The first U.S. presidential debate was the most watched in history, with 84 million people tuning in.  Sure, many of us wanted to educate ourselves before practicing our solemn duty as democratic citizens in November.  However, many of us also didn’t want to miss out on what (hopefully) promised to be a once in a lifetime political event .  We were motivated by FOMO.

FOMO, or ‘fear of missing out,’ is believed by some to be a very recent psychological phenomenon. But smartphone-wielding millennials are not the only ones afflicted — the analytics decision-makers at your firm may soon fall victim to FOMO as well. With insights-driven businesses poised to rake in $1.2 trillion by 2020, the potential for missing out is very real.

 

But how can firms quell these anxieties? For those who are just showing up to the insights party, issues with data quality, scarcity of internal resources, and over-ambitious project selection often plague their attempts to get customer analytics off the ground.

 

The key to building the business case for customer analytics lies in selecting the right pilot project that is both achievable in the short-term and demonstrates value. The recently-published “Pick A Powerful Pilot To Propagate Customer Analytics” explores ways for firms to:

  • Involve business stakeholders in analytics planning

  • Take stock of on-hand data resources

  • Prioritize potential projects based on expected return and feasibility

 

Effective measurement is the key to proving the success of your pilot, but unfortunately this is where many companies fall short.  One head of database marketing aptly summed up this common pitfall: "People are focused on getting the campaign out the door as opposed to measuring its performance."   

 

The “Analyzing Analytics” report provides a framework for CI pros to quantitatively and qualitatively measure the impact their efforts have on the organization. By using tools like a cumulative gains chart, your team can use historical data to visualize the expected lift that will result from deploying a model on a specific percentage of the population:

 

 

For more methods and metrics to ensure the continued success of your analytics initiatives, be sure to take a look at the report — you won’t want to miss out.