Earlier this year I took a class at Georgia Tech (Go Jackets!) on big data to keep my skills sharp. The class agreed the hardest part of data is knowing what to do with it. What good is having data if you can’t read it? Or even more so, if you can’t come up with actionable items based on your findings in the data.
Having understandable data can help your team to prove value, make better decisions and tell a story. That’s why I’m so excited that today marks the general availability of our new Wave for B2B Marketing app. Here are three features of the product I can’t wait to share with my clients:
Customizable Reporting
Have you ever looked at a Wikipedia article and gotten trapped in a web of clicking on other articles? An hour and a half later you have an overview of 100 different semi-related things but nothing quite like what you were going for in the first place. Sometimes that’s how I feel after looking at a ton of different data sets, but using Wave for B2B Marketing you’re able to pull the right data the first time and build out specific dashboards that focus on the information you need to know. You can use filters and groupings to sift through and drill down into the data that is right for you and your business’ use case. You can also save your customized dashboards so you can easily access the right reports whenever you like.
Beautiful Visuals
Just recently I was working with a client who wanted to be able to share a campaign snapshot every week in her team meeting. Wave would be perfect for this! One of my favorite things about it is that it’s so easy to capture really digestible charts and graphs that you can then share out to your team on Chatter, or even drop into a presentation – no extra work required! You just choose your favorite format by selecting from one of the many chart types available, select your data view, and then send these graphs via Chatter posts in Salesforce, image downloads, or even just send out the URL to the report. It makes it simple to keep everyone on the same page, and it saves you tons of time.
Marketing + Sales Data, Together Forever
Marketing and sales often operate separately from one another, which can cause duplication of processes across your business. One of the things I frequently recommend when I’m implementing a new client is a communication strategy between both teams. Marketing should understand what sales is looking for in a lead or opportunity, and sales should be aware of campaigns that are influencing their prospects. Linking marketing initiatives to sales’ opportunities in Salesforce through Wave can be a great conversation starter. Think about how much your teams could take away if you were able to quickly see how your marketing campaigns and sales opportunities were related. If you were able to meet once a month with sales and review with this data, it would give both teams a great understanding of what’s working and what’s not and how each team’s performance is affecting the overall business.
Wave for B2B Marketing is easy to use, and is bound to help you accomplish marketing superstar status. Check out a preview of Wave, along with some other amazing new Sales Cloud features from our Winter ’17 release.