• by Mike Zell , July 21, 2014

Working in client services for an analytics consultancy has taught me a few things along the way. 

I’ve learned that today’s empowered consumers will not be confined. Rather, they move fluidly among a triplicate of segments: paid, owned, and earned channels. They convert when it’s agreeable to them. And they share their experiences—positive or negative—amongst thousands of others via social media channels.

Providing digital measurement and actionable insight to global brands has shown us that while this makes for a dynamic consumer experience, it presents challenges in measuring across traditional channels. 

For example, how does a brand understand the correlation between a real-time social promotion and in-store purchases? Or, how does a marketing group accurately measure the consumer conversion path from phone to tablet to desktop?

The recent 2014 World Cup marketing mania highlighted the fact that brands are constantly seeking to understand the fluid cross-channel journey of their customer. And why is that?

· They need to be able to assign ROI to social campaigns.

· They need to know how geolocation is affecting user behavior.

· They need device specific segmentation for optimized experiences and personalization initiatives.

Having created, tested and scaled marketing programs that deliver measurable results for more than a decade, I’ve been able to help clients address those aforementioned needs while gleaning a telescopic view into what’s working and what’s not in the age of the empowered consumer.

Here are the top three trends I’ve noticed among the most successful data-driven companies:

They have executive confidence in their data  

Data management might not be sexy, but it’s a must. Gaining a 360-degree view of your consumer (or at least a 180-degree view for some) requires a scalable process for connecting and analyzing all your disparate sources of data.

The number-one complaint we hear from marketers at Fortune 500 companies is that they don’t trust their data. Whether it’s a technical data capture issue or an inability to even quantify how many unique users a company has across mobile, web, or social, if you don’t have executive confidence, that’s a one-way ticket to a undermining the core of any analytics strategy. Rock-solid data management is effectively the foundation that facilitates both access to your data and organizational trust in your analytics strategy. 

The most successful brands have forged internal partnerships in order to incrementally drive overall site revenue.

What use is data if brands aren’t able to make better experiences for their customers?

Companies know they need to be testing the pages and events in their conversion funnels, but often struggle in knowing what to prioritize.

It’s easy to optimize one portion of the site at the expense of another, but the most successful brands have forged internal partnerships between content owners, analysts, engineering, and marketing decision-makers with the goal of incrementally driving overall site revenue.

Creating and gaining organizational buy-in for testing priorities is vital for the long-term success of your company’s optimization campaign.

They know how to deliver data in an engaging, relevant and actionable way

Evangelizing data throughout an organization requires a deep understanding of existing internal audiences and the way they need to consume data to execute their jobs successfully. Segmenting your audience by role—analyst, marketing/business manager, and executive leadership—allows you to pinpoint the data needs of each group and deliver accordingly. A successful data roadmap will outline both near- and long-term goals for success.

The companies that can deliver data in an engaging, relevant and actionable way throughout the organization will be strongly positioned to deliver targeted relevant experiences to today’s empowered consumer.