Today’s marketers feel the pressure to justify the effectiveness (and spend) of their digital marketing efforts. How many people opened and clicked through your e-mail campaign? What’s your cost per click? How many times was your content downloaded? How many views did your video get?
As outlined in a previous post, these questions fall under the category of vanity metrics. They are easy to measure because they are quantifiable, and they are easily understood by top-level executives.
However, highly successful organizations measure active users on their sites or mobile apps to analyze engagement, optimize the cost of customer acquisition, and ultimately increase revenue. If you capture and report this data – actionable metrics – then you can make business decisions based on this information.
You may be thinking, “It’s good to know the difference between vanity and actionable metrics, but how do I go about capturing this data and putting it to work?” Keep reading!
Which analytics platform features are capable of capturing actionable metrics?
It’s worth noting that we consider as ‘vanity’ and ‘actionable’ metrics today will change over time as our expertise and technology evolves. Remember the early days of the web? It was impressive to track interest and awareness through link clicks and page views.
Here are the top features to look for in an analytics platform so you can gather and analyze actionable metrics:
1. Consolidated database
With a platform that consolidates data within a single database, you can break down the data silos and begin analyzing data such as social media usage, customer loyalty, mobile traffic, and communication preferences all in one place.
2. 360-degree view of the customer
The consolidated database lends itself to another important capability – creating a 360-degree view of the customer so you can:
- Understand the buyer’s journey
- Identify people who convert from browser to buyer at an above-average rate
- Automate responses to deliver the right offers or messages at the right time
- Test strategies to see which offers or messages are more effective
3. Attribution models that combine multiple data sources
By assembling data from websites, e-mail campaigns, podcasts, video, mobile apps, mobile web, geolocation, and retail stores, you can build attribution models to understand which components are most influential in the customer journey. This helps you understand where to spend marketing dollars, what topics or content are of interest, and when to adjust go-to-market strategies.
4. Customer segmentation & automated rules-based marketing
With richer customer profiles, you can create audience segments that allow you to develop and execute automated responses based on the characteristics and behaviors of those segments. Automated, rules-based marketing also determines which customers to target – and which to avoid – when launching a campaign.
5. Intuitive, compelling dashboards
Actionable metrics based on customer data and behavior are more complex, so reporting this information isn’t straightforward. You want an analytics platform that presents data on an intuitive, visual dashboard. This makes it easy for you – and others in your company – to understand how campaigns are performing and how to improve the customer experience. The dashboard should also allow you to see the big picture about your customers and prospects to help you increase customer lifetime value.
Download our latest guide, and learn more about capturing actionable metrics using a solid platform, like Adobe Analytics, to move the sales needle for your business.
