In today’s fast-paced digital marketplace, marketing success is increasingly driven by data. Because smart, impactful marketing decisions rely on analytics, Southeastern Oklahoma State University developed the online Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a Concentration in Data Analytics program.
Data analytics and consumer expectations have raised the bar in most markets to a level that is difficult to understand without expertise in this discipline. At the same time, the volume, variety and velocity of data in the field continue to increase, making well-trained marketing analytics professionals highly sought after and essential to the future of the industry.
What Exactly Is Marketing Analytics?
According to email marketing company Mailchimp, marketing analytics is a “math-based discipline that seeks to find patterns in your marketing data to increase actionable knowledge that you can use in your marketing strategy to improve your marketing performance. Analytics employs statistics, predictive modeling, and machine learning to reveal insights and answer questions.”
The power of information is in its aggregation and interpretation, which forms the framework of marketing analytics. Analysis of data offers two main benefits:
- To learn how well marketing campaigns and activities are performing
- To determine what gets better marketing results across channels
This is crucial because humans generate tremendous amounts data constantly. In fact, an estimated 181 zettabytes of data will be created in 2025, which is about 1.45 trillion gigabytes per day, and data volumes are expected to double every three years, highlighting why expertise in analytics is more important than ever.
Brands collect data from consumer interactions across devices such as TVs, smartphones, laptops and gaming consoles. They track a wide range of activities, including online purchases, app downloads, social media use, notification preferences and geolocation.
What Can Analytics Accomplish?
Data offers marketers the opportunity to acquire detailed insights and develop descriptive and predictive models to target and engage their consumers more effectively. It enables them to answer marketing questions more precisely, allowing them to develop more strategic campaigns.
In fact, analytics can help answer most questions in marketing, including:
- Who is buying the products and why?
- Are we offering the right products to our consumers?
- How do we help consumers find our products more efficiently?
- How are our marketing initiatives performing?
- How well are our competitors performing?
- What is the best media allocation mix for our marketing investments?
Specific Applications for Marketing Analytics
Business professionals can use marketing analytics for a number of disciplines:
- Personalization of online shopping:Online retailers like Amazon, Wayfair and Best Buy continually gather information about user preferences and shopping behavior. Intelligent, machine-learning algorithms use this data to predict customers’ current and future needs, ultimately encouraging greater purchasing and order volumes from customers. It also enables increasingly effective email and social media promotions, with personalized landing pages.
- Gathering product intel:Analytics enables organizations to better synthesize data sets, including focus groups, polls, surveys, and studies of online behavior and buying patterns. The information discovered through these processes helps organizations to align products, features and price points with consumer demand and present precisely what consumers want.
- Lead scoring and segmentation:Analytics allows marketing and sales to collaborate by scoring leads during a consumer’s purchasing journey. Scoring leads may be direct selling through sales or email, or “nurturing” the prospect further down the sales funnel until the consumer is ready to make a purchase. Advanced analytics enable marketers to create accurate customer lifetime value (CLV) predictions early in the process so that resources are allocated to the best leads.
- Improving the customer journey:Analytics enables marketers to “map” the customer journey. This is how they develop a comprehensive understanding of how prospects first discover products and services, learn to engage and proceed through other touchpoints to become more frequent purchasers. The data output through this process enables marketers to make smarter investments in improving the customer experience at each step. Results can include more opportunities for cross-selling and compelling happy customers to share product reviews on social media.
Marketing analytics empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions across personalization, product development, lead management and the customer journey, making expertise in this discipline essential for anyone looking to succeed in modern marketing.
Advance Your Career With an MBA in Data Analytics
The growing complexity of marketing analytics demands professionals who can turn data into a strategic advantage. Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s online MBA in Data Analytics degree prepares you to meet this challenge, combining advanced business principles with specialized analytics training that today’s employers actively seek.
This data analytics MBA degree equips you with the technical skills and strategic thinking needed to excel in data-driven marketing roles. Whether you’re looking to advance in your current organization or transition into marketing analytics, Southeastern’s flexible online format allows you to build expertise while maintaining your professional commitments.
Learn more about Southeastern Oklahoma State University’s online MBA in Data Analytics program.