Learn the 4 ways to align your marketing and IT analytics teams in this eBook.

1. MARKETING AND IT ANALYTICS
4 WAYS TO ALIGN
IMPLEMENTATION WORKFLOWS

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Table of Contents
Introduction
What causes misalignment between marketing and IT analytics teams?
Aligning Marketing and IT Analytics Teams
Align language, goals, and knowledge between teams
Build a solid baseline for collaboration with the data layer
Create a framework that facilitates collaboration moving forward
Focus on necessary data
Use Team Alignment to Improve Customer Experiences
About the Author
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Introduction
In a perfect world, marketing and IT analytics teams
would harmoniously collaborate to lift businesses to
new levels of customer satisfaction and overall revenue.
But we don’t live in a perfect world, and in reality the re-
lationship between marketing and IT analytics is often
anything but harmonious.
In a recent webinar with Jim Cain, CEO and Founder
of the analytics consultancy Napkyn Analytics, Cain in-
dicated that nearly every one of Napkyn’s consulting
clients struggles with creating synergy and alignment
between marketing and IT analytics teams.
Undoubtedly, this is a pervasive issue for many analyt-
ics-driven businesses. But does it have to be that way?
We don’t think so.
There are solutions to the discord (we present 4 in this
eBook). But first, let’s take a quick look at where the
discord stems from.

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As marketing analytics becomes an increasingly important element in business, IT analytics and marketing teams
have had to collaborate more than ever. However, several issues get in the way, such as:
What causes misalignment between
marketing and IT analytics teams?
Siloed team goals Differing perspectives Major communication gaps
Marketing and IT analytics
teams differ in their individual
KPIs, as marketing team goals
are often focused on branding
and lead generation elements of
a website or app, while IT team
goals are generally structured
around functionality and security.
Marketing and IT analytics
teams tend to conceptualize
elements of a business in dif-
ferent ways. For example, the IT
analytics side of a business tends
to see time in terms of release
dates, while marketing teams
conceptualize time in terms of
campaigns and seasons.
Marketing and IT analytics
teams interact with customers in
different contexts, so each team
has valuable customer insights
that are unknown to other teams
in the business. If these teams
don’t actively encourage open
communication, much of this
valuable information can slip
through the cracks.
The challenges are there, so what is the solution? How can you improve the alignment of your marketing
and IT analytics teams?

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Aligning Marketing and IT Analytics Teams
Aligning your marketing and IT analytics teams may be a
challenging task, but getting there is certainly possible.
You can reach a point of more effective marketing and
IT alignment through the following strategies:
Leaders need to unite teams around
KPIs, goals, and terminology.
Aligning language, goals, and knowledge
between teams
Building a solid baseline for collaboration
with the data layer
Creating a framework that facilitates
collaboration moving forward
Focusing on necessary data
Let’s take a look into each of these strategies.
Align language, goals, and knowledge
between teams
One of the first steps to aligning your marketing and IT
analytics teams should be synchronizing the language
used by the different teams.
Aligning this language requires leaders of each team
to hold meetings specifically about language, and then
work to unite each team on terminology around KPIs,
goals, and terms for how each team conceptualizes
different work elements, like what project completion
looks like and which team owns specific tasks.
When IT analytics and marketing teams get on the
same page by uniting on common terminology around
these KPIs, goals, and workflow items, the two teams
close communication gaps and effectively improve
collaboration.
Increasing collaboration is one of the ultimate goals, as
each team has valuable knowledge about the customer
that may never get to other teams without collabora-
tion. Failing to communicate this individual knowledge
ends up negatively impacting the end user and the
business’s bottom line.
Without effective communication and collaboration,
each team will likely end up serving its own team’s
goals, which may conflict with other teams’ goals.

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Build a solid baseline for collaboration
with the data layer
The data layer is the foundation for continuous
collaboration between marketing and IT analytics
teams.
Having an accurate and effective data layer allows
teams to more easily collaborate on future tagging
plans, while also helping marketing teams feel empow-
ered to proficiently use their tag manager. As a result,
a significant portion of resources should be spent on
creating an accurate data layer.
A significant portion of resources
should be spent on creating an
accurate data layer.
Additionally, this baseline needs to involve creating
space for each team to do their work properly. Market-
ing needs to allow IT to complete their work without
trying to enforce timelines that are unreasonable, and
IT should work to have specific marketing-dependent
IT projects completed on time. Articulating these clear
expectations will allow for improved communication
while eliminating excess conflict.

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Create a framework that facilitates
collaboration moving forward
Creating a framework that ensures ongoing collabo-
ration is essential to maintaining alignment and can
only be done by implementing processes that support
collaboration.
Collaborative processes need to involve rigorous
tracking of each team’s tasks and accomplishments
in relation to one another, so the teams can ensure
accurate communication into the future.
Track each team’s tasks and
accomplishments in relation to one
another for greater visibility and
communication.
The processes should also require teams to review work
and ensure quality, leading to the website breaking less
often, which can have a negative effect on relationships.
According to Jim Cain from Napkyn Analytics, “Things
breaking on the site lead to relationships breaking down
in the office.”
One great way to ensure quality between IT analytics
and marketing teams is through site audits with au-
tomated testing software. Running automated audits
will allow you to obtain a clear, third-party view of your
analytics implementation and ensure communication
about your implementation remains intact.
ObservePoint provides you with automated software
that allows you to thoroughly audit your site and mon-
itor your analytics implementation over time. These
site audits are profoundly helpful when ensuring the
quality of your analytics implementation and when
communicating site expectations with other teams.
Building a Framework on the
Foundation of Analytics Test
Automation

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Focus on necessary data
One crucial element to getting marketing and IT ana-
lytics teams aligned is focusing only on necessary data,
as there is often an unhealthy tendency for marketing
teams to collect excess amounts of data in an effort to
not miss any data.
Why is excess data a problem? Collecting excess data
bogs you down. Having too much data can slow down
decision-making, frustrate IT analytics teams with useless
data, and create bottlenecks for digital release cycles.
Having too much data can:
As a result, both marketing and IT analytics teams
need to move their focus to only collecting data that
is directly related to improving customer experiences,
because that’s the data that will ultimately impact the
company’s bottom line.
• Slow down decision-making
• Frustrate IT analytics teams
• Create bottlenecks for digital
release cycles

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Use Team Alignment to Improve
Customer Experiences
At the end of the day, your efforts to align teams should be about delivering amazing experiences to your customers.
Increasing alignment between marketing and IT analytics teams will allow you to remain customer-obsessed and
deliver customized experiences based on accurate data and insights. These improved customer experiences will
continuously increase loyalty and steer your bottom line upwards.
ObservePoint is here to help. To see how ObservePoint can help you align your marketing and IT analytics teams
via automated analytics validation, schedule a demo.
Schedule Demo

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CHRIS BAIRD
As Vice President of Marketing, Chris Baird is responsible for pro-
viding strategic direction for ObservePoint products, solutions
and services, and for presenting the ObservePoint brand world-
wide. He previously held various marketing positions at Mrs.
Fields Brands, Omniture, and Adobe.
About the Author