There has never been so much data in marketing. Harnessing it can facilitate better-informed decisions and more effective advertising campaigns, optimize marketing channel mixes, increase the reach and conversion of your target audiences, and ultimately lead to higher customer satisfaction and business performance.
The problem is that gathering all the right raw data, collating it into actionable insights, analyzing the results, and identifying where to optimize your various strategies… is just as complicated as it sounds, and you might risk not doing it right!
Luckily, there are some great data-driven marketing firms with the right attitude, experience, and tech you need to succeed! We have reviewed them and shared insights on the specific services to seek when choosing an agency partner.
Effective marketing strategies start with accurately understanding your existing customer data and marketing performance. Auditing your current campaign data will reveal your weaknesses and strengths while highlighting performance gaps.
Agencies audit past data and campaign analytics from all your customer engagement platforms, including your existing customer relationship management system, social media channels, website, and past inbound and outbound marketing campaign results.
Agencies can extract actionable audience insights by collecting, cleaning, organizing, and interpreting your existing data. Data visualization services could make your data easy to understand and convey key customer insights across the organization.
This matters because you need to understand who your potential customers are. They should have a higher affinity for your products and services, resonate better with your brand and messaging, and ultimately have the highest chance of converting.
Specialized agencies have the experience and tools to help you achieve that. This lays the foundation for accurate targeting and personalization, and tailored campaigns directed at specific audience segments.
Your agency will guide you through this and help you gain all the insights you need on your buyer segments and what drives their purchasing choices.
Many digital marketing agencies offer solutions to develop and deploy digital marketing campaigns powered by performance metrics.
This could involve variance analysis of past campaigns to determine best practices within each channel—optimal frequency and messaging to achieve the highest email open rates, target segments on social platforms to optimize reach, and the type of content that resulted in the highest social engagement, etc.
This could also involve a/b testing designs to further test the hypothesis. For example, different campaign messages in the same email marketing campaign could be delivered to two randomly selected groups of recipients to see which one results in a higher click-through rate.
Some specialty agencies could help you evaluate different marketing technology (Martech) solutions and oversee implementation and integration. Marketing automation platforms could include marketing asset management, customer relationship management, channel coordination, etc.
These agencies have in-depth knowledge of the latest Martech stack and how they can solve problems at companies of various sizes and needs. They can make recommendations and help with the introductions.
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Founded: 2017
Location: New York City and fully remote with employees across the US
Number of Employees: 51 – 200
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Founded by industry veteran Stephanie Harris, PartnerCentric is the largest independent partner marketing agency in the USA and takes pride in being fully woman-owned and WBE certified.
PartnerCentric provides tactical, data-driven, and tech-enabled services to drive growth and revenue for your business, using patented software development combined with extensive marketing experience and expertise.
PartnerCentric creates bespoke “speed to value” marketing strategies designed to achieve results quickly.
It has developed a unique technology platform called Control Suite, specifically designed to enhance revenue and drive successful outcomes in affiliate marketing.
This proprietary tool offers a comprehensive solution for optimizing affiliate campaigns and maximizing profitability using data and advanced analytics.
Independence, transparency, and boundary-pushing performance are deeply ingrained in the company’s culture, felt by every client, and evidenced by its exceptional track record.
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Founded: 2002
Location: Sarasota, Florida, USA; and Banja Luka, Bosnia
Number of Employees: 51 – 200
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Perform[cb] Agency is a leading data-driven performance marketing agency and an award-winning affiliate marketing agency.
It offers a diverse range of services, including full-service performance and affiliate marketing services, web and mobile app development, and expert data-backed strategy development.
Perform[cb] Agency works with clients (and agencies) of all sizes across all industries to create client-specific, customized, and scalable strategies.
It drives customer acquisition across multiple pricing models, including CPA, CPI, CPL, CPE, CPS, CPC, and PPC, using distribution channels such as native, mobile, social, contextual, SMS, search, and more.
It takes an ‘outcome-based’ approach that focuses on achieving real, measurable results for your specific marketing goals, increasing ROI, and achieving sustainable incremental growth.
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Founded: 2007
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA; London, UK; Berlin, Germany; Sydney, Australia; and Singapore
Number of Employees: 201 – 500
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Acceleration Partners is an award-winning global digital marketing agency with an extensive portfolio and a stellar track record.
It focuses on developing data-informed marketing strategies and complete program management in the partner, ship, affiliate, and influencer marketing spaces, as well as in content strategy, mass media, and B2B marketing.
As a full-service agency, it has a dynamic range of capabilities and the breadth and depth to fulfill all your marketing needs.
