Forrester: The Rise of Marketing Analytics
In an email I received from Forrester, Chris Charron explains that "as many elements of marketing services and software become commoditized, agencies are looking for ways to differentiate, boost margins, and become indispensable to clients."
The answer, says Charron, is analytics. Tools that help marketers translate the database into consumer insights and help drive marketing strategy will differentiate leading marketing services and software vendors from contenders and risky bets.
Now, that's "competing on analyics"...
Charron predicts that "the ascendancy of analytics will change how marketers look for a marketing services and/or software provider." He asks -
"Does your prospective vendor:
- Require its analytics software to sit on top of a proprietary database? And if so, are you prepared to build a new database if necessary?
- Integrate analytics and segmentation capabilities with other necessary functions, including marketing resource management (MRM), campaign management, and marketing optimization?
- Help you to better understand your customer?"
Sounds like obvious stuff, but he's right about these predictions:
As consolidation continues and marketers demand more integrated technology and analytics, marketing services and software providers will:
- Play catch-up with the best-in-class analytics vendors like SAS, which got its start -- and made its name -- in data.
- Improve analytics while offering a more comprehensive enterprise marketing suite, including MRM, campaign management, and marketing optimization. Clients will value having all of these capabilities in one software suite.
- For database providers, provide analytics software for customers who don't use their proprietary database. Even analytics-savvy vendors stand to lose out if they restrict themselves to only clients using their proprietary database.
I must say I like the Forrester Waves more than the Gartner Magic Quadrants.