Exploring the New Field of Marketing Analytics

It has been aptly said that in today’s environment companies are often “data rich and information poor.” This is especially true in regard to the potential value of databases to inform marketing strategies, tasks, and decisions. Thus, the goal of the new Marketing Analytics Concentration and the addition of a new course for Spring 2011 (“MBA Topics in Marketing: Marketing Databases and SQL” taught by Rita Bowers, DB Administrator at Shelter Insurance) is to provide Crosby MBA students with predictive data-modeling and data-mining tools that will enable them to exploit databases relevant to marketing decisions.

Read a SAS article about the the strong market need for analysts who have sound business and marketing knowledge as well as analytical and technological skills, and how the MU Crosby MBA concentration can fulfill that need. Numerous members of the Marketing Advisory Board, potential employers of Crosby MBAs, and recent graduates whose data-analysis skills combined with a Crosby MBA have enabled them to land very attractive jobs have noted the critical importance of this field. Most importantly, many employers desire business-educated students with statistical knowledge, rather than students with purely a statistical background. Thus, a unique and differentiating feature of new Marketing Analytics Concentration is the integration of data-analysis skills as well as user-level knowledge of relational databases with MBA program requirements.

Several Crosby MBA students and alumni have already found opportunities to work in the field of marketing analytics.

    
Laura Rudolphi, Crosby MBA ‘10
Immediately upon graduation Laura Rudolphi became a Market Research Analyst at Shelter Insurance, and she is now a Senior Associate at dunnhumbyUSA.  Laura is glad to see new additions to the Crosby MBA program to account for the growing demand in Marketing Analytics. To be a successful market research analyst, she says, one must possess strong computer and analytical skills to extract and interpret data from databases and web applications, as well as advanced problem-solving skills to identify relationships within the data. In her position at Shelter, Laura also needed to be able to use Base SAS, SAS Enterprise Miner, and Audit Command Language.

Although Laura graduated from the Crosby MBA Program before the Marketing Analytics concentration was created, she still learned how to think analytically and be a better problem-solver overall. Courses such as “Database Marketing” taught by Dr. Gary Coles piqued her interest in SAS and analytics.

Laura believes that the new Marketing Analytics concentration will provide an opportunity for students who are interested in analytics to become well-versed in the area and make those students more marketable during their job searches.

Annie Fennewald, Crosby MBA ‘11
Annie Fennewald’s background in government data analysis helped her first land a summer internship at Shelter Insurance, and eventually to a full-time position after graduation.  At Shelter, the CEO has set forth an initiative to use analytics.  During her internship Annie performed market research analysis and delivered results for two major projects. Her first assignment was to gain a better understanding of where Shelter’s customers are located. Annie utilized USDA data, which can be filtered by county size, metropolitan and rural areas, etc., to match the different geographical divisions with Shelter’s customer database.

For her second assignment, Annie helped develop a logistic model to predict the likelihood of new and existing customers converting to or purchasing an auto insurance policy from Shelter through the use of demographic data and data that shows what other policies the customers hold.

Annie gained great exposure at her internship, as her research reports were given to the Marketing Director and the CEO of Shelter. Also, Annie says that her experience at Shelter combined with her previous work background and her marketing analytics concentration will help her work with large databases in unfamiliar industries and achieve her career goal of excelling at work in an analytical field.