The Basic Facts:
- The Eye is the first and only web-based reporting software that integrates all of an advisory’s marketing.
- The Eye allows Simplicity Lone Beacon to mine and learn from the data we have, resulting in better decisions that give our advisors a competitive edge.
- The Eye is available through a real-time, convenient website URL that is easy to use for busy advisors
Read this Q&A with Marcus Roth, Director of Marketing Automation at Simplicity Lone Beacon and creator of The Eye platform:
Q: What is The Eye?
A: The Eye is a state-of-the-art, comprehensive monthly dashboard of client data able to automatically generate precise data and display the critical business metrics needed to make key monthly decisions within an independent financial advisory. Users can see key performance metrics and useful information like total online submissions for the month, most engaged leads with their contact information, and cost per lead for each marketing platform.
For example, on one page, advisors can see how each campaign is performing, and can easily get a sense of what’s working and what’s not. This is extremely helpful for our team when analyzing what content to promote versus pull back on and comparing current performance to past performance.
Q: Why Did We Create The Eye?
A: As the first full-service marketing agency in the financial industry, since day one we knew we wanted to participate in the entire customer journey for our clients, from initial engagement to close, and everything in between. This meant we had to pull together data from every source we had, including call data, Facebook Ads, Google analytics, and email metrics. We learned that there is an enormous amount of data coming from all directions, and ultimately you can’t manage what you don’t measure. We’re the only agency mindful enough to pursue and understand the entire customer journey. In order to be stewards of all this different information, we needed to view it in one location. We needed a tool that was powerful enough to aggregate all our data from many different sources, but also customizable enough to match our vision and niche.
Q: Why Was It Challenging to Create?
A: We had to get all of our different software and data sources to communicate with each other in a USEABLE way. We used our core partnership with Act On and partnered with Funnel.io, Facebook, Google Analytics, and Google Data Studio. Getting all of that software to play nice in the sandbox together was no easy task. I led software engineering discussions with representatives from multiple companies to coordinate the intricate solution we needed, given the engineering constraints each unique software had.
Q: What Are The Ultimate Benefits?
A: The Eye is any advisor’s “finger-on-the-pulse” of their marketing ecosystem. Simplicity Lone Beacon builds out an extensive marketing ecosystem where all elements from email, radio, events, Facebook, etc., are connected. The Eye platform is the logical conclusion of our marketing philosophy because it allows advisors to understand the health and interconnectedness of their marketing. The Eye allows anyone to learn from the vast stores of data collected via our initiatives in a way that is new to the industry.
All too often, people invest in an initiative, execute, and then fail to monitor and learn from the results; The Eye allows those who use it to learn from the data and continue to grow and improve where less sophisticated competitors simply guess, shrug, and move on. Seeing marketing results in real time allows us to execute on the tenets of DALA, Data, Analytics, Learning, and Action. Whereas most reporting ends at “Analytics”, The Eye crosses the finish line to get to “Action.”
Q: Why Is It Better Than An Excel Spreadsheet?
A: The Eye platform far outstrips the capabilities of an Excel Spreadsheet in a few ways: It’s far more comprehensive, automatic (you set it up once and then the information populates in there forever), and more effectively collects all the data in one convenient location. Spreadsheets are harder to populate with all the information that’s on The Eye, and it’s more difficult to make sense of that information. The Eye is designed for busy advisors because it tells them everything they need to know at a glance, rather than after sifting through a lot of info. Brevity is key. We use sophisticated visual elements that give context to data, which we can’t do on an Excel Spreadsheet that just displays columns that the advisor has to decode.
Interested in The Eye platform? Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you transform your marketing practices, analyze results, and take action. Check out our services page for more info!
