by Sophie Daniline 
You may have heard of B2B Marketing Analytics (B2B MA), and may even be using some of the out of the box or custom build dashboards. Now, there’s a new kid on the block – B2B Marketing Analytics Plus (B2B MA Plus). But what is it, how does it differ from B2B Marketing Analytics, and should you be using it?
What is B2B Marketing Analytics Plus?
B2B MA Plus is an analytics platform for marketing data that incorporates predictive elements. This means it tells you what happened, and what will happen. Pretty cool. It will also give you predictions and improvements!
How does it differ from B2B Marketing Analytics?
The key difference between the two is descriptive vs predictive analytics. In short, B2B MA tells you what has happened, and B2B MA Plus goes one step further and tells you what will happen.
There is also the access element. In order to access B2B MA, all you need is a B2B Marketing Analytics permission set, which comes with Pardot Plus and Pardot Advanced editions. B2B MA Plus requires something different – an Einstein Platform licence.
A good way to think about the licence access differences, is that B2B MA gives you a limited version of the Einstein Platform (with out of the box dashboards, and the ability to create custom ones too), without any predictive data modelling. B2B MA Plus, on the other hand, gives you access to the full Einstein Platform as well as to additional custom dashboards, and provides out of the box predictive modelling.
You mentioned new dashboards…?
Glad you asked!
B2B MA Plus provides access to two new dashboards:
- Marketing Campaign Insights
- Account-Based Marketing
Let’s take a look at what each of them do:
Marketing Campaign Insights
This app uses predictive data, combining prospect engagement data from both Pardot & Salesforce. The Campaign Engagement card shows prospect engagement data from Pardot, and the Campaign Performance card shows associated campaign data from Salesforce.
You can then filter all this information down by date range, Business Unit and more. This means you could focus your data on time frames, campaigns, or accounts. This therefore gives you the opportunity to look at which audience segment most often engages with your marketing campaigns.
More than anything, this dashboard allows you to see connections between sales and marketing efforts, and helps you identify the best next steps for future campaigns. This is a big step in the right direction for sales and marketing alignment.
Account Based Marketing
This app was built to give you a complete 360 degree view of your accounts. The main dashboard that comes with your Account-Based Marketing app includes metrics and graphs, such as Top 10 values and expected revenue amounts.
You can use the Pipeline, Accounts, and Closed Opportunity cards to find valuable information about your accounts. On each dashboard, you can also click into any widget to filter data or open related records.
- The Pipeline Value card allows you to explore predicted account values.
- The Account card allows you to drill down into accounts, even by region, as well as explore account reach over time.
- The Closed opportunity card gives you insights from already closed business.
Should you invest in B2B MA Plus?
If you’re an Enterprise level client or need predictive analytics, then this tool is perfect for you – just don’t expect it to be cheap! If you’re not Enterprise level, and not already using B2B MA, I’d recommend getting stuck in with that first, and then assessing your need for B2B MA Plus afterwards. You may find that B2B MA fulfils your needs without needing to invest in a more Enterprise-level tool.
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Here at Nebula we have in-house analytics experts. If you’re looking to get up and running with B2B MA or B2B MA Plus, and want some help – get in touch here.