M A R K E T I N G I N T E L L IG E N C E P L AY B O O K

Data Analytics,
Optimization,
and Alignment
Turn Marketing Data into Action
for Your Entire Organization

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Introduction
Marketers now have access to more and better information than ever. In this digital-first
environment, every engagement across every channel generates data. In our previous
Marketing Intelligence Playbook, you learned how to integrate and harmonize your all
this data into a solid foundation. But what now? With your data prepared, it's time to
move to the juicy part: analyzing, optimizing, and aligning your business with insights.

Analysis Optimization Alignment

Understanding and Taking action on Teams collaborating
turning data into insights those insights effectively around data

Unlocking the power of raw data to create actionable insights for your entire
organization is the final step in your marketing intelligence strategy.

For most marketers, there's plenty of room to improve at this step: only 31% of marketers
say they're completely successful at evaluating return on marketing investment, and only
35% say they're completely successful at evaluating customer satisfaction.1

And it's clear where most marketers stumble.

Despite 98% of marketers agreeing that having
a complete, centralized view of all cross-channel
marketing is important, 71% still evaluate cross-
channel performance in siloes.1

So let's take a closer look at some concrete

areas to focus on and improve when it comes to
turning data into action. This playbook will help
you understand the basics of data analysis and
optimization, and learn how to set goals and
monitor performance. We will also cover how
to use visual reporting to answer stakeholder
questions, and how to leverage the power
of AI to surface actionable insights.

1 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

What Is Data Analysis
and Optimization?
Data analysis and optimization is the
process of turning your available data
into actionable insights.

80 % 80% of marketers say their

Creating a strong data foundation, as we ability to track ROI for each
marketing investment
learned from the Marketing Intelligence
needs needs improvement.
Playbook, is an important first step in
improvement
maximizing data’s impact; however it’s just
the beginning. Your collected data must
be analyzed to reveal insights, and those

11 %
insights need to be accessible to all team
members so that they can use them to
optimize their business impact. Once all
get real-time
these pieces are in place, your organization performance
can spend less time on data preparation,
and more time on data action.

27 % Only 11% get real- time

Automating this data analysis and performance alerts, and
optimization process is essential for 27% monitor cross-channel
efficient data sharing and speed-to- monitor performance monthly or less.
insight. In our 3rd Marketing Intelligence performance
montly
Report, only 11% of marketers said they
get real- time performance alerts, and
27% monitor cross-channel performance
monthly or less. Automated analysis can
dramatically speed this process.

In this guide we’ll explore how to use a

marketing intelligence strategy to create the
building blocks for analyzing, optimizing,
and aligning data.

2 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

 BENCHMARK

PERFORMANCE

Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug

How can a marketing
intelligence platform help?

Since marketing intelligence platforms

house all of your data — across
campaigns, tactics, and time — they
enable you to easily create effective
KPIs, goals, and benchmarks. With
their flexible and customizable
measurement calculations you can
enable use cases such as:

• Comparing how campaigns

Monitor Performance are performing across different
channels, and pausing
with KPIs, Goals, and underperformers based on cost,
engagement, or
Benchmarks conversion metrics

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are • Triggering alerts to your team’s

critical in data analysis. They surface the preferred channels — Slack, email,
mobile — if performance deviates
insights most important to your business
from expectations
and let you quantify marketing impact
consistently over time. However, they are Marketing intelligence platforms
not always available in a standardized allow you to spend less time digging
format. You often have to apply custom through your data, and more time
business logic to the raw data to unlock taking action where it’s needed. You
insights that were not natively available will not only be more efficient in
the present; you will also have the
within the source marketing platform.
information you need to inform your
future planning.

3 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

To create KPIs, you need a solid data foundation to tie data together across sources.

For example, to analyze marketing ROI, you would have to tie your spend across all
channel platforms to revenue from another platform.

When KPIs are in place, it’s time to set up monitoring. You can most effectively
automate your KPI monitoring through the use of goals
and benchmarks.

These quick visual cues guide your attention straight to your most immediate needs
and ensure you’re keeping your performance on track — or help you see what
needs optimization.

Goals

Establish a point of success that a

company wants to reach. Goals might Benchmarks
differ by KPI, campaign, or business
unit, so it is imperative that marketers Establish thresholds of success.
clearly establish their desired outcomes Perhaps there is an industry standard
and constantly track against them. for a given KPI that you don’t want to
fall below. Or maybe your company
has established, based on last year’s
performance, that any eCPM above a
given benchmark is unacceptable.

