It stands to reason that a marketer’s job is one of the most difficult today; consumer engagement is not even an identifiable relic of its former self.  Consumers interact with brands on their own terms and in their own ways. What used to be a straightforward progression of awareness to purchase on the path to purchase continuum has been replaced by an intricate playbook of multiple customer touchpoints with no clear, identifiable sequence for data connection explanation.  Awareness is no longer a starting point for such customer analysis, rather it has become the tipping point.  Robust analytics now trigger a range of behind-the-curtain actions to better understand the consumer. In this post, I will show you how you can take learnings from your own analytics efforts to drive deeper engagement with your target audience and positively impact future customer conversion. Analytics is everything today, this we know.  With our precarious economy keeping budgets tight, never has the responsibility been more critical to measure and quantify campaign effectiveness among marketers today.  Brands incorporate data from multiple channels via sophisticated platforms to create a complete picture of consumer behavior.  They do so synthesizing data through the lens of multiple filters among distinct customer segments to gain insights and direct understanding into how consumers interact with Here at wedü, our client base expects us to deliver clear and actionable insights from our datamining efforts. Suffice it to say, analytics comprises a great deal of the work we do at each stage of our client’s marketing campaign lifecycle.  While this process can be at times rather intimidating, we have found a series of distinct commonalities among those companies who are correctly placing data analysis to work for them in their day-to-day marketing.  When combined properly, the end result is a recipe for increased sales and customer loyalty.  Here’s a snapshot.

 Step 1: Define Your Touchpoints

Simple enough, right?  Don’t be so certain.  This step goes well beyond standard online performance data such as email campaign metrics and web site analytics.  Focus needs to be extended to other offline and online channels too.  For instance, are you logging metrics such as the # of incoming leads via a toll-free phone number?  What about sales derived through your social media channels, pay-per-click advertising or even trade show engagement?  Is the duration and end result of these conversations being captured? Connecting the dots between your various external marketing touchpoints builds a framework to garner customer data that can in turn be mined to support all of your channels.  Bottom line is where you can optimize, do it!  You will be able to identify your company’s strongest influencers.  You will also have an unfiltered lens into how your customers move back and forth within these channels as they consider your products/services both online and offline.

Step 2: Optimize Your Point-of-Sale Data

Bricks-and-mortar retailers already use data gathered at the register to generate relevant coupons that store personnel print and deliver to consumers on the spot.  Presuming you have a POS strategy in place, how are you extending this concept to your other channels: mobile, email, or if relevant, your catalog business?  They may serve different purposes individually but still collectively pool together as part of a critical, cohesive purchasing pattern.  Be sure to approach this data optimization in a holistic manner; it will prove to be a rewarding exercise as opposed to a costly mistake.