Must Read: Why You Need Magento Business Intelligence

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around Magento Business Intelligence.

But... do merchants know what they/you can really get out of it, and how does it add value to your business?

According to Bob Moore, head of MBI and informally coined, 'Magento Royalty' it could improve the way you view and implement data analysis, enormously.

“Big data and analytics are now table stakes for merchants who want to find new customers, increase order value, and enhance loyalty.” - Mark Levelle, CEO of Magento Commerce.

Previously referred to as Magento Analytics, Magento Business Intelligence provides online retailers a more holistic view of the consumer journey across a variegated cosmos of valuable data sources. So, rather than seeing data from one single source/medium, the software enables for the consolidation of numerous data sources like MySQL and Salesforce...chuck some Facebook Ad data too. The list goes on. Basically, whatever mediums you’re utilising… Magento Business Essentials is able to grab and track that data.

By having Magento Business Intelligence on your side, this means that analysing data reports becomes a much simpler, faster and more efficient process. Marketers and business retailers alike can spend more time actually applying newfound insights, and much less time gathering and combining data from varying sources.

“Big data and analytics are now table stakes for merchants who want to find new customers, increase order value, and enhance loyalty.” - Mark Levelle, CEO of Magento Commerce.

The key metrics Magento Business Intelligence empowers are:  

1. Customer Lifetime Value

2. Segmented data for personalization

3. Top Performing Channels

4. Cohort Analysis

So... how did MBI come to fruition?

Magento Business Intelligence… Its Roots

“Jake Stein and I founded RJMetrics in pursuit of a core mission: inspiring and empowering data driven people. Our software helps online businesses make smarter decisions using their data,” stated by Bob Moore who is now head of MBI and informally coined ‘Magento Royalty’.

Before RJMetrics, Bob was a relatively junior analyst at the venture capitalist firm, Insight Venture Partners. His role as an analyst slowly transformed into spinning up database servers and deep diving granular analyses of raw data that companies were investing in. The data was sent back to those said companies with recommendations on where to re-allocate marketing dollars. These companies then made decisions based off those insights and, needless to say, they were pretty impressed with the results.

That’s where Moore and Stein’s idea of a software system purely designed to compile correlated data stemmed from. 80% of RJMetric’s customer base were referrals from Insight.

By the end of its run (before it was acquired by Magento), RJMetrics had raised $23 million of venture capital with a world-class customer base.

With RJMetrics seven years of prior experience, combining it with Magento’s main goal to facilitate digital commerce innovation through flexible functionality, the merging of the two platforms, “[opened] up a world of possibilities for our customers to define the future of commerce analytics”. 

Introducing Magento Business Intelligence Essentials

Magento’s Imagine 2017 saw the introduction of Magento Business Intelligence Essentials and MBI Pro. 

While Magento Business Intelligence Pro will cost you a little extra coin (along with advanced API data and live support), MBI Essentials is extremely affordable for Magento merchants; it works on all Magento versions, including the Magento Community edition (it also allows for the access of 10 user accounts with advanced user permissions).

A lot of the benefits of Magento Business Intelligence Essentials come from the systems out-of-the-box reporting; there are 75 different reports you receive along with executive management dashboards, email summaries, SQL and visual report builders. MBI Essentials even has the capacity to pull in old data from former ecommerce providers. Plus this data can all be exported to CSV and excel.

Believe it people - this is the digital enlightenment. Gone are the former dark ages of Magento, where reporting was all but a fable fantasy. Without sounding too much like a corny Disney catchphrase… dreams really have become reality.

Personalized Marketing & Segmentation Through MBI

Magento Business Intelligence’s cohort analysis function means retailers can actually break their customers up into groups based on when they made their first purchase  - and then place this data onto a chart. Rather than comparing them over a calendar month, retailers can compare the relative months of the customer’s life span.

In physical terms, you can see the customer lifetime grow and track customer behaviour to determine who your most valuable consumers really are.

MBI Key Capabilities:

• Advanced customer insights

• Marketing campaign ROI

• Improved segmentation and personalization

• Better merchandising & shopping experience

• Multi-brand

• Cross-border analytics

• Intelligent sourcing and inventory optimization

For example, how does the consumer lifecycle of customers you acquired in January, 2017 compare to the consumer lifecycle of those customers you acquired in January, 2014?

Is the customer you obtained today more valuable than the one you obtained four years ago?

From there, you can extrapolate what channels are bringing you the highest return on investment, what channels are only just paying for themselves and what channels are actually providing you with negative impact.

