7 Ways to Use a Marketing Data API

It seems I’m doing more writing for Optify than my own blog these days (which is fine). Here’s a recent article I posted on ways to use the Optify Marketing API to deliver reporting, insight and value. Original article published here.

One of the most under-appreciated, but important services a digital agency can perform for their clients is to make business sense of the enormous volume of data available to online marketers. The number of different KPIs/metrics, tracking systems, data collection methods and ways to view the information creates confusion – especially for businesses not born on the internet and aren’t steeped in the ways of data. The more you can do as an agency to simplify, deliver business insight and provide actions to impact the metrics positively, the more value you add to your services and the relationship.

At Optify, we are guilty of adding to the growing pile of information by capturing data in a unique way and building more holistic customer visitor profiles. Read this post on the similarities and differences between Optify and Google Analytics to understand how our data set is unique. We make the data available through an easy to use web interface AND an API which is for developers and the more technically proficient.

In this post, I’ll share 7 ways agencies can use the Optify Marketing API to improve data clarity with their clients:

1. Stand-alone dashboard. We’ve created several versions of a stand-alone dashboard that pulls raw data into an Excel spreadsheet, organizes the data using pivot tables and publishes to a dashboard tab with tables and charts. The screenshot image with this blog is an example of one of the dashboards.
2. Cross site/intra-organization reporting. For clients that have Optify organized into multiple sites under a single organization – each country is an individual website or multiple brands – the API can function as a method to roll-up information across these different sites into a single overview for tracking and management.
3. Cross client reporting for an agency – In the same way the marketing API can be used for reporting for a single client with multiple sites, an agency can use the API for rolling up performance across client sites for internal performance reporting and monitoring.
4. Cross company/cross visitor scoring – The Optify data is very good at building profiles at the individual visitor level which means that if multiple visitors from the same company interact with a site, we will generate a profile for each visitor. We’ve used our API to understand how companies, with multiple visitors, are engaging with a website. This approach is particularly helpful with a longer, more extensive sales cycle in which multiple people are accessing the client’s site.
5. A feed into a broader dashboard pulling from multiple sources – In this scenario, an agency can use the Optify data as one element of a broader dash boarding system that includes data from outside of just Optify such as social signals, pipeline information from a CRM system, etc.
6. Adding individual data elements to a CRM system or customer service infrastructure – Optify integrates seamlessly into Salesforce with our Salesforce Lead Generation Application – but other customers have taken our API data and added it their CRM and Customer Services systems.
7. Deep analysis at the page or visitor level including marketing attribution. Since Optify tracks website interactions at the individual level over time – including which pages the individual visitor engages with, we have a unique view of which sources a visitor uses to access a site (direct, paid search, organic search, social, referral, email, etc.), when they convert to a lead (complete a form) and how they perform in the sales pipeline (in Salesforce). For sites with large amounts of visit data, this individual view data set forms the foundation for a true marketing attribution model or a page level productivity analysis.

The beauty of data API’s in general is the flexibility of uses – either as stand-alone source of analytical data or as a plug-in to other systems. The marketing API from Optify is no different and delivers a unique view of customer interaction with your website that can serve multiple purposes. I’ve listed seven here, but I am sure there are many more.

Let us know if you have any questions, comments or have other ways to use the Optify Marketing API and please share this post!