Most senior marketers will claim that an analytic based data-driven approach is table stakes. And they’re right. Marketers have access to more information than ever before to inform and improve the customer experience. And while being able to measure and analyze data is a keystone to effective strategy, there is a point at which being too reliant on data can hurt.

As marketers had to double-down on creative solutions during the pandemic, change has been happening behind the scenes. Whether it’s doing away with cookies or the recent news that Nielsen’s audience measurement tools are being applied to Twitter’s video content, data use is shifting, always.

The events of 2020 have a long tail. As marketers enter 2021 with decreased marketing budgets, ROI is of increasing importance. Analytics and the ability to evaluate performance are key, especially as media mix is evolving. And it’s a great time for marketers to check in with their plans and confirm they are still looking at the right metrics.

As companies are finalizing budgets for next year and marketers are fine-tuning their plans, it’s a popular time to look back at what worked and what didn’t. It’s also a critical opportunity to revisit your organizational strategy, realign your KPIs, and design a testing system that gives you actionable insights.

It’s no secret that 2020 was an unexpected year for all of us, and a big year for ecommerce. A recent eMarketer report suggests, though, that “the pandemic has only accelerated an ongoing shift to the [ecommerce] channel.” So with this growing channel in mind, our CEO Michael Caccavale and I sat down to discuss what marketers need to keep an eye on.

The kids are going back to school, our Denver office has already seen snow, and it’s starting to feel like fall. While 2020 has dished up a lot of new challenges, marketers are still facing the need to plan and budget for next year, even if we’re still struggling to plan for next month. Here’s what our CEO thinks about 2021 planning.

Like many people, I have spent a lot more time in 2020 with Zoom meetings and Netflix characters than with real people. And as social distancing continues to be the norm, the resulting consumer habits are leaving some marketers to rethink their tactics. I recently sat down with our CEO to talk about what’s changing – and what isn’t – as more consumers are staying home.

Marketers use many different channels to reach customers, and they’re increasingly building omnichannel strategies that can follow and engage an audience on multiple different platforms. But when it comes to the marketing tools they use, too often these solutions are siloed from one another.

Over the next twelve to eighteen months, US energy consumers will enjoy an exploding array of choices when it comes to bundled and a la carte services. As the landscape of energy providers and their product offerings diversify, consumers gain the flexibility to adjust their service plan and even to change their energy provider altogether, if they feel they are not getting the service they expect. There is time pressure, particularly for traditional energy suppliers who have, unlike their new competitors, typically invested little in agile marketing strategies. The energy company’s CMO has just one chance to execute an agile marketing strategy in advance of the coming upheaval in the market -- one chance to align the brand identity across all channels, create the ideal messaging for each segment of the target market, and cast a wide (but intelligent) net.

Smart grids and domestic alternative energy production are changing the rules of engagement between energy customers and their suppliers. At the same time, deregulation and a new set of diverse domestic digital media service providers entering the market demand broader and more intelligent marketing strategies. These changes create instability in a market that has been stable for many years. It forces the suppliers, particularly the energy suppliers, to abandon business practices that have long been serving them and adopt a more flexible and agile growth model, an uncomfortable position, particularly for the larger organizations in the sector.