As we wind into holiday season, we often press to squeeze the last fruits of the year by working long hours right before the break.  So it is again at Conclusive this year, as we are working at the last minute to finalize a White Paper on Trigger Marketing with the Aberdeen Group.

 

The Aberdeen research examines the components and performance of different types of event based marketing triggers, including life stage triggers, transaction and interaction behavioral triggers, as well as different stage of deployment, from event identification to response execution.  Preliminary results indicate that Best-in-Class organization benefit greatly from their investment in trigger marketing; with over 80% of the firms enjoying increased customer profitability, over 85% greater cross-sell and upsell, and approximately 95% with greater performance in precision marketing. 

 

In past research, Gartner has predicted a future of mass automated interactions – the Aberdeen Group confirms that it is well on its way.  Conclusive is convinced that the coming age of trigger marketing interactions are inevitable as well, and has been bonding the elements of such a solution for several years. 

 

The company’s foundation is in fact, based on automated marketing technology – Conclusive’s own listcleanup.com was delivering NCOA, list rentals and enhancements over the web while the concepts of marketing automation were still a twinkle in most of our eyes.  

In recent years, after the acquisition of Synapse Technology and Conclusive Strategies in 2006, and progressing with the adoption of the MicroStrategy business intelligence platform in 2007, we’ve accelerated our automated triggered marketing platform to emerge as a Best-in-Class solution.  We accept input from many different data providers, ranging from top tier consumer list and marketing data providers such as Acxiom and Experian, along with as well as other commercial off-the-shelf and/or proprietary sources, align rules for interpreting appropriate marketing communications for each data event, and invoke Conclusive’s long-established data delivery platform for delivery via direct mail, email, text messaging, or routing priority customer/prospect records to call centers.  Particularly our event driven marketing solutions in banking and with agency partner GSMarketing for Toyota have received acclaim as leading edge, forward-thinking trigger-based  solutions.
 

The core benefits of this integrated marketing platform are pinpoint timing and brutally efficient marketing.  The tentative title of Aberdeen’s report, in fact, states a major feature simply and to the point: “Timing is Everything”.  
 

Now as we finally hit the brakes and skid into the holidays, that same adage seems to also apply to our personal lives.  Thanksgiving is special every year, but this year, amid the hectic pace that surrounded our presidential election, amid the rock and roll of the stock market and amid the tension of global economic uncertainty, well, Thanksgiving just seems a little more so special and a little more “just in time” to save us from burnout. 

 

The Thanksgiving break seems to offer the perfect anecdote for the chaotic year – a solution, per se, that gives us a time out, a chance to enjoy a full bodied meal and reflect on the very many blessings that we enjoy as citizens of these great States, even despite the setbacks and challenges we might encounter along the way.  Our family will set aside a few hours this afternoon serving meals at an Austin homeless shelter, and then cook up that perfect Thanksgiving meal with friends tomorrow night. Looking ahead, I can sense that it will be the perfect solution, at just the right time. 

Here’s hoping that you enjoy the perfect Just in Time Thanksgiving as well.

Despite the dark cloud over the financial markets, it's an exciting time to attend the November 18-20 Bank Administration Institute (BAI) conference in Orlando.  World markets have been in a tailspin, a wide assortment of industry acquisitions, bailouts and bankruptcies are in abundance, while the consumer lending crisis seems to be at the center of an economic firestorm. Attendees will be eager to hear Colin Powell's comments, as well as an impressive array of other speakers ranging from George Stephanopoulos to Arkadi Kuhlmann (President/CEO of ING Direct) to Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company.  

Conclusive Marketing will exhibiting at the show highlighting our data management, data intelligence and data delivery proficiencies, alongside MicroStrategy, our chosen vendor for business intelligence and data analysis solutions.  The timing seems ripe for the industry to respond to a very challenging marketing environment whereby there must be marketing integration to ensure that all facets of programs work together to achieve the highest possible return on investment.

Conclusive's Event Driven Marketing platform provides a compelling option for banks to identify and prioritize customers who are in the midst of anomalistic transaction behavior; while our data delivery services offers banks tightly integrated methods of ensuring that each customer meriting communication receives communication.  Our relationship with MicroStrategy adds an extra array of value added solutions for the banking industry, solutions that particularly ensure  management can attentively monitor key customer-facing metrics.

