Editor's note: Pierre DeBois of Zimana Analytics offers advice for how marketing pros can best utilize IoT data to understand customer activity.

November 29, 2016

2 Min Read

When Dorothy arrived in Oz in the movie The Wizard of Oz, she said to Toto, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Well, many marketers feel just as bewildered in the current IoT landscape, looking for the “ruby red slippers” that will engage customers.

That not-in-Kansas feeling comes from the arrival of IoT devices. Marketers that were once getting used to interpreting customer intent from a browser now face new influences on customer behavior. From programmatic campaigns to cross device usage in a household, those influences alter how a customer experience is measured for establishing successful marketing.

The end result is a challenge: how to tie data sources into a reasonable report or visualization that aligns accurately with customer intent and activity.

Despite the challenges, marketers can consider the following tips to align their data and analytics tools with the IoT devices that feed those reports with data.

Use tag protocols that are network-device friendly

Many analytics solutions have protocols designed to capture data that standard reports may not reflect. Using those protocols can allow for flexibility in displaying dimensions and metrics, as well as options to incorporate data from other sources, such as IoT devices.

Google Analytics Measurement Protocol is an example of such protocols. Through HTTP POST, the protocol script sends parameters with data arranged into a readable format in which the analytic reports display the networked devices among its dimensions. Marketers must review settings with developers to implement the protocols, but the interaction can establish a shared understanding of the data. The end result is an identified metric linked to the source, and arranging data layers and protocols for easy updates that complement dynamic changes in the IoT network.

[Check out five more IoT tips for marketers from Pierre DeBois on All Analytics.

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