SigmaWay Blog

If you’re not tracking VR analytics, how do you know what works and what doesn’t? How do you prove ROI?

Utilizing quantitative and qualitative data can put you ahead of your competitors.  After all, without analyzing your data within VR is just guess work.

Doing this gives businesses the ability to track users in a 3D space instead of 2D screens. Traditional 2D tracking metrics such as clicks, swipes, scrolls or taps are certainly not the best ways to capture the depth of data available in these 3D environments.

VR specific metrics include Eye tracking to see what draws their attention, user interaction with specific objects, tracking 3D spatial data and biometrics to measure the emotional state of users to name a few.

These metrics are used by businesses to develop better products, train employees effectively and more efficiently and to understand customer buying behaviour.

Converting analytics to action is a nightmare as it is fraught with problems, of which, not the least is the political nature of organizational decision-making. When it comes to ROI, we see lots of organizations taking on the analytics bandwagon and are happy to have more insight into which pages, and segments are driving returns. A host of digital tools can transform data into pretty dashboards to help improve ROI.

Overall, businesses do a great job of monitoring, understanding, and utilizing ROI information–translating it into effective actions. These relatively simple metrics guide managers on which messages, segments, products, and channels are working their best, allowing them to tweak strategy in order to improve market performance and intelligence. Still, sometimes issues of data quality and politics impede implementation of the right actions based on available data.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/translating-analytics-action-right-metrics-right-time-01702969#LDbDrcQKbELE1vEd.99

People spend more time on the social media nowadays. So, marketers are targeting their customers on the social media platforms. As a result, organizations having a social media presence are generating greater ROI. Social Media is a new communication channel that presents the combination of communication and information. With the integration of powerful search engines, people use it as a source to search for information. Organizations can also check what people are saying about others. Marketing is about your presence at the place where your potential customers can be present. Salespeople are a source for news for their clients on these social networks. There has been a decrease in the budgets for marketing with the help of social media, without affecting the marketing strategies. Read more about this at: : https://www.siliconrepublic.com/business/2016/02/16/social-media-marketing-investing-roi-imi

The purchasing decisions taken by the customers are more often the result of online reviews and various comparisons. After buying products they themselves become reviewers and express their views on web about the product. This significantly impacts the reputation of the product and hence the company. This expands marketing horizons, thus its measure can't be only limited to ROI (Return on Investment). Work of marketers is not limited to being just creative. It is important for them to be contributing employees to the organization. Testing of the marketing strategy should be done. All the influencing factors should be kept in mind. The marketing team should be aware of when to measure. Read more at: http://bloomreach.com/2016/01/measuring-marketing-roi/

Changing attitude of the young generation along with urbanization in India is driving the expansion of digital marketing in the Asia hugely. Noticing such changes, digital ad spending is also increasing gradually. Increasing use of mobile is enhancing marketing by helping product research work better.  Smartphone has penetrated regions in Asia Pacific like never before. This increases the usage of mobile app which indirectly increases mobile internet ad spending as marketers are benefiting. Western marketers are also looking to move into this region as they can have better social measurement. They focus on the impact of social on key business objectives. Digital marketing increases in countries like India, China that grow into true economic powerhouses with increasing ROI. Read more about it by Stuart Found (Global Digital Events Manager) at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/how-is-digital-marketing-expanding-in-asia

Annual marketing data benchmark report reveals that around 84% of marketing database are non-functional, 64% of records do not include a phone number and only 35% of emails were identified to be functional. Undoubtedly, this will take the profits on a downward flight. Larisa Bedgood in her post on Datamentors tells us 4 ways we can bring the data to shape and extract higher revenues.