Whether it’s a goal or benchmark, tracking both in real time is imperative. Currently,
only 33% of of marketers strongly agree they gain insights fast enough for impactful
decision-making.1 If performance goes awry, tracking in real time lets companies
correct course immediately, rather than having to explain after the fact why they
didn't meet expectations.

4 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

Use Visualizations to
Tell Your Data’s Story
Data is most impactful when it tells
a story. That’s why many marketers
use dashboards and reports to create
accessible data stories for all team How can a marketing
members, tailored to their specific intelligence platform help?
business needs. KPIs, goals, and
benchmarks are the building blocks A strong marketing intelligence
platform can help you achieve
of this visual reporting.
effective visualizations through
accessible tools that turn your data
Through visual reporting, marketers foundation into a story.
can communicate the results of
their programs and campaigns to all Marketing intelligence platforms
house all of the marketing data
stakeholders. Dashboards let all teams
necessary to create effective,
collaborate so that they can optimize no-code visualizations.
campaigns in real time.
Rather than spending time writing JS,
To be effective, dashboards need to HTML, or CSS, marketing intelligence
answer all stakeholder questions. platforms give marketers out-of-the-
Whether it's top-line results for executives box, drag-and-drop solutions that help
or drilldowns for analysts — everyone them quickly turn data into compelling
visual stories, so your teams can
should be able to find the insights and
collaborate more effectively and
optimizations they need in a single place. make better decisions to move your
marketing and business forward.

And because marketing intelligence

platforms are flexible, you can build
filtered and specific visualizations
for each stakeholder. This ensures
everyone answers their own business
questions while working out of one
system of record.

5 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

In order to successfully visualize your data, you need effective dashboards.

Planning for effective visualizations requires a strategic approach based on what the
specific dashboard should enable viewers to do.

1. Consider the purpose of the dashboard.

• What questions does it need to answer?

• Is the correct data available to answer those questions?

• Are there sub-questions or drilldowns that also need to be planned out?

2. Match the purpose to the flow and visual elements.

Once you’ve determined the story your data needs to tell, use visual elements to help
viewers efficiently explore the data, answer questions, and accomplish necessary tasks.

Some considerations when organizing

your dashboard:

• Consider using questions as graphical

headlines, so your reader knows the
purpose of the visual

• Create a page layout in which the

visuals proceed from a top line to a
deeper view of available data

• Create ways for users to interact with

and filter to the data points most
relevant to their business needs

6 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

Automate Discovery with the Power of AI
Modern marketers need to monitor the performance of an overwhelming number of
data sources in their cross-channel ecosystems. Monitoring each channel, campaign,
region, business unit, and any other pivot can be an impossible task. Prioritizing what's
critical, and automating wherever possible, is the only way to move beyond data and
get quickly to insights.

The complexity behind all this marketing data requires solutions that will
effectively uncover the “what” and “why” of the stories the data provides,
and allow marketers to make real-time decisions that reflect rapidly
changing campaigns.

That’s why many marketers are leveraging AI to lessen this time burden. AI can make
marketers more efficient by automating data discovery so marketers can focus on data-
driven action. Marketing-focused AI can scan all available data to quickly help uncover
hidden value and optimization opportunities in cross-channel marketing data.

These opportunities include changes over time, deviations from goals, or cross-channel
optimizations. With a rapidly evolving marketing landscape, efficiency is especially critical.

