It’s been nearly five years since we posted a blog denouncing the use of spreadsheets for complex marketing performance management.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Demand generation, Data silos, Marketing Budgeting, Marketers, marketing measurement, marketing data, collaboration

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

Happy Super Bowl Sunday! Whether you’re thrilled or crushed you won’t see the Patriots - say what? - in the big game this year, you’re bound to be entertained by at least a few exceedingly pricey commercials, which are estimated to sell for roughly $175,000 per second. Yup, according to CNBC’s estimates, it’ll cost a company a total of $5.25 million for 30 seconds of advertising this year, which is up from $37,500-$42,500 per spot back in 1967, the year of the first Super Bowl.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Martech, marketing measurement, marketing data, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance

C.S. Lewis authored the often quoted saying that “two heads are better than one.” Why? “[N]ot because either is infallible,” the British writer said, “but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.” Of course, Lewis wasn’t referring to marketing strategy, but the quotation proves an apt concept in this space, particularly when it comes to effective budgeting.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Budgeting, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, marketing data, agile marketing

In the fourth season of The Office, Michael Scott, laden with financial troubles, decided he needed to declare bankruptcy, leading him to announce to his colleagues, “I declare bankruptcy!”

Spoiler: His verbally declaring bankruptcy didn’t automatically launch the legal process. In the marketing world, the same can be said for deciding to adopt an entirely new approach for your team. For instance, agile marketing - becoming more popular in the B2B community in particular - can’t be implemented by waving a magic wand and assuming everyone is on board with the concept. Instead, it takes proper planning, training, and, importantly, a collaborative and centralized platform.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Marketing Insights, Marketing performance management, Marketing Performance, marketing strategy, agile marketing

One of the best quotes about planning ahead comes from that iconic Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” This is particularly apt in the world digital marketing, where a lack of specific strategies to achieving clear goals will sink any business, big or small. For that reason, we’ve listed five features every marketer needs to look for when selecting an effective marketing-planning software solution.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Financial Planning, Revenue Attribution, Marketing Budgeting, Marketing Insights, marketing measurement, alignment

Spreadsheets were developed to manipulate numbers, not to juggle marketing campaigns, sales leads, the demand center, teams divided by region or country, or conflicts between digital campaigns and events. In fact, the more information crammed in to a spreadsheet the more unwieldy it becomes. The harder it is to use, the more the data becomes siloed. And when the data is siloed, it might as well not even exist.

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Topics: Marketing Planning, Marketing Analytics, Effective Planning

The most effective marketing organizations in 2017 (and beyond) will be those who break down any remaining barriers that prevent them from working harmoniously with sales. Collaboration is the path to better results for both teams, a bigger contribution to the company’s bottom line, and a clear justification for getting a sizeable budget renewed each year.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Hive9, sales, sales enablement

Real-time data has become a common expectation in marketing technology products. Once you know the option exists to see how your marketing campaigns are playing out instantaneously, who wants to wait days, weeks, or months?

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Hive9, Effective Planning

Marketing data has come a long way. The insights we can now glean from marketing analytics give us the power to make huge strides in how well we do our jobs. Of course, the path from marketing data to clear, actionable dashboards and reports depends on some pretty powerful tools.

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Topics: Marketing Analytics, Hive9, Business Intelligence