Top 5 Marketing Analytics Platforms for Large E-commerce Businesses

In 2020, over two billion internet users purchased goods and services online, hitting a combined revenue of 4.2 trillion US dollars. Such a monumental amount of money means a lot of buying and, of course, a lot of data. As a burgeoning e-commerce brand, knowing how to use the data at your disposal can be a game-changer for you. Top brands in the e-commerce ecosystem are breaking grounds and hitting new records simply because they know how to implement data-driven marketing strategies. Over the years, there has been an influx of analytical tools aimed at helping e-commerce brands evaluate business-related data and enforce result-oriented decisions. Right here, we will reveal 5 of the best marketing analytics platforms you can use to get the best out of your e-commerce business!

Challenges E-commerce Businesses Face While Scaling

E-commerce businesses (or any business, for that matter) usually pass through the core stages of ideation, planning, launching, and scaling. The first three stages would usually see you set your business in relatively stable motion. But then, there will be a time to scale. And that is where things get tricky. At this stage, you have a massive pile of customer data to work with, a marketing budget to manage, and a ton of inventory and fulfilment issues to handle. The backend can be pretty messy. We will take a look at some of the challenges e-commerce businesses face while scaling, so you'll be better prepared to scale!

Multichannel Attribution

Multichannel attribution is simply the process of tracking marketing data across a business’s marketing channels to determine which channel brings in the most revenue. While this is usually easy in the early stages of a business, it can get a lot tougher when the business starts seeing significant growth. By scaling, you would most likely increase the number of marketing channels you’re using and consequently pull in several times more data. The need to analyze all these channels and focus your marketing budget and strategies on the most efficient channel is a challenge that every scaling e-commerce business will face at some point.

Data Sampling

Data sampling involves the analysis of a subset of data to understand an entire data group. During their early stages, e-commerce businesses usually work with relatively smaller data groups. This is easier to analyze. However, as scaling begins, the data groups become exponentially larger. It becomes more strenuous pulling and sampling data individually from so many distinct data sources. Inventory and Order Fulfillment While scaling, e-com businesses are tasked with ensuring that there is enough stock to match the influx of purchases. At the same time, there’s a need to track every order and ensure that all purchases get to their destination. This can be challenging as the e-com business would probably be experiencing large-scale orders and rapidly diminishing inventory for the first time. Thus, there'd be need for more efficient ways of managing inventory and customer purchase data.

Data Synchronization

As businesses begin to scale, they usually deploy a wider array of tools for different purposes. The data generated from these tools would need to be regularly updated across all communicating systems to match the constant changes that come with everyday business activities at a higher level. Batch synchronization, which is usually common with smaller businesses, can be very slow and unreliable and will pose a challenge for a business when it's time to scale. A scaling business is faced with the challenge of deploying tools that can synchronize data in real-time to keep up with rapid changes in the business environment.

Customer Management

With so many customers coming in, a scaling e-com business will face the challenge of managing a large amount of customer data. The business would need to device means to understand and group its customers based on predefined attributes to make more personalized offers and ultimately make marketing more efficient.

Top 5 Marketing Analytics Tools for Large Ecommerce Businesses

The challenges discussed in the previous section can relatively easily be eliminated with the use of automation. In this case, the scaling business is dealing with a huge repository of data. A solid solution should automate the businesses' analytics and provide helpful insights to reinforce strategic decision-making. That said, this section will discuss five of the best marketing analytics platforms that can bring the best value to growing e-commerce businesses.

Improvado.io

Improvado is an ETL platform that helps businesses consolidate data from over 200 data sources, including search engines, social media platforms, analytics tools, e-commerce platforms, and more. This is very helpful to scaling e-com businesses because they can integrate this vast amount of data sources into their dashboards without paying a fee for each integration. Also, users can request any integration that is not listed in the platform's library of data sources. Improvado’s Marketing Common Data Model (MCDM) facilitates efficient data usage across a business's entire ecosystem. This is achieved by automatically matching different dimensions and metrics across multiple data sources, thus, unifying marketing data for more efficient analytics. @Improvado-io has been used by businesses across multiple industries, including ASUS, Gymshark, Teachable, and the University of San Francisco.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics 360 is the premium version of its popular, free counterpart: Google Analytics. The platform is developed for enterprise-level users who need a robust system for measuring and analyzing data from a wider range of touchpoints. As part of its bevy of features, Analytics 360 provides its users with advanced, customizable funnels and attribution modelling, helping them understand how customers are behaving across their sales funnels. The platform also allows its users to access data from other sources, including other Google products and 3rd-party integrations. Google Analytics 360 is currently used by top brands, such as Samsung, Salesforce, United Overseas Bank, Adidas, and more.

DashThis

DashThis is a marketing report tool designed for marketing teams and online stores. The platform natively allows users to draw data from over 38 data sources. DashThis provides its users with customizable dashboard templates to enable them visualize data the way they want. Once a user starts building a dashboard, DashThis provides some default widgets to help speed up the process. Some of the analytics tools supported on the platform include Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Ahrefs, etc. Some of the platform's prominent users include the University of Oxford, WPromote, and JELLY.

Supermetrics

One of Supermetrics most impressive features is the ability to schedule data transfers and automate marketing reports. The platform currently supports over 70 integrations, including analytics platforms, sales tracking software, email marketing platforms, and more. Supermetrics also allows users to connect multiple accounts of any integration. For example, if you have two Google Analytics accounts, you can connect them to Supermetrics without paying an extra fee. The platform also allows users to move processed data into popular data warehouses, like Google BigQuery and Snowflake. Supermetrics has recorded thousands of users, including Nestle, WarnerBros, Samsung, HubSpot, and more.

Tableau

Tableau is a visual data analytics tool that gives businesses access to AI-driven analytics functionalities. The platform can be accessed through a browser, smartphone, desktop, or as an embedded application. Tableau natively supports over 80 data sources, including analytics software and databases. Some of the platform’s top customers include Verizon, Lenovo, Chipotle, Honeywell, and Red Hat. The downside to using Tableau as an analytics platform is that it takes relatively longer to master how to navigate the platform. Other than that, Tableau has an impressive collection of analytics and reporting features. Scale Your Business with Data-Driven Strategies Scaling e-commerce businesses can be difficult due to the vast amount of data involved. But with efficient analytics platforms, businesses can effectively take advantage of its large collection of customer data and make well-informed decisions. Indeed, there are hundreds of analytics tools all over the internet, but the ones we’ve discussed have been impressive so far. If you still need help with choosing the right marketing analytics tool for your eCommerce business, feel free to reach out to us. Cheers!