Over the years I have had a lot of experience working in and with analytics companies. Some folks know me from when I was the head of marketing at Kissmetrics, while others know me from being the badass who runs McGaw.io. Even after all this time and experience, I know I am not the smartest person in the room many times. Instead of me going on for hours writing some post about what I thought would happen in 2017 with analytics, I figured I would reach out to a ton of my friends and connections to see where they thought this shit was going.
Well, as hoped, these dudes and dudettes have some amazing insights. Not only were the predictions spot on, I also picked up a few cool tools to use next year. This post may take an hour or two to make it all the way through, but man is it worth it.
Big thanks to everyone who helped with their predictions and a big shout out to my amazing team for slogging through this over the past month or two. :)
Before we jump into all the other predictions I feel I should share mine. Heck, I am the one who has slaved days in and out making sure this mega-post saw the light of day.
So, what do I think?
What is my prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Analytics has gone in two direction in the past two years. First it went as down market as you can imagine. Even the smallest businesses are using some sort of analytics tools (Hotjar, Crazyegg, Sumome) to measure their website. Companies like Shopify and Woocommerce have also lowered the barrier to entry when it comes to building a site and measuring it with plug-ins.
If we go in the other direction though, analytics has massively gone up market through machine learning, AI and easier to analyze and use tools (Amplitude, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics). Heck, tools like Segment.com have made it so integrating only takes second if you already have your Segment code built out.
But where does this take us? Analytics in 2017 will be focused on making analysis easier. Everyone might talk about how tools will connect insight to action, but I think that is BS this year. the tools will give us the insights faster through data science and the humans will be able to act faster. This is clear if you have ever used the Amplitude Compass report.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
The big things that pump me up are connecting my clearbit data to my segment data an enabling me to see all my customer attributes in my analytics tools. We use Amplitude on many clients, but also have strong ties with Kissmetrics and Mixpanel. Unlike ever before I can see in my web analytics a user’s gender, salary, company name, title and if they have kids. this type if data mixed with prediction is where I create insights and growth for my clients.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I am 100% focused on enriching all of my data with as much information as possible. Not just demographic, but also firmographic and technographic. All of this mixed with my analytics and marketing automation is creating such 1:1 communication and messaging that it is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Ok, so that is what I think. But what about all the people that are way smarter than me? Let’s move on and learn how the industry leaders predict the future :)
2. Larry Kim – WordStream
3. Guillaume Cabane – Segment
4. Guy Marion – Autopilot
5. John (Yanay) Sela – Appsee
6. Sean McVey – Virtru
7. Jonathan Taylor – Klipfolio
8. Jordan Lore – Wishpond
9. Sam Laber – Datanyze
10. Murry Ivanoff – Metrilo
11. Stefanni Becker – Mouseflow
12. Kevin Goodings – SessionCam
13. Jacob McMillen – JacobMcMillen.com
14. Andy Crestodina – Orbit Media Studios
15. Melinda Byerley – TimeshareCMO
16. Lauren Walker – Adwerx
17. Ryan Farley – LawnStarter Lawn Care
18. Victor Antiu – Sleek Bill
20. Natalie Weaving – The Typeface Group
21. Justice Mitchell – Big Block Studios
22. Sieva Kozinsky – StudySoup
23. João Romão – GetSocial.io
24. German Viera – SlideModel
25. Steven Llano – LlanoMedia
26. Duston Moore – Paid Peace
27. Chris Jones – MWI
28. Jacob Warwick – ThinkWarwick
29. Lisa Steingold – Popimedia
30. Derric Haynie – SplashOPM
31. Maddy Beaupre – Careerleaf
32. Wesley Hansen – ShadowBid
33. Ilmari Kontulainen – Deveo
34. Ankur Jain – Ajonit Software
35. Paul Foley – Pluck
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Digital analytics will go deeper and deeper when it comes to analyzing activity of each user individually. Hopefully, it will also make it easier to connect activities of a particular user on different devices.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Services like Zapier or IFTTT allow combining more and more services, so the only obstacle in connecting different products and services is your imagination. Simple marketing automation products like Autopilot make targeting individuals with personalized messages easier than ever. Consumers hate receiving generic emails and marketing, so all the tools that allow you to offer a personalized approach will make marketing in 2017 even more exciting.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I’m excited for combining personalization options with whatever big data has to offer. Example? Using these two to come up with user activity patterns that end up with sales or conversion.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I’m hoping to see more in the area of audience insights. Who exactly are the people who are clicking on stuff on your website. What are their interests, demographics, and behaviors? Google Analytics and Facebook offer various features, but they could do so much more.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Messaging for businesses.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I’m interested in unicorns. Remarkably high engagement content that attracts links, social shares, mad hits, and converts to leads and sales like crazy. They exist! Find them and use them to magically grow your business.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Data analytics started as a way to provide insights to help make decisions. Then it offered predictions, which helped focus time and resources on the right areas. Next, analytics will not just predict, but go so far as to take the right course of action. Sure, we know this cohort is at high churn risk, but how great would it be if data automatically added them to the right campaigns to minimize that churn risk?
