Data mining process is the discovery through large data sets of patterns, relationships and insights that guide enterprises measuring and managing where they are and predicting where they will be in the future.
The data mining process requires commitment. But experts agree, across all industries, the data mining process is the same. And should follow a prescribed path.
Here are the 6 essential steps of the data mining process.
1. Business understanding
In the business understanding phase:
First, it is required to understand business objectives clearly and find out what are the business’s needs.
Next, assess the current situation by finding the resources, assumptions, constraints and other important factors which should be considered.
Then, from the business objectives and current situations, create data mining goals to achieve the business objectives within the current situation.
Finally, a good data mining plan has to be established to achieve both business and data mining goals. The plan should be as detailed as possible.
2. Data understanding
The data understanding phase starts with initial data collection, which is collected from available data sources, to help get familiar with the data. Some important activities must be performed including data load and data integration in order to make the data collection successfully.
Next, the “gross” or “surface” properties of acquired data need to be examined carefully and reported.
Then, the data needs to be explored by tackling the data mining questions, which can be addressed using querying, reporting, and visualization.
Finally, the data quality must be examined by answering some important questions such as “Is the acquired data complete?”, “Is there any missing values in the acquired data?”
3. Data preparation
The data preparation typically consumes about 90% of the time of the project. The outcome of the data preparation phase is the final data set. Once available data sources are identified, they need to be selected, cleaned, constructed and formatted into the desired form. The data exploration task at a greater depth may be carried during this phase to notice the patterns based on business understanding.
4. Modeling
First, modeling techniques have to be selected to be used for the prepared data set.
Next, the test scenario must be generated to validate the quality and validity of the model.
Then, one or more models are created on the prepared data set.
Finally, models need to be assessed carefully involving stakeholders to make sure that created models are met business initiatives.
5. Evaluation
In the evaluation phase, the model results must be evaluated in the context of business objectives in the first phase. In this phase, new business requirements may be raised due to the new patterns that have been discovered in the model results or from other factors. Gaining business understanding is an iterative process in data mining. The go or no-go decision must be made in this step to move to the deployment phase.
6. Deployment
The knowledge or information, which is gained through data mining process, needs to be presented in such a way that stakeholders can use it when they want it. Based on the business requirements, the deployment phase could be as simple as creating a report or as complex as a repeatable data mining process across the organization. In the deployment phase, the plans for deployment, maintenance, and monitoring have to be created for implementation and also future supports. From the project point of view, the final report of the project needs to summary the project experiences and review the project to see what need to improved created learned lessons.
These 6 steps describe the Cross-industry standard process for data mining, known as CRISP-DM. It is an open standard process model that describes common approaches used by data mining experts. It is the most widely-used analytics model.
Do these 6 steps help you understand the data mining process? What is your organization’s readiness for date mining?
Influencer is someone who helps other people buy from you. How do they do this? Influencers have a combination of three assets: Reach, contextual credibility and salesmanship.
38% of marketers say they are unable to tell whether influencers activity actually drives sales
How to determine if influencers are going to deliver a return on investment for your business?
Here’s how 10 experts calculate the ROI of influencers.
