Data Tip: Lost In Space

By Dan | Published: April 8, 2011

Loosing customers just because their contact details are out of date is the last issue marketers should have to think about.

Sure, some subscription based product organisations avoid interrupting their customers for fear of churn, however the majority of organisations have no valid reasons not to follow some simple processes to minimise this loss.

Our advice is:

  1. Automate implement regular standard processes
  2. Reference match to 3rd party sources for change of address, left address, correct address, deceased, etc.
  3. Leverage include reminders on as many communications as possible for customers to update their details
  4. Innovate explore, measure and tweak the many available channels for encouraging detail updates, such as post-paid reply forms, web landing pages, or even incentives

To talk through maximising your customer recovery processes or for any help in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your data, give us a call today on (02) 9432 7401.

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Data Tip: Enhance it!

By Dan | Published: March 17, 2011

Unless you have the ultimate marketing database containing every demographic detail, every behaviour, every preference, and every relationship across all customers, there will always be marketing initiatives that are inhibited due to missing or out of date data.

The next question we get from clients is how do we fill these customer knowledge gaps without having to make too many assumptions? Ah ha… Enhance it! Data enhancement is the fine art between balancing cost, reliability, and end value.

Our advice is:

  1. Cost Focus on high value customers where possible
  2. Reliability Be wary of 3rd party data refresh rates, breadth of population, and privacy policies. Sometimes it is worthwhile to simply cross-pollinate your data by leveraging other internal data
  3. Value Try find past results or test samples on lift in response rates due to enhancement. This is critical on the high cost enhancements such as phone & geo-demographic data

To talk through our range of data enhancement techniques or for any help in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your data, give us a call today on (02) 9432 7401.

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Data Tip: Uniting campaigns and results

By Joel | Published: February 11, 2011

Depending on the scale and frequency of your marketing campaign calendar, you’ll perhaps understand the importance of managing campaigns on a centralised basis. By leveraging a model by which each campaign can be executed and measured as part of a process, marketers not only expose themselves to a world of efficiencies on offer, but also aggregated and exponentially more powerful insights.

We’ve found over a number of years that there are several key elements required to enable centralised campaign management:

  1. Consolidated Marketing Database A clean, accessible and relevant marketing database should always be the main enabler of successful direct marketing, let alone evolved centralised management. This includes regular data health checks and cleansing, as well as housing the data on a platform relevant to your needs.
  2. Single Customer View By establishing a clear picture of each customer across various data sources, marketers are far more empowered to get a view of true performance across campaigns, as well as establish more accurate recency/frequency behavioural patterns.
  3. Campaign Level Data It may seem simple; however a common pitfall we see is companies not recording consolidated and precise campaign level data. This may include straightforward values such as products and dates; however you may also consider storing costs, campaign influences or creative groups.

To talk through these and the array of other centralised campaign techniques, or for any help in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your data, give us a call today on (02) 9432 7401.

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Data Tip: Exciting Segments

By Dan | Published: January 10, 2011

While almost everyone fully intends to embark on post-campaign analysis, we’ve found that without the correct preparation, the task is made considerably difficult. By following a few simple steps, the process of measuring and drawing conclusions from your campaigns can be made thoroughly more pleasurable.

Step 1.  What Segments Analyse & identify which fields are available to segment from your data, more often being better than less. Consider factors such as:

  1. Grouping values to within 5 to 10 variations
  2. Push to access strong behavioural segments like Recency/Frequency/Monetary
  3. Include enhancement fields such as web data appends or model scores

Step 2.  When Derive and append segment values before campaign lodgement, rather than relying on the work to be completed post-campaign. This encourages a more planned approach to analysis and also centralises data processes which equates to efficiency and cost savings.
Step 3.  Consistency Maintain a consistent definition of segment values across all campaigns, to allow for simple comparisons and aggregation over time.

To talk through our full campaign cycle or for any help in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your data, give us a call today on (02) 9432 7401.

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Data Tip: Raw Data!

By Dan | Published: December 13, 2010

Many clients suffer from similar marketing restrictions when assumptions are made by the data extractors leading to missing records, aggregated information that can’t be undone, and omitted fields.

While it’s not always feasible, requesting as much raw information as possible from your own customer pool, external source or partner can have several key benefits:

1.       Profiling The more information is available, the more you’re able to identify and use to your advantage when it comes to the data selection stage via segmentation. Simple attributes may include age and gender, however a more comprehensive initial extract may provide deeper insight into spend behaviours and product preferences, in the end helping you select the best prospects for your offer.

2.       Matching Additional information such as Date of Birth and Phone Number often improve matching processes by helping identify & qualify the same person at different addresses otherwise not achievable. These pieces of information can often improve matching accuracy by 5 to 10 percent, ultimately resulting in a better balance between a direct marketer’s dichotomy – wastage vs opportunity loss.

3.       Personalisation With better knowledge of your opportunity pool, the chance to accurately target your offer becomes possible. This may include personalised references through your marketing creative, calculation of various derived fields for lasering, or simply, ensuring your customers title accurately reflects their true gender.

Our advice is:

1.       Write a clear detailed brief on objectives & ideal data requirements

2.       Request data to be supplied with no modifications

3.       Start by asking for layout of all fields available

For any help in ensuring you’re getting the most out of your data, give us a call today on (02) 9432 7401.

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Convincing stakeholders on the importance of data?

By Joel | Published: September 16, 2010

For a practical approach to benefiting from quality data refer to the following link: http://rocketscience.com.au/the-importance-of-data/

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Don’t let your single customer view fail

By Joel | Published: September 16, 2010

Westpac has been rolling out their single customer view project for 11 years now and are yet to see the finish line. Why? Peter Hanlon, Group Executive at Westpac recently suggested at an ADMA presentation that scope creep from stakeholders is the biggest reason for project failure.

The second key failure of many single customer view projects are the complexity in measuring multi-product multi-offer marketing campaigns. The concept of leveraging a holistic 360 degree view customer appears better practice, however Peter also suggested when quizzed on evidence of success, that the best measurable campaigns are single product single offer initiatives.

A related article professing the benefits of single customer view can be found on: http://www.sun.com/software/whitepapers/soa/soa_single_customer.pdf

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Why CRM & Marketing databases should not be confused as the same thing?

By Joel | Published: August 11, 2010

Every marketer and business person faces the paradox of comparing one system with many benefits verses many systems with one benefit.

We believe most companies fail more in the direct marketing space by choosing one system with many benefits. Competitive advantage comes from doing specific task well. Being limited by a system that is a “jack of all trades” disables competitive advantage.

We see every week many successful direct marketing innovations evolve from separating CRM and Marketing databases into unique platforms and gaining the strengths from both.

For example,  a company may use Salesforce as their CRM and outsource their marketing database management to a data service bureau like Marketsoft.

For related arguments refer to the following link:

http://directmag.com/disciplines/crm/marketing_pintsized_platforms/

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