For event planners and marketers, analytical reports can be gold mines for driving registrations, adoption of tools and calculating ROI. However, the true potential of analytics remains underutilized in testing the effectiveness of marketing efforts, testing new audience segments and creating impactful cross-promotional efforts. This is mostly because there are a plethora of options and features available, as well as disconnected channels that add significant complexity to the analytical process and make accurate attribution extremely difficult.

If you have been struggling with putting your data to work for driving positive change within your organization, here are five essential techniques that can help you build accurate and effective reports.

Use Campaign Tracking Parameters

Add URL parameters to your links in web ads, emails and social media posts to capture campaign source, medium, term, content and name. This will enable you to analyze your traffic patterns and campaign ROI in detail. Google provides an easy tool for adding appropriate parameters to your links.

Monitor in Real Time

If your marketing automation system and/or analytics tracking solution provides this feature, then make the most of it. Monitor the audience engagement immediately after launching a new promotion since that is the time when you’ll probably see the most activity. This will help you not only understand which channels are delivering maximum value but also make improvements and corrections to your messages if needed.

Compare Different Date Ranges

Add depth to your analysis by doing week over week, month over month and year over year comparisons to get insights on whether critically important factors such as the audience size, page views, revenue and more are growing per your expectation.

Compare with Industry Benchmarks 

Gain a better understanding of the trends occurring in your industry by comparing the performance of your assets with aggregated industry data. If possible, refine by geographical location, organization size and other categories, to get a more accurate picture of the space your company and events are a part of.

Analyze for Mobile Devices and Platforms

Increasingly, the share of mobile devices is growing significantly for email and social engagement, as well as for searches and sales. To tap into the new opportunities that this presents, you first need to know what volume of your traffic is coming from mobile devices and platforms, and then analyze what content triggers deeper engagement on these.

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