UNIQUE CODE: If you sell products online and want to measure ROI of your influencer campaign by direct sales, give influencers a unique code to give to their audience that they can use at checkout for a percentage off their purchase. A good amount is 15%-20% off. Calculate the amount of sales you earned from your influencer’s unique discount code and divide it by the dollars you spent on the campaign. – Kristen Matthews, Social Media Examin
INFLUENCER LANDING PAGE: You must tie your influencer campaign into a branded landing page in order to measure the ROI of that influencer. The influencers can have as much free reign as you’ll permit, as long as they drive their audience where you want them to go. Once on the landing page, you, as the brand, can incentivize the users and capture their lead info for measurement data and future communication. – Kenny Eicher, The CSI Group
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE ANALYTICS: One of the easiest metrics to track when using an influencer is social engagement. Track your social accounts for changes in total followers as well as new unfollows. Monitor your website traffic for an increase or decline in website visits from the social network. Are there spikes that align with the influencer’s activity? Do you see an increase in sales (or inquiries) directly following their activity? – Korena Keys, KeyMedia Solutions
HASHTAG CAMPAIGN: You could tailor your social media campaign to use a specific hashtag encourage influencers to use your hashtag with their followers. You can then tally uses of the hashtag, considering its use to be part of your influencer marketing campaign. – Influencer Marketing Hub
KPI DEFINITION AND TRACKING: Establish metrics for measuring the performance of your campaign. This means identifying your campaign objectives and metrics (KPIs) for tracking these objectives. The following KPIs are the most common for gauging influencer campaign success: 1) Engagement, 2) Reach/Impressions, 3) Follower growth and 4) Traffic. – Magda Houalla, Revfluence
PIXEL TRACKING: TapInfluence partnered with a Fortune 500 Food Brand and Nielsen Catalina Solutions to complete the first ever Influencer Marketing Sales Effects Study. Special NCS tracking pixelautomatically inserted by software into blog content for every post. 1000 people viewing influencer contentgenerated $285 of incremental sales over the control group. Influencer Marketing delivered 11X ROI over all other forms of digital media. – Bill Carmody, CEO, Trepoint
CONVERSIONS: One of the simplest ways to do this on Instagram is to track direct conversions through the “comment to buy” feature. This allows consumers to comment directly on an influencer’s post expressing their interest in purchasing the product or products featured in the post. Consumers then receive a personalized link via email. Tracking “comment to buy” not only provides revenue information for the campaign, it’s also an excellent source of brand demographic information. – Andrew Higgins, Product Marketing and Product Management, Pixlee
COMPARE VS OTHER INVESTMENTS: Be sure to track wherever possible: custom links, landing pages, influencer promo codes, giveaways, anything you can. Consider an influencer marketing campaign’s performance against your other marketing strategies. How much would you have to pay on Google PPC to gain the same exposure? Keep things in perspective and consider lifetime value. – Bernard May, National Positions
ENGAGEMENT: If your campaign focuses on social media exposure with influencers, look at engagement on your social channels after the influencer initiative. Do you have an increase in engagement on your channels? New followers are important, but it’s key to have the right followers. If your engagement increases, you know you reached your target audience who actually wants to engage with your content. – Lisa Arledge Powell, MediaSource
LIVE EVENT: A live experience is the ultimate influencer ecosystem. Getting like-minded people together who have a passion for a particular subject matter creates an environment for influencing, whether it be comics, cars or causes. Once at a live event, the social amplification through influencers is exponential and can be measured in real time through social posts, brand activation and word of mouth. – Chris Cavanaugh, Freeman
Does the advice of these experts help you in calculating the ROI of influencers? Are you looking for help in how to effectively use influencers for your company?
Measures, metrics, KPIs – It’s all about data, data and more data. We have never had more data in our hands. Understanding and making productive use of it is essential to your business.
How many people have opened your email? How many sales did your team bring in? And most importantly, how much time do you spend creating spreadsheets and getting buried in reports? Wouldn’t it be easier if there was a way to display your data so that you know exactly what’s going on in your business at all times?
What is a dashboard?
The go-to solution you are looking for is dashboards. A tool that cuts through data clutter and helps you get down to what really matters. But more concretely, what is a dashboard?
Founder of Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few describes dashboards as a visual display of your business’ data that is essential to achieve your goals. This data is consolidated and showcased on a single screen so that it can be tracked and monitored at a glance. Truly helpful is the fact that the data is automatically updating itself without any assistance from the user. With the right dashboard, you can experience the satisfaction of leading your business to success.
I know what you’re thinking: so, how do I spot the right dashboard?
As the Partnerships Manager at Airtame, I’ve spent months researching dashboards that work with Airtame.
Provided that these executive dashboard templates have a shareable public link, you can copy-paste it into your Airtame’s settings, and your dashboard will display on the screen. Once your dashboard is up on a large screen, it becomes a wallboard, a term you might have heard before but never really knew what it was. The main benefit of wallboards is that they are highly visible and easy to understand for everyone around them.
