Deluged with data, interactive marketers wrestle with summarizing and communicating information. Essential life jackets in this raging sea: well-crafted dashboards. They help interactive marketers distill and understand information and — most importantly — they advance the organization's ability to make decisions. To build valuable dashboards, interactive marketers must take a three-phased approach. Start with planning: Define your vision, win over senior-level champions, and drive business process changes that enable insightful measurement. Once the plan is in place, it's time to build and optimize.