You don’t have to own a body of data to reap the benefits of analytics. In fact, a multitude of information is available for free or for purchase. You can think of it as having many maps at your disposal. Not all of them are useful and some of them have higher cost to obtain. The Data Scout has experience working with a wide variety of information and can quickly figure out which sources would best serve your needs.
Product targeting is an area where multiple information sources can be extremely helpful. In this project, the client wanted to entice users to engage with more products, resulting in higher revenue. The client had collected some information on users and the products each user was shown. Some initial analysis indicated that this information was not sufficient for improving product targeting, so other sources of information were evaluated. Put another way, the map wasn’t detailed enough to show a definitive direction. To understand how to generate more revenue it was necessary to know more about the terrain.
Additional sources of information were brought in from third parties regarding both the users and products. Not all of this third party information was useful, but working through some quick prototypes The Data Scout was able to identify which sources of information and analyses would aid product targeting. The result was a 50% increase in user engagement.
Scout Tips
Third party information sources vary greatly in the value they provide. In many cases these sources charge by the field, meaning the more information you request the higher the price you will pay. The Data Scout can help you keep these costs low by evaluating which pieces of information will be most useful for your needs.
Having more information is not always helpful. For example, you may think that retrieving social media information on your users might help you gain insight. Unless you’ve built an app that is widely used by your target audience on Facebook you won’t be able to get much information from just a user name alone. This is true even in the case of open platforms like Twitter, where you can get a lot of information on users (but only if their profiles are public!). If you pay for Twitter user names you might be chagrined to find out that most of your users a) don’t have Twitter profiles, b) have a profile they never use or c) are not engaged on Twitter enough for you to draw meaningful results.
To get an idea of when social media information can provide a lot of insight check out the “Surveying the Landscape” article.
These are just a few examples of how additional information sources can be beneficial. Get in touch with The Data Scout for guidance on finding the right path.