Here I found not one but 26 executive dashboard template, that will easily help you showcase your company’s indispensable data on any office screen. To make your life easier, I’ve split them into Executive Dashboards and Social Walls, according to their focus.
Executive Dashboard Templates
If what you’re looking for is the classic KPI dashboard that helps you keep track of your business performance, then Executive Dashboards are for you. This includes your accounting software data, your CRM, website analytics, or email system data for a broader perspective. Here are some recommendations:
Used by more than 4,500 companies, and integrating data from Dropbox, Marketo, Moz, and so forth, our partner, Klipfolio makes sure that your web analytics, sales and finances, and project management goals are transparent throughout your company. I personally have a screen dedicated to Klipfolio dashboards in front of my desk and it really makes my life easier.
An all-in-one business dashboard app, Cyfe’s goal is to help you make better business decisions by bringing all of your business performance data under one roof. However, to benefit from its full potential, you would have to sign up for a Premium account.
With varied integrations, such as Zendesk, Pipedrive, Podio, leaderboards and custom recognition features, Plecto will drive your team’s motivation sky high. If sales are your main focus, Plecto is what you’re looking for. Also, I must say the pricing plan is quite eye-catching.
Small, medium, large companies – it doesn’t matter. Datapine can provide you with accurate KPIs in the most professional way, be it management, finance, sales or marketing related. Plus, I really enjoyed their customer support. For example, booking a demo and understanding their product took no time at all.
Monitor your workflow, connect to an ever-growing list of tools and services, and make sure that all relevant stakeholders in your projects get the essential details with Axosoft. I would also add that these dashboards load very fast, so you won’t have to worry about delays in your content.
By connecting and visualizing your data in a matter of minutes, Tableau Public is one of those executive dashboard templates that can make you forget about the old-school spreadsheets and reports that used to clutter your life.
I like the fact that Tableau has a broad service offering. Also, they are pretty active in terms of social events. So if you have any doubts, you can always check if they’re holding an event in your neighborhood.
Integrating Facebook, MailChimp, Google Analytics and Adwords and many more, Cervinoboard focuses on online marketing agencies. They deliver smart services that save a lot of time for agencies that wish to deploy and maintain large amounts of dashboards. A few newer services are still in beta, but this is a young startup to watch.
A business solution that is able to monitor data from a wide range of industries. From banking and finance, education, government to pharmaceutical transport and logistics, retail, and so on. With more than 20 years of experience on the market, Dundas has dedicated over 7 of them to their dashboard project development.
However, if you want to explore their service offering, you should definitely consider signing up for a Premium account. If this sounds like a deal, get started with a free trial!
Boosting your sales, managing daily activities or stepping up your productivity game – Zoho has helped business professionals take care of all these for more than a decade. If I were looking for a very complex software provider, I would most likely choose Zoho.
Want to get a better sense of your data? Watch this video!
Be it SEO, SEM, PPC or social media, DashThis has got your back. It automatically gathers all your client data into one dashboard report.
If you are a digital agency, DashThis dashboards might be just what you’re looking for. But feel free to check their demo video here and read more about their features.
Lets you easily combine the data your team needs and has customizable dashboards. What else is there? Oh, yes, the fact that it can be tailored to nearly every market from digital agencies to server admins and sales teams. Quite a tool for startups, I’d say.
Start with a free trial to get better sense of these dashboards.
Incredibly user-friendly features and very intuitive executive dashboard templates. Not to mention the sharp design of their live graphs. Sometimes, it can take a while to load, but it’s worth the wait. The pricing plan: really appealing.
This is a very useful Business Intelligence tool for Microsoft users. It’s connected with Excel and Microsoft Office 365 and has a publish to web function that can be used with Airtame.
The name says it all, because SimpleKPI is just that – simple. And when it comes to monitoring your business reports, that’s what you want from executive dashboard templates. The visuals are nicely put together and easy to understand.
Databox has a clever drag-and-drop editor that makes data visualization a breeze. It has a ton of integration options so you can connect all data sources, no matter where you want your information to come from.
A great thing with Dasheroo is that you can have several different executive dashboard templates to suit different needs or even different people. Organize data and set up dashboards for you SoMe presence, your sales team, your support… Everything your heart desires. Oh, and it’s free!