• Begin with Data Assessment

• Establish Business Processes to ensure data quality

• Establish an ROI to fund new marketing database initiatives

• Implement a data management solution 

The quality of big data is more important than the quantity of big data. Three types of data a company should be stressing on:
1. Social data- Marketers are now focused on estimating the number of followers of the company website, and its products now that there are ample opportunities to share the knowledge of their products in social platforms like, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
2. On-line IDs- Data has taken marketing to a whole new level. Data can be collected and used to personalize messages and send offers through mediums most preferred by consumers. This is often done by connecting off-line data with on-line identities.
3. hard-to-find data- Enterprises produce large quantities of data everyday as a by-product of their day-to-day business transactions. Many companies, realizing the benefits of monetizing these data assets are making it available to other firms and the fact that the data has already been mined and sourced, adds value to the whole procedure.
Read more at:

http://www.business2community.com/big-data/3-big-data-types-will-increase-roi-01257959

Big data is completely transforming the way we look at business. Analytics is being used to foster growth in every industry. The entertainment industry uses predictive analysis to forecast the box office collections, gauging the success of the movie before they even start shooting it. Production houses can use big data to plan strategic release dates and to retain consumers by analysing patterns derived from the data. By collecting data from the social media sites, they can formulate plans based on consumer sentiments as to what kind of music, casting, genre, are in trend thereby increasing the ROI and giving improved entertainment to the end user. Read more at: http://analyticsweek.com/how-big-data-is-changing-the-entertainment-industry/

Predictive analytics make use of statistical or machine-learning techniques to analyze current and past facts to predict the future. Companies, by using predictive analytics, can make better and decisions at low-cost. Predictive analytics can help companies to get an idea of every possible event, thus allowing for risk management and calculating potential ROI. Using predictive analytics, companies can remove politics from the decision-making process. There is a growing awareness among companies about predictive analytics and companies that adopted this method have reported success and increased ROIs. Optimizing predictive analytics to produce better choices leads to decision modelling. Through decision modelling companies can gain insight into how predictive analytics can add value and how ROI can be measured. Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/making-faster-decisions-with-predictive-analytics  

Social media is no more just the place to catch up on old school friends and college buddies; it is now being used for diverse activities. People, nowadays, are using social media to look for products and services, research and review companies and ask for recommendation from friends. Social media has now become the place for branding, opening channels of communication with customers, building loyalty, being transparent and establishing goodwill. Reaching out to customers is far less expensive on social media enabling marketers to achieve higher marketing ROI. Digital marketing has replaced traditional marketing techniques as consumers these days are more tech savvy and active on social media. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/social-media-advertising-roi-01247591

A firm needs to build a firm base that gradually can destroy others. The amount of information produced by social media platforms is an excellent way to measure a business’s both real and potential value. 56% of marketers named the ‘inability to tie social media to business outcomes’ as the central challenge to measuring ROI from social media. Gauging customer demand prior to launch using social media helps minimize risk, especially for entrants. Social media data can be correlated with an organization’s KPIs to know their impact upon one another indicating its usefulness. Allowing big data analytics capabilities to the social media platform helps firms to cross-reference social data to other data streams from their business. Read more about this article at: http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/social-media-analytics

Marketers need to think creatively for building an effective and creative campaign. On the other side, they have to give returns on investments. So, marketers are feeling stressed. To improve the performance of the marketers, they need to make standardization a priority across their organization. Standardization is an essential practice to improve the performances and gives long-term benefits. Scott Vaughan (CMO of Integrate) in his article at marketingland.com, discussed about five areas where marketers should start standardizing are:
• Process
• Data
• Key technology systems
• Metrics and Benchmarks
• Team Expectations
Read more at: http://marketingland.com/marketers-time-stop-standardize-130267

80% (including tangible assets) of a business total corporate value on the S&P500 index, now only count for 20%. Now, intangible assets such as data, talent and intellectual property has become the hallmark. In this competitive world, the CFO needs to allocate their entire budget in digital technologies. CFOs need to become leaders and guide business during digital transformation. According to Gartner, "intangible assets are the core competency value of any business." And they need to rebalance their investment portfolio. According to Shailender Kumar (MD of Oracle India), data and access to the data are the most valuable intangible assets for businesses today and cloud helps organizations to get the most from the data. Organizations need to rethink on their ROI measurement procedure. They need to develop new metrics, risk and performance measures in order to measure ROI. To know more about the CFO role in cloud and digital technologies, please follow this link: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/companies/data-talent-and-ip-are-key-to-a-companys-market-worth/78557/

