We’ve known for a while that agile marketing – continuously developing and refining your marketing activity to improve your response to unfolding events and customer activity – can increase speed to market and foster more effective customer engagement than relying on those rigid old long-term marketing plans.

But to be truly agile, you need adequate data – from measuring the efficiency of your marketing operation to assessing customer sentiment and the effectiveness of your engagement across all digital and social channels. Knowledge really is power.

The problem most marketers face is not lack of data – every aspect of your digital activity generates reams of real-time information – but the ability to glue together these data feeds and interpret the information in a rapid and meaningful way.

That’s why we introduced Status. Status is our data visualisation and analysis tool, which complements our Media Centre MRM platform. It takes real-time data from all your marketing activity and presents it in an easy-to-read-and-interpret series of dashboards.

Instant insights

The faster you can access these insights, the more quickly you can assess what is working and use this intelligence to increase marketing performance, engagement and – what ultimately interests us all – sales.

Agile marketing often breaks down when information is either not shared by different teams due to siloed ways of working, or when third-party agencies retain the data. It also fails when your technology spits out information that other platforms can’t read.

Status solves these problems through being platform-agnostic. It can pull in data from marketing platforms such as our Media Centre, as well as numerous other sources, including Twitter, Facebook, SAP, Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Campaign Monitor.

It can combine marketing data with sales data, production, delivery and stock information, and financial and budgetary data, giving you total visibility of your entire operation.

Improved ROI

As a cloud-based app, Status enables you to view your real-time data on any desktop or mobile device. You can view broad overviews of activity or drill down to a granular level of information on any area of your operation.

Not only does Status provide valuable real-time insights, it helps you measure your return on investment by showing the impact of your campaigns on sales. You can see which channels work best at driving specific engagement, while the agility and insights it provides gives you more time to plan more effective campaign strategies.

But best of all, it’s easy to understand and navigate – you don’t need an IT degree to interpret the data and develop meaningful strategies. We supply it with expert training and setup, and ongoing development and support.

Until next time

Simon Ward

About Simon Ward

Simon Ward ITG – Simon is the founder and CEO of pioneering technology-led marketing company, Inspired Thinking Group (ITG). ITG delivers best-in-class marketing software, procurement and studio services to dozens of blue-chip clients, including Audi, M&S, KFC, PUMA and Heineken.

Simon Ward SP Group – Prior to ITG, Simon founded SP Digital in 1998, and in 1999 bought SP Print to form SP Group, creating innovative marketing and point of sale displays for some of the world’s best-known retailers, including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett and Calvin Klein.