If you are out in Orlando for the show, drop by to booth 1251 and let's trade thoughts about the changes you are facing, and what the perspectives of our keynotes and colleague presenters imply for these dynamic times. 

October the 21st Conclusive Marketing (www.conclusivemarketing.com) and MicroStrategy (www.microstrategy.com) released a press release announcing how Conclusive is adopting MicroStrategy technology to put Business Intelligence ("BI") right in the middle of our services. 

To the casual onlooker that might look like a ho-hum technology announcement, but in the marketing services arena this is a meaningful signal how marketing paradigms are shifting from simply executing communications to continuously searching for improved ROI by analyzing programs.  Its not enough to outfit tomorrow's marketer to simply perform direct marketing, they need to be properly tooled to view the macro and micro condition of their programs.  We believe in a highly automated data-driven future and Conclusive is seriously investing to ensure that our clients can transition into this paradigm with us. 

Without recent tools like MicroStrategy, firms' analyzing marketing programs have all too often relied on one or two staff who know both how to think about marketing analysis and also how to engineer the data for analysis.   With MicroStrategy, however, the data engineering is out of the way and all the analysts can actually focus on, (catch this!) analysis.  The MicroStrategy report and charting options are attractive and easy to use by anyone in the marketing department.   And the impact can be dramatic. 



One client, an agency for a major automotive OEM, reports that it now takes them 10 minutes to examine data that used to take 8-10 hours to digest.  More of their team members can contribute to the analytic process, as the task of doing so is now focused on viewing, as opposed to managing the data.  And with the time savings, the resources now have the "luxury" of digging deeper into analysis.

So there is now definitely some BI in the middle of Conclusive Marketing.  MicroStrategy could be our middle name.
 

At the DMA Conference in Las Vegas this week, I heard a common question.  "Why set up a Marketing Database?  We have a CRM platform."  Then I begin to ask the questions.  How long does it take to get data from IT to complete the data processing for your marketing campaigns?  How difficult is it to utilize business intelligence to develop campaign triggers or report on marketing results? Where does the marketing information reside in your CRM platform?  I often hear "by the time our business intelligence group recieves data and completes data analysis the relevance of the marketing opportunity discovered by our market research has passed!"  The reason this is happening is simple;  you have data management occuring at the enterprise level in order to run the back-end of the business, not specifically marketing data that captures the essence of the customer interaction required for integrated marketing activities. We service several Fortune 500 clients, those with a true marketing database are able to successfully execute campaign management, triggered marketing and deliver great marketing ROI.  Those of our clients that rely on enterprise level information management are only able to manage campaigns as "one-offs,"  the results often a fraction of those with a true marketing database.  It is a simple question with a simpler answer, in order to optimize marketing ROI you must have a database built for that purpose.

What times we live in  ... the cover title of DIRECT magazine proclaims "Mad Money" in August 2008 and "What Downturn?" in September 2008 as Wall Street registers its first dip below 10,000 in years just a week before the October 2008 DMA Conference.

How is it that those headlines could co-mingle?  Were the circumstances related to the DIRECT articles simply darting in and out to be replaced by an economy that arrived as quick as the season's first turn in weather?  Was data on the Dow's decline misleading?  Or were there people at Wall Street or DIRECT that simply missed the story?

As practictioners of direct marketing, and particularly as experts with data analysis, we are much better positioned than our public to make sense of these paradoxical times.  We recognize that both our headlines are true -- the economic downturn is striking, but there is still room for success if we can cull through data and identify that event, that moment in time, that each consumer returns to purchase products.  

Of course our margin for error is getting smaller - a lot smaller. To be prepared for precision marketing, we need to sharpen our data management - search for new sources, perform thorough data processing to cleanse it more thoroughly, incorporate data analysis services to elevate our knowledge about consumers and generally do all we can to optimize our marketing information.

