Momentum. Shama Hyder

created images to attract more attention. The constant tweaks paid off in more conversions—more email addresses—which in turn meant that overall business goals were being reached.

      » Analytics Tools

      Tracking all this data sounds complicated, but there are plenty of tools you can use to keep tabs on it all. When it comes to analytics, however, there’s no one-size-fits-all tool that tracks every piece of data on every platform. So it’s important to understand what types of tools are available, and how to combine them to get the best insight into your audience’s behavior.

      

      The analytics tool that should have the most direct and noticeable impact on your day-to-day marketing activities and campaigns is marketing automation software. This branch of business software covers a very wide range of capabilities, although the term typically is used to define software that helps marketers to:

       collect and track data, often across multiple channels

       organize and sort that data to make database segmentation much easier when creating targeted campaigns

       actually help execute marketing campaigns, while tracking the progress and results of those efforts

      Here’s a (very) limited list of marketing automation technology vendors, ranging from email-specific tools to full marketing automation suites that cover everything from email statistics to social media analytics to lead-generation tools. Some are better suited for smaller businesses, some are highly scalable and appeal to both SMB (small- and medium-size businesses) and enterprise companies, and others probably are best described as enterprise-class. But all are established in the marketing industry.