Rise of the Data Scientist

In the movie The Matrix, Tank is the skilled operator who stays in the ship , staring at the console all day and guiding Neo and the crew safely through the virtual world of the matrix: entry points, exit paths, dangers, and risks. While we see green binary trails, he sees the answers and insights.

In our world of marketing technology, the data scientist can look at marketing and sales data and see the correlations, connections, and causations. Data scientists are the new masters of the marketing universe. At DemandGen, to address the evolving needs of our clients, we started bringing data scientists aboard two years ago. Fast forward to today: Thanks to our data scientists, we have automated data-hygiene programs, nurture performance analyzers, automated reporting solutions, predictive scoring systems, and an ever-expanding suite of data and applications for sophisticated clients who crave answers and insights.

Data scientists are having game-changing impacts on initiatives like reporting capabilities and constructing healthy data marts. Yes, some type of DNA mutation must have happened in the evolution of the marketing workforce, and let me be the first to tell you that the data scientist is the new “wonder kid” on the marketing block. No other department has seen more new roles/titles than marketing in the past few years:

First came the chief marketing officer, a role that evolved because marketing deserved (and earned) a seat at the executive table.

Then the demand generation manager came along to take ownership of marketing-generated pipeline and revenue.

Next followed the marketing operations and marketing systems managers, two roles that are still emerging to help companies manage the deployment and adoption of their marketing systems and provide the demand generation team with performance reporting.

Now in 2015, the data scientist has arrived as a core role for helping companies understand where their next customer will come from, what they’re likely to buy, and when. Raise your hand if you want one.

Hello, 2015. The transformation in marketing continues, and the more things change, the more they are NOT staying the same. The behemoths like Oracle, Salesforce, Adobe and others will popularize the power of the marketing cloud, and the early adopters will have a head start on their competition in building their Demand Factories. Increasingly, marketing is becoming the powerhouse for high-growth companies that are investing in marketing technology and the resources to harness their power.