MKT 449 Week 1 Web Analytics and Marketing Data Example

Four Systems, No Shared Answer: Web Analytics and Marketing Data Sources for a Vermont Wool Sock Company

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/449: Marketing Analytics

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Hollow Brook Sock Company and all figures are composites written for a model paper.

Hollow Brook Sock Company is a composite maker of merino wool hiking and everyday socks founded in 2011 in Burlington, Vermont. It sells through three channels: its own website, which brings in about 45 percent of revenue; a large online marketplace, about 30 percent; and 140 independent outdoor and ski shops in the Northeast and Mountain West, about 25 percent. Annual revenue last year was $6.2 million. Founder Grace Thibault spends about $780,000 a year on marketing, mainly search and social advertising, email and trade shows. She can see sales figures every day, but when she asks whether marketing is working, each system gives a different answer and none gives a complete one. This paper defines marketing analytics, inventories the company's data and tools and sets out the questions the course will answer.

What Marketing Analytics Is

Marketing analytics is the use of data, measurement and models to understand customers and markets and to improve marketing decisions. It includes describing what happened, diagnosing why, predicting what will happen and recommending what to do. Wedel and Kannan (2016) described how marketing has become data-rich, with information from transactions, websites, mobile devices, social media and sensors, and argued that the value lies in analytical methods that connect these data to decisions about customers, products, prices and communications while respecting privacy.

Does Analytics Pay Off?

Germann et al. (2013) surveyed senior managers at more than 200 large firms and found that deploying marketing analytics was associated with better firm performance, and that the link was stronger in industries with more competition and faster-changing customer preferences. They also found that support from top management and an analytical culture helped firms adopt analytics. The outdoor apparel market, with frequent new entrants and shifting styles, is the kind of market where the payoff should be high.

How Managers Use Metrics

Mintz and Currim (2013) surveyed managers about their use of marketing and financial metrics in decisions on activities such as advertising, pricing and promotions. They found that firm strategy, managers' experience and the type of activity influenced which metrics were used, and that greater metric use was associated with better performance of marketing-mix activities. The lesson for Hollow Brook is that metrics help when they are actually used in decisions, not only collected.

System 1: Web Analytics

The company's website uses a standard web analytics platform. It records visits, where visitors came from, such as search, social ads, email or direct entry, which pages they viewed, how long they stayed, whether they added items to the cart and whether they bought. It reports conversion rate, average order value and revenue by traffic source. Its blind spots are significant. It cannot see marketplace or shop sales, it loses track of people who switch devices and browser privacy settings increasingly block some tracking.

System 2: The Marketplace Seller Dashboard

The marketplace reports sales, units, page views of each product listing, advertising spending and the share of shoppers who bought after viewing. It provides little information about who the customers are, since the marketplace keeps that data. Hollow Brook cannot email these buyers or link them to its own customer records.

System 3: Wholesale Orders

The wholesale order system records each shop's orders by product, size and color, with dates and prices. It shows what shops buy, but not what they sell to shoppers, so slow sellers can sit on shelves without the company knowing until reorders stop.

System 4: The Email Platform

The email platform sends newsletters and automated messages, such as reminders to buyers who left items in a cart. It reports open rates, click rates and revenue from purchases made after clicks. Because the platform and web analytics count sales differently, their totals for the same campaign rarely match.

The Customer Survey

Once a year, the company surveys its email list about product satisfaction, how customers first heard of the brand and where else they buy. The survey reaches only customers who buy directly and who choose to answer, so it overrepresents loyal fans.

Each system is accurate about its own corner of the business and silent about the rest.

What the Inventory Shows

Hollow Brook has more data than it uses. Its main gaps are a view of the customer across channels, information about shop sell-through and any measure of brand awareness among people who have never bought. Its main risk is crediting the website and email for sales that marketing on other channels or in shops actually prompted.

Five Questions for the Course

The rest of the course will address five questions. First, how deeply has the brand penetrated its markets, and where can it grow? The first metric is the share of target households that bought in the past year, estimated from survey and sales data. Second, how well known is the brand among outdoor shoppers who have not bought? The first metric is aided and unaided awareness from a short panel survey. Third, how loyal are customers, and which ones are worth the most? The first metric is the repeat purchase rate within 12 months. Fourth, which marketing activities bring profitable sales? The first metric is cost per new customer by channel. Fifth, how should results be reported? The answer will be a monthly dashboard.

Who Will Do the Work

Hollow Brook has no analyst. The marketing manager, Owen Pratt, spends about four hours a week pulling reports. The plan for the course assumes he will keep doing so with a simple monthly routine rather than new software. A spreadsheet that combines exports from each system, with a tab for each question, is enough for a company of this size. If the analysis proves useful, the company can later consider a part-time analyst or a tool that joins the data automatically, but that decision should follow evidence that the questions lead to better choices.

Data Practices

Before analysis, the company will set three practices: consistent product codes across all systems, a monthly export of each system into one spreadsheet and a privacy notice explaining how customer data are used.

Conclusion

Marketing analytics turns data into decisions. Research shows that firms deploying analytics and using metrics tend to perform better, especially in competitive markets. Hollow Brook Sock Company already collects data from web analytics, a marketplace, wholesale orders, email and surveys, but each source sees only part of the business. Starting with five questions gives the company a reason to connect those sources and a path for the weeks ahead.

References

Germann, F., Lilien, G. L., & Rangaswamy, A. (2013). Performance implications of deploying marketing analytics. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 30(2), 114-128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.10.001

Mintz, O., & Currim, I. S. (2013). What drives managerial use of marketing and financial metrics and does metric use affect performance of marketing-mix activities? Journal of Marketing, 77(2), 17-40. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.11.0463

Wedel, M., & Kannan, P. K. (2016). Marketing analytics for data-rich environments. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 97-121. https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0413