Apples are great and probably one of the most popular types of fruit available. However, we all know that an apple is not the only type of fruit that is available to us and that we’d be missing out if we didn’t consume other kinds of fruit. I personally love apples, but I also enjoy bananas, berries, and mango.
I love analogies and this is a perfect way to describe how we see many people and organizations viewing data analytics today. We often see companies have a baseline of analytics starting with Google Analytics. While Google Analytics is a really great start, it is only the tip of the iceberg in the Data Analytics space. Think of it like this: Google Analytics, in its basic form, gives you a 2D snapshot of your customers and their interaction with your online presence. As someone in Analytics or Marketing, you shouldn’t settle for a simple 2D drawing of a circle, you should want the entire sphere and be able to hold it in your hands.
The beautiful thing about data analytics is that your organization has the other pieces to the ‘Data Analytics’ puzzle: internal data. Think of your POS data, CRM data, email marketing data, or your ERP data. As Marketers, we search for a complete picture of our ‘ideal client/customer’ and would go to the ends of the earth to find it. In reality, you already have it.
At this point, you’re probably wondering: well, this is all great, but how do I do it? My Salesforce CRM doesn’t talk to my POS and online ordering platforms, and my email campaign data is in Constant Contact. Unifying internal analytics doesn’t have to be some big secret. Through tools, for example, Google’s BigQuery, it is possible to create APIs that will connect and seamlessly integrate all these streams of data and marry them into one large, accessible data stream. Once complete, this will give your organization a complete picture of your customers and how they interact with your organization–or–how they want to be communicated with and how they don’t.
At Futurety we live and breath data analytics. We look at ourselves as a data analytics company that DOES digital marketing and marketing automation, not the other way around. Marketing doesn’t have to be a guessing game, and we’re closer than ever to creating true one-to-one marketing on a large scale to reach your customer before they need you and to make sure you’re the first brand or organization they think of when they have a need.
