Guest blogger: The Statistically Improbable Re-Rebirth of Cool
| Justin Kistner
Paul A. Barrett is the Customer Management Global Program Director for Teradata’s Communications, Media and Entertainment Industry Solutions group. Paul has over 20 years of industry experience and 15 years of internet marketing background. Prior to joining Teradata in 2006 he was the managing partner of Creative Convergence, a boutique management consulting firm. At Creative Convergence he built client relationships with companies such as Microsoft, AOL, Embratel, and other market leaders. Paul has an MBA in Marketing from George Washington University.
I had to take statistics about three times in college and grad school to be able to claim the credits. So of course one of my first jobs after getting my MBA was managing a marketing analytics group. We lived data – neural nets, regression analysis and predictive consumer behavior – I swam as hard as I could to keep up.
So I am simpatico to all the traditional marketers who are now getting swept up in a rising tide of cross-channel marketing data, analytical tools and statistical modeling, not to mention integrating marketing data with other enterprise data. New books like Beautiful Data, magazines with predictions about the impending rise to coolness of statisticians, tweets about #measure and even casual postings from my friends about what data geeks they are – these things excite me about the future of cool.
“The future is here it is just not evenly distributed” William Gibson
Marketing has always been cool and it has always been about data. But that data has often been simple and at times less than convincing. The science of marketing is finally getting the observable data it needs to gain credibility and to significantly improve the bottom-line.
So if you want to be cool in the future here are three major areas of interest for you:
Reach Beyond: As recently as five years ago the majority of the detailed data in a company was about customers. But now data is everywhere in marketing – more data about customers, campaigns, advertising interactions and increasingly, about brands, competitors and suppliers. Find those sources in your company and bring them into marketing and redefine how you measure your business.
Synthesize and Integrate: Lots of data is good, but it has to be mixed with other sources to reveal game changing truths. Synthesize web data from advertising, search, site visits, conversions and more. Synthesize online and offline data together. Synthesize marketing data with other enterprise data. Don’t be confined to customer integration, data can be synthesized geo-spatially and temporally to create new insights. We think you can double or triple the value of your web data by integrating it with other data.
Experiment: Nobody knows exactly which data will transform their campaign, their company or their market. Marketers have to take time to play with this new data, try, test and execute. We experimented with some data years ago and drove $100MM to the bottom-line by merging two sales models together – there is probably lots of opportunity in your company.
I am really interested in how companies are approaching these topics – are you in denial, running scared, or taking the bull by the horns. Let me know. Teradata and Webtrends have put together some great new offers in this space to help your organization get more value from the integration of your multi-channel marketing data and your other enterprise data. We will continue to evolve those offerings to meet your needs.
If you are interested in learning more in person, visit Webtrends and Teradata at some upcoming events – Webtrends EMEA Engage in London Oct 13-14, Teradata PARTNERS conference in Washington DC Oct 18-22, and eMetrics in Washington DC Oct 19-23. If you aren’t attending those events, you can learn more by participating in our joint webcast in November or by contacting your Webtrends or Teradata sales reps.