A recent webinar with Debbie Kennedy, CEO of Write for You discussed how marketers have been collecting and using data to inform their messaging and campaigns for years. However, that data doesn’t generally make it over to the Creative team. One way for Creatives to get their hands on data that can help them make better content is to understand how the marketing team collects and analyzes data. Here are five types of data analytics tools often used by Marketing teams that Creative should be familiar with.

1. Pardot (Email Automation)

What is it?
Most marketing teams use some form of marketing automation, which helps marketing teams streamline their work and collect important data. One key function of Pardot is email automation. Rather than manually sending individual emails to hundreds or thousands of contacts, users can build a template email that will auto-fill such fields as name, company, job title, etc. and send mass emails. More importantly, Pardot collects data on those emails once sent, such as open and clicks through rates. Marketers can even run A/B tests on an email by sending slightly different versions of the same email to a split list and see which one performs better.

What Creatives Need to Know:
Pardot collects data on every form, email, landing page and file in the system, and provides a reporting area where users can easily see things like top performing emails based on open rates, most visited landing pages, and most popular content. Creatives can easily get into these reports and see key performance stats for various content pieces. For example, imagine a copy writer assembling the content and writing the subject line for a monthly newsletter. By understanding which months had the highest open rates, they could begin to A/B test subject lines and tweak them each month to drive higher engagement.

2. Google Analytics (Website Analytics)

What is it?
Google Analytics is the most universal tool for website analytics. Advanced users can get just about any information they want about website traffic and user behavior for their website. However, Google Analytics can be accessible for new users too. Some common metrics that are easy to find in Google Analytics include bounce rates, time spent on page, referral sources, traffic levels, and top entry and exit points of the site.

What Creatives Need to Know:
For creatives, this is an easy way to check out the performance of a page or site. Suppose the creative team was tasked with building a series of product pages tailored specifically to certain industry verticals. The team could check out Google Analytics to see what other product pages have performed well. Moreover, the team could keep and eye on their pages after they go live and potentially catch design or usability issues.

3. Google Search Console (Search Enginge and Keyword Analytics)

What is it?
Another Google product, Google Search Console allows users to gain insight into the search terms that bring users to the company’s website. This gives marketers direct insight into what real people are typing in when they look for a product. For example, a business may offer what they call “luxury cat accommodations for vacationing felines”, but no one is likely searching for those terms. More likely, potential customers are searching for things like “cat hotel” or “cat sitting”. This business will need content on their site that is relevant to the search queries of their target market if they want to show up in search results.

What Creatives Need to Know:
As a person creating content, keyword data is an absolute goldmine. By understanding what people are searching for, and what keywords your site already ranks for, you can start writing content that bridges that gap. Copywriters can do this the most literally by placing keywords in their writing, including long tail keywords. But any creative will benefit from knowing what the relevant keywords are for their business. As Google’s search algorithm gets smarter it will learn to read video, audio, and images to return the best search results. Businesses that want to win the SEO game need to be attacking keywords on all fronts.

4. Hojar (User Behavior Analytics)

What is it?
Hotjar allows users to gather data about on-page behavior by website visitors. For example, heatmaps show how far down a page users scroll, or what areas of the page get the most interaction, like buttons, videos or links. User behavior analytics can also show the most common paths that users take through a website.

What Creatives Need to Know:
When creating content for websites, it’s important to know how users interact with the site. For example, a heatmap of page activity might show that users are trying to click on an object that looks like it should be clickable, but isn’t. These insights can help copywriters and web designers make better site experiences that drive site traffic.

5. Hootsuite (Social Media Analytics)

What is it?
Hootsuite is a Social Media management platform that also offers social media analytics. This enables users to track key metrics like number of posts, likes, followers, replies, and general engagement across various social media platforms. These analytics can be viewed at the single post level, answering questions about how individual posts performed, or over time at the account level, showing how a company has grown its followers or increased engagement over time.

What Creatives Need to Know:
Social media happens fast. Unlike other forms of content, social media posts go live quickly and can iterate multiple times a day. With most companies tweeting 3-5 tweets a day, this gives Creatives plenty of time to test different approaches. With near instant response times, Creative teams can observe the results of a posts from earlier in the day, week, or month and modify content based on the data. This allows the most rapid iteration available to creatives and marketers today.

If this seems like a lot, don’t worry! It’s not necessary for Creatives to master all of these tools. The important thing is understanding more about the data the Marketing team is collecting, so that Creatives can have an informed conversation about the data. Try asking the Marketing team to share some their best insights from these tools; they will probably be delighted to share their findings with you! By understanding the tools the Marketing team uses to collect and analyze data, Creative teams can begin to leverage that data for themselves to make better content.

If your creative workflow could benefit from faster iterations, check out a live demo of inMotion.