According to Pernille Bruun-Jensen (leader in marketing efforts for NetBase) both digital marketing and customer care have moved beyond the Web to social media. Marketers have advanced technologies at their disposal. Social data is providing the higher returns on investment that business leaders are asking for. Similarly, emergencies can be detected and prevented before it is too late. To successfully lead in social media and henceforth in digital marketing, marketers need a strategy based on accuracy and speed using real-time tools. Next-generation social analytics reveals not just who is engaging with your brand and what they are engaging with, but why they are engaging. To know more about what next-generation social analytics can do for a brand go to: http://www.adweek.com/brandshare/next-gen-social-analytics-are-transforming-digital-marketing-160064

Social media now holds a place alongside print and broadcast as a major, essential marketing channel for businesses. As such, social media now should be held to the same standard as those channels: your social media ROI needs to contribute to your bottom line. To prove that your social media investment is truly warranted, you need to track how social is influencing every interaction you have with your clients.

The first step involves setting social media goals that complement existing business and departmental goals. If you have set a specific number of leads you’re trying to attain this quarter, set the number of leads you want to specifically be driven by social media. If one of your goals is to increase landing page conversion by say 10%, ensure that you’re tracking the conversion rate of people who land on the page through social channels. Audit your existing social media performance to establish baseline targets, and then set appropriate goals for improvement.

Once you’ve established your social media goals, you’ll need to identify and implement the tools and processes required to measure the ROI on your social media. This may involve adding tracking codes to URLs, building custom landing pages, and more. There are a variety of social media analytics tools which service to track the diverse metrics you are after.

Once you’ve identified what works and what doesn’t work on social, it’s time to adjust your strategy. The point of tracking your social media ROI isn’t just to prove your social campaigns are valuable, it’s to increase their value over time.

Due to the short lifecycle of social media campaigns, a failing campaign should be changed and improved as soon as possible. Social media is never static. To meet your social media ROI goals, you’ll need to constantly update and adapt your strategy taking into account the analytics data you’re tracking. To read the full article visit:http://blog.crazyegg.com/2014/02/10/social-media-roi

20-30% of the business decisions really need the use of advanced techniques like predictive analytics.   70-80% of marketing decisions can be judiciously carried with simple analytics techniques. A CMO broadly expects 3 key outcomes for his business:

• Bring more “future” customers in the most cost-effective manner.

• Convert those who come to the door into customers.

• Maintain the current customers “buying.”

Predictive Analytics need advanced skills and constant maintenance. A product manager or an operations manager equipped with the right “Data to Decisions” framework and easy access to data can optimize 80% of their daily workflow on their own, without having to depend on little and costly analytics resources. For 20% of decisions, where the potential ROI justifies the use of advanced techniques, they can work with their analytics counterpart. In summary, a smart CMO knows that a marketing team equipped with a “Data to Decisions” framework and easy access to data without the company of a data science team would emerge much better than a marketing team lacking data skills supported by a large data science team.  Read more at: 

In a recent research by Commodity Technology Advisor, an analytical firm covering the ETRM and CTRM markets; it was found that cloud technology will be the next big thing for Energy and Commodities Trade and Risk Management (E/CTRM) solutions. More firms are accepting this technology replacing the on premise software model once preferred by companies. Cloud technology also helps in quicker realization of ROI. Other factors which help in accepting cloud technology are: speed of implementation, ease of integration, centralized vendor support and device mobility.

To read more why more firms are switching to cloud technology, follow the link below:

http://www.commodities-now.com/reports/technology/16598-future-of-commodities-trading-secure-in-the-cloud.html

An article by Devin Redmond, Co-founder and CEO of Nexgate, talks about how social media spam can damage a brand name and how it affects social media marketing ROI. He also spoke about different steps that social media marketers can adopt to stop social spam and mitigate loss.

For more information visit http://socialmediatoday.com/1865971/state-social-media-spam-social-media-spam-rise