Three years ago, Coca-Cola began testing their new Freestyle machine, a soda fountain to rule all others.

With 125 different beverages on tap, including soft drinks, sports drinks and more, this fountain will change the way consumers experience Coca-Cola products and force further innovation in the beverage industry.

But that’s not all it does.

This digital delivery system will also change the way Coca-Cola markets their products. It sends usage data back to the number crunchers at headquarters. The data reveal interesting insights, such as the popularity of Caffeine-free Diet Coke after 3pm. This type of knowledge will help Coca-Cola decide what time of day to air radio and TV spots about Diet Coke, where to sell certain products, and much, much more.

In the Ad Age article “Coca-Cola's Futuristic Soda Fountain to Get 2012 Ad Push,” Gene Farrell, VP-general manager for Coca-Cola Freestyle said, “It's mind-boggling, from a marketer's perspective. I don't think we'll really understand the total value for a few more years."

But that’s the way it is with analytics. We can glean new insights every day that will help us work smarter and more efficiently.

We learn what works in our email marketing by testing different offers and subject lines and reviewing the data. We figure out that a specific word combination gives us a boost in search engine rankings. We discover that our website sees more traffic throughout the month if we add new blog posts on a weekly basis.

If you’re not tracking and analyzing your website's performance, your email campaigns, or your social media programs, you should be. How else will you be able to identify what’s working and what’s not?

(Image from popsci.com.)