AI, BI, MI, Oh My!
Your marketing AI is only as good as your data.
Lately, everyone is talking about AI. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and the recently announced Salesforce Einstein GPT are making headlines around the globe. There’s one thing everyone seems to be forgetting — chatbots utilize databases to derive answers. If those data are wrong, so are the answers the chatbot provides. So if you’re planning to get on the AI bandwagon, it’s more important than ever to optimize your data stack.
Introduction to business and marketing intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) refers to the set of processes, technologies, and tools used by organizations to gather, store, analyze, and present data to support informed business decision-making. The goal of BI is to provide organizations with a comprehensive view of their operations and performance, including financial, marketing, and customer-related data.
Marketing intelligence (MI) is a subset of BI that focuses on data and insights related to an organization’s marketing efforts. It’s an essential tool for organizations seeking to gain an edge through informed decision-making on marketing strategy. This includes analyzing data on campaign performance, market trends, customer behavior, and competitor activities.
Organizations are eager to invest in business intelligence tools to automate their reporting needs and answer one of the most prevalent and important questions in business: “What’s the return on my investment (ROI)?” This eagerness spurred the analytics industry into a proliferation of cloud-based business intelligence platforms — so much so that it’s becoming hard for organizational leaders to answer a more foundational question: “Which tools fit my use case?”
Let’s take a look at two Salesforce platforms in the business and marketing intelligence space:
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama)
- Tableau
Marketing Cloud Intelligence
Marketing Cloud Intelligence (MCI) is a cloud-based platform that helps businesses integrate, harmonize, and analyze marketing data from various sources.
MCI key features include:
- A robust library of 174 data vendor connectors, including advertising platforms, site analytics tools, and CRM systems
- The Harmonization Center, which offers easy-to-use features enabling users to set rules that will apply to the underlying data sets, allowing marketers to easily classify and extract dimensions from data
- The Marketplace, a collection of out-of-the-box apps that allow marketers to visualize data quickly, for common use cases
- Data visualization and Einstein AI insights, features that enable businesses to align on metrics and KPIs to scale efficiently for growth across all regions, brands, and teams
How do you know if MCI is the tool for you?
Organizations implement MCI to enable marketing teams to corral all marketing data into a single platform without reliance on IT. A typical MCI implementation will incorporate data from social, programmatic, search, customer relationship management (CRM) software, site analytics, and email platforms. MCI also enables marketers to create custom dimensions, measurements, and a single place to view all marketing channels and campaigns. A fully functional MCI solution allows marketers to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and optimize media spend with ease and efficiency.
Tableau
Tableau is an award-winning desktop, server, and cloud-based data visualization and business intelligence tool. It is ideal for organizations with large data sets and complex data structures.
Tableau’s key features include:
- Allowing users to create industry-leading, interactive, and visually appealing charts, graphs, maps, and dashboards
- Supporting a wide range of data sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and other cloud-based services
- Handling large amounts of data, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes
MCI + Tableau = magic
Marketing Cloud Intelligence and Tableau support native integrations, enabling easy data connectivity, harmonization, and visualization.
Ready to take your business intelligence to the next level with these two platforms? Follow the steps below.
- Connect and harmonize marketing data from all sources into MCI to control, merge, and provide a holistic view of all marketing activity.
- Integrate marketing data in MCI with Tableau, and connect it with other relevant organizational data (i.e., finance, inventory, or product data).
- Analyze all of your data together to gain holistic business insights that uncover budget efficiencies and growth opportunities!
Example use cases for combining MCI and Tableau
- Ensuring product inventory is aligned with marketing campaigns.
- Connecting CRM and marketing data to identify which campaigns drove the most leads.
- Connecting financial systems and media plans to track actual versus projected media spend and pacing.
“Which tools fit my use case?”
The decision of whether a BI platform provides the right solution for your business will depend on your specific requirements and the types of data and insights you need to analyze. Before deciding on a platform, consider creating a comprehensive measurement framework and high-level business architecture. Having a handful of KPIs and use cases that you want to solve will set you up for success.
…
P.S. If you haven’t heard, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement now provides Intelligence Reports to optimize your email campaign performance and gather insights directly within the platform. Click here to learn more.
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Learn more and reach out today.
