Insights Platform
The Insights Platform transforms data into actionable insights to inform relevant marketing executions and enable measurement strategies. The rise of digital media, big data, and quickly changing marketing landscape means analytics needs to be embedded into technology to deliver insights in a continual, ‘always-on’ fashion. The Insights Platform is the part of our technology solution dedicated to insights and analytics, delivered to our clients through embedded analytics, dashboards, data visualization, and forward-looking scenario planning and optimization tools.
The core components of the Insights Platform include:
- BI & Analytic Playground
- Connected Attribution Engine
- Scenario Planning & Optimization Layer
- Self-service Portal and Knowledge Base
It is built with best-in-breed tools based on the application and requirements. Typical deployments include tools like SAS and R for analytics, Tableau and MicroStrategy for reporting, Hadoop and SQL server for data management, integrated into a single sign on web-based interface always accessible for our clients.
Measurement Strategy
Measurement is a core marketing discipline that is often overlooked. Our belief at Merkle is that analytics should drive measurement. Period. The accurate measurement of marketing vehicles, the impact of various service levels and customer experiences, and activities like social engagement are core to truly effective closed-loop decisioning. Without accurate measurement of the incremental and synergistic effects of these activities, time and money spent on creation of the best insights, targeting, and optimization decisions are wasted.
Connected Attribution
Attribution is the process of assigning credit for an output of interest (lead, sales, etc) to consumer touchpoints leading up to that output. At Merkle, our Connected Attribution solution addresses a simple question: What drove the actual purchase? This seems very simple in theory, but can be very complex to do accurately.
Connected Attribution is a top-down marketing mix solution to attribution that is integrated with a bottoms-up granular attribution process. The integration of the macro mix modeling outputs and micro attribution models creates a calibration system between the two functions. This enables us to not only create overall mix scenarios and optimize total budgets, but also report on specific campaign and tactical details within the same measurement solution.