7 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

How Does AI-Assisted
Marketing Work?
AI-assisted marketing optimization begins
at the data integration phase, with no-code
integration of all of your sources.
How can a marketing
intelligence platform help?
Then, when you’re ready for the analysis
phase, AI can use automated regression AI is built into marketing intelligence.
modeling and statistical analysis methods Marketing intelligence platforms
to reveal insights — and optimization not only store all of your essential
paths — across all of your data. business data in one centralized
location, but enable embedded AI to
AI can give you access to strategic tweaks parse through that data and uncover
so you can capitalize on what’s working and powerful insights.
course-correct what’s not. This happens
This allows marketers to spend
in real time, at the pace of marketing, more time on data action versus
allowing for day-by-day improvements to data discovery. This makes them
keep your KPIs performing on track. more efficient, helping them find
connections that they may have
This analysis is possible through the use missed when doing manual analysis.
of predictive intelligence and prescriptive
AI not only helps marketers make the
action.
most of the data they have access to;
it also provides rapid access to the
Predictive intelligence mines through large insights most critical to the business.
volumes of data in order to identify valuable
relationships between cause and effect. And because AI is built-in, your
teams don’t have to spend time and
It uses those patterns and relationships to resources building out your own
make educated predictions. solutions.Let your one system of
record do it all for you.
Prescriptive action describes the process
by which AI uses predictions to suggest a
range of prescribed actions that improve
outcomes. When combined with predictive
analytics, prescriptive action can suggest
options that take advantage of future
opportunities while mitigating future risks.
And there's a big opportunity for growth in
AI functionality. Only 23% of marketers
agree their organization's AI-driven insights
performance exceeds their expectations.1

8 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

 How can a marketing
intelligence platform help?

A strong marketing intelligence

platform will:

• Align all your teams to one

common system of record

• Connect harmonized and

accurate marketing data to any
business intelligence platform for
use across the enterprise

• Create visuals for all stakeholders

that allow them to easily ingest and
customize their view of the data

Align Your Teams • Deliver key insights to their

preferred communications
So your business’ data has been pulled channels — like Slack —
in from all your disparate systems and automatically
analyzed with AI to surface insights.
With a proper marketing intelligence
KPIs, benchmarks, and goals have platform, all members of your
been set. You’ve set up dashboards organization are aligned. Marketers
with custom visualizations per use — no matter where they are located —
case, so every stakeholder has specific, can quickly identify which marketing
real-time insights to optimize their plans need budget adjustments to
business objectives. Stakeholders will optimize ROI. Sales teams know
which messaging is driving the highest
also be notified via their preferred
conversion rate with their target
communication channels if any goals audience. And everyone understands
or benchmarks need attention. This marketing’s true impact on the
structure is how you begin to bring all business’ bottom line.
your teams into alignment.

9 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

Formerly, sales and marketing teams frequently worked in silos, separated from the rest
of an organization's operations and reporting. But marketers recognize this needs to
change: Shared marketing and sales business objectives was indicated to be absolutely
essential or very important for driving growth and improving customer experience by
74% and 75% of marketers, respectively — the second most of any response.

Align with Commerce

If you align your marketing with your

commerce team you can gain insight
into whether there is enough inventory
on hand to support continuing your
marketing campaign or if supply chain
difficulties may raise costs and impact
the products you market.
Align with Sales

If you connect marketing data with product

offerings from your credit card sales team,
you will gain a better understanding
of which cards to use to advertise to
which audiences, and you can automate
messages to those teams via their favorite
communications channel when one credit
card is outperforming expectations.

To succeed, decisions are no longer made in silos, or with incomplete pictures of

performance. Once data is harmonized across an organization, it provides unique,
cross-organizational insights and informs accurate, business-driving decisions.

10 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment

Conclusion
In the current marketing landscape, there is unprecedented access to raw data
and information. But, as we discussed, turning this data into insights for the entire
organization is easier said than done.

A marketing intelligence platform, however, helps turn this raw data into a thoughtfully
designed and highly automated process for data optimization, aided by AI. These
platforms allow all aligned organizational stakeholders to have quick, easy access to the
information that matters most to them. This enables immediate action on business-
driving decisions.

Use marketing intelligence to optimize both your business and your time, and make
the shift from data discovery to data action.

Streamline Data Optimization with Marketing Cloud Intelligence

Marketing Cloud Intelligence was designed to solve data optimization challenges in the
modern marketing environment. Intelligence will help you discover and capitalize on
what’s working and course-correct what’s not. Spend less time analyzing and more time
acting with AI-driven insights. Create marketing dashboards with ease to visualize your
KPIs. Put the right information at everyone’s fingertips with 24/7 interactive marketing
reports. Empower every decision maker with customized dashboards and reporting —
so your teams and partners can make smarter decisions.

Want to learn more about how Salesforce can streamline your organization’s data
optimization process and get your teams in alignment?

Request a demo

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3rd Edition "Marketing Intelligence Report", 2022

1 1 | Marketing Intelligence Playbook: Data Analytics, Optimization, and Alignment