Top 10 Predictive Analytics Tools for Marketing Professionals

Predictive analytics tools leverage the power of current and historical data to help marketers uncover trends in consumer behaviors, make forecasts, and formulate optimized marketing strategies.

According to Gartner, companies allocate 9.5% of their annual revenue to marketing teams. This is a drop from the 11% recorded in 2020. The allocation of smaller budgets has put marketing executives under more pressure to make the most out of every dollar.

Predictive analytics solutions come to the rescue by empowering marketing executives to identify productive opportunities and make more effective, data-driven decisions.

This guide will examine the top 10 predictive analytics tools you can use to supercharge your marketing game today.

What is Predictive Analytics, and How does it Benefit Marketing Executives?

In the context of marketing, predictive analytics is the use of past and present data to forecast the outcomes of marketing strategies. This process combines advanced analytics and statistical techniques to predict marketing performance and set-ups that are most likely to bring the best results, as well as consumer segments that are most likely to convert.

It is important to note that predictive analytics tools aren’t exactly crystal balls; they offer reliable probabilities but not guarantees.

Benefits of Predictive Analytics

A report by Allied Marketing Research revealed that the predictive analytics market will hit $35.5 billion by 2027, increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.9%.

This growth is driven by the widespread awareness of the benefits of predictive analytics across all industries. According to the Predictive Intelligence Benchmark Report, organizations that implement predictive analytics report positive impacts on conversion rates and revenue.

This section will detail how predictive analytics help marketing teams drive their organizations to their revenue goals.

Better Lead Segmentation

Predictive analytics allows marketing executives to identify leads that have more potential to convert based on historical data and characteristics common for the high-conversion lead list. With this insight, they will know where to invest more energy and resources for maximum results.

Operational Efficiency

Integrating predictive analytics into your marketing activities makes you more efficient. Your decisions will prioritize actions that are most likely to drive results, minimize errors and generate a higher ROMI.

Better Understanding of Customer Behavior

Predictive analytics uses historical data to uncover consumer behaviors and how they evolve throughout the conversion journey. That way, you can identify possible roadblocks and triggers, as well as best practices for influencing their decisions.

Identify Opportunities for More Sales

Identifying similar products and services your customers/clients have purchased in the past makes it possible to predict what they may need down the line. Predictive analytics is at the core of product recommendation engines, helping organizations uncover opportunities for upsells and cross-sells.  

Improved Personalization

Predictive analytics arms you with information about your customer’s preferences, making it easier to craft more personalized experiences in anticipation of specific outcomes. Personalized experiences have a direct impact on conversion rates, with personalized emails driving 760% more revenue than regular, generalized versions.

10 Best Predictive Analytics Platforms for Marketers

This section will look at 10 of the best predictive analytics software you can use to kickstart or upgrade your predictive analytics journey.

We will describe what each predictive analytics software can do for its users, who each platform is best suited for, its pros and cons, integrations, and pricing.

Improvado

Improvado is a revenue data platform designed to help marketers integrate data from multiple sources in real time and deliver automated reports and dashboards.

The platform extracts data from over 500 data sources (CRMs, ad servers, email platforms, and more), transforms it into digestible formats, and loads it onto your preferred data warehouse or visualization tool. 

By consolidating your entire marketing data in one place, you get access to a holistic view of your entire marketing campaign performance, how leads behave at each step of the conversion journey, and can make data-driven predictions on the most probable outcomes of your marketing strategies. The Professional Services option offered by the company can further broaden your data use cases and drive marketing success.

Who Should Use Improvado?

Improvado is best-suited to marketing and analytics executives who manage multiple data sources but want to simplify data analysis and cut time to insight. 

This encompasses marketers in enterprise organizations managing campaigns in multiple regions, mid-market brands running campaigns across several channels, and agencies managing accounts for multiple clients.

Pros

1. Offers real-time data aggregation.
2. Covers HIPAA compliance for health companies.
3. Supports custom metrics and offers full-cycle professional data services.
4. Automatically harmonizes disparate naming conventions from different marketing channels.
5. Has a highly responsive customer support team.
6. Supports over 500 data sources, warehouses, and visualization platforms.
7. Offers insights at a granular level.
8. Requires no coding knowledge.
9. Perfect for marketing and sales alignment.
10. Allows marketers to view and analyze ad creatives from their dashboards.

Cons

1. Might require a bit of back and forth with your assigned customer support rep before you get your dashboards and reports visualized the way you want.
2. Some of the granular features can be a bit complicated, but your support rep is always available to walk you through them.

Improvado Pricing

Improvado’s pricing is customized to suit your specific needs. The actual pricing can only be determined after a call with a sales rep.

Improvado Integrations

Improvado supports over 500 integrations spanning marketing and sales data sources, warehouses, and visualization platforms.

Domo

Domo is a data app platform that enables business executives to integrate data from multiple sources and create app-led workflows for business challenges.

The platform combines data integration, Power BI, and data apps to help teams across various departments make the most efficient use of their organization’s data. Its analytics tool allows you to create interactive dashboards powered by real-time data to help you analyze events and achieve more predictable results.