Merchants can then make data-driven decisions like: create shopping experience enhancements and audience targeted campaigns. Retailers can invest marketing money based off insight, not intuition. By controlling their messaging and content, brands can speak to a higher level of brand affinity and loyalty than if they were purely actioning campaigns to acquire new customers.

Remember the 80:20 rule?

80% of revenue comes from your top 20% of customers.

“Not about more metrics, it’s about more dimensions”

Magento Business Intelligence even has the capacity to connect with Zendesk, for further dimension reporting. Businesses can actually segment their cohort analysis by whether or not somebody has filed a customer support ticket. Dig even deeper, and you can see if customers who interact with customer support are any more valuable than those who don’t i.e. if you find they’re twice as likely to come back and buy in six months, then you know that you (your team) are doing something right. Never underestimate the value of that 5th P of the Marketing Mix (aka People).

“Know how specific actions impact the value of a customer to your business. Use early behaviours as signals for marketing and promotional segmentation. Spend your time and energy focusing on the most impactful customer populations”. - Bob Moore

The benefits of installing MBI don’t necessarily just mean you know which channel to turn off, it means you can analyse the data to change the way you’re appealing to an audience on those channels. In other words, it may not be the medium that’s causing the problem,  but rather, it may be the way you are operating on that medium that needs to be reexamined.

The Importance of Growth KPIs

The three most important KPIs to remember are:

• Benchmark & Strategy

• Acquisition

• Retention & Customer Lifetime Value

The 2015 RJMetrics eCommerce Buyer Behaviour Benchmark report proved how low the average customer attachment really is.  In fact, 68% of customers never purchase a second time and only 32% of customers purchase again within a year of their first purchase. I bet you didn’t think it was that poor, right?

In order to truly find out the value of a customer, retailers need to ask the questions:

1. Where are my customers coming from?

2. How is marketing and merchandising impacting CLV?

3. How can I grow faster and make sure I’m not wasting my marketing & advertising dollars in the process?

And, thankfully now with Magento Business Intelligence Essentials, merchants can find out the truth to those answers. No need to live in fear of interrogation, because you’ll know exactly what to say.

Oh, and if you’re thinking, ‘how does this fit in/coincide with Google Analytics data?’

“Magento Analytics [Business Intellgience] works right alongside Google Analytics and other web analytics tools. What Google Analytics does for page views, [MBI] does for people. The Platform tracks customer behaviours via data in the Magento backend database and combines the data with insights from web analytics tools like Google Analytics so you can get a comprehensive view of the full customer lifecycle.” - Magento 

That’s just a little bit of reassurance for you.

So, What’s The Next Step?

Let’s finish off this geekfest with an extra nerdy allusion to Futurama (that I stole from Bob Moore).

Why was that video relevant? Because of its core (albeit fictional) message; by observing it, you change the results. And that’s pretty much, in animated terms, what Magento Business Intelligence is all about.

Moreover, if you haven’t already looked into him, I’d definitely check out some of the works written by Robert (Bob) J. Moore. For example, his entrepreneurial article’s published in the NY Times under the title, ‘You’re The Boss’, or even just check out his LinkedIn profile… it’s as entertaining as it is intimidating. For a laugh, have a look at this blog post he wrote about the RJMetrics logo back in 2014 and how it got confused as a pair of ‘Y fronts’. It actually gives some decent insight into brand building.

For a link to Moore's recent podcast on Magento Business Intelligence with MageTalk hosts Kalen Jordan and Phillip Jackson, click here. I highly recommend listening… This guy is pretty impressive.  

So, have I sold you on Magento Business Intelligence yet? If you answered with a tentative yes, because you really are super excited about the software and the fact that they’re offering a free trial, but you just don’t have the means on-site to install it, that’s where we come in… Hi!

acidgreen is your jovial, reliable Magento Gold Partner. We’ve been around for a long time (over fifteen years, actually) and we’re more than happy to help you out with your Magento development needs. Not only are we an action-packed digital commerce agency filled with professional website developers, we also have a solid-based team of digital marketing experts who would be stoked to guide you through and maximise your Magento Business Intelligence Essentials or Pro usage. Why? Because we want to provide you with the ultimate CLV and highest of high ROI.

Contact us today for a friendly chat… whatever the query, we’re happy to guide you through it.

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acidgreen is an award winning e-commerce agency  specialising in Magento, Shopify Plus and digital marketing with over 15 years of  industry experience. Our certified developers and digital marketers are highly qualified to create aesthetically pleasing Magento and Shopify Plus websites that generate the highest amount of conversions and provide the best ROI. Be sure to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, or give us a call to learn more about our services.