Many services can’t offer a swift implementation but take months to get your solution up and running. Grow claims they implement 8x faster than competitors, meaning you don’t have to wait to get started with analyzing data. You can create role-specific KPI dashboards for an unlimited amount of team members, which is also a nice feature.
Sometimes, one dashboard just isn’t enough. That’s why Geckoboards lets you display several different dashboards on the same screen. You can even add your own logo for a customized look and feel that matches your brand.
You can automatically merge data with this service. That makes it easy for you to get an overview of all metrics, goals and KPIs without having to worry about the time spent trying to do it yourself. Target Dashboard includes support in their pricing plan, and that’s something we applaud. Bills can pile up when problems arise if support isn’t included, so that’s definitely something to look for when choosing a dashboard service.
With Octoboard, you can create public dashboards for easy sharing with other teams or clients. Octoboard also offers activity monitoring for brands and bloggers on social platforms. For those out there that want to glance at competitors while simultaneously looking at their own engagement, this is superb. That’s why I’ve put it as the last in the executive dashboard section, because it would fit just as well in the next section; social walls.
Social Walls
Presumably, you want to track your social media lifespan, or organize a kick-ass event. Social walls can help you stay on the pulse of your social media community. These are some suggestions that caught my eye.
Want to keep track of your social media activity for a certain event or conference? With so many platforms out there, why not bring all of them into one easy-to-use display so that everyone can see your tailored stream of content unfolding in real time? Start with a free trial and then you can decide among Plus, Premium or customized plans.
Meet Juicer, a social media aggregator that sets your filters up, moderates your posts, and analyzes your social media engagement. What’s more, Juicer has 18 integrations and a modest pricing plan.
Unleashing your hashtags and building your social wall with data integrated from over 15 platforms is a no-brainer if you go with Walls.io. Keep your audience updated with Walls.io’s customizable next-generation social wall and your next event is sure to be a success.
Basic no-frills executive dashboard templates
Suppose you are only looking to create and share your slide decks. Or maybe you want to focus on showcasing your data through charts. Here are some no-frills options that work great:
Slides allows you to create and share great complex presentations online, in your very own browser without the need to download anything. See for yourself by clicking here.
On the hunt for real-time executive dashboard templates for your business? With Project Manager, you can combine powerful project planning and scheduling features with collaboration tools for teams, plan waterfall projects, and adjust due dates. Project Manager takes project planning to a whole new level, I must say.
Into maps & charts? Then Datawrapper is one of the optimum executive dashboard templates for you. Back up your presentation with this great visualization tool and you might just get some applause by the end of it.
What’s your favorite dashboard? Who should I look into next on my hunt for great dashboards you can use with Airtame? Let us know in the comments!
Patricia is a Marketing & Partnerships Manager at Airtame. She’s a technology aficionado always looking to learn and share relevant insights from within the industry.
Best data visualization tools drive better decision making. As Peter Drucker says, “what’s measured improves.” And the data backs up business leaders believe it.
91% of marketing leaders believe successful brands use customer data to drive business decisions.
87% of marketers agree capturing and sharing the right data is important to effectively measuring ROI in their own company
A simple pie chart you can one-click using Microsoft Excel is a best data visualization tool if it accomplishes this task. As technology has evolved, new kinds of data visualizations have emerged. Not only pie, line and bar charts but timelines, maps, heat maps and gauges using a whole host of new technologies and tools.
If you’re looking to really exploit best data visualization tools, you should be careful before making a buying decision. The costs of these tools vary widely. You could spend a lot of money before you know if you’re getting what you really need.
To use data to improve decision making without spending any money, here are the 10 best data visualization tools for free in 2018
1. TABLEAU PUBLIC: This is the same platform as the paid version of Tableau Desktop with only one caveat: Everything you create with it is public, which means you’ll automatically be making it available on the web via Tableau’s visualization gallery. The company chose not to make its free version feature-poor. And Tableau Gallery is a great resource, not only for business people but also for researchers, students, and journalists looking for ways not just to flesh out and beautify their Other folks have done tremendous work on some truly impressive data visualizations and Tableau has curated that content and made it available for download.