Who Should Use Domo?

Domo is best for C-level executives at enterprises looking for a tool that can create executive-level dashboards and be used across the organization. 

Domo is used for general business data analytics and is not designed specifically for marketing. This means that the software’s capacity is relatively vast when it comes to company-wide business intelligence and executive dashboards.

Pros

1. Offers over 1,000 data connectors.
2. Supports a wide range of teams across multiple industries.
3. Provides real-time data in a single dashboard.
4. Requires little to no support from IT teams.
5. Lauded for its appealing and scalable visualization features.

Cons

1. Not precisely focused on marketing, resulting in limited marketing integrations.
2. Users complain that the platform is super-expensive.
3. Ease of use is low.

Domo Pricing

Pricing for Domo is based on a yearly subscription, and the cost varies depending on the number of people who need access to the tool. There’s also a 30-day free trial available.

Domo Integrations

Domo offers over 1000 pre-built and custom data connectors for marketing, sales, finance, HR, IT, and more.

Sisense

Sisense is an infused analytics platform designed to help organizations uncover business intelligence through AI-driven insights.

The platform offers a robust mechanism for connecting, analyzing, and exploring enterprise-grade data. It leverages machine learning to make sense of current and historical data to deliver predictive insights for its users.

Who Should Use Sisense?

Sisense designed its tools for executives in the customer service, HR, IT, marketing, and finance departments. The platform is for users who want to create visualizations and get a 360-degree view of their company data with minimal technical assistance.

Pros

1. Offers a drag-and-drop dashboard.
2. Customer support is excellent.
3. Has a wide range of widgets, including gauges, charts, and graphs.
4. Suitable for a wide variety of teams.
5. Offers integration to over 100 platforms.

Cons

1. Has data sorting limitations.
2. Its solutions aren’t specifically tailored to suit marketers. Thus, there are limitations in marketing analytics features.
3. Sometimes images can degrade after exportation.
4. Dashboards lack flexibility.
5. Overall fewer customization options.

Sisense Pricing

Sisense offers a custom pricing system and requires a call before you can get a quote. It also provides a free trial.

Integrations

Sisense has over 100 data connectors that support tools for HR, customer support, IT, marketing, and finance departments. 

Looker

Looker is a big data analytics software and BI platform that helps organizations explore, analyze and share business data in real time.

The platform allows users to pull insights from multiple data sources, unify workflows, build embedded analytics apps, and serve real-time dashboards for in-depth analysis.

Who Should Use Looker?

Looker is a valuable BI and predictive analytics software for teams across almost all business departments. It’s particularly good for businesses that require a tool that is easy to use but still offers plenty of insightful information in a visual way.

Pros

1. Very intuitive.
2. Great customization.
3. Integrates with big data platforms and databases.
4. Custom install options along with their hosted solutions.
5. Excellent customer support.

Cons

1. Large dashboards can take a long time to load.
2. With simplicity comes a lack of flexibility.

Looker Pricing

Pricing is based on your unique business needs, so you will need to contact the sales team for a quote.

Looker Integration

Looker offers integration with over 200 data sources in multiple categories.

Tableau

Tableau is a BI and analytics platform tailored to suit businesses that want to explore and analyze data for better forecasts, strategies, and decisions.

The platform allows you to connect to almost any database, create advanced visualizations with drag and drop tools, and collaborate with teams across your organization.

Who Should Use Tableau?

Tableau is designed to fit everybody’s needs, from data analysts to business executives to IT professionals.

Pros

1. Connects with a large number of data sources.
2. Intuitive and user-friendly.
3. Access to files using cloud and data warehouses.
4. Data can be organized and sorted to appear how you want.
5. Versatile tool.

Cons

1. The dashboard can be slow at times.
2. Sometimes large data files can take several minutes to load.
3. Graphs are somewhat limited.

Tableau Pricing

Tableau offers two pricing categories: one for on-premise installation and another for deployment on the Tableau cloud.

Tableau Integrations

Tableau supports over 100 data connectors and partner networks. 

Dataiku

Dataiku is a centralized data platform designed to help enterprise leaders and business experts build reliable predictive models from raw data. 

The predictive analytics platform leverages AI and machine learning to offer insights into possible outcomes of specific business decisions.

Who Should Use Dataiku?

As an all-in-one data science platform, Dataiku is designed to meet the needs of tech experts, business analysts, and enterprise leaders. It is meant to serve teams that want to deliver advanced analytics using modern technologies on a “big data” scale.

Pros

1. Offers an intuitive interface.
2. Fosters collaboration between enterprise teams.
3. Supports the exportation of data transformation, ML, and lead scoring workflows.
4. Connects to almost any database, including SQL, FTP, HADOOP, and NoSQL.
5. Allows you to extend functionalities using plugins.

Cons

1. Has a high licensing cost.
2. Lacks drill-down functionalities in visualizations and interactive charts.
3. Data visualization could be improved.

Dataiku Pricing

Dataiku has a free version with limited features and a free trial for all its premium versions. However, to get actual prices for each premium plan, you’re required to contact the sales team.

