Pinpointing revolutions in the marketing industry is quite difficult. That’s because it is famously in a continuous cycle of reinvention. Lately, though, it feels different.
The explosion of digital marketing tools and opportunities, cookiepocalypse and the vast possibilities promised by artificial intelligence, are all shaping the future of marketing. For the past several years, marketers have increasingly relied on data, hoping it can unlock the secret pathways to business success.
While marketing data has given us a leg up, we can’t rely solely on it anymore. We have to push beyond. That’s why we’ve evolved our brand and offering.
We’d like to introduce you to Funnel Marketing Intelligence.
Fredrik Skantze, Funnel CEO and co-founder, introduces Funnel Marketing Intelligence.
Why we needed to change
To explain our evolution requires an origin story. About 10 years ago, we saw marketers were neck deep in tons of spreadsheets — desperately trying to control their data and make sense of it. We wanted to help.
To provide that relief, we needed to build a reliable and up-to-date platform that serves accurate and correctly modeled data. In other words, we wanted to bypass the frustration of broken formulas and sheets, giving marketers a unified bedrock of data.
As the digital marketing industry proliferated, we knew we were onto something big. As the volume of available digital marketing platforms grew, so did our client base. We now serve more than 2,000 companies around the world.
Yet, as growth has accelerated, it has led to our industry’s heavy reliance on the data generated from those platforms. Today, marketers are struggling to keep pace in the face of reduced tracking, increasingly aggressive privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA and DMA) while marketing budgets keep getting squeezed.
The death of (traditional) attribution
There is no more controversial marketing term than attribution. Everyone has a theory, a hot take and a favorite methodology.
Many digital marketers opted for last-click attribution. Relatively simple and still reasonably reliable, it has broad appeal. However, some realized that a method that can take multiple touches into account is needed, which gave rise to multi-touch attribution. Now, this method is no longer a reliable measurement tool by itself.
At the same time, marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens across channels, online and off, that commingle and influence each other. They create a messaging ecosystem. Marketers need to understand how each channel contributes to overall success,even when data is becoming both more plentiful but at the same time less reliable.
They need something more holistic. That something is marketing intelligence.
How does it all come together?
We’ll get to all the fancy new bits in a moment, but we must start with Funnel’s core: our Data Hub. You can think of the hub almost like the OG Funnel. This is the crux of how we make data magic happen.
The Data Hub consists of our connections and data model. It allows you to combine and work with your data, creating that oh-so-valuable single source of truth. Some of the features of the hub include:
- More than 200 pre-built connectors and a virtually infinite number of custom connectors
- The data model built specifically for marketing data, reducing the time to map and enrich data
- Non-destructive data transformations that keeps your source data intact
- Smart API optimization that feeds the data you need at the best possible times
It’s all the features you need to set a solid foundation of workable data.
The smarts behind the marketing intelligence
Built from the backbone of the Data Hub are measurement, reporting and export. While each of these modules is powerful on its own, they require the Hub’s power and accuracy to help the insights shine through.
Reporting that takes center stage
Earlier this year, we launched our reporting product, Funnel Dashboards. By building the visualization tool on top of our Data Hub, we enable a much faster transition between data exploration, analysis and reporting. Marketers no longer need to wait for data to travel between two or more tools.
You can easily flow between spotting correlations and understanding the details behind them. Employing best practices from industry experts, our reporting tools allow you to tell a compelling story to your stakeholders and instantly prove the value of your efforts.
In addition to this, we have our best-of-class connectors to leading BI and visualization tools like Looker Studio, Power BI and Tableau.
Measurement that moves your marketing
Marketers can really make their data move and groove with our measurement tools. By leveraging machine learning and AI technologies, you can uncover what drives success across your marketing ecosystem.
The secret is our ability to triangulate the points of contribution by combining marketing mix modeling (MMM), attribution and incrementality testing. This method allows us to leverage each approach's strengths and give you reliable and trustworthy recommendations on how to optimize your media mix and campaigns – even automatically.
This data deserves to be exported
Giving marketers every data tool they need is one thing, but they don’t act in isolation. They must work collaboratively with other areas of the business including data engineers, analysts, data engineers, and BI teams. And while these teams typically have more advanced data expertise, they should also have access to the clean, unified data emerging from the plethora of marketing platforms.
That’s precisely why we provide robust capabilities that allow you to export data to leading data warehouses and cloud storage solutions, as well as BI tools. Your data, anywhere you need it.
Sure, we love marketers, but it’s our goal to create operational efficiency across all teams that can benefit from marketing data.
So why the new look?
Such a revolution in our product offering – serving marketers of the future – required that we shed our old skin for something new and fresh. We wanted to showcase our own maturity, growth and sophistication. At the same time, we wanted to communicate that we still know how to have fun and experience the joys that great data can bring.
The result is a new brand identity that hints at the data we love, the modularity we can provide and the movement we enable. We are moving from data to intelligence. We help you choreograph your data and turn it into something beautiful – a symphony of insights. We make your data dance.
Started with a hub and now we’re here.
Learn more: Discover the strategy behind our new brand platform from Carl Ronander, our VP of brand and communications.
TL;DR
Funnel Marketing Intelligence is the first end-to-end solution built for marketers and data teams alike. It’s easy enough for marketers of all stripes to use and powerful enough for sophisticated data teams at brands like Home Depot and Publicis.
Whether you’re looking to create a single source of truth or you need a comprehensive decision-making and reporting solution, Funnel Marketing Intelligence is here to help you every step of the way. Together, let’s make your data dance.