2. CHARTBLOCKS: Chartblocks, like many of these free programs, basically does the same thing that made Windows so successful: replace the code with a visual interface so anyone can use it. In Chartblocks’ case, that visual interface is their chart designer, which guides you through the process. With its free version, you can make up to 30 charts, export the charts as PNG files (no vector graphics in this version), and get up to 5,000 monthly views.
3. CHARTBUILDER: This best visualization tool has one of the cleanest user interfaces among all the charting tools I’ve seen. It’s extremely easy to use as well. All you have to do is upload a CSV file, or a Google Sheets link, and it’ll generate the chart for you. Moreover, it refreshes your chart every 30 minutes, so your chart’s data source remains fairly up-to-date. The Charted service is free, and its source code is also freely available if you would like to run it on your own web server.
4. DATAWRAPPER: This is one of the extremely easy-to-use best data visualization tools for plotting interactive charts. All you need to do is upload your data via a CSV file, choose the chart you want to plot, and that’s basically it, you’re good to go! It’s a very popular tool among journalists, often using Datawrapper to embed live charts into their news articles. The fact that it’s a tool of choice for most of the non-techie people out there tells you how easy Datawrapper is to use. Read this tutorial to get started with Datawrapper.
5. HIGHCHARTS: Highcharts, another big name in the data visualization domain, offers you a wide selection of charts and maps. They offer many plugins that allow you to experience all of its powerful features without needing to deal with JavaScript. Highcharts is free for non-commercial purposes.
6. GOOGLE CHARTS: Google Charts is user-friendly and compatible with all browsers and platforms. It covers a wide range of data visualization types — from simple line and bar graphs to complex hierarchical tree maps — making Google charts suitable for almost any project. Check out the gallery that showcases the various charts and visualizations that Google Charts offers.
7. MYHEATMAPS: If you want your visualization to provide immediate recognition, a heat map is a good way to go. Heat maps’ use of color makes them intuitive. MyHeatMap has the same easy user experience as a lot of other free software: drag, drop, (et voilà!) map. Be sure that at least two of the rows are for latitude and longitude, and that these values are included for all the data points you want to map. The one downside is a lack of privacy. MyHeatMap’s free version only offers public maps, and those free maps only get 20 data points for each.
8. OPENHEATMAPS: Creating a map is simple. You upload a CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets file to owner Pete Warden’s heat map website, click a button and get a map. It’ll live on his site, but you can link to it. This is all to say that Openheatmap is about as simple as sending an email with an attachment.
9. TIMELINE: Timelines are to history what directions are on maps: they show how one thing led to another. Timelines can also be a great way to enliven reports, especially when a tool like Timeline allows you to design and embed them for free. If you’ve got a Google Drive account, just make a Google Spreadsheet using a template Timeline provides, embed it on your website.
10. RAW: Raw bridges the gap between spreadsheets and vector graphics. It’s built on the D3.js platform. If you’re not a programmer, Raw could be the perfect data visualization tool for you. Raw provides a selection of 16 ready-to-use chart types. Customization is one of the biggest positive aspects of Raw, for it allows you to use your own custom layouts.
Do these best data visualization tools give you an idea of one for your business? Are you glad these best data visualization tools are free? Does your business need help with data visualization?
Good ROI measures the profitability of investments and helps objectively assess future success.
ROI also demonstrates how skilled the people in charge are at generating profitable growth and managing company funds wisely.
What is a good ROI? 10 experts state explain their standards for a range of industries.
Adverstising
Business Owner
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer Service
Entrepreneur
Investing
Marketing
Digital Marketing
Real Estate
Restaurant
Venture Capital
Here’s what they have to say.
