped into the following categories:

Reporting / Analytics
Machine Learning /Artificial Intelligence
Stability
Audience Growth
Customer Journey
UI and Operational Efficiency
Privacy and Trust
Loyalty
Content
Simplify Stack

Take a look and see if your priorities align with theirs.

Why Reporting / Analytics?

The first question that naturally arises is: Why is Reporting and Analytics given such significant importance, far surpassing other potential wishlist items?

One key reason is Return on Investment (ROI). Marketing departments constantly face the challenge of justifying every action and every dollar they spend by showcasing the results they achieve.

Marketers, along with their superiors, require clear evidence that their efforts are delivering the expected outcomes, particularly in terms of direct attribution, such as revenue generated across all channels – be it email, mobile, or others.

This brings us to the concept of autonomy. Marketing teams prefer to independently analyse the results of their campaigns directly within the platforms they use, rather than relying on a separate IT or tech department to extract data for them.

Furthermore, this approach is not only more efficient in terms of time and resources, as it eliminates the back-and-forth request/response cycle, but it also enhances the actionable nature of the insights gained within the marketing team and the campaigns they oversee.

Automation is another significant factor. Marketing teams are shrinking as budgets are redirected towards establishing IT and tech-focused groups, like marketing automation.

Consequently, marketers find themselves dedicating too much time to data creation and the manual tasks associated with it. They express a preference for platforms with built-in automation wherever possible to streamline their efforts.

This desire for automation extends to connecting data and analysis functions directly with the CRM platform they use. Marketers are looking for proactive predictive customisation tools that can automatically implement campaign changes based on predefined parameters.

Lastly, monitoring plays a crucial role in the data and analysis equation. Investing in data and analytics should also focus on the ability to monitor incoming data and make rapid adjustments as necessary.

This encompasses robust A/B testing capabilities that allow for dynamic modifications on the fly, as well as the capability to monitor the entire customer journey.

Ideally, this monitoring should be consolidated within a single dashboard that aggregates data from across the platform or integrates data from multiple platforms. This approach aims to minimise the need for multiple screens or handoffs, which is often required in most systems today.

What to report/analyse?

Indeed, the ability to report and analyse data is important, but knowing which data points to prioritise is equally crucial.

Among the marketers we conversed with, revenue was a frequently emphasised data point they wished to measure. Collaborating with a technology company that can trace web behavior and link it to channel performance stands out as a critical data point.

They want to understand which marketing emails, ads, and other tactics are driving the most revenue and, importantly, why they are performing well. When something surpasses historical trends, they aim to identify the factors that differentiate it.

Furthermore, they are interested in exploring whether changes in one channel can influence shifts in channel share.

Engagement statistics like click-through rates are indeed crucial metrics to monitor because high engagement often translates into increased revenue. Conversions, which signify successful actions taken by customers, are also of paramount importance.

Moreover, it’s essential to ensure that interested customers receive proper service through digital channels to prevent the need for human intervention. Engaging human resources can slow down the conversion process and impact efficiency.

For instance, imagine receiving a push notification with a coupon code but encountering difficulties when trying to redeem it during the checkout process.

The “human” cost associated with such digital channel issues can be expensive, as it may require customer service representatives to step in and complete the transaction. A well-functioning marketing campaign aims to keep the entire activity online, ensuring that sales are completed in a single session. This signifies an effective campaign that not only enhances engagement but also boosts revenue.

Ultimately, the primary goal is to avoid triggering a phone call to customer support. While a phone operator can assist only one person at a time, a website can serve thousands concurrently, making it a more efficient and scalable approach.

In theory, the benefits of robust data reporting and analysis are clear. Consistently, good data and analysis lead to enhanced ROI. However, in the fast-paced world of marketing, finding the time to both gather and analyse data can be challenging, particularly when these processes remain manual.

That’s precisely why companies should actively seek and insist on automated reporting and analytics capabilities from their marketing platform providers. Aspects like revenue modeling and channel attribution are far too critical to be left to chance.

Collaborating with a platform that can effortlessly automate performance reporting of this kind, and then leveraging AI to identify subtle shifts in these outcomes, equips marketers with the insights necessary to optimize their efforts in real time.

In essence, the same tools that marketers employ to automate their marketing outreach should simplify collection & interpretation of data, making it just as effortless & automatic.

This, in turn, enables marketers to allocate more of their time to making the data more actionable for crafting personalised communications – ultimately nurturing more meaningful relationships with their audience.