Making Sense of the Data: A Marketing Ops Chat on Exploratory Data Analysis
At MOBI, we’re big believers in getting curious with your data—especially before you start pulling together complex dashboards or reports. So we sat down with our stats-savvy intern, Casey, to talk through the basics of exploratory data analysis (EDA) and how it applies to data-heavy marketing ops systems like HubSpot, Marketo, or Salesforce.
What started out as a fun client project it turned into a great discussion on how teams can use EDA to uncover unexpected insights, even when they don’t have a specific question in mind yet.
Watch the full video below, or check out a few highlights further down.
💡 What Is Exploratory Data Analysis?
According to Casey, EDA is all about understanding your data as it exists, without trying to prove or disprove anything.
“With hypothesis-driven analysis, you’re testing a specific claim. But with EDA, you’re just exploring what’s there. You look at summary statistics, build some visualizations, and see what stands out.”
That’s a powerful mindset shift, especially in marketing ops, where we’re often asked to validate specific campaigns or build attribution models. EDA gives you space to notice unexpected patterns before narrowing your lens.
🔍 Why It Matters
In one client example, Casey shared how we found a major drop-off point in the funnel: one that we never would’ve caught if we’d only been focused on answering a specific question.
“There was a whole segment of leads that never converted, and they all came from the same source. If we’d just been trying to prove whether that campaign was ‘working,’ we might have missed it.”
EDA helps you spot outliers, overlaps (or lack thereof), and shifts in the data, without waiting for a formal reporting request.
P.S. Ever noticed how some people have the habit of asking for very specific reports? Your best bet is to ask them what they’re trying to solve for first. You never know what you might find, and you’ll probably also save yourself hours of work pulling multiple iterations of each report!
🧰 How to Use EDA in Systems Like HubSpot, Marketo, or Salesforce
Marketing data is notoriously messy. We deal with duplicates, inconsistent naming, incomplete lifecycle stages… you name it. EDA helps make sense of it before jumping to conclusions.
A few tips we shared in the conversation:
Start with visualizations (bar charts, box plots, funnel drop-offs)
Look at summary stats like mean, median, and variance
Break variables down by type: Are they categorical or numeric?
Look for relationships between fields (even ones that seem unrelated)
Investigate anything that surprises you or doesn’t behave as expected
🧠 Key Takeaways
You don’t need a hypothesis to learn from your data.
EDA is a powerful first step, especially when data is messy.
It’s okay to start by just asking, “What’s here?”
Whether you’re in marketing ops, sales ops, or analytics, we hope this conversation gives you a useful lens to explore your CRM or MAP data more confidently.
Want more tips like this? Follow us on LinkedIn or get in touch to see how MOBI helps B2B marketing teams make their MarTech stack actually work for them.
