Article

Dr.Venkatesh Raman
Dr.Venkatesh Raman 1 March 2019

So you've decided to become a Marketing Data Scientist?

It’s a challenging time to be a marketer today.  Due to the rapid growth of marketing technologies, businesses are abundant with the wealth of data. Increasingly, consumers expect more personalised shopping experiences than ever in today’s complex business environment.

Marketers today are struggling with digital data for deriving meaningful business outcomes - understanding audience real-time behavior, running different experiments (A/B & multivariate testing), tailoring the personalized digital experience, optimizing their campaigns and so on. No doubt, Marketers live in an era of the data-driven world to monitor budgets and digital strategies intact. 

The demand for data science is profoundly increasing in the world of marketing hence today's and future marketers need to become the ‘Marketing Data Scientist.’

Businesses are shifting towards always-on campaigns using Marketing Automation as a technology enabler to drive data-driven outcomes. Thus, the role of data science in Marketing automation is a reality today with robust marketing automation platforms, available in today’s digital marketplace. It captures, stores, manages and analyzes the data for making data-driven marketing decisions on marketing campaigns today.

“The most powerful data scientists are those who act as bridges between insights and people,” says Kirill Eremenko, the founder and CEO of SuperDataScience, an online educational portal for data scientists and data science enthusiasts. “There’s a science behind analytics; however, communicating insights is an art.”

Key Stats that prove the rise of the Marketing Data Scientist

The evolving role of Marketing Data Scientist is to build a closer relationship between Marketing Automation and Data Science for maximizing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, improving the personalized digital experiences and measuring the overall business outcomes. Key stats that include:

  • 91% of senior marketers indicated that customer data was essential to making decisions. (Source: Forbes)
  • The research report projects a shortfall of between 100,000 and 190,000 data science jobs by the end of the decade. (Source: American Marketing Association)
  • Companies will begin to hire the Director of Marketing Data and other marketing data professionals in 2019. — IBM Watson Marketing, 2018 (Source: TechRepublic)
  • People around the world will generate 50 times more data than they did just six years ago by 2020. (Source: Analytics India Magazine)

It’s a great shift towards data-driven world from the gut feelings of Mad Men era to increase marketing ROI. Increasingly, the role of data science will enhance key areas of digital marketing – content marketing, customer engagement, real-time marketing campaigns, SEO and so on. So, there will be a huge demand for Marketing Data Scientists in the future.

The Marriage of Data Science and Marketing Automation

Data science and analytics are transforming the future of marketing. Here are the key applications:

  • Granular Targeting – Marketing automation processes a large amount of customer data through the integration of CRM and other transactional systems. It helps marketers target customers with more granularity and enable them to personalize their customers experience through a data-driven approach.
  • Omnichannel Touch points – It helps marketers to gauge the value of the leads generated through different digital channels – Website, Social Media, E-mail Campaigns, Mobile, Search and so on. Moreover, it analyzes the leads generated in the past and predicts the future purchases.
  • Precise Segmentation – It enables marketers to segment the customer data precisely and monitor the user behaviors online. This, in turn, will improve the conversions and results in better ROI.
  • Content and Campaign Optimization – Marketers use data points to optimize content and campaign using real-time experimentation.

The list goes on and on in the light of data science and marketing automation. Moreover, there is a lot of data challenges within the organization:

  1. Data remains currently untapped to a greater extent
  2. Data collected randomly and infrequently
  3. Data not converted into actionable insights and recommendations
  4. Data not captured in real-time

“Data is massively complex and comprehensive, which makes it difficult even for experts to understand. Extracting insights is the first step, but the crucial follow-up is finding ways to communicate and contextualize those insights so they’re accessible to all,” says Kirill Eremenko is the founder and CEO of SuperDataScience.

Thus, the role of Marketing Data Scientist becomes crucial to overcome these data challenges and transform valuable insights into marketing ROI. With the proliferation of new technologies and tools at disposal, a Marketing Data Scientist should be able to uncover key insights from big data in marketing. The industry predicts that there is a shortage of data scientists in the future.

What does it mean for modern marketers like us?

Trust me, this is the right time for modern marketers to become a Marketing Data Scientist. It's a great opportunity to learn this new skill and start analyzing untapped data to uncover meaningful insights, trends, and patterns.

Start rolling up your sleeves to position yourself as a great ‘Marketing Data Scientist.’

Do you have interesting insights to share about evolving role of Marketing Data Scientist in your organization? Feel free to share your thoughts.

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