Marketer's Toolbox
Marketers
today use a variety of software programs in their toolbox in order to make
better informed data driven business decisions. According to Moz’s 2015 OnlineMarketing Industry Survey, among the list of the most popular top 10 software
programs, Google Analytics is the overwhelming leader with 91 percent. But how does one make sense of, and correlate the information
into, a visualization tool that leaders across a variety of departments and various
experience levels of team members can understand? According to MarketingAnalytics Report of 2014, the top three most important features were dashboards
with 48 percent, followed by real-time reporting with 39 percent and predictive
analytics with 34 percent.
Tableau is a leader in data visualization
One
software that has been fast out of the gate in the business intelligence
category with dashboards and data visualization is Tableau. In the data
discovery segment, Tableau has the ability to make sense of the data deluge and
the displays are clean, visually appealing and modern. Tech Target defines data
visualization in generic terms as the effort of placing important data into
visual context, which defines patterns, trends and correlations that otherwise
might go undetected in a text based report or email and is visually easier to
identify. The data can be presented into a visually
understandable dashboard that is strategically driven and customized into
something meaningful for the individual user. The interactive dashboard allows the user to
search, query, analyze and instantly visualize large amounts of data that
generate useful business insights. The software targets
the non-IT professionals who are able to easily bring data to life through an
interactive dashboard platform (Forbes Treflis Team, 2015). The drag and drop
interface is relatively intuitive and compatible for various experience levels.
The program appeals to a variety of business sectors and a long list of
well-known brands who are more than happy to sing Tableau’s praises including
Deloitte, Tesla Motors, Microsoft, Nokia, PwC and Barclays. Below
is an example of the wide variety of dashboards that can be created with
Tableau.
Where businesses begin with data analytics
The
typical path for a small to medium business enterprise to process and analyze data
commonly begins with the free service of Google Analytics. This enables the
online website traffic and behavior to be analyzed in a pretty extensive approach.
Furthermore, there are other online and offline data sources that are also
important and related to marketing business decisions. For example, a marketer
may want to pull in the data from a variety of inbound marketing campaigns accessible
from the content management system such as HubSpot, website data from Google
Analytics, social media data from a variety of social channels and tie the data
to customer or lead records in Salesforce, the CRM system, to obtain a full 360
view of what is happening. Decisions that are based on multiple inputs gives the
marketer the ability to actually see the metrics. You are able to walk through
the data and filter based on the circumstances. This permits the marketer to
make better media buys based on the data, create trending social campaigns based
on keywords or generate email campaigns to reach a target audience in a defined
geographic market. Nordstrom does a good job of this by analyzing the data from
the social channels on Instagram and Pinterest and tracks the top 10 items
being pinned. The data is compared to searches on the ecommerce site and if
they trend as a popular item that is catching steam, an email campaign can be
created to the top customer base who has demonstrated a buying behavior toward
these brands. Simultaneously, the items can be promoted through blogs and on
social channels with call to actions and the brick and mortar stores can also
feature the items for walk in traffic which all generates a full court press of
integrated marketing.
The
list above demonstrates the wide variety of data sources and where the deluge
of data begins. Many times after businesses become more familiar with the data,
reports and capabilities of Google Analytics, a professional naturally needs to
tailor and customize reports into a visual story which is then used as a
communications tool. Data is frequently exported into an Excel spread sheet and
manipulated for customization. This can quickly become time consuming as many
times data is being created for individual departments, for specific reasons or
one off situations. Tableau’s chief executive, Christian Chabot who is one of
the co-founders along with Professor Hanrahan, who teaches computer graphics at
Stanford University says, “Managers trap themselves in Excel hell, when they
choose to track and visualize data using the ubiquitous spreadsheet software.”
He goes further with the statement that “spreadsheets have provided no
contribution to the human understanding of facts” over the past 30 years.”
This
is where Tableau hits the sweet spot for many businesses. One of the strongest
features as mentioned above is the easy to use drag and drop interface. Integrated
data can provide a visual snapshot that can be shared in emails, included in reports,
shared during meetings or conference calls and allows for increased
collaboration between departments through the online services. By having the
data available and thinking more in terms of business value, users are able to
own their business decisions in rapid time. Creating a seamless integration of
data and leveraging with a universal tool makes the communication easier and
faster.
Frankly,
what Tableau has been able to do is an evolution of Excel that Microsoft missed
by lack of innovation long ago. Business leaders need something more dynamic
than default pie charts and Tableau has leveraged this missed opportunity into a
market differentiator. It’s about time, and Fast Company says, that the
spreadsheets of the future will no longer be static and consist of columns and
rows. Let’s take a look at the overview of Tableau in the
short video below:
Recap of Features
·
Speed – Tableau is able to analyze millions of
tables with rows and columns in a matter of seconds.
·
Dynamic Visualization – The displays are beautiful, colorful and
very attractive and grab your attention. The information comes to life.
·
Easy to Use – The drag and drop interface is intuitive
with basic Excel learning skills.
·
Easy to Publish and Share – With just a few clicks the data
visualization is shared live and compatible for mobile devices.
·
Data Connectors – Users can connect their data with the
dozens of data connectors built into the various editions or through add-on
tools. One of the newest connectors is the web data connector which allows
developers to write their own connector to any web data source such as Facebook
or Google Sheets.
·
Learning Communities – There are files, downloads, video, and
webinars available on demand along with extensive online communities.
·
Price – This can be confusing as most users begin with a 14-day
free trial offer for a desktop version. The desktop version is a public online
version which is free and shared with everyone who has access. If security is
important, other online versions cost $500 per user per year. The professional
edition is $1,999 per user that covers more than 40 different connections. A
personal edition costs $999 per user with 6 connections. All have a one-time
fee.
Exciting next phase
Tableau
has developed a new application designed to target the tablets and mobile user
called Elastic. Again one of Tableau’s strengths is the easy to use application
and this time the intent is to reinvent the spreadsheet for mobile devices using
left and right swiping similar to the dating app called Tinder. Tableau make
use of pinching and zooming, which is the method most familiar to mobile users.
The target market is specifically small businesses or possible business
analysts who are on the go and often work off of tablets or mobile phones. Elastic
makes sense of large amounts of data for the ordinary user. It is not intended
to replace the desktop application but it is an exciting mobile application that
enables customization for one spreadsheet at a time. This may not be applicable
for large enterprises, but could be useful for creating different scenarios
quickly. Imagine a business luncheon is being held and an example of a
hypothetical situation is being discussed. The user is able to use their handy
tablet or mobile device to give life to the data. In the example below the user
is able analyze the profitability of a restaurant on a specific day, with a
specific menu item whereby better business insights are utilized for making
better marketing and financial decisions. The video below of Elastic was shared
at an unveiling conference:
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