By JD Nyland on August 4, 2014

Ear­lier this year, the theme of our annual Adobe Sum­mit in Salt Lake City was the “renais­sance of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing.” It was very fit­ting as we see how quickly the indus­try is evolv­ing, with busi­ness, mar­ket­ing, and IT all converging.

For dig­i­tal mar­keters, this renais­sance starts with think­ing about the idea of Big Data dif­fer­ently; mar­keters aren’t just col­lect­ing data nowa­days. Instead, data rel­e­vancy—or putting the data to work to meet busi­ness goals—is now essen­tial and a cen­tral focus for many mar­keters. Data isn’t enough; the num­bers must be action­able and enable smarter analysis.

(You can read the blog, “It’s Time to Rein­vent the Dig­i­tal Mar­keter,” from Adobe’s Senior Direc­tor of Strate­gic Mar­ket­ing, Matt Langie, for a more in-depth look at this shift in dig­i­tal marketing.)

Ana­lyt­ics plays a major role in this trans­form­ing mar­ket­ing land­scape, which was the theme of a panel I co-presented at Adobe Sum­mit called “The Future of Analytics.”

In the past, ana­lyz­ing all your data pro­vided cus­tomer insights after the fact. Analy­sis came in hind­sight. Now, dis­cov­er­ing cus­tomer insights and being able to act on them is eas­ier than ever before. More value can be extracted from the data to enhance mar­ket­ing efforts in real time; the data is smarter, and the analy­sis simpler.

Advances in ana­lyt­ics are crit­i­cally impor­tant for the rein­ven­tion of the mar­keter, and our cus­tomers are embrac­ing inno­va­tion to max­i­mize their mar­ket­ing efforts. For instance, pub­lish­ers are now able to opti­mize arti­cles, sto­ries, and videos in real time to max­i­mize engage­ment and ad impres­sions. And retail­ers have made it a pri­or­ity to lever­age data to per­son­al­ize and opti­mize the cus­tomer experience.

The ROI of this data-driven style of mar­ket­ing is clear: increased engage­ment, more ad impres­sions, bet­ter cus­tomer reten­tion, increased sales, etc. I believe three inno­va­tions in ana­lyt­ics are enabling mar­keters to rein­vent themselves.

1. Visual Data with Context

Ana­lyt­ics isn’t just num­bers and data any­more. Now, data is being cou­pled with con­text and con­tent to boost rel­e­vancy for an entire orga­ni­za­tion and build an emo­tional con­nec­tion to the numbers.

Tra­di­tional reports dis­play black-and-white data. It’s just about the num­bers. Adding con­text and con­tent enhances your reporting—the data is col­or­ful, Hi-Def. More impor­tantly, it con­nects peo­ple to their cam­paigns in a more visual way. With con­text and con­tent, your report­ing has the abil­ity to show how the num­bers are con­nected to the cus­tomer experience.

In some ways, con­text is avail­able in real time; pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, data visu­al­iza­tions, and real-time report­ing that offers insights like trend­ing prod­ucts or sto­ries. This merg­ing of data, con­text, and con­tent will con­tinue to evolve to incor­po­rate con­tent like web­site copy, prod­ucts, arti­cles, and videos to tie the num­bers to the cus­tomer experience.

2. Action­able Data

As ana­lyt­ics soft­ware con­tin­ues to improve, data is becom­ing sharper and more insightful—the data is smarter now. This smarter data lets mar­keters quickly iso­late cus­tomer insights, which is a key to greater data rel­e­vancy, and it’s enabling mar­keters to make bet­ter real-time decisions.

We’ve seen our cus­tomers use real-time action­able data in a few dif­fer­ent ways.

For instance, they’re using gran­u­lar data to opti­mize con­tent and cam­paigns. Our cus­tomers are also using smarter data to pro­vide rel­e­vant and per­son­al­ized offers to cus­tomers. This has enabled them to max­i­mize engage­ment and ad impres­sions. And they are also using real-time data to resolve cam­paign issues as soon as they arise, i.e. trend-spotting.

Put another way, smarter data enables orga­ni­za­tions to bet­ter iden­tify oppor­tu­ni­ties and dimin­ish risk.

3. Smarter Analysis

Before, data analy­sis was a time-intensive process. To deliver mean­ing­ful cus­tomer insights, it took time, and you didn’t have rel­e­vant cus­tomer data until it was too late. This is chang­ing; with smarter data, analy­sis is sim­pli­fied. You get bet­ter, visu­al­ized data that make insights eas­ier to iden­tify and respond to.

This shift has also made it so any­one can now mine data for insights because the tools are there for mar­keters and ana­lysts of all types to dig into the data. Now, busi­nesses big and small can take the data they’ve been col­lect­ing and uncover use­ful cus­tomer infor­ma­tion, which is dri­ving change in the way mar­keters work.

Every day, our cus­tomers rede­fine what dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing will mean in the future, and it’s been incred­i­ble to watch the ways they are using Adobe Ana­lyt­ics to respond to this need for rein­ven­tion. This blog was the first in a series that will high­light some of the ways mar­keters are using data and ana­lyt­ics to rein­vent the role of the dig­i­tal marketer.

JD Nyland

As director of product management for Adobe Analytics, JD Nyland leads a team of professionals that guide the development of the leading analytics platform for enterprises in the world. Nyland is responsible for the product strategy for Adobe Analytics, including mobile and video capabilities.