Useful but impractical, handy but unwieldy, and trusty but untrustworthy, spreadsheets can be a polarizing tool for marketing management.

On the one hand, most marketing leaders have always used spreadsheets—it’s understandably what they’re accustomed to using, so why rock the boat? Investing in and learning the nuances of an unfamiliar product can be intimidating, especially when there’s a learning curve. It’s also important to note that spreadsheets can, indeed, get the job done just fine if there aren’t a ton of moving parts within the marketing organization.

However, the reality is that spreadsheets aren’t the most useful tool for every marketing organization—particularly the complex ones.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Effective Planning, Data Visualization, Martech, Marketing Technology, marketing measurement

At the start of the year, we took a deep dive into the concept of agile marketing and what it takes to adopt the approach for your marketing team: proper planning and training and, crucially, a collaborative and centralized planning solution (among other things, of course).

In a newly released Gartner report, the research and advisory firm underscores the importance of centralization, as well as the continued growth of agile practices. According to a survey of more than 400 marketing leaders, almost two-thirds of marketing teams are either “fully or primarily” centralized.

“CMOs are evolving their teams through increased centralization, more functional alignment and continued exploration of agile marketing practices,” Gartner says. “These changes are helping build more scalable, flexible and resilient marketing organizations.”

So, what does it take for marketing leaders to achieve this centralized approach?

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Effective Planning, Marketers, Data Visualization, Marketing Insights, Campaigns

If you’re ready to leave the trials and tribulations of 2020 marketing in the dust, you might be excited to learn about a new concept that’s been floating around: 2020.5.

With the end of the first half of 2020 now at our doorstep, why not commemorate the milestone by rethinking your strategy for the second half? (Unless, of course, your year has been a breeze, marketing-wise – in that case, carry on as usual.)

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Effective Planning, Business Intelligence, Data Visualization, Marketing Technology, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, marketing data, Marketing performance management, marketing strategy

Is your company’s data analytics practice up to snuff, or are there things you could improve? During Adobe’s recent virtual Summit, two analytics experts teamed up to offer tips and tricks on bringing a “data-driven, decision-making culture” to your organization, starting with democratizing your data.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Marketing Automation, Marketing Personalization, Data Visualization, marketing data, Marketing Performance, marketing strategy, marketing

Around this time of the the year, businesses project what their overall revenue will look like in the next. It’s an essential process that’s needed to create the year’s budget and align it to an overall business plan and strategy.

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Topics: Data Visualization

Event marketing is one of the most important aspects of the marketing budget at many companies, yet the important data still often remains offline, making it harder to better track your event success.

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Topics: Data Visualization

Conventional wisdom holds that the more marketing data we have, the better. Data can show us so much, but it seldom comes in a that’s actionable or easy to understand. And the more data we track, the harder it can be to translate it into meaningful insights.

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Topics: Hive9, Data Visualization, Marketing Insights