Start paying attention to data trends instead of data attribution: Ashley from InfoSync

Ashley started as a Graphic Designer but always had a always had a passion for writing and creating which naturally led her to embrace a marketing role. She has worn various hats beyond creating writing and deploying marketing strategies for tasks, and right now she is working as Marketing Communication Manager at InfoSync

I think that we’re going to see a lot more tools coming out to help marketers without retribution. and I think we’re gonna see a lot more companies kind of veer away from the vanity metrics and start paying attention to data trends instead of data attribution.

0:27My journey in marketing and communications has really been working for midsize companies who are already well established and then coming in as the first-ever marketing person, I started as a graphic designer, and received my Bachelor of Arts and graphic design but I’ve always had a passion for writing and creating. So that naturally led me to embrace the marketing role, starting in a non-profit hospice and eventually moving to my current role in BPO business process outsourcing. I have worn a lot of hats so beyond creating writing and deploying marketing strategies for tasks. I’ve been a part of various company projects. I was the senior culture captain for our culture team. I’ve sat in on board meetings as a note, taker assisted Ceos and COOs with various needs. And just at the beginning of this year, I led a company-wide communication for the rollout of a new time tracking system. So being a part of so many various initiatives really taught me the importance of effective communications. I have found that the challenge for many companies during any kind of project is identifying those key stakeholders and their needs and then making sure that that communication not only reaches everyone who needs to hear it but also making sure the communication is clear and that we are communicating the why behind any changes, decisions or initiatives and the benefits for me, I think learning to be an effective communicator internally has helped me be a better communicator within our marketing practices. Again, identifying the why and the benefit of knowing those key stakeholders and being able to relate to their needs. I have really developed a passion for taking complicated or boring content like BPO and creating a story that makes sense to my audience with educational content around our business, the challenges they might be facing, and offering a clear path to overcome those challenges.

Understanding data

2:31I’m pretty new to the data field. We’ve been deploying marketing strategies across our digital channels for years, but within the last 12 months, we’ve really started looking at the data to see what’s working and what’s not. We knew something we were doing was working, but how do we do it better? And you know, why is it working here? Why is it not? So my first experience, we actually implemented a CRM, an automated marketing platform and I am beginning to look at certain metrics beyond web leads beyond our sorry, beyond what traffic, and beyond social media. you know, we generally looked at those key vanity metrics before, but now we’re looking at what is that revenue that marketing is actually bringing in and what sources are these leads coming in from the marketing standpoint? Is it campaigns, Is it trade shows, is it lead generation, is it social media. So really that was kind of what launched my interest into the data because being able to see, wow, you know, this is how much revenue we’re bringing in and so what I’m doing is working that to me is the biggest, biggest motivator by far.

My favorite tools for data insights

I use various tools. Right? So we have google analytics for website traffic hoot suite for our social media. We are a salesforce customer and part dot so we use both of those for you to track our success and our revenue. And then I will say I track my web leads the old-fashioned way in an Excel document just so I can see them and I can compare them to the CRM and make sure that everything lines up and is the way that it’s supposed to.

The go-to metric

My favorite two metrics that I look out for are our web leads coming in and then the revenue opportunity attached to those leads, I will say that attribution has been and continues to be the biggest challenge in marketing when you’re trying to track metrics, especially since there’s so many dark social channels or dark marketing channels that you can’t track, you can’t track that buyer journey from start to finish and every touch point, right? Because you just can’t, so we take all of that data and we look at trends over time. We know for a fact after looking at our data trends that if our social activity or digital marketing activity is down, our web traffic goes down and then our web leads go down and then our convergence goes down. Right? So we know even though in our crm our data doesn’t say, well this person came from social media or this person read your blog or this person saw this video listen to your podcast. We can’t attribute to that. But we know if we’re not doing those things then we are losing those leads.

Integrating data into campaigns

5:39We know for a fact that people love stories and everything that we do is to try to tell a story. So I also know based on campaign performance, that nobody really cares about sales tax or attachments but they love success stories and they love videos that tell a story and they want to hear from other customers. Right? So we take all of that data. If we know that those are the things that are getting clicks based on our campaign rates that are campaign performance, then we’re going to incorporate more of that and mean more on that type of content and less on company-based content like sales decks and white papers. And I would say it that not just from a marketing standpoint but our sales team as well. So they’re gathering data all the time from customers and then they’re bringing it back to marketing and marketing is saying, okay, so this is what we need to create. If the customer is constantly asking these common questions like what does your ap process look like or what does your finance look like? Then we need to create something that tells that story and walks in through that process so that sales can take that out and have it on hand for their next conversation.

My 2cents

6:56My advice would be to learn it and learn it, learn it sooner rather than later, and lean on that data because that data is going to continue to make you better and that data can solve different problems for you.

7:09For me personally, our data has aligned our sales and marketing teams so that we’re driving towards the same goal and we understand each other even better than we ever did before.