Companies often struggle with the reality that gathering the right event data can be challenging. Knowing that data is an organization’s most valuable asset, it is important to treat data collection, storage and accessibility as key considerations surrounding your event data management.
Advances in technology has empowered event marketers to collect more data on event participants than ever before. Virtual events—in particular, generate even more granular engagement data, allowing marketers to tap into insights on their attendee behaviors and preferences. Data-driven marketers leverage the power of event intelligence to take important actions and ultimately boost their events ROI.
But the question is, how are marketers able to drive outcomes from such large, unstructured data sets? And where does all this data go?
It all starts with understanding the value of an integrated data system. Centralizing your event data is the key to identifying, measuring, and capitalizing on the data that you’ve captured from different sources. And to make sense of that data, you need a centralized event data platform. Let’s talk about what we mean by a “centralized event data platform.”
What Is a Centralized Data Platform?
A centralized data platform is an integrated data framework for collecting, processing, and storing data. A centralized event data platform unifies data across all your events and multiple systems into a single source of truth.
Whether making decisions about how to pull data together from a technical point of view, or trying to break down organizational silos, integrating your data is the first step toward creating a more consistent data strategy. A single source of truth (SSOT) is the practice of aggregating the data from many systems to a single location. This allows updates to the data in the primary location to propagate to the entire system without the possibility of a duplicate value.
Integrating your data not only ensures cross-functional access but also lifts the data to the level of value it represents. Having a unified data platform creates a consistent data strategy that allows you to:
- Get a clear picture of where all your data is coming from
- Understand how and why that data has been collected
- Gain insights into how and whether the data is being used
- Control the mechanics of collecting data and deciding where it will live
- Make your event data consumption more accessible by teams
Usually, your centralized data framework will be a combination of solutions that work seamlessly together to collect, process, and store your data. Your approach to this will depend on your specific needs. However, because organizing large data sets can be challenging, simplifying your data ecosystem should be a priority.
What Event Data to Collect?
With constant innovation in technology, it’s likely that you have a lot more data at your disposal than you actually need. Analyzing data that isn’t relevant to your specific needs can be a waste of your time and resources. It’s important to know what data to collect and what metrics to establish in advance.
The key is to ensure that the event data you capture is both relevant and actionable. It’s best to establish event goals and clear outcomes that are closely aligned with your business objectives. You can then determine what event data to measure so you can achieve these priorities. Once you’ve identified and collected the right data, it can be even more challenging to figure out how to turn that data into actionable results that will improve future events.
The solution lies with investing in an end-to-end event data management platform to capture attendee behavioral data at all stages of the event. This will allow you to bring your event data together in a single platform for a more holistic picture and a 360 view of your global events in one place.
Certain allows marketing executives, event marketers and planners to better capture insights and buying signals from attendees and share them across the enterprise technology stack to drive revenue and customer success.
Whether you need to focus on data collection or generate meaningful leads that are likely to be profitable, Certain offers an end-to-end platform data management and intelligence platform with everything you need to succeed. Find out how you can get more out of your events, contact us today to speak to one of our event experts.