Most of the business analysts of higher education promoters use the Excel spreadsheet to analyse data. Let’s ask a few questions our self to discover if the excel spreadsheet would serve the purpose in all scenarios.
Excel Spreadsheet was considered an efficient tool for data analysis over a decade ago. There are many new tools now and once we don’t adapt to the new ones, the chances to remain in the higher education market will be gradually reduced.
As of now, the data over the internet rose beyond expectations and has eventually led to the rise of Big Data analysis tools too. This include the campaign level data, user data, log information etc
As of now the in-house marketing team of a higher education institute also works with data analytics companies to better streamline the business and to understand data in all dimensions.
The data in the analytics companies are collected from ad servers like Double Click, Adzerk etc and loaded to the database in the analytics company. The database used depends on the size of the data. Sometimes if the datasize is of a medium type, databases of Oracle,Netezza etc can be used. Else if the data size is too huge to handle, one can use big data.
Once it is loaded to the database, its broken down to the granular level to deduce all required information and business rules are applied. The business rules vary from one higher education institute to another. Some institutes consider that filling up an online conversion form as a conversion while others track conversion only after the payment of fee.
How the raw data of ad servers look like?
The raw data would be in an encrypted from and has to be decrypted before its loaded to the database.
The data received should be either the conversion data,click data or the impression data. The data is classified to the correct one based on the tracking pixel information.
Whether it be conversion or click or impression data, it is going to be in the form of multiple rows. Each row has information about the browser, IP address to track the visitor, geographic location, keywords used to arrive at the placement, information on the campaign, placement creative etc. Each row corresponds to a particular user.
Each conversion data is matched to its corresponding click and impression data based on the user id information to build a stack of the particular conversion. This stack consists of all required information like even the details on last click generated before ending up in a conversion.
How to interpret the ad server data?
Different companies interpret this data in different ways.
However, the final result is the analysis of data in all dimensions and the marketing team gets a clear idea based on which the team decides over the next budget on campaigns over different geographic locations.
The data will be broken down to its granular form to find the different dimensions. These dimensions campaign level information, details on creative, placement, keyword, geography, personal details of the user, agency details, previous websites visited before ending up in conversion etc.
They get a comparison data over the past years too. If the analytics tool is a sophisticated one, they also get a future prediction on the no of admissions that they would probably receive over a particular campaign for a particular time frame and budget.
This would help them plan their strategies better with better income.
Trend And Comparison Data
The data is studied on various trends like why there is a drop of interest on a particular course, how the campaign performed an year back, why there is a rise of interest over online courses etc.
How the campaign performed compared to the previous year?
Is there a rise of income over a limited budget?
What is the age group of customers which enrolled?
How many males and females?
Which country took maximum admissions?
So simply analyzing your data in a spreadsheet wouldn’t serve all these things and its better to analyse your data over various dimensions using analytic tools before ruling out a marketing strategy in the higher education scenario.
Google Analytic tool is available free of cost. There are other paid services of many other data analytics companies too. Choose one based on your volume of business and budget.We will soon publish an article on different reports used for data analysis.
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