We are in a world where data is growing vital as a decision-making tool, particularly as technologies like cloud computing and even hot trends like artificial intelligence, take shape. In fact, the statistics show that the total amount of data created and consumed globally has grown from 2 zettabytes to 64.2 zettabytes in the past decade!
Well, as a marketer, you can harness the growing data points to make informed decisions and drive strategic initiatives. Talking of data points, here are some of the top marketing data sources that can empower you to make informed decisions and drive successful marketing and sales campaigns.
1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
As a marketer, you can tap into your enterprise CRM tools such as Salesforce CRM, HubSpot, and Zoho as a source of data to derive insights.
These CRM tools hold essential customer data, including contact information, purchase history, customer interactions and more. In other words, integrating CRM data with marketing efforts can help you gain a 360-degree view of your customer base.
This comprehensive understanding will enable you to identify things like upsell opportunities, plus you can personalise your marketing campaigns. The data will help you devise ways to improve your customer retention strategies.
2. Email Marketing Platforms
Email marketing is one of those nice tools for customer engagement. Other than this, the data generated from email campaigns is another excellent data source you can use.
For example, you can use email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and SendGrid to gain insights on your email campaign campaigns through metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.
Analysing this kind of data can help you refine your email marketing strategies and segment your audience more effectively. Again, you will be able to deliver personalised content that resonates with your recipients.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is another popular source of data you can use as a marketer in the digital domain. It is a free web tracking tool that offers a comprehensive view of website traffic, user behaviour, and conversion data.
“This way, you can track website key performance indicators (KPIs) such as page views, bounce rates, and conversion rates to assess the effectiveness of your online presence. The beauty is that it is a tool that allows you to drill deep into these metrics and even create custom reports.” – says Jacek Zmudzinski, Team Lead at MakoLab. In fact, you can take it a step further by pulling data from the Google analytics platform to build your own dashboards. In this case you will have to install an IDE such as Anaconda, which will allow you to use a programming language such as Python to pull data via the Google Analytics API and build your custom analytics dashboards.
💡 Just remember that IDEs like Anaconda will install lots of package tools and server files on your computer. So, you might want to uninstall it once you are done. Here is a nice guide on how to uninstall anaconda on Mac completely. You can also try a lightweight version known as the Miniconda.
Industrial marketing quant research, including email marketing, aims to analyze customer behavior, preferences, and engagement metrics to optimize outreach strategies and drive impactful results in B2B environments.
4. Social Media Data
You can also leverage the power of social media data for strategic insights. Social media platforms have inbuilt analytics pertaining to metrics like your audience demographics, engagement, and content performance.
If you are running paid ads on social media, you can also use Ad campaign analytics tools. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager offer detailed insights into your ad performance.
You can track metrics like impressions, click-through rates, and conversion metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. Analysing this data allows for real-time optimisation, ensuring that ad spend is allocated efficiently and driving maximum return on investment.
Well, you can use these insights to tailor content to your target audience, identify the best-performing channels, fine-tune your social media strategies, optimise content for specific audiences, measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns, and create more engaging content.
5. Market Research Surveys
In-depth market research surveys are another excellent data source that can help you understand your target audience, industry trends, competitive landscapes, and customer preferences.
In this case, tools like Zonka Feedback, SurveyMonkey and Typeform allow you to collect quantitative and qualitative data, uncovering valuable insights for product development, customer satisfaction, and brand positioning.
You can also use the likes of Nielsen, Statista, and other industry-specific research reports to provide you with a broader perspective into your market. This external data helps you in benchmarking performance, identifying market gaps, and refining strategies to stay ahead of your competition.
6. Ecommerce Analytics
If you are operating in the ecommerce marketing space, platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento offer detailed insights into online sales, customer behaviour, and product performance.
💡 In this regard, you can analyse metrics such as average order value, cart abandonment rates, and customer lifetime value, which can come in handy to help your business optimise its online storefronts and marketing strategies to drive revenue growth.
Wrapping up
It is without doubt that the right data is becoming a key part of successful marketing strategies. This is why, as a marketer, it is time to understand your way around collecting and analysing data from diverse sources. This will help you gain that holistic understanding of your audience, then refine your strategies, and drive measurable results. Ultimately, getting these data-driven insights will play a role in setting you apart from your competition!