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Segment, Clearbit, Zapier, and Madkudu.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We want to use data to personalize every customer interaction so that we can quickly build trust and rapport with them.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Digital analytics will play a crucial role next year as marketers continue to adopt automation and integrate their tools and data to create a single view of the customer. In 2017, expect to see easier ways for SMBs to centralize their data for more sophisticated customer segmentation and targeting.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Two words: Predictive Analytics. We have just scratched the surface on how predictive analytics is becoming more integrated with all aspects of Martech. Next year, I look forward to seeing predictive analytics become a critical component of automating and customizing the customer journey. Almost half (48 percent) of the marketers surveyed in our recent State of Customer Journey Marketing Report plan to invest in predictive analytics in order to better route qualified leads, drive higher conversion rates, and craft a more personalized customer experience. With marketing automation adoption rising at an unprecedented rate—more than 4X in two years—the tools we use to make automation smarter are constantly improving, predictive being one of them.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
It’s clear that we are at crux of witnessing a huge divide between the Data Haves and Have-nots. Today, marketers have access to more data than ever before between tools like Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Hotjar, Heap, Salesforce, GoodData, and more. In our research, we found 68% of marketers feel they have the data they need to confidently track performance. Despite this fact, 82% say they would benefit from better insights and analytics that clearly show what’s driving growth and provide answers on how to improve. In 2017, Autopilot is working to democratize actionable data for the Have-nots.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I believe the challenge these days is not a lack of data, but the ability to actually understand it, digest it, and transform it effectively into actionable insights. . . . A plethora of numbers in tables and graphs can only take you so far in terms of understanding your KPIs and, frankly, what the hell is going on. Specification of tools is a great step forward, yet we now need to tackle how to make the data more intuitive, qualitative, and insightful. At the end of the day, a lot of app professionals are currently left feeling that something is missing in their analysis because they are not getting a clear 360 degree picture of what’s going on in their product. I predict we’ll probably see the adoption of more visual analytics as the fundamental qualitative layer of analysis. I see this type of analytics work in conjunction with the traditional quantitative layer that professionals have been using for the last few years.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Qualitative Analytics, Machine Learning Personalization, and One-to-rule-them-all dashboards.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We will run a more structured insight-gaining process. Workflows that look like KPI->Top KPIs->Secondary KPIs->Hypothesis->Qualitative Data->Implement Changes->Repeat.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I believe more marketing teams will start experimenting with running different campaign attribution models for digital campaigns. In other words, we’ll start giving opportunity credit not just to first touch or last touch campaigns, but to all campaigns. Weighting will be given based on when the campaign happened in the lifecycle, the role of the person that engaged, and the type of campaign. Right now most companies are complacent, giving 100% revenue credit to the “primary campaign.” This model, while really easy to understand, is also misleading—especially for products with a long sales cycle.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Full Circle–campaign response management and funnel reporting in Salesforce. This tool is new and very raw. But if you can figure out how to make it work for your organization, it can be very powerful for uncovering insights.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Using UTMs (I know not revolutionary). We are finally bringing data from the very top of the funnel, like keywords and ad versions, all the way to the bottom of the sales funnel. Example: XYZ keywords drove $X revenue in Q1. How actionable this will be? Not sure yet. But it’s cool.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
The promise of big data has been fulfilled: we’re drowning in data. What we’re missing is insight into the small, micro moments that really make a business successful. I believe 2017 will continue the trend towards insight, and using data to solve day-to-day problems.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I think tools that aggregate data from multiple sources into a single location, like Klipfolio, have a big role to play in 2017. Just think about digital marketing—there are thousands of great tools out there, each one generating its own bit of insight or data. That pie-in-the-sky ideal of the “big picture” is the result of putting together these disparate pieces.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
In my role as a digital marketer, I strive to tell a complete story. Analytics and data are like the plot and setting for a big character drama. My goal is show how the data impacts the key players in the business such as sales, marketing, and support.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I believe we’ll continue to see a shift away from tangible data towards more concern for the intangible, aka the brand. Social media, and the brands that have blossomed out of it, have shown that companies/brands cannot only rely on data (traffic, CTR, etc.) to grow. Attention MUST be paid to the brand when considering actions. They must follow the “why.” I believe analytics will continue to try and address this. How? I’m waiting to see!
