CMOs: 3 steps to integrate big data analytics into CRM

As a CMO, how you integrate big data analytics into your customer relationship management systems could spell the difference between success and failure in today's data-driven marketing era. As a graduate student in the Northwestern Medill Integrated Marketing Communications program, I have found two articles that can help you learn more about CRM analytics and its impact on building a comprehensive understanding of your customers’ needs and preferences. 

The article “The Future of CRM Analytics is AlreadyHere” points out the importance of applying analytics to customer relationship management efforts.In order to gain a 360-degree view of the customer, many companies have blended customer data, operational and transactional data and data analytics to develop comprehensive understanding of their customers. The integration of data analytics and CRM has proved success- the complete views of customers resulting from the integration have enabled these companies to generate meaningful insights about marketing campaigns and put them at a better positioned to identify and act on cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

source: http://crmsolutions.crmnext.com/

In the article “Five Reasons Why CRM Analytics are Essential for Success”, Marianne Cotter explains five reasons companies should integrate data analytics into CRM and use data and CRM analytics to tailor the customer experience for improved engagement and better profits. The five reasons she points out include better customer understanding, better understanding of the customer-facing operations, decision support, predictive modeling and benchmarking.
Based on these two articles and my graduate learning in the Northwestern Medill IMC program, here are three action items I recommend you consider:

• Adopt real-time and predictive analytics - be aware of real time tools and utilize them to process data in real time to connect with customers more immediately and deliver highly personalized experience. Tie predictive analytics with CRM to learn more about customers' buying behavior.

• Create expert team -recruit people with complementary skills who can bridge big data analytics with CRM. Have people with analytical skills who can understand structured and unstructured data working with business managers and IT people in a team.

• Cultivate interaction - besides monitoring customers and conducting big-data analytics on social media, interact with your customers by providing them more customized opportunities.

As a CMO in today’s data-driven economy, you really need to start thinking about harnessing the power of big data and integrating data analytics into CRM to facilitate smarter sales and better customer engagement. I recommend you look at these three action items and use them when develop a future strategy for big data and CRM.

Xinwei Zhang is a M.S. candidate of integrated marketing communication at Medill School, Northwestern University, specializing in Marketing Analytics. She is going to graduate in December 2015. With dual bachelor degrees in Psychology and Consumer Economics, she is passionate about analyzing consumer behavior and synthesizing data to actionable insights, stories and marketing solutions.
Any questions and comments? Contact me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

How to Measure Your Social Media Ripple Effect - Today!

Justin Bieber has 45.5 million Facebook fans.  Skittles has 22 million.  Taco Bell has a little less than 9 million.  So whose post worked the hardest for them?  Taco Bell.

When every dollar counts in todays economy you need to make sure you can show social media impact.   While studying effectiveness measures in the Northwestern Medill IMC program I found this simple, easy way to show the ripple effect of social media posts and how they work hard for your brand or business.  This blog will take you through an easy calculation to show your organization what impact social media posts are making and how you measure up against some of the big players in social.

Socialbakers, a social media company, has developed one measure that takes into account all available social media measures to come up with one deterministic score – engagement rate.  Engagement, to them, measures if your social media move did something – someone changed their behavior because of it and others will see the message as a result.  In essence how many social ripples took place in response to your post. 

http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/16/one-number-will-tell-you-why-audi-beats-mercedes-and-if-your-social-media-marketing-is-working/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Image courtesy of 5to9Branding.com

The measure is simple:  Count the number of reactions (tweets, likes, shares, comments, replies, etc.) you get per day divided by the number of social media moves you made, divided by the number of followers or fans you had that day X 100. 

This analysis works because it is not all about one single metric, like fans or retweets.  It measures real actions.  The best part – all metrics are publically available so you can track not only your own brands but any brand.

Let’s do the math.  Skittles made a post on July 22.  Doing the Facebook calculation the engagement rate is 0.051.

Taco Bell made a post on July 19 and doing the same calculation the engagement rate is 0.141. 

Justin Bieber wrote a post after the Teen Choice Awards which only received an engagement rate of 0.074.

All fan pages have impressively high numbers but the best engagement was seen after a post from the page with the lowest number of fans.  The post worked for them on that day.  The Taco Bell post had the most impactful ripple effect.

This engagement rate measure is so easy you need to start tracking today.  Score your social media work.  See how it stacked up against the brands you consider competitors.  Are you winning? 

Here are three simple action items that you can do right now to show the effect of your posts:

1. Calculate, calculate, calculate and find brands that are scoring high in engagement.  They could be direct competitors, peer companies or just cool brands or people.
2. Track their social media posts and see what posts score high engagement numbers.
3. Look at what they are posting about (questions, surveys, photos, funny tidbits), what time of day, what fans are saying and how they are sharing and try it with your brand.  

If your scores are lackluster you have all the information you need to become a social media marketing star.  Find comparisons and measure - constantly - to show effect.  Northwestern's Medill IMC program primes its students to measure the value of our work and this calculation is the best example of how you can refresh your measurement tools with a dynamic, value-added analysis.

Nancy Slivoski is currently a graduate student in the Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University.  She worked for over ten years at The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company in Communications and Analytics.  Nancy is looking to make her passion for analytics the focus of her next position.  She reads and posts information on Marketing and Social Analytics via her Twitter account @chgonancy.