Recognizing the challenge suggested by today's headlines, the vital ingredient is to conduct integrated marketing, to link all that data management to the point in time that clean data is relevant -- the seemingly narrower and narrowing point in time that each consumers' purchasing window is actually open.  And that, dear reader, implies that marketing must evolve to event driven marketing solutions. 

Mad Money will be on display at the DMA next week when the convention center opens its Starbucks and $4 coffee stands right in front of marketers, marketers who are staring this economy straight in the face.  But the product will be right, the prospects will be thirsty and the timing will be right.  Marketers will smell the coffee and buy that event driven solution.  Now, we just need to fix that Dow ...

With marketing dollars declining, it is more important than ever to communicate to customers and prospects most likely to purchase.  Your customer base is your best resource for generating additional revenue and determining your best possible prospects.  In order to utilize this valuable resource, your must learn as much as possible about them.

 

Third party data providers can determine important facts about your customers by simply matching your database of names and addresses to theirs.  Types of information available are age, income, education, marital status, presence of children, credit score, and on and on.  Once these details are known, data analysis can be used to determine what a customer of your product “looks like”.  This data intelligence will enable you to create a customer profile for each product in your portfolio. 

 

Customer profiles create the ability of a company to increase sales in a couple of ways.  The first way is to cross-sell to current customers.  By using the profiles of customers currently purchasing certain combinations of products in your portfolio you can determine the next best product to sell to each customer.  Secondly, these profiles also give you guidelines for acquiring prospects.  Third party data providers can provide prospect lists based on detailed demographics that you determine through the customer profiling.  In essence you are determining the next product to sell your customers and the next prospect to sell your product.  Follow up with lead management processes such as direct mail marketing and both approaches translate into additional revenue.

Forecasting the need for standalone online NCOA services is a function of five intersecting variables: USPS regulations, ACS Options, Software Integration, Internalization, and competitive offerings. 

The largest impact on NCOA services in the last 10 years is the USPS’s change to the Move Update regulations.   Beginning in November of this year, the new regulations will add Standard Mail and double the frequency requirement to 95 days.

With this projected increase in demand comes more options and changing economics.    For some larger mailers, the regulation may make it cost effective to bring the processing in house.  These larger mailers are also more likely to have already purchased industry specific software that includes integrated flat rate NCOA services.   Finally, the changing options with ACS services may be optimal for some clients who don’t need to clean a list before it is mailed.

However, for the vast majority of smaller to medium size mailers, nothing is easier or less costly than using an on demand, online NCOA service.    No software to buy, no hardware to buy, no agreements to sign, and no payments in advance.    Combine these benefits with sub 10 minute turn times (coming in December) and the benefits of advanced bundled services, and nothing is simpler or less costly for the small to medium size mailer.    Make sure you ask for a competitive rate, and see why even some of the industry's largest mailers still prefer the benefits of working with an independent online list hygiene company.

On a recent Alaskan adventure with my family I discovered that there is complex data science involved in the Alaskan salmon fishery.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game use technology, such as sonar monitoring systems and advanced statistical models, to monitor commercial and sport catch as they track salmon migration into the various river systems to complete their natural journey.  The most interesting part is how this statistical research is utilized to communicate fish location to the fishing public through multi-channel communication methods; email alerts, websites, printed materials, broadcasts on TV and radio, now even automated text messages on the streams!  I would consider this a great example of real-time event based marketing.  As with any ecosystem, opportunistic bears also go where the fish are, without the need for technology; they just wait patiently for the fishermen to show up. We have unintentionally created data-enabled bears!

Alaska is everything I expected and more.  The grandeur of the mountains, rivers and sea, the vastness of the wilderness and the opportunity to respectfully interact with wildlife in this unbelievable setting is only enhanced by the data based science that protects this priceless renewable resource. 

While it's now clear the earth is flat, data intelligence is key, and integrated marketing is all the rage, too often I find that Brand strategies are still linear and often media focused.  With the media landscape evolving incessantly these days, Brands and Brand strategy need to be agile and all-inclusive.

The concept of open source was initially a software development method that allowed for distributed peer review and transparency of process.  Opensource.org believes the promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost and this has generally proven to be true.  But open source has evolved beyond software in my opinion.  Wikipedia explains the open source model as allowing for concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities and made available for public collaboration. Just like web 2.0.

