Web traffic, engagement rates, conversions, return on investment (ROI) from campaigns... Marketing data is abundant, but which data is really useful? How can we ensure that we only keep the essential data? How do you build a dashboard that's concise, reliable and action-oriented? Brigitte Neveu-Dérotrie, an expert specialising in digital marketing, outlines the essential steps for creating a relevant marketing dashboard, avoiding common mistakes and taking advantage of advances in AI.
Digital marketing is evolving at an exponential rate. The ability to make fast, relevant decisions represents a decisive competitive advantage. According to a study by Capgemini Research Institute, 74 % of companies say that data-driven decisions considerably improve their marketing performance. The key is to have a reliable and relevant dashboard.
In this context, a well-designed dashboard is essential for monitoring performance, making choices, reacting and implementing effective actions. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into these systems also offers unprecedented opportunities, enabling finer-grained analysis and greater responsiveness.
1ʳᵉ step: defining the right KPIs for a relevant dashboard
A dashboard is a indispensable tool for managing marketing campaigns, provided you have clear objectives.
Choosing the right KPIs can improve your productivity and profitability:
- They make it easier to take decisions based on clear data
- You can identify opportunities and problems more easily
- Regular feedback motivates and guides teams
The most important thing is to clarify your marketing objectivesthen select the really useful indicatorsavoiding the notorious "vanity metrics". Choosing the right indicators is fundamental to decision-making. It is preferable to choose a limited number of indicators, but to stick to the essential KPIs, rather than having too many, which would be detrimental to the quality of the decision-making process.
Beware of vanity metrics
Certain indicators such as the number of views, likes or subscribers on social networks are not correlated with the marketing objective. What's the point of having an exceptional number of views of your posts if they don't generate any ROI? For example, on LinkedIn, an emotional post can generate many views without any effect on lead generation.
A B-to-B company on LinkedIn should be as interested in conversion or lead generation as in the number of views, likes and comments.
Another example: the e-commerce company Zalando attaches vital importance to its Net Promoter Score (NPS) - the likelihood of a brand being recommended by its customers - particularly during Black Friday. Its priority is to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction, even during peak periods.
Having too many indicators is counter-productive
You can start by defining three priority objectives and selecting a maximum of three KPIs for each objective. Sometimes a single KPI is enough to measure an objective. If you think you need 5 or 6 indicators, it's probably because your objective isn't defined precisely enough.
Here are a few examples of useful KPIs, depending on the marketing/communication objective:
- Notoriety share of voice, media coverage, new unique visitors
- Acquisition conversion rate, cost per lead, quality of traffic (average time, page views)
- Loyalty Re-purchase rate, NPS, attrition rate (rate of customers lost out of the total number of customers over a given period)
- Profitability ROI per channel, customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV)
2e stage: collecting and processing data to turn information into insight
A dashboard is a dynamic tool based on reliable, up-to-date data. It is therefore essential to guarantee their quality:
- Prevent data entry errors that could affect the quality of your data and dashboards.
- Use APIs to export certain data automatically to the analysis tool. This ensures reliability and avoids tedious reporting.
- Clean up the data collected: regularly check the accuracy of the data. Data cleaning (manually, using a programming language, or even AI) helps you identify misspelled, missing or erroneous data.
Choosing data management software (Salesforce, Adobe Audience Manager, Lotame, etc.) is essential to guarantee the reliability of your data at every stage of collection, analysis and sharing with your employees.
This software centralises your data and you develop your own dashboards to use it.
Automating and centralising data: best practice
By bringing all your key information together in one place, you can benefit from better management, more in-depth analysis and more informed decision-making:
- Choose a flexible solution that is compatible with your existing systems, taking into account your current and future needs
- Standardise data by cleaning and organising it, eliminating duplicates
- Segment and customise dashboards according to your objectives
Some tools and data sources for :
- Centralising sources: CRM, Google Analyticsdata from social networks, e-mailing tools, e-commerce platforms, etc.
- Automate data collection to avoid manual errors: connectors, APIs or ETLs such as Zapier, Make or Supermetrics
- Make data more reliable using cleansing, de-duplication or weighting rules
Get trained!
To go further and create customised dashboards, discover the training programme Building marketing dashboards.
Key points:
- Define clear and measurable objectives
- Create dashboards tailored to your needs
- Automate data collection and monitoring
- Using insights to adapt marketing strategies
Example of practical work:
Creating an interactive dashboard with Looker Studio
3e step: integrating AI, from visualisation to prediction
Beyond simply visualising historical data, AI enables you to identify emerging trends, predict future results and propose specific actions to optimise current campaigns.
AI now makes it possible to move from a descriptive dashboard to a decision-making tool.
Testimonial
"Integrating AI into our marketing dashboards is a real lever for personalisation. It gives us a better understanding of visitor behaviour on our site, enabling us to anticipate booking peaks and optimise our campaigns according to when customers are most receptive." Marketing director in the luxury hotel industry
Examples of tools: Loomi AI, Lumi AI, HubSpot (with integrated AI)
- Anomaly detection
For example, an e-tailer can use Loomi AIA sudden drop in conversions on mobile. The AI identified a display bug on Safari iOS, which was corrected immediately.
- Predictive analysis
A hotel website uses Lumi AI to anticipate slack booking periods. It launched an "early booking" campaign 3 weeks in advance, thereby stabilising its occupancy rate.
- Recommendations for action
A HubSpot customer used Seventh Sense to optimise the timing of its emails. The case study showed that the open rate increased by 93 % after integrating AI into its dashboard. The click-through rate also rose sharply, by 55 %.
HubSpot offers a AI assistant which automatically adjusts the timing of marketing emails based on recipients' past behaviour. Emails are sent when each contact is most likely to read them, with an improvement in click-through rates of up to +30 % (source: HubSpot).
Get trained!
AI at the service of your marketing and sales strategy
Discover how to use AI for data analysis and decision-making:
- Use AI to analyse market trends and optimise your positioning
- Enhance your competitive analysis
- Better understand consumer behaviour and generate leads
- Predict the needs and behaviour of your customers and prospects more accurately
- Optimise your advertising campaigns and refine your content strategy
Examples of effective dashboards
Digital performance monitoring
Monitor the performance of digital channels in real time, so you can quickly adjust your strategies.
Key indicators :
- Web traffic: number of unique visitors, pages viewed, average session length
- Engagement on social networks: number of likes, shares, comments, etc.
- Conversions: conversion rate by channel, number of leads generated
Example
An e-commerce business can use a table consolidating data from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and Google Ads to visualise the impact of each channel on sales and adjust budgets accordingly.
E-mail campaigns
Evaluate the effectiveness of e-mail campaigns and optimise future mailings.
Key indicators :
- Open rate
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
By tracking these indicators for each campaign, you can identify the best-performing email subject lines and the most engaging content.
Sales performance
Provide visibility on sales performance to guide strategic decisions.
Key indicators :
- Sales figures
- Number of new opportunities
- Opportunity conversion rate
The performance monitoring dashboard enables you to identify the most profitable geographical areas and adapt your resources accordingly.
ROI marketing
Measure the effectiveness of marketing expenditure in terms of revenue generated.
Key indicators :
- Cost per acquisition (CPA)
- LTV
- ROI per channel
For example, determining which channels offer the best return on investment and reallocating your marketing budget accordingly.
A well-designed marketing dashboard doesn't just measure: it enlightens, anticipates and guides. It's up to you to transform your data into strategic decisions, by choosing the most appropriate tools and indicators.
