The Update: How investing in analytics prepares you for the future
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The UpdateGuest
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October 2020Share this page
The Update: How investing in analytics prepares you for the future
October 2020In this episode of The Update, Google VP of Sales Karen Sauder speaks with Vistaprint VP of Channel Platforms Drew Casey about how Vistaprint was prepared for the shifts in its business during the pandemic, and how it responds to changing customer needs with solutions like the new Google Analytics.
>> DREW CASEY: We did see a pretty dramatic shift in the types of products
that they were looking for with us.
So, I think a lot of it was rethinking what our customers need,
and really trying to follow the data with what our customers need.
>> KAREN SAUDER: Urgency to create digital transformation
and move business online is accelerating.
A greater focus on ROI and the need to make every marketing dollar count.
Now's the time to build the digital foundation your business needs to succeed.
This starts with the new Google Analytics,
which gives you the essential insights you need to be ready for what's next.
In today's episode of The Update,
I'm joined by Drew Casey, Vice President of Channel Platforms at Vistaprint,
to discuss how digital analytics can help marketing teams
accelerate their recovery and business growth.
How's Vistaprint been doing since the pandemic? How has the business changed?
>> DREW CASEY: As a company that services 17 million small businesses
across our portfolio, as the pandemic and the global shutdown hit,
it was something that we saw immediately in our business.
All of a sudden, people don't need business cards to meet with prospective clients.
People are going to less trade shows.
But they need more things like signage, to convey what their operating hours are on the street.
They need things like floor decals to ensure that they have a good in-store experience
with their customers and that they can properly stay six feet apart.
We saw we had an opportunity to actually stand up a business around supplying masks.
We took a bit of a leap in trying to produce these, and I think we now have a high-quality product
that’s been a good thing for our customers and good for Vistaprint.
>> KAREN SAUDER: What kind of business insights did you use
to make sure your strategy was successful?
>> DREW CASEY: It was a scary experience, and I think like most organisations
that rely heavily on marketing and e-commerce,
we had to make sure that every marketing dollar was really working for us.
I think with good analytics comes good intel for what your customer wants,
and I think, again, coming back to this idea of really us as a company trying
to go to where our customer needs us.
We saw that clearly in our analytics data in terms of what users were looking for,
what types of product pages they were landing on.
>> KAREN SAUDER: What work had you done previously to really set you up to respond
so quickly during this time, and to succeed?
>> DREW CASEY: At Vistaprint, we have a long history of being a data-driven company,
and I think right now it's really a renewed focus on that.
We've hired a new Chief Data Officer, and so we're making more investments
into our analytics platforms than we have before while also building on
what was a good foundation of, I’d say, data-driven decision-making.
Google Analytics has been key in this for us, and especially in the mask business,
where we really didn't know what was going to happen in terms of it being successful
or if there was going to be a high demand for it from our customers.
GA has been critical to us as we've really tried to monitor it on a day-to-day basis,
and make sure that the business is doing well, that our customers like our products,
and that we're actually able to deliver a positive experience across the board.
>> KAREN SAUDER: So, as your team prepares for the future, where are you investing now?
>> DREW CASEY: I think for us, automation is more critical than ever. And, if we're doing
automation and personalisation right, the customer is getting the experience
that they want and not necessarily the experience that we want to give them,
and I think that's a better way for us to be operating as a business.
The new platform that we're standing up, we built it for the future,
and that it's going to be more event-driven than driven by things like hits and sessions.
As we think about where Google Analytics is going, we're excited
that it's going to be moving in that same direction.
And, I think we also need to just always continue building on the foundational basics.
So, while we build our new capabilities, it's also making sure that we continue
to reassess our foundations and ensure we're building on top of a stable structure.
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