An old adage goes like this: 50% of the money spent on marketing programs is wasted. But which 50%?
That question can finally be answered in the new era of advanced analytics – and by Adverity Marketing Data Analytics Platform. No more tedious number crunching on spreadsheets for marketing teams, thanks to this popular solution on SAP Store. Now, data-driven marketers can take advantage of fully automated data integration for a single source of truth on the performance of their programs and move past “point-in-time” performance monitoring toward insights that lead to tangible actions.
I spoke with Sven Woeltjen, partner manager with Adverity GmbH, to find out more about the solution’s impact on the life of a marketer.
“From every source – paid search, social media, direct demand-generation campaigns, events – you get different data in different formats,” Woeltjen said. “Everyone is asking for ROI, and no one has the answer. Many marketing teams work in silos. Harmonizing and cleansing the data from all the different sources is a labor-intensive process that’s prone to mistakes, and typically takes many days. As a result, marketers spend more time wrangling data than they do interpreting it, meaning they miss out on opportunities to optimize performance and improve ROI. They don’t have current info and can’t produce timely reports. Those are the problems Adverity solves.”
Reporting in Near Real Time
With the Adverity solution, marketers can create omnichannel overviews in near real time. Integration with SAP ERP and SAP Marketing Cloud allows them to enrich their insights by pulling in data from finance or HR or whatever interests them, Woeltjen continued. The ability to build ad-hoc reports on their own enables them to explain to the business the impact of what they’re doing whenever they’re asked. Report templates and data visualization tools make that even easier. “With tangible results based on real data, they can turn their attention to the next program or campaign rather than the next report,” he added. “By better understanding what works and what doesn’t, they can make decisions from a strategic standpoint.”
In fact, Woeltjen speaks from experience after spending his career in marketing, including tenure with an agency where he was using the Adverity solution himself. He ended up approaching the company about potential partner opportunities and, not long after, joined the firm and worked with its most important partner, SAP.
Understanding Marketing Challenges – as Marketers
I asked Woeltjen to tell me more about the company, which was established in 2015. Like him, the founders themselves were working in the marketing field, experiencing the data challenges , and saw an opportunity. The company has grown steadily since then, largely by building relationships, understanding customers’ needs, and building new features accordingly – as all good marketers do. For example, an augmented analytics module uses machine learning to analyze large amounts of data, identify trends and anomalies, and deliver suggestions for improvements that enable marketers to proactively address issues affecting performance.
Teamwork is a crucial factor for Adverity. The implementation team sits next to the developers to promote collaboration. Even as they have transitioned to working from home, the relationships are in place. Now with about 250 employees, based largely in Austria, the U.S., and the UK, the company plans to double in size this year. With offices in London and New York City already, Adverity plans to establish a presence on the West Coast of the U.S. and in the Asia-Pacific-Japan region. As a digital company with most employees working remotely, not just during the pandemic, he commented, “We can hire the best people.”
And speaking of the pandemic, Adverity has been in the position to cushion some of the fallout for customers suddenly making the transition to online marketing. “Here in Germany, for example, many stores have been closed for a full year,” Woeltjen remarked. “People have had to get used to buying more online, causing many smaller businesses – distilleries, for example – to sell directly to consumers and use their marketing budgets to acquire customers online. We can help them with our tool.”
Adverity Wins with SAP
Adverity’s customers run the gamut from small companies to large enterprises, which creates good synergy with SAP. In fact, the root of the partnership was a head-to-head competition for a customer that Adverity won. That got the attention of the folks at SAP, who wanted to know what business challenges Adverity could cover that SAP could not. That led to a stronger alignment with SAP and an invitation to sell its solution on SAP Store.
I asked Woeltjen about his experience with SAP Store and about lessons learned that he might share. “We’ve captured an audience that translates into real results,” he reported. “But I recommend thinking about the commitment and resources you can devote to it. Just having a Web page means nothing; you aren’t just pushing a button. I spend 80% of my time developing relationships with the SAP field team, building trust, and discussing how our integrated offering benefits the customer.”
And I would add that having good content on the site, including use cases, is key. Please check out Adverity Marketing Data Analytics Platform and its companion solution, Marketing Data Integration for SAP Data Warehouse Cloud, on SAP Store. And remember that with every transaction on SAP Store, SAP will plant a tree on your behalf. It’s spring and a perfect time to turn over a new leaf with these great solutions.
Bill Rojas is senior director of Business Development and Partner Alliances at SAP.