“Uh, this is really a bad time…”

Okay, I’m about to whisper in your ear some vital information that will make it possible for you to solve a problem that’s been haunting you, keeping you up nights. The catch is that I’m going to whisper to you while you’re surrounded by a crowd of people making a huge amount of noise. So now that I’ve told you, good luck!
This is essentially the predicament that marketers face when an organization’s analytics gurus try to explain to them the technical and complicated nuances of tracking code preparation and capture right after they’ve learned that things have gone wrong, and their ears are ringing with the disastrous news that no data was captured, it’s completely gone, and it’s never coming back.
No wonder those complicated instructions don’t tend to sink in. Just after the disaster isn’t the best time to lecture about tracking code capture. Yet finding a better time to have that conversation is not the solution. It’s not a question of finding a better time, but of finding a better way.
We are overdue for a change in the way marketers and analysts work together. Marketers shouldn’t need to know everything that analysts know and vice versa. Instead, marketing teams should focus on eliminating the gaps in team communication that lead to inaccurate campaign reporting.
Marketing organizations can go a long way toward closing gaps by using a better set of tools, to eliminate the potential for human error. In the era of big data, with reporting systems that allow organizations to gain insight into their customers’ behavior and build personalized campaigns, any instance where a human is involved in setting up data generation is a risk point. The best dashboard in the world still can’t show data that was never captured.
Mature marketing organizations are moving toward structures that automate campaign setup. This makes analysts happy, because the resulting data is coherent. It also makes marketers happy. Instead of having to remember a dozen different rules for accurately tracking campaigns, their time and talent is reserved for interpreting data and guiding future initiatives.
Joseph Riddle is the Chief Marketing Officer at Claravine. He can be found on Twitter @josephriddle13