Case study: Driving marketing performance with Data Analytics

Dominic Graydon is a planning and forecast analyst for the Simplyhealth Marketing Department. By undertaking the Cambridge Spark Data Analyst Academy, Dominic has been able to build a dashboard providing his team with data-driven insights about marketing performance.

Prior to starting the Data Analyst Academy (funded by the Level 4 Data Analyst Apprenticeship), Dominic was already working with data to understand the performance of various marketing teams, which helps inform decision-making regarding future activity and spend.

The data I work with ranges from customer personal detail, to financial data and ROI. This data comes from a range of databases and sources, and I often have to manipulate and link different data sets to paint a complete picture”  

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

Dominic has no formal qualification in data analytics, having developed his skillset through learning at work. Undertaking the Data Analyst apprenticeship was an opportunity to develop his skills further and gain a recognised qualification as a Data Analyst.

"Working with data on a daily basis, without the qualifications and skills to progress, motivated me to seek and apply for this apprenticeship.”

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

Applying data skills to work-based projects

A key part of the apprenticeship is identifying work-based projects to apply new skills and show how data analytics can generate a return on investment. Working with a Cambridge Spark Technical Mentor, Dominic has developed a dashboard that his team can use to analyse marketing performance.

In my project, I was looking to create a report or dashboard that would be accessible to the whole marketing team to use, that would be filterable by a range of variables. This Dashboard would make it easy to analyse how different sets of customers, on different products, levels and sources perform, and in the future will make it possible to easily measure the ROI of each of them.”

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

The modules covering Seaborn (a Python visualisation library) and Tableau (data visualisation software) were crucial to Dominic’s project.

“I was first able to initially plan the project by using the Seaborn add-on within Jupyter Notebooks. Once I loaded customer data into this program, I was able to visualise what I really wanted out of the project, that led to the development of a Tableau Dashboard. The course itself has given me a better understanding of the tools and techniques available, and this led to me using Tableau, where I was able to load a dataset with all of my required information and then produce visualisations once I added the required filters. None of this would have been possible without the modules within this apprenticeship.”

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

Showing a return on investment for data analytics skills

Importantly when developing data analytics skills, this needs to produce a benefit to the organisation if applied correctly. Dominic and his team are already seeing the benefits of this project.

My team no longer relies on the MI team for basic Tableau functions, that previously would have required a ticket to be raised, that would add days to any quick changes.”

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

More broadly, Dominic is seeing the benefits of the programme on his performance at work and creating opportunities for future development.

Due to the course, I have been granted a Tableau online license to enable me to produce my own reports and dashboards without reaching out to the MI team. This has saved me a lot of time, and given me the skills to create the Dashboard that can be seen in my first project. I have enjoyed learning about the other tools available, and feel as though learning Python is a really key fundamental skill that will help me in my future as a Data Scientist.”

Dominic Graydon, L4 Data Analyst Apprentice

Cambridge Spark are currently enrolling for the next cohort of the Data Analyst Academy. Get in touch with the team using the form below to find out how we can help your organisation build data analytics capability.