ADVANCED ANALYTICS/REPORTING, AND QUANTITATIVELY-GROUNDED CONSULTING
We provide the advanced analytics and reporting, and quantitatively-grounded consulting, required for sophisticated data-driven marketing. This is possible because, besides our deep data mining experience, our marketing databases support the efficient creation of the datasets required for all such initiatives. The following are examples of the quantitatively-grounded support that we provide our clients:
- Statistics-based predictive modeling.
- The creation of homogeneous segments such as customer clusters, and the merchandise groupings required for product affinity analysis.
- Cohort analysis, including long-term value estimations to improve prospecting.
- The optimization of contact strategies across multiple channels, including longitudinal test design and backend analysis.
- Interpreting the results of data mining to drive target marketing programs, including loyalty initiatives and other forms of long-term incentives.
- Reporting and key-metrics dashboards.
- Triggers to generate tailored promotions whenever customers display predefined behaviors.
- Share-of-wallet calculations.
- The packaging of key customer information for access at touch-points such as field sales, telesales and e-commerce sites.
- Business simulations to support “what-if” analysis and anticipated P&L’s.
MARKETING CAMPAIGN PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION
In today’s business environment, it can be overwhelming to develop sound multi-channel and multi-season strategies for promoting customers and prospects. We help our clients define and refine their circulation strategies. Our engagements range from focused, one-off projects to ongoing turn-key services. For example:
- Analyzing existing catalog circulation plans in order to improve revenue and profit by prudently adding – and subtracting – contacts.
- Evaluating the effectiveness of catalog circulation and email marketing, as well as digital efforts such as search engine optimization.
- Developing test plans to optimize circulation.
- Assisting in the proper attribution of advertising across multiple channels, including catalog.
- Applying long-term value metrics to guide investment spending, thereby ensuring optimal business growth.
- Coaching clients to evaluate circulation in a seasonal, longitudinal manner, instead of viewing customer contacts as discrete events.
DATA MANAGEMENT SERVICES
We execute the selects for marketing campaigns, including those with large circulation and complex processing in which a single error would be very costly. Our campaign management service offerings include the following:
- The operational support of data mining initiatives, such as the ongoing execution of statistics-based predictive models (i.e., “scoring”). Also, our marketing databases support the scoring of past-points-in-time, so that “apples-to-apples” longitudinal comparisons can be made of segment performance.
- Comprehensive campaign and cross-channel results analysis, including “matchbacks” for prospect names derived from one-time list rentals.
- Customized report packages that assist clients in the continuous understanding of their businesses. These include Executive Information Systems to help senior management in the tracking of seminal trends and developments such as: Customer and prospect segment “inventories” and changes over time, broken out by purchase groupings such as model-score segment (e.g., deciles) and merchandise category; The flagging of positive and negative business developments; for example, indications that the quantities of top-segment customers and/or average productivity of these customers are not sufficient to achieve overall revenue and profit objectives.
We also maintain the best-practices marketing databases that we create. For details, please see the next section, The Creation of Marketing Databases.
THE CREATION OF MARKETING DATABASES
Our best-practices marketing databases display the following characteristics:
Comprehensive Content
Our databases support content that is as robust as a given client’s underlying methods of data collection are capable of producing:
- All data within reason is kept, even if its value is not immediately apparent.
- Derived data is created to enhance the understanding of customer/prospect behavior.
- Marketing activity is tracked for every channel that links data to customers/prospects.
We also recommend improvements to a given client’s underlying methods of data collection, in order to enhance the quality of the resulting marketing database content.
Robust Name and Address Processing
For B2B, our marketing databases represent sold-to/bill-to/ship-to relationships in all of their complexity. Therefore, individuals are linked to sites, and sites to organizations. Likewise for B2C, individuals are linked to households. The following are employed to establish these multiple levels of customer/prospect definition:
- Name and address matching logic.
- “Hard connectors” such as telephone numbers and email addresses.
- Third-party data sources.
These multiple levels of customer/prospect definition are required to:
- Properly allocate marketing-spend to each customer/prospect.
- Perform accurate analysis, scoring, campaign management, and response attribution.
Advanced Transaction Processing
Our marketing databases reflect semantics that have been rendered historically complete, consistent and accurate, and represent essential business concepts. The data is time-stamped and maintained down to the granular level (e.g., invoice and SKU), and is not overwritten, archived or deleted. Examples of source data include:
- Order and item detail.Post-demand transactions such as back-orders, cancels and returns.
- Sold-to/bill-to-/ship-to history.
- Promotion history for non-responders as well as responders.
- Third-party data such as demographics and “firmographics.”
Rapid Creation of Multiple Past-Point-in-Time “Views”
Our marketing databases, because of their best-practices content and technical design, support:
- The rapid creation of multiple past-point-in-time “views” for customers/prospects.
- The simultaneous application of dynamic business rules to these “views,” at any or all of following levels: Individual, site and organization, for B2B; Individual and household, for B2C.
Therefore, our marketing databases allow the on-demand execution of any calculation, aggregation or subset that logically can be generated from the underlying data. This, in turn, means that the datasets required for all meaningful analytics and reports can be efficiently created, including for:
- Statistics-based predictive models.
- Cohort analysis such as: Long-term value estimations (“LTV”); Tracking changes in customer/prospect segments, such as size and performance; Investigating trends within promotional channels, products/services offered, etc.
- Campaign reports that are driven by flexible attribution rules.
Powerful Client Access
Our marketing databases drive the BlueVenn (formerly, smartFOCUS) marketing suite of desktop analysis, reporting and campaign management tools. BlueVenn provides clients with web-based access to their marketing databases, and powerful tools to manipulate the database content, such as the creation of detailed ad hoc reports. The following can be executed in a single environment:
- Data profiling and visualization.
- Data enhancement through calculations and aggregations.
- Campaign management.
- Reporting and analysis.
