Splunk for Business Analytics

Using Splunk for Your Sales and Marketing Data

Data has become one of the most important assets a business can have. Every interaction — whether it’s a customer clicking on your ad, signing up for your newsletter, filling out a form or just browsing your website — produces valuable information. Companies that want to stay competitive use that information to guide important business decisions.

The challenge may come when it’s time to find out what that data means and how you can turn those insights into action. Data comes in many forms and from many sources. Whatever and wherever those data points may be, Splunk business analytics can help you connect the dots and reveal insights that will win you more customers.

Make the Most of the Data You Have

These days, it’s easy to collect tons of data, but more isn’t always better. The challenge with having a mountain of information from various sources is that the data doesn’t always play nice together. 

For example, every interaction a visitor has on your website creates a series of machine-generated logs. Prospects who sign up for your newsletter create information that’s stored in a CRM. Compare the data made by these two systems:

• The machine-generated logs simply note the actions visitors take on your website.
• Newsletter sign-ups only allow you to collect specific information.

Your sales team relies on CRM data to determine the most valuable potential customers for follow-ups. Your team needs all the information they can get to make that decision, but if your CRM doesn’t understand the logs made by your website, you’re either missing out on valuable insights or wasting time figuring out how they’re related.

We’re only looking at two different systems in this example. You’re likely using more than that for your operations, each of which is generating unique data. 

Using Splunk for business analytics, you can collect and analyze any kind of digital data. This allows you to use every bit of information you have to gain a better understanding of potential customers.

Gather More Data From Anywhere

No matter how much changes in the world of business, one thing has always been true: You need to go where your customers are. The challenge is that customers can now be in multiple places at once.

Prospects may be browsing your website, engaging with your brand on social media, looking at reviews on Yelp or checking your apps on their mobile device. A potential customer can find out about your brand from one channel but may not necessarily convert there right away. They may interact with your company somewhere else until their experiences on that other platform finally make them decide to become a customer.

By engaging Splunk’s business process analytics, you combine data from all of those different channels. This allows you to find out where customers are and why they’re there. Understanding why your customers do what they do will help you tailor your marketing to make it as effective as possible.

Respond in Real Time

Today’s data is abundant and produced faster than ever. By the time you make a report about a marketing campaign that started a week — or even just a day — ago, that information may already be irrelevant. If you want to keep up with your data, you’ll need to see it in real time. And that is exactly what Splunk business analytics was made to do.

From the moment you launch a campaign, data starts flowing in. Whether your data involves pay-per-click advertising, social media promotions, live events or web activity, Splunk can analyze what’s going on. The software takes data in its entirety and correlates it with the sources to measure the effectiveness of your initiatives and help you adjust your marketing to improve outcomes. By leveraging Splunk for business intelligence in real time, you can take your campaigns to the next level.

Answers Today, Insights Tomorrow

The amount of data being generated by your business is too much to analyze on your own. The traditional way to get around this is to set key metrics. You take the data and filter it down to what you need then measure your performance based on those metrics. But are you sure that the information you’ve chosen is right? Data doesn’t lie, but you can’t see the whole picture if there are missing pieces of the puzzle.

Here’s a simple scenario to show why this is important: Let’s say you’re running a campaign to drive traffic to your website. Your goal is to bring in fresh leads for your sales team. When the results are in, it seems to be a success, at least as far as traffic goes. But when it comes to converting those leads into paying customers, things aren’t looking as good. 

Why did that happen? The answer, of course, is in the data — but only if you still have it.

Splunk performs business analytics without requiring you to filter beforehand. It takes data in its entirety so you don’t lose any precious information that you may need to answer questions later. No blind spots. No valuable insights left behind.

Get Splunk for Your Business

Big Data isn’t just for large enterprises. Splunk is the business process analytics platform that will help you level the playing field. As one of Splunk’s top five partners, bitsIO can help you get started. We’ll deploy, customize and manage Splunk for your organization so you can hit the ground running.