GOOD ROI FOR ADVERTISING (GOOGLE ADWORDS)
“Research show businesses make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on AdWords. According to Google, campaigns that use the Conversion Optimizer achieve a 21% increase in conversions while decreasing CPA by 14% on average.” – Elisa Gabbert, Sr. Manager of Content and SEO, WordStream
GOOD ROI FOR A BUSINESS OWNER
“Strive to make at least triple the value of the hard cash you have invested in your business. Average angel investors and venture capital fund investors shoot for a return of 4 to 10 times their invested capital.” – Start on Purpose
GOOD ROI FOR CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)
Nucleus Research finds that for every dollar spent on CRM implementation, returns can peak at a stellar $8.71 (2014). That’s a $3.11 jump from three years ago when the strongest returns topped out at $5.60.” – Sarah Brigham, Nutshell
GOOD ROI FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE
“In research on actual customer transactions published in the Harvard Business Review, researchers found that among thousands of customers studied, customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experience.” – Elen Veenpere, Groove
GOOD ROI FOR AN ENTREPRENEUR
“My advice to entrepreneurs is to try to at least double total invested capital plus the value of any contingent liabilities associated with guaranteeing bank debt, real estate leases and equipment leases. Building a successful business is hard work. Earning a salary is not enough to compensate for all the risks and effort involved with business ownership.” – Susan Schreter, Fox Business
GOOD ROI FOR INVESTING
“A really good return on investment for an active investor is 15% annually. It’s aggressive, but it’s achievable if you put in time to look for bargains. ROI, or Return on Investment, measures the efficiency of an investment. For every dollar you put in, what kind of profit can you expect.You can double your buying power every six years if you make an average return on investment of 12% after taxes and inflation every year.” – Trendshare
GOOD ROI FOR MARKETING
“A good ROI for marketing is 5:1. A 5:1 ratio is middle of the bell curve. A ratio over 5:1 is considered strong for most businesses, and a 10:1 ratio is exceptional. A 2:1 revenue to marketing cost ratio wouldn’t be profitable for many businesses, as the cost to produce or acquire the item being sold (also known as cost-of-goods-sold, or COGS) is about 50% of the sale price. For these businesses, if you spend $100 in marketing to generate $200 in sales, and it costs $100 to make the product being sold, you are breaking even. If all you accomplish with your marketing is break even, you might as well not do it.” – Chris Leone
GOOD ROI FOR DIGITAL MARKETING
“According to Neilsen, the average marketing return on investment is $1.09. A $1.09 ROI means that for every $1 spent, the company generates $2.09 (for a profit of $1.09). The top 3 marketing media with the highest average return on investment are email marketing, search engine optimization, and direct mail. Tracking source of sales to be able to calculate return on investment from your marketing initiatives is critical to being able to improve the effectiveness of your marketing spending.” – Profitworks
GOOD ROI FOR REAL ESTATE
“Without using any debt, real estate return demands from investors mirror those of business ownership and stocks. The real rate of return for good, non-leveraged properties has been roughly 7% after inflation. Since we have gone through decades of 3% inflation, over the past 20 years, that figure seems to have stabilized at 10%.” – Joshua Kennon, Managing Director, Kennon-Green & Co.
GOOD ROI FOR A RESTAURANT
“If by ROI you mean the profit realized annually by the average restaurant, it is very consistent across the industry: 3–5% according to several sources. Extremely well run restaurants or very high-end places might make as much as 10%, but those are the exceptions — not the norm. I would be very suspect of any restaurant that claims to achieve 15–25% net profits.” – Chuck Rogers, New Orleans Restaurant Owner
GOOD ROI FOR VENTURE CAPITAL
“Venture capital (“VC”) funds, as well as experienced angel investors, specialize in investing in startup and growth-oriented privately held companies. They understand the statistical risks of business failure within their investment portfolio. They know that on average, only four out of 10 investments in promising entrepreneurial companies will deliver any profit to VC fund investors. This is why VCs and angels aim extra high and turn down investment opportunities that don’t represent a “grand slam home run potential” to the overall fund.” Susan Schreter, Fox Business
Do these example help you understand what is a good ROI and why? How is your business measuring up? Or, if you don’t know, do you think it’s worth knowing what is the ROI for your business?
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BarnRaisers builds brands with proven relationship principles and ROI. We are a full service digital marketing agency. Our expertise is strategy, search and data-driven results.
