Effective data gathering and analysis is a cornerstone of any successful modern business. Data can give you invaluable insights and information on customer behavior, habits, and preferences, allowing you to optimize and tailor your approach to achieve greater results.
However, it can be easy to get bogged down with data and suffer an overload, where the sheer volume of information makes it difficult to know what is useful and what isn’t. Thankfully, there are numerous methods and systems available for marketers to both gather and categorize consumer data, allowing you to make the most out of information on your customers. We’ll take a look at some of these approaches and discuss how best to implement them in your marketing strategy. Keep reading to find out more.
Identity Resolution
An effective marketing campaign makes use of a number of different channels. This works to increase reach and impact, allowing you to target a range of different markets and demographics. As new digital platforms emerge, it is imperative that marketers utilize multi-channel methods in their strategies, to take advantage of all the opportunities available to them.
While using multiple channels for marketing comes with advantages in terms of brand reach and impact, there are some drawbacks to this method. Tracking customer data across numerous channels becomes time-consuming and complex, and it can be difficult to properly collate and assess metrics.
By using identity resolution services, marketers can collect this data and use it to identify specific customers across various digital channels. By analyzing things like browser behavior, device recognition, and transaction history, identity resolution gathers this data to create an accurate profile of a customer, tracking them across a range of devices and online platforms.
This information is invaluable to marketers, it can allow them to identify customers and evaluate their behavior and response to campaigns across all platforms. Methods can then be adjusted to create a far more personalized user experience.
Multi-Touch Attribution
Consumers often visit a platform a number of times before they make a decision to buy, with a journey that can be made up of numerous touchpoints across several devices. For marketers to effectively assess their strategy and identify which touchpoints are contributing the most towards conversions and sales, it is essential for them to be able to track this buyer journey.
Multi-touch attribution, also sometimes known as fractional attribution, is a method that works to measure the touchpoints on these journeys, ranking each based on its importance to securing a sale. By using this method, marketers can draw up a detailed image of their strategy, from paid advertisements to email campaigns, identify the most effective touchpoints and focus on these moving forward to further improve results.
There are a number of different multi-touch attribution models, each with their own unique characteristics. Linear attribution is usually the standard model, it gives equal credit to each touchpoint involved in a conversion. Time decay attribution categorizes touchpoints based on their influence, from least influential to most influential. U-shaped attribution gives more credit and emphasis to the first and last touchpoints on a conversion journey, with less focus on intermediary touchpoints.
While each of these methods is incredibly useful for mapping buyer journeys, which one you choose will depend on the type of campaign you are running and the type of analysis you are looking for.
Marketing Mix Modelling
Marketing mix modeling is an analytic and predictive approach that can be used to assess the success of marketing strategies and evaluate the effectiveness of different campaign elements.
It works by collating and aggregating datasets over a previous period of time, examining sales, and determining what led to these conversions. The system can make predictions on future conversions based on data from previous years and information on factors that could impact sales, including supply, ad spend, and seasonal effects, allowing marketers to tailor their methods for the future.
Using a marketing mix modeling approach can give marketers the ability to evaluate the long-term impact of their campaigns, as well as indications of the potential impact external factors could have on influencing business performance.
Conclusion
Data has never been so important for marketers. Effective information gathering and analysis is crucial for assessing how successful a marketing or advertising campaign has been, it allows marketers to identify the most effective elements and optimize these as they move forward.
While there are a range of methods through which data can be evaluated, the best approach is to use a combination of them all. Doing so will give the most detailed and clearest possible picture of customer behavior, touchpoint effectiveness, and potential future conversion figures.
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