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Heading into 2017, I’m still most excited about email #whatyearisit. I’m still a strong believer in the power that email brings to the table when it comes to building relationships and creating action—not to mention tribe building. In terms of emerging things: VR of course! I absolutely can’t wait to see what VR can do to push the boundaries of immersion. For marketers, it’ll be interesting to see what they can do to turn up the volume on a total product experience. As the tech becomes more affordable, people will expect things to be taken to the next level. I’ve seen the Volvo driving demo, and I can’t wait to see what else is next.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
In 2017 the amount of data we’ll have to handle will be immense. For us, we’ll be looking at ways to use that data more effectively. User data, behavior, and actions will become even more relevant. Being able to see what users do on a page and what actions they take will determine how we respond and what initiatives we push. We’ll look to visualize that data even more, so we can make more calculated responses.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Analytics will continue to push towards visibility on top-line metrics. With the rise of ABM (account based marketing), marketers are becoming increasingly responsible for revenue (as opposed to leads, meetings, pipeline). Analytics platforms will have to adapt to help marketers understand their BOFU impact on sales. This means providing visibility on KPIs like opportunity influence, key account touches, and deal attribution.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
We’ll be geeking out with marketing attribution tools, specifically multi-touch solutions that can provide full funnel insight and deal velocity.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We’ll be creating more sophisticated KPIs around campaign influence, and looking at marketing vs sales attribution on pipeline and revenue.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
For the last 2 years, digital analytics has been focused on personalization. In 2017, the focus will be on personalization + context (slash momentum).
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Chat bots and connecting customer’s behavior for context when engaging with the eCommerce brand’s social media content. VR technologies are obviously on their way and are pretty exciting, but frankly I don’t think they’ll seriously impact eCommerce in the next few years.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Hyper-personalization and precise context.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
We see digital analytics becoming much more about the customer experience: what they need, what they want, and how well your company gives it to them. You need to take an honest and unbiased look at how your website performs from the ground up. If you overlook the vital user experience data, little else will matter.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
We are excited about automating how to find, flag, and interpret data. In a sea of endless information, it’s easy to lose focus on what matters. We try to find the needle in a haystack and miss the big picture. We’re excited to develop algorithms to interpret and tag session replay data when users experience problems—bringing a giant magnet to the haystack and letting the needle come to us.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We just implemented a bi-weekly company meeting where staff members are invited to present unique and actionable recommendations derived from our real-world analytics data. It’s a competition, and each person presents their findings in a round-table format before we, as a group, select the winner. Our culture is all about finding a better bug or issue than the one presented last week and, so far, this has had a massive impact on our business because we’re able to tackle issues we would otherwise overlook.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
We will see the adoption of machine-learning and AI technologies to improve the productivity and efficiency of analysts, powering them up so they spend less time finding problems and more time working out how to optimize and improve.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Our own SessionCam machine-learning algorithm that automatically measures customer struggle within a website journey.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We will quantify the cost of the customer struggle we identify to enable clients to focus on the most valuable problems first.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
All things mobile have been trending over the last couple years, but as of right this moment, the vast majority of tools we use were built with mobile as an afterthought. We still don’t really understand mobile behavior, which means there is significant opportunity. I think we will see an analytics driven push into greater mobile understanding in 2017, which will result in some groundbreaking solutions for engaging with mobile audiences.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
While I still think we are a few years away from the revolution this tech will bring, I am very excited about the development and application of machine learning and AI in CRO and marketing in general. Sentient Ascend is one tool in this category that I’m keeping my eye on.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
My goal in 2017 is to find better ways to engage with mobile users. I feel like there are some opportunities to facilitate more meaningful interactions with these users, and I’m going to be tracking mobile behavior religiously with that goal in mind.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I predict converging reports in Google products. Google Analytics will get more reports from Google Search Console. Also, Google Tag Manager reports will appear in here as well. Probably not in 2017, but eventually, all of these will be managed from the same place. GA + GSC + GTM = unified Analytics platform.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Google Tag Manager is going to make life a lot simpler for a lot of us. Get up the learning curve and you’ll become more efficient at measuring and testing forever after.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
After 15 years of SEO and optimizing for rankings, I’m going to focus more on optimizing for clickthrough rates. It’s the click, not the rank, that produces traffic. I’ll be testing new headlines and title tags to increase traffic with the same rankings. I’ll be using GA and GSC to measure the before and after.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
One-size-fits-all tools will see increasing competition from vertical and niche specific tools built by experts in these areas who understand the unique needs in these spaces. From financial services’ needs for data lineage preservation, to life science manufacturing’s need to track source materials from origin to patient, businesses now want specialists working on their data.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Google Apps plugins like Supermetrics and big data tools like Trifacta continue to be uncharted waters and opportunities for companies of all sizes to leverage and combine unique data. Both of these tools allow a company of any size to design its own visualizations and map its data for its unique needs.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Predicting the behavior of users based on what channel they signed up with.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Today, digital analytics flourish in the funnel. But it’s all the work that happens before the customer enters the funnel that remains in a black box. There are disparate systems to help measure reach, engagement, and brand recognition, but very few talk to each other to create that whole picture. Today, we piece together the puzzle and hope to see the elephant and not just its various parts, like the blind men in the parable. But marketers are desperate to know how many touches each customer experienced, and which ones drove them closer to that conversation. The holy grail is true attribution.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Data science and content marketing are sitting closer together in the proverbial bull pen of the marketing organization. They are learning to speak each other’s language, and therefore tools like TrackMaven and Marketo are doing exciting things to connect the content/conversion dots.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We plan to be more forward thinking with data, using it to shape our content strategy and not just measure performance after the fact.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I think more companies will start to make the investment in using predictive analytics to increase revenue. Financial institutions and large companies have been using predictive analytics for years, but even many large companies still use “dumb” algorithms for pricing, conversion rate optimization, etc.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
By far the coolest tool out there is Data Robot. They’ve made such an amazing platform that allows someone with basic data chops to build machine learning models fairly easily.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Since we’re a marketplace—matching consumers with lawn care providers—we’re going to be using predictive analytics to better match supply and demand. A lot goes into that—pricing, location, how many lawn care providers are in that area, demographics of the area, etc.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Mobile devices and the rising wave of IoT devices are surpassing the desktop as the primary gateway to the online world. Increasingly, users now use 2, 3, or even 4 devices in their online activity. This creates a problem for companies who need to accurately measure this in order to distribute their ad budgets. Cross-device analytics will become more and more relevant in 2017 and later. In March 2016, a survey by Econsultancy noted that nearly 75% of respondents felt matching customers across multiple devices was a strategic priority, yet only 14% of marketers felt they could handle it. It is true Google and Facebook have made progress on this front, but a true change has yet to occur. But when it does, it’ll also come with a new way of creating ad campaigns.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I think optimization tools for testing and experimenting still have a long way to go. They’re certainly not as advanced as many analytics tools. With new all-in-one tools like Hotjar starting to dominate, I expect the veterans of this industry to either get much more complex or to merge with others. The fact is, these two industries shouldn’t be separated. Optimizing is all about data, and everything should be in one place. I expect big changes in this segment with quite a few mergers or acquisitions.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
With our new online version, we can finally take our product to the next level, and data analytics is a big part of that. For a startup to get their CRM, site analytics, app analytics, and marketing automation tools connected and working properly is one of the most important steps. If we can do that, finding the right messages and pain points in our invoicing software should be easy. I’m excited to do this as it’s much easier and more accurate now than a couple of years ago.
19. Glenn Miller
Owner @ Miller Enterprises
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
The “big” data behind the likes of Apple, Facebook, Amazon, MS, Google, IBM, IBIS, etc. will be shared “open source” and leveraged into a global accessible pool of mammoth data for global consumption and for multiple purposes—the concept I call Free Data.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
IoT, Bots, ChatBots, AR, and VR.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Use data and data insights and automate as much as possible.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
The way digital analytics are going, businesses will be able to refine their digital offering and pinpoint customers, and where they are in the sales funnel, unlike ever before. Customer service, retention, and real connections via social media will become more important to ensure that you keep people coming back for more. Expectations of customers will increase. They will not just give you their data for nothing. And it has to be something they feel adds value to them. Businesses that are new to the market might choose to work with partners that customers already trust such as PayPal, Facebook, Amazon, and Ebay to make that process simple and easy for the buyer. Does this mean that these partners will then charge more? I reckon so. As analytics data becomes more precious for businesses, it would make sense that these 3rd parties capitalize on this.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Any platform that gives you an insight to your audience excites me. The thought that all social media platforms, including Snapchat, will have in-depth insights helps business to fine tune their channels. AR is going to be a big player. It will be interesting to see how this will be made mainstream and used in digital marketing.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We will continue to use data how we always have—monitoring who we are engaging with, tweaking our offerings, and giving our audience what they want. Segmentation is going to be a focus in 2017 to ensure that we only send communication out to those that are most likely to engage with us.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Micro Campaigning: Inbound marketing specialists will be required to prove they can show positive action/persuasion/influence with smaller test budgets. Think $500 over 50k. Assessing more qualitative triggers in sales and then more confidently funneling budgetary spend.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Any channel-owned device creating more intuitive strides to profile audiences and test vs. invest. Facebook, blog media networks, and in-content networks are the first to come to mind.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Landing page clusters and variability on messaging.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Analytics are making leaps and bounds towards showing us every interaction with our customer. This year I see web analytics making breakthroughs in displaying the full spectrum of interactions with ours customers across every channel.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I think the incumbent players have the biggest opportunities to provide a full service experience for our marketers—big things to come!
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Leveraging our customer discovery journey to direct our product decisions and how we can create better tools for students. For example, tracking the usage of our flashcards to optimize reminders and notifications for students to remember to study at the best times!
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Content automation: companies will look for new ways to streamline their content assets and maximize reach, virality, and clicks to their owned media properties. AI could also be a big thing in this sector as there’ll be a need to identify the best content to promote & invest in.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I’m looking forward to see how AI/Machine Learning impacts the newsroom & media industry.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Automating social media advertising with correct social traffic attribution.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
With the advent of Self Service BI, new analytics products integrated with machine learning, and changes in big data platforms, analysts have much more control of the data and more tools to identify insights.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Cloud Machine Learning and AI from Microsoft and Google.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Predictive analytics with cloud platforms.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
We all know that mobile has been taking over desktop in our analytics for awhile now. It’s gotten to a point where a lot of my clients’ accounts now display more traffic coming from mobile vs their desktop sites. With such a growth in mobile, I foresee the near future focusing on more mobile metrics. There has been a huge uptick, in my opinion, on automation, AI, and bots. There are services emerging allowing a company to integrate some sort of automation or bot service to improve their customer experience. It’s come to this now that mobile has helped the internet become even more ubiquitous than ever. Keep an eye for more AI and bot technology becoming mainstream, and thus we’ll need a way to measure success through digital analytics.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
As mentioned above, I’ve really become interested on what you can do with automation. I’m in the restaurant industry, and offer online ordering software solutions. I was curious to see what could be done to offer online ordering with bots. Within a few days of sparking that thought, I started seeing many startups creating just that—online ordering services through messaging services that automate the entire ordering process. It’s fun and easy to use.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Anything we do in digital marketing has to be measured in order to track success. Data is so important because it helps us to make choices on what path to continue taking or veer away from when trying to grow a brand online. I plan on creating filters in my analytics software to focus more on the customer path revolving around mobile, tablets, and automation software.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
In 2017 we will see a larger push from multiple companies in the direction of analytical consolidation. More than likely this will lead to stronger, multi-platform partnerships as well as company acquisitions. This is going to greatly improve the ability to pull together data from multiple platforms and devices per user.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I am excited to see more options for dynamic content as well as the additions to Google Analytics with Optimize.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Our company has several clients who have a long conversion to sales cycle. We are hoping to find new ways to shorten marketing funnels while keeping our story lines intact. We plan to do this by replacing certain marketing drip efforts with social channel aspects. This should cut costs, keep connectivity high, and shorten the marketing to sales funnel.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
We’re already seeing, and will continue to see, an emphasis on tools to help businesses/agencies easily and quickly identify trends or correlations to build strategies around without sinking hours digging through a sea of data. Data analysis can be fairly manual, so I think we’ll see a large movement and priority towards insight automation.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Personalization Tools.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I like the idea of segmenting data and A/B testing for segments. Rather than lumping all data together and declaring a winner, you can segment out user types or buyer personas and optimize an experience for that segment.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Analytics will be become more visualized in the marketing world. Currently a majority of marketers, particularly in the social and content marketing space, have no idea the power of visualization tools like Tableau or experimentation tools that provide testing data like Optimizely. These tools can help marketers create more personalized user experiences across all channels including paid, owned, and earned.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I plan to use data to earn internal buy in for scaling our content and analytics department.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Digital analytics will be seen as a lot more relevant in driving both business decisions but also creative decisions for marketing processes. It’s going to be more about the insights than the data itself—i.e. it’s not about metrics, it’s about insight. AND REAL TIME! We can’t be post-reporting any longer, not for marketing and certainly not for sales.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Salesforce, HubSpot, Hootsuite, and Google Analytics.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
I’m going to use it to ensure more relevant personalization among our clients. I want to ensure our process is automated, but automation is not enough—it needs to be personalized automation. This will then influence and ensure the right creative, the right events, and the most relevant engagement.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
There will be a lot more predictive analytics going on, where we as marketers are being told what to actually do based on our data, rather than looking at the data and determining. I also predict better tracking and attribution, and perhaps even a major shift in the fundamental way users, links, and websites are tracked. Right now this is done using cookies and UTM parameters, but there is likely a better way on the horizon.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
I’m excited to see what people can do with open APIs to some of Google’s cool AI tools and Watson from IBM. Companies are just now starting to realize they can build entire data analytics companies off the backbone of these complicated technologies.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We want to create data-driven buyer personas automatically using predictive analytics. It’s really not that complicated to do, but requires a good amount of data points on each user.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
There are so many ideas, options, tools, methods, etc., and so much data available, that it can get overwhelming and confusing for those who aren’t specialists. I think we’ll see a shift towards focusing on the data that’s really important. Of all the data you collect, what information actually pushes you towards making decisions or taking action? We tend to want ALL the data, and it’s also great when data from one area/tool can sync up with another. But if you’re looking at everything all at once, you might not see the forest for the trees. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more highly-focused, customizable analytics tools that let you zero in on the particular problems you’re trying to solve, and pull in additional data when needed, rather than dumping it all on you all at once by default.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Automation is hovering over so many industries right now, and I think we’ll see more ways to use analytics data to intelligently trigger automated tasks.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Focusing on the highest-value data points, and finding better ways to track and communicate that data over time.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
I predict that more firms will begin to incorporate human deduction into their analysis. While the numbers are critically important, understanding the nuances of each individual and of each different company is becoming more important for relating to customers.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Other than ShadowBid, I am most excited about improvements in healthcare and doctor access.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
In 2017, ShadowBid will be able to provide companies with data on how their customers actually value the products that are sold.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
More and more digital analytics will be implemented throughout the customer journey. Digital analytics becomes easier and more cost-efficient to implement, which means that even smaller companies and simpler apps benefit from it.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Having a hybrid business model with SaaS / on-premises with a freemium model of operation, everything related to analyzing the behaviour of users and finding ways to convert them into active users is interesting. We at Deveo don’t consider one technology or tool to be exciting, but the results a tool can yield or a problem a tool can solve.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
We are going to implement more and more data oriented decisions through the customer lifecycle. When the things come to the point where you want to scale, you need to automate a lot of things in order to be efficient. Data and analytics provide good starting grounds for that.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
There will be a tight integration between mobile apps and IoT. Given the recent security breach that one of the largest DNS providers had to endure, there will be more emphasis on security. I won’t be surprised if various governments jump-in to make basic data security a law for major hardware manufacturers. A clear-cut anomaly like the one that happened recently may result in huge fines.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Smart, unintrusive personalization which measures customer intent will (and is already?) the next big thing. IoTs , cloud, and web security will remain the top most things—at least for the next couple years.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
Building warm relationship with leads and measuring exactly when a customer may need a product.
What is your prediction on how digital analytics will change in 2017?
Cross-Device & Cross-Channel Analytics will become a thing.
Which emerging tools and technology excite you the most heading into 2017?
Augur.io and Pluckhq.
What is the most intriguing way you plan to use data for your business in 2017?
ROI analytics across platforms and channels and automated prospecting through advancements in AI.
Conclusion
Man, oh man. What a great post with a ton of great opinions on what is to come for 2017. Now it is up to you. What is your analytics predictions?
Thank you for sharing your expertise and insights with us.