Acceleration Partners has won many industry awards across numerous categories, including the Global Performance Marketing Award (GPMA) for Best Agency and Best Team in Performance. Acceleration Partners is also a six-time GPMA winner in the Best Affiliate and Partner Marketing Agency category.
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Founded: 1982
Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Number of Employees: 11 – 50
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Choose J & C if you need a 360-degree agency. With this agency, brands can rely on expert data science-oriented services like predictive models to optimize customer buying decisions and segmentation for personalized targeting.
J & C is a digital marketing agency like no other. With a long list of services, this agency guides businesses to leverage data science to drive sales. You can work with J & C to perform transactional and attribution analysis to determine the value of your sales and at which touchpoints buyers become disengaged. J & C can also provide a custom segmentation strategy built on in-depth customer analysis for accurate targeting. And if you have a high churn rate, don’t worry! This agency has solutions to reduce your customer turnover and guide you to brand loyalty.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2019
Location: Cardiff, Wales, UK
Number of Employees: 1 – 10
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Alytix Marketing is the top choice for businesses that create digital marketing campaigns powered by in-depth data, including PPC campaigns and outbound marketing strategies that increase revenue and awareness.
Alytix Marketing provides digital marketing solutions built on data and analytics. You can work with this agency to develop customer-centric content marketing strategies and outbound campaigns like backlinking and SEO. To kickstart your progress, Alytix Marketing uses data and analytics to create custom roadmaps for success.
Whether your business needs guidance for customer acquisition and retention or wants to leverage customer engagement strategies, Alytix Marketing has the necessary solutions. This agency will also create intuitive data visualizations so you can extract actionable insights!
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Founded: 2006
Location: Saint-Sulpice, Vaud, Switzerland
Number of Employees: 11 – 50
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Want to work with an expert team for services like data science, data visualizations, and Google Analytics? Comtogether is a perfect choice! This agency has worked with brands in various sectors and offers a well-rounded list of specialized data and analytics services.
Comtogether is a group of data and digital marketing enthusiasts with loads of experience. Helping brands like Musica and Fishermen’s Friend, Comtogether offers solutions for every aspect of your data and marketing campaigns.
This agency uses Google analytics data, data visualization, and data science to extract the most valuable audience and marketing insights and build strategies that work. Comtogether also has the tools to audit your analytics and pinpoint areas that need optimization for improved data. Plus, this agency also provides content and digital marketing strategies consulting.
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Founded: 2017
Location: Columbus, Georgia, USA
Number of Employees: 11 – 50
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Brands should opt for Aletheia Digital if they want an agency with more bells and whistles than most! This agency works with small and mid-level businesses to develop brand-centric strategies powered by an in-depth customer and market analysis. You can also rely on this agency to deploy digital communications like email, social media, and video advertising.
Aletheia Digital offers a broad range of services for personalized, buyer-centric strategies. This agency relies on tools and platforms like YouTube, Google Analytics, and Facebook to extract in-depth customer data and create bespoke solutions for your brand.
You can leverage cultural marketing, digital marketing, data analysis, data enhancement, and customer segmentation by working with this agency. Aletheia Digital also provides expert strategies for brand awareness and customer engagement through social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, web design, and video marketing.
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Founded: 2015
Location: San Diego, California, USA
Number of Employees: 11 – 50
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Opt for Smartboost if you need an agency specializing in growth hacking strategies. This agency will audit your analytics to evaluate your performance and prescribe custom solutions powered by audience insights. You can also benefit from a tailored tracking dashboard and custom analytics reports.
Smartboost will integrate your existing analytics and CRM platform to streamline your marketing efforts and use a wide range of data. You can work with this agency to audit your analytics, create intuitive data visualizations, so your team can compare data, extract actionable insights, and perform competitor analysis. This agency doesn’t stop there. It provides solutions for customer segmentation, custom branded analytics reports, and a tracking dashboard to centralize your campaigns and performance.
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Founded: 1986
Location: Rochester, New York, USA
Number of Employees: 1001 – 5000
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Indotronix is a fantastic option for businesses of all sizes that need more than just standard data analytics techniques. Through branding, content management, conversion rate optimization, audience building, and research and testing, you ditch traditional marketing strategies and benefit from practices built on real-world data.
Indotronix is a next-generation agency that abandons traditional marketing and data techniques. Working with this agency, you’ll follow a six-step strategy to achieve your KPIs and sales goals. This strategy starts with branding built on real-world data, research and testing, and guiding your brand to build an audience. Next, Indotronix offers customer identification for targeted advertising, content management to hone customer relationships, and finally, conversion! Businesses can leverage buyer-centric landing pages, custom reports, analytics audits, and so much more.