Brands today need to adopt an open source strategy.  Along the marketing continuum, the media and touch point options will continue to segment and proliferate.  A strategic position reliant on only current options is doomed to long term failure in our new environment.  However, a strong strategy that allows for immediate execution in any media stream or any environment and that allows for ongoing customer interaction is one that will survive as well as thrive.

It’s amazing how much money is spent launching new products these days.  One auto manufacturer recently spent over $85 million on a new launch.  Even in a fully integrated marketing campaign, you know broadcast still got the bulk of that budget.  But it seems to me that they could have given away several cars a day for a year and really generated some viral buzz! Yet along the marketing continuum, hands on experience with brands is of increasing value these days – especially in large ticket categories.   

Imagine landing aboard an aircraft carrier at night with limited visibility and a pitching deck for the first time. Without the assistance of the Landing Signal Officer, onboard instrumentation, lots of practice on shore and an occasional peek outside the cockpit at the carrier, it would be challenging to find the carrier let alone land successfully aboard the ship.

Why wouldn't you use all the tools available to you to acquire, cross-sell and retain your most profitable customers? An integrated marketing solution from Conclusive Marketing represents a practical approach to upgrading your traditional marketing program by incorporating analytics, business rules and customer preferences. The Armed Forces provide the best aircraft, training systems and instructors to ensure that pilots learn from each flight and improve their mission readiness. Learning from each marketing event can also help you determine the best message and channel by which to reach your existing customers and prospective customers while improving your marketing ROI.

Are you are constantly challenged to build enduring relationships with your customers in a very competitive landscape? Organizations that continue to grow during these challenging times have built a core base of customers and differentiate themselves from their competitors by superior customer service and an effective integrated marketing solution. Increasing customer retention by 5% can improve your profitability by 30%!  Unfortunately, attrition can be even more damaging to profitability since it is significantly more costly to acquire a profitable new customer than it is to retain an existing customer. 

Don't fly solo as you evaluate the options to achieving your marketing objectives. As you evaluate technology and integrated marketing solutions, fly with a Top Gun. Consider an Integrated Marketing Solution from Conclusive Marketing as you look at your options for the rest of 2008 and start your planning for 2009.

Marketing has undergone a paradigm shift. New tools, new technologies, new approaches and new data have opened marketers’ eyes that there is indeed a cause and effect and predictability in customer’s actions. It is discernable in the marketing data, as Davenport notes: “Most business functions, even those, like marketing, that have historically depended on art rather than science—can be improved with sophisticated quantitative techniques.” ¹ In a paper, “CRM from ‘art to science’” Jackson² sets forth a new framework for treating marketing as a science:

Early research and methods concerning customer relationship work often focus on more intuitive approaches to customer management. Many of the initial theories, such as one to one marketing and value-based management, were less analytical in their approach. Likewise, too often companies that have implemented customer relationship management (CRM) systems have done so with an unstructured approach (art) as opposed to a structured and by-the-numbers approach (science).

 
Historically, marketing is known as a social science, rooted in psychology and sociology. However, as has been recently discovered, customer behavior is actually quite quantitatively predictive:

Marketing…has always been tough to quantify because it is rooted in psychology. But now consumer products companies can hone their market research using multiattribute utility theory–a tool for understanding and predicting consumer behaviors and decisions. Similarly, the advertising industry is adopting econometricsstatistical techniques for measuring the lift provided by different ads and promotions over time.³

It is only recently that the marketers have discovered new data mining methods which are proving to be highly robust and reliable. “Over the last 10 years, a paradigm shift has occurred in the statistical analysis of marketing data.” ⁴

At the same time, consumers themselves have undergone their own paradigm shift…from being marketed to, to taking control of what messages they hear, when they hear them and what channels of communication that companies are able to use to communicate with them.“ The consumer is deluged with messages. The average consumer sees about one million marketing messages a year-about 3,000 a day. One trip to the supermarket alone can expose you to more than 10,000 marketing messages!” ⁵Customers will no longer tolerate this mass media or mass customization approach. Customers are individuals, not transