Turning Your Marketing Team in Data Wonks


Marketing ROI has never been sexier… or more possible.

With today’s data analytics, digital marketing spend, and marketing automation systems, the opportunities are ripe for changing the ways that we approach marketing and its management.

Direct marketing professionals are ahead of the trends here, having focused on response rates, revenue generation, and list management long before these things rose to their current level of popularity.

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There are new positions showing up in marketing organizations to address this need, ranging from marketing operations managers to marketing data scientists. CEOs across industries are now learning a whole new set of acronyms (like SEO and SQL) as the CMO and CIO are working more closely together.

This change has very real implications for the marketing organization overall. People who were attracted to marketing and have performed exceptionally well in their previous roles might make a smooth transition to the new world of data accountability.

Here are three ways to help:

Demystify Data

Wanting to make data-driven decisions is all well and good, but if the data that would drive those decisions are not easily accessible, then the effort is for naught. Make sure that the metrics you want to see are available to your team.

This requires the insight to be in data form (that is, systems and report structures in place) and for the team who needs the data to have permissions to access it. I have heard of organizations where the marketing organization wanted to measure lead-to-opportunity conversions, but didn’t have access to the CRM system from which this data might be pulled.

This article was published in the Puget Sound Business Journal, Denver Business Journal, Los Angeles Business Journal, as well as other American City Business Journals.

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