By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    data analytics in sports industry
    Here’s How Data Analytics In Sports Is Changing The Game
    6 Min Read
    data analytics on nursing career
    Advances in Data Analytics Are Rapidly Transforming Nursing
    8 Min Read
    data analytics reveals the benefits of MBA
    Data Analytics Technology Proves Benefits of an MBA
    9 Min Read
    data-driven image seo
    Data Analytics Helps Marketers Substantially Boost Image SEO
    8 Min Read
    construction analytics
    5 Benefits of Analytics to Manage Commercial Construction
    5 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: 5 Dark Data Sources that Lead to Better Marketing Analytics
Share
Notification Show More
Latest News
big data mac performance
Data-Driven Tips to Optimize the Speed of Macs
News
3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
Artificial Intelligence
data analytics in sports industry
Here’s How Data Analytics In Sports Is Changing The Game
Big Data
data analytics on nursing career
Advances in Data Analytics Are Rapidly Transforming Nursing
Analytics
data analytics reveals the benefits of MBA
Data Analytics Technology Proves Benefits of an MBA
Analytics
Aa
SmartData Collective
Aa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Analytics > 5 Dark Data Sources that Lead to Better Marketing Analytics
AnalyticsExclusiveMarketingUnstructured Data

5 Dark Data Sources that Lead to Better Marketing Analytics

Jon Pilkington
Last updated: 2017/05/20 at 10:03 PM
Jon Pilkington
6 Min Read
Flat design doodle illustration concept of web development of analysis and seo
SHARE

Marketers have greater opportunities to reach target audiences today than ever before. There are endless ways to engage with prospects and customers thanks to the plethora of marketing channels, solutions, and approaches now available. And, when it comes to marketing analytics, the volumes of data these tools generate provide immense value – but that’s only if marketers can access all of the data required to get an accurate, holistic view of the business and then transform it into actionable intelligence.

Harnessing the power of data-driven insights requires the ability to quickly and easily access large amounts of data in multiple formats, across disparate systems. Unfortunately, as with other analytics domains, many marketing departments are still plagued by “dark data,” resulting in data retrieval challenges and forcing marketers to make strategic business decisions based on incomplete information.

Data that provides the most analytical value has traditionally been locked away in multi-structured or unstructured documents, such as text reports, web pages, PDFs, JSON and log files. The only way for marketers to use this information has been to manually rekey and reconcile the data, which are time-intensive and error-prone processes. Because the data is often deemed inaccessible, or not accessible in an acceptable timeframe, these information sources are too frequently “written off” or simply forgotten altogether – and hence, dark data is born. As a result, marketers only see part of the picture.

The good news is that self-service data preparation technologies are taking data out of the dark ages. With this technology, marketers can quickly and easily access data from virtually any source, including dark data housed in previously inaccessible multi-structured and unstructured documents, and then prepare, manipulate, enrich and blend it for use in marketing analytics tools. Users gain fast access to not only the right data but all of the data, needed to enhance decision making and deliver business value.

More Read

big data mac performance

Data-Driven Tips to Optimize the Speed of Macs

3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
Here’s How Data Analytics In Sports Is Changing The Game
Advances in Data Analytics Are Rapidly Transforming Nursing
Data Analytics Technology Proves Benefits of an MBA

Discovering and accessing marketing dark data can fill in the blanks and provide critical intelligence for improving performance and maximizing ROI on marketing dollars spent. Here’s a look at five marketing dark data sources that will increase insight and enhance analytics.

  • Salesforce Data Trends Over Time – Running a Salesforce query results in a snapshot of current data, but marketers need a bigger picture – one that lets them see things like how marketing leads and opportunities have been converting over the course of the quarter, or how the sales pipeline has been trending. Marketers must be able to take a daily snapshot report and have the ability to automatically and easily aggregate this data to see what is happening, and how marketing efforts are creating impact.
  • Lead Segmentation Data – Every day, marketers ask themselves if their campaigns are engaging target audiences and attracting new audiences for additional business opportunities. Accessing and using web data in marketing analytics can help provide responses to these outstanding questions.
  • Comprehensive Spend Analysis – As a best practice, marketers should be appending data from financial systems to analyze marketing program spend over time with the assurance that all costs are being counted. Bringing in prior months of reports from financial systems and blending them with CRM data can help monitor key metric trends like customer acquisition cost and marketing percentage of customer acquisition cost.
  • Competitive Benchmarks – How does marketing spend as a percentage of revenue compare to the competition? How does revenue growth compare over that same period? Extracting this data from quarterly financial reports like a 10Q report from Edgar can provide much needed added insight. This approach can also be used when evaluating brand and influencer awareness, and audience engagement on social media.
  • Market and Industry Research and Trends – Valuable data is commonly found within reports from third-party market research firms or within tables of information that live on websites or in PDF reports. Marketers who can unlock this data and transform it into an analytics-ready data set for better analysis can complement their campaigns and strategies with relevant and complementary market intelligence.

Increase Marketing ROI and Program Performance with Better Insights and Analytics

Marketing leaders and their teams face complex reporting challenges every day. They need to analyze many different types of data from disparate sources in various formats and systems. While marketers have embraced self-service analytics solutions, many still struggle with bringing data into these systems.

Self-service data preparation tools allow quick and easy access to all company data – including dark data – and facilitate rapid preparation for use in analytics tools. With this increased agility, marketers can get better insights to improve demand generation and lead nurturing streams; track detailed costs associated with activities captured in other internal and external systems; drill down on web analytics combining disparate sources; gain a competitive advantage analyzing customer and competitor online behavior and trends; and so much more.

With a detailed and comprehensive view of customer data, marketing activities and costs, marketing departments can play an instrumental role in helping their organizations strengthen their brand, enhance the prospect and customer experience, and build effective programs that grow revenue.

 

 

 

Jon Pilkington August 29, 2016
Share this Article
Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

big data mac performance
Data-Driven Tips to Optimize the Speed of Macs
News
3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
Artificial Intelligence
data analytics in sports industry
Here’s How Data Analytics In Sports Is Changing The Game
Big Data
data analytics on nursing career
Advances in Data Analytics Are Rapidly Transforming Nursing
Analytics

Stay Connected

1.2k Followers Like
33.7k Followers Follow
222 Followers Pin

You Might also Like

big data mac performance
News

Data-Driven Tips to Optimize the Speed of Macs

12 Min Read
3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows
Artificial Intelligence

3 Ways AI Has Helped Marketers and Creative Professionals Streamline Workflows

6 Min Read
data analytics in sports industry
Big Data

Here’s How Data Analytics In Sports Is Changing The Game

6 Min Read
data analytics on nursing career
Analytics

Advances in Data Analytics Are Rapidly Transforming Nursing

8 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

AI and chatbots
Chatbots and SEO: How Can Chatbots Improve Your SEO Ranking?
Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Exclusive
ai is improving the safety of cars
From Bolts to Bots: How AI Is Fortifying the Automotive Industry
Artificial Intelligence

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US

© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.

Removed from reading list

Undo
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?