Why Universities Must Incorporate Data Analytics in Their Curriculums

I was recently invited by Adobe to conduct a educational webinar on why it is imperative for universities to bring data analytics to the forefront of their marketing curriculums.

When they asked me back in January of this year if I would be interested in talking about this topic to various university faculty and administrators, I jumped at the chance.  After all, I had insight into what was happening out there in the job market and how NYU has become a leader in preparing students for the digital data revolution.

So with that said, I pulled together some slides and went into sales mode.  I created a compelling case for why we must teach our students to embrace data and all it can bring to bear on our marketing decisions.

In this presentation, I revealed (and quite passionately, I might add):

• What companies have been doing over the past two years to gain a 360 degree view of their customers
• What software they are using to do so (SAS, SPSS, Sitecatalyst, Radian6, etc.)
• How and why roles are becoming much less siloed than in the past and what that means for new hires
• How analytic tools are becoming much more user friendly for marketers, making it easier for them to embrace the data
• An IBM study of more than 1,700 CMO's discussing their concerns with the lack to properly trained marketers in the use of data
• Other studies showing the same
• The trends on indeed.com showing how the use of the word "analytics" in any form is increasing in frequency.

I then went on to discuss some of the major challenges we are facing today as marketers and yet to be determined solutions such as:

• Issues of inappropriate campaign attribution (first touch vs last touch)
• Siloed data and the problems caused by it
• How we are still not able to properly measure the ROI of our social programs
• How to deploy proper A/B and multivariate testing
• The challenges of defining appropriate KPI's

In summary, let me just say that universities must incorporate these new digital data analytics topics in their various marketing and MBA programs or else they will risk becoming irrelevant, and quickly so.  

To get more detail about all of these challenges mentioned above, view my presentations in pdf file form: http://www.drakedirect.com/Adobe-Educational-Series-Data-Revolution.pdf

To view my live presentation click here:  https://seminars.adobeconnect.com/_a227210/p55rklmh93y/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal

Perry