Analytics Help Industry Professionals Reach Consumers

With consumers desiring a more individualized experience when dealing with businesses, business is beginning to respond by collecting data from analytics to meet this growing consumer need.

For example, more than half of the digital business professionals globally are tracking consumer behavior across devices and channels (56 percent) and are using personalization and targeting (53 percent), according to a report issued June 1, 2014 that was created as part of a collaboration between Econsultancy and Lynchpin entitled “Measurement and Analytics Report 2014,” wrote eMarketer (downloadable here https://econsultancy.com/reports/measurement-and-analytics-report). Meanwhile, nearly half of the worldwide digital business professionals are identifying valuable customer clusters and segments (49 percent), are evaluating the overall customer experience (44 percent), and are identifying patterns of content engagement and campaign response (43 percent).

The study also revealed that, due to the increase being seen in data driven marketing, analytics have been a key topic among digital business professionals across the globe, with many of these professionals using these analytics to improve their efforts at personalization to reach consumers and drive business, wrote eMarketer.

Although helpful, analytics are only part of the equation, and personalization does present challenges, according to data compiled in a U.S. Data Management Professionals report issued June 2014. Professionals indicated that, gaining insight quickly enough (40 percent), obtaining sufficient data (39 percent), collecting inaccurate data (38 percent), and having insufficient internal resources (32 percent) were key issues. According to eMarketer, citing Experian’s report entitled, “ Maximizing Personalization: How to Improve Data Insight for Better Consumer Connections,” other issues cited that presented challenges included the following. The report was produced by Global Markets Insite (GMI) on July 26, 3014:

Having too much data or a lack of budget (28 percent each)
Being unable to gain insight from the data collected (24 percent)
Lack of internal resources (23 percent)

According to eMarketer, those digital professionals who are able to become the most adept at personalization will likely be the ones who will see significant upticks across a number of their processes. In fact, customer prioritization and cross-sell/upsell offers were the top processes that were improved by personalization, according to 69 percent and 63 percent of those responding to the Experian survey, respectively. Other areas enhanced by personalization efforts were: