Marketing dashboard

I was speaking with a marketing executive the other day who was frustrated as he struggled to collect salient numbers for a meeting with his CEO.  He felt he was being judged by the CEO and VP Sales on numbers that he can’t easily collect.   He therefore had to allocate one of his marketing analysts to dig out data from 3 different internal systems, finance, and web analytics, then correlate it all in a spreadsheet… a process that took almost a week.  That week could have been spent setting up an online campaign or other lead generating activity that would actually contribute to the numbers rather than just reporting on them.

CEO’s and Sales Managers have always demanded and been provided visibility into business critical information via dashboards and CRM reports.  Why not CMO’s?   Is the productivity and effectiveness of marketing initiatives less important?  Is lead generation viewed as “outside” the revenue production pipeline?  

The connections are clear, but the data is scattered.

In a turbulent economy it is even more important that leads are generated efficiently and effectively and web traffic is turned into revenue opportunities.   Your website is often the first and perhaps the only way that people interface with your brand.   Traffic on the site itself can provide invaluable information.  Coupling that with the commerce capabilities that can literally turn visits into revenue and web engagement has become that much more important. 

So, why doesn’t the CMO also have access to real-time information that is passing through your site and feeding the network you login to every day?   We believe you should.   EPiServer’s Online Center facilitates other departments getting the same benefits from dashboard capabilities and real-time information that sales managers and executives have long enjoyed.   I’d encourage you to check it out. 

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