AGENCY SNAPSHOT
Founded: 2011
Location: Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa; and London, UK
Number of Employees: 51 – 200
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Clockwork is a digital agency that offers a full suite of marketing services, all backed by an insight-full, data-informed strategy. They have worked with a diverse range of clients and have an impressive portfolio and track record. Services include data analysis, strategy, and everything you need to plan, create, and execute your campaign, from concept to creative to measurement and optimization.
Clockwork is a digital marketing agency that specializes in data-driven strategies. Its services range from PR to social media marketing, paid media, experiential marketing, design and development, video, and creative content services. Based in South Africa and with offices in London, UK, Clockwork is a great combination of the creative and the scientific, using hard data to guide its creative efforts.
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Founded: 2003
Location: Bengaluru (Bangalore), Karnataka, India
Number of Employees: 201 – 500
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Businesses work with MetrixFox because of this agency’s stellar track record. They have worked with over 3000 clients and developed over 5000 projects. B2B brands also opt for MetricFox because this agency provides tailored solutions for ABM to maximize your revenue.
MetricFox has a team of data experts. This agency has worked with businesses in various sectors and can boost your brand through web design, SEO keyword strategy, and more inbound digital campaigns. MetricFox also provides solutions for creative services to help your brand use innovative strategies, putting you ahead of your competitors.
You can work with MetricFox to access services like data analysis, customer segmentation, and data enrichment. B2B businesses may prefer this agency because they offer ABM to secure quality leads and drive revenue, too!
Big data has empowered businesses to leverage in-depth, valuable audience insights and create tailored marketing strategies.
When leveraging data-informed decisions, it will be easier to engage and acquire new customers, retain existing buyers, and promote your content that converts.
Work with any of these agencies specialized in data and analytics to skyrocket your revenue!
It is an approach to marketing that bases decisions on data analytics and continuous improvements through test and learn. Through campaign analysis and testing, marketers can better understand their customer behavior and customer journey and find the campaign messages that resonate the best. The key insights can enable businesses to create more personalized experiences
One example is to use purchasing data to segment your customers, e.g. value-seekers who has a high percentage of purchases on discounts and coupons, category spenders who shop narrowly on select categories, etc. You could use data analytics and predictive modeling to identify the sweet spot of discount levels. You can subsequently target higher-value coupons to value-seekers. For example, a 25% off storewide coupon delivered would maximize profit by predicting the total sales uplift from this target segment, less the discount. For category spenders who only shop haircare, one could extend an adjacent category coupon, e.g., a free sample with purchase in skincare, to incentivize cross-aisle shopping.
The services offered are tailored to gathering, integrating and analyzing all available data, both internal and external, to identify what the most effective strategies will be for your brand, and your consumers. These services include analytics audits, data aggregation and analysis, marketing strategy optimization and digital marketing services, and audience segmentation. Read the full review to learn more about data-driven marketing services and the best agencies to consider.
Brands can use feedback loop data analytics to better understand what content resonates the most with the target audience. It could be identifying content pixels that resulted in the highest open-click in each email campaign. It could also be singling out the content types in social media posts with the highest engagement. These should point the brands to what content to create in the future.
Netflix is a classic example. It uses user viewing data to predict what other movies or shows the user would be interested in and displays recommendations front-and-center. This approach extends further upstream and allows Netflix to strategically invest in content creation, resulting in many blockbuster shows such as Narcos, The Crown, Stranger Things, etc.
The goal is to use data to make smarter decisions every step of the value chain. It should start with easily accessible data, i.e., a reliable, real-time, well-controlled, single-point-of-truth database, with data visualization for every aspect of the organization. For product development, external market and internal customer data should inform new product introduction or existing feature enhancements to maximize adoption. For supply chain, internal sales data and external market trending should inform purchasing or production decisions to maximize sales and minimize stockouts. Ultimately when all departments use data to make smarter decisions, a company can maximize profitability.
One way to differentiate data available to marketing is 1st party, 2nd party, and 3rd party data. 1st party data is your own data. e.g., your email list and email response history. 2nd party data is owned by someone else, but you have access to it because you are a trusted partner. e.g., a grocery store can access customer credit card information and, therefore, gain insights into customers' demographic data. 3rd party data is owned by someone else that you do not have a relationship with but can gain access to. e.g., a mailing address list from the registrar's office to send direct mail for a local service such as landscaping.
Invoca: Data-Driven Marketing Trends for 2024: Why You Need to Update Your Strategy
McKinsey & Company: The Big Reset: Data-driven Marketing is the Next Normal
McKinsey & Company: Insights to Impact: Creating and Sustaining Data-driven Commercial Growth