Dataiku Integrations

Dataiku has integrations with over 100 data sources in multiple categories.

Alteryx

Alteryx is an analytics platform that delivers end-to-end automated analytics, machine learning, and data science processes to help organizations uncover hidden insights and create reliable predictions.

The platform offers a unifying mechanism for consolidating data from different tools across an organization, empowering leaders to achieve a holistic view of performances, predict outcomes, and align strategies.

Who Should Use Alteryx?

Alteryx caters to a wide variety of users across multiple departments, including finance, HR, IT, supply chain, marketing, and sales.

Pros

1. Works well with a multitude of BI and database solutions.
2. Offers an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop functionality.
3. Capable of handling large amounts of data.
4. Visual and interactive nature reduces the amount of coding required.
5. Uses automated data preparation to help business users quickly transform raw data into actionable insights without the need for code.

Cons

1. The per-core costs are high if you need to scale out in a large organization. 
2. Designed more for on-premise computing and isn’t very cloud-friendly.
3. Has an overall steep learning curve.

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Alteryx Pricing

Alteryx offers different pricing plans for individuals and teams. Prices for specific features are listed on the page but to get the complete pricing for each package, you will need to contact the sales team.

Alteryx Integrations

Alteryx offers integrations with over 90 data sources.

Emcien

Emcien describes itself as “predictive analytics for the real world.” 

Powered by machine learning, the platform heavily focuses on automatically discovering the complex rules that connect business data and building predictive models that help users identify possible outcomes and access practical recommendations.

Who Should Use Emcien?

Emcien is meant for everyone who wants to efficiently analyze data and fast-track results. This includes business users and data experts across all industries.

Pros

1. Requires no data preparation.
2. Supports a wide variety of data formats.
3. Can analyze multiple unrelated data at scale.
4. Supports both on-premises and cloud-based applications.
5. Provides graph analysis, weighted predictions, and likeliness scores.

Cons

1. Its interface looks dated and unintuitive.
2. Has very few learning resources and an insufficient knowledge base.

Emcien Pricing

Emcien has no pricing information on its website. It does, however, offer a free trial, after which you will get in touch with a salesperson for a customized quote.

Emcien Integration

There is no information on how many data connectors Emcien provides. However, the platform claims to be compatible with almost every data source available.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence (Datorama)

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence, formerly known as Datorama, is an AI-powered marketing intelligence platform that helps users to integrate, onboard, and visualize data. This makes it possible for marketing executives to get a birds-eye view of campaign performances, optimize spending, and achieve predictable results.

Who Should Use Marketing Cloud Intelligence?

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence might be more suited to organizations with an inphouse team of data analysts and BI engineers and those able to invest time and resources into understanding its intricacies. For teams seeking a more straightforward or automated solution, this platform might prove to be more of a challenge than a help.

Pros

1. Offers tools tailored to suit marketing professionals.
2. Provides a testing environment to help you test-run updates before pushing them to live reports.
3. Offers clean visualization features.
4. Supports dashboard customization and collaborative reporting.
5. Provides automated data preparation.

Cons

1. Sometimes it can lag for an extended period when streaming certain data types..
2. It’s complex and can take time to set up.
3. Usage can be very expensive.
4. Requires several manual interventions as users report that streams constantly fail.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence Pricing

Marketing Cloud offers three pricing tiers, with the lowest starting at $3,000 per month. The platform provides customized quotes for large organizations.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence Integrations

Marketing Cloud Intelligence claims to provide thousands of API connectors. The platform differentiates between data sources available to all users, premium connectors that come as an add-on without a set price, and data source connectors available via Intelligence Marketplace.

Marketing Evolution (MEVO)

Marketing Evolution (MEVO) is a marketing analytics platform that helps marketers consolidate data from multiple channels, track performances, and create future-proof strategies for their organizations.

Using a combination of AI and machine learning, MEVO provides a unified solution for omnichannel marketing measurement, experimentation, and predictive analytics.

Who Should Use MEVO?

MEVO is explicitly designed for marketing teams in agencies and organizations that want to maximize media spend and brand impact.

Pros

1. The platform has a clean, intuitive interface.
2. Offers a “scenario planner” for helping marketers run experiments and make predictions.
3. Supports marketing data at all granularity levels.
4. Requires minimal historical data for training its machine learning model.

Cons

1. The middle touch module of the customer journey is too broad and doesn’t provide much value.
2. Offers very few native integrations.

MEVO Pricing

MEVO doesn’t list its pricing plans on its website. You can access this by requesting a demo, after which you’ll get a quote tailored to your business requirements.

MEVO Integrations

MEVO offers native integration to 16 platforms. You can request a custom integration by contacting the support team.

Summary

Predictive analytics is a game changer for marketing executives. It helps them to better understand what marketing activities bring the most value and get a higher return on marketing investments by putting the most effort into high-return campaigns. This heavily curtails wasted budgets and supercharges productivity.

This guide discussed 10 of the most reliable tools for predictive analytics. However, it is important to ensure that your chosen predictive analysis software is compatible with your unique marketing goals, data infrastructure, and budget. If you would like to discuss this further, speak to one of our experts.