It’s no secret that today, companies that leverage data most effectively have a significant competitive advantage. Having data isn’t the problem. But being able to turn that data into a holistic picture of your performance that enables smart decisions? That’s the challenge.

For startups with small budgets and smaller teams, it’s even trickier.

Deeplite, a Canadian AI software optimization startup, puts data at the core of its marketing strategy.

To find out how they use Databox to harness that data and turn it into real-time action, we talked with Anastasia Hamel—responsible for marketing.

The challenge

“I take data seriously,” Anastasia told us. “If I want to test things—to see how this or that works—I need to access the data in real-time, be able to explain it, and deliver it to others.”

The challenge came down to accessing that data, collecting it in one central place, and presenting it in a way that makes sense for executives and board members—without spending hours and hours on reporting or blowing the budget on an expensive setup.

When it came to options: “To name a few, there are spreadsheets,” Anastasia said, “Excel is a very powerful tool, but in the context of spreadsheet reporting, it is a manual pain. There’s Google Data Studio, which takes a lot of time to set up. And then there’s Tableau, which is super expensive and requires a lot of proficiency. The two later options are also limited in terms of the ability to add different data sources into one comprehensive picture”

Here are the challenges Deeplite faced:

• Create an overview of marketing performance: Like most companies today, Deeplite’s digital marketing spans several channels. They needed reporting software to bring all that data together to create one, holistic overview of performance.

“Without Databox,” Anastasia said, “it’s quite tricky to combine different marketing channels together and make sense out of them, to be able to show a campaign overview to the rest of the team.”

• Gather historical data to inform goals: As a startup, the company doesn’t have a lot of historical data to base goals and forecasts on. They needed a solution to help change that and make goal-setting and forecasting easier down the road.

“As an early-stage startup, we’re just working out our main KPIs. Right now, we lack historical data to do a proper analysis and prediction. We try to gather as much data as possible so we can do forecasting later on,” Anastasia explained. “Databox plays a big role there.”

• React in real-time to optimize spend: On a startup budget, Anastasia and the team need to be able to react quickly when certain channels and campaigns aren’t performing.

“We have targets for growth. We need to identify the best-performing channels. So we do a lot of testing and trial. That’s why data is very important—to find the right recipe for marketing growth,” Anastasia said.

The solution

Throughout Anastasia’s career, challenges like that have plagued reporting at every company: “Reports can take an enormous amount of time. Often the visualization isn’t great. And when you present it, to the executive team, for instance, they just don’t understand the data.”

At Deeplite, they’ve connected LinkedIn Ads, YouTube, Wistia, HubSpot CRM, HubSpot Marketing, Twitter, and Google Analytics to help form an integrated marketing and sales overview.

Here are the solutions Deeplite found with Databox:

• Create an overview of marketing performance: Anastasia uses a variety of dashboards to report on high-level marketing and sales performance, as well as channel-specific reports to drill down into the details when necessary.

“Marketing pipeline: We give a high-level overview to our executive board. We really like how it’s visualized, we can also insert screenshots and pictures to showcase the campaign visuals. If a drill-down overview is needed, we have LinkedIn performance, Twitter performance, YouTube performance in-depth dashboards,” Anastasia explained.

• Gather historical data to inform goals: Whenever new questions come up, Anastasia can gather data and build dashboards in a matter of a couple of hours—versus the 3+ days, it used to take with other tools.

“[With other tools] it can take anywhere from 3 days to a week to create another dashboard. Now, it just takes me a few hours.”

• React in real-time to optimize spend: Now, the whole team has quick, easy access to real-time data, which means Anastasia spends less time updating dashboards and more time creating results.

“I share one snapshot to the whole team and I don’t need to update the dashboard. Whenever they look, it’s updated real-time data. That’s really important.”

The results

“When you’re a startup and you need to make decisions fast, Databox is priceless,” Anastasia told us.

Since implementing Databox, Anastasia and the Deeplite team have better access to real-time data. They’re better equipped to understand marketing performance holistically and react quickly to make the most of their budget.

“Ever since I’ve worked with Databox and I’ve fallen in love more and more,” Anastasia said. “It’s the easiness of user interface, the ability to create custom metrics and add various sources.” 

Here are the results Deeplite saw using Databox:

• Create an overview of marketing performance: A comprehensive data overview that updates in real-time gives Deeplite a leg up on the competition.

• Gather historical data to inform goals: With more historical data at their fingertips, Anastasia and the team have a deeper understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and how to set ambitious yet achievable goals.

“It gives such a great view on what’s happening with your audience, how do they react to things, what do people do on your website,” Anastasia said. “Looking at all this data in one place is great.”

• React in real-time to optimize spend: Everyone on the team can pull up accurate, real-time data whenever they need it—which saves our valuable time to spend on producing results instead of reporting on them.

“Being in a startup and juggling all sorts of things, I don’t have enough hours in the day,” Anastasia noted. “I appreciate very much that I don’t have to spend all my time on reporting. I can just pull out the snapshot and show everyone what’s happening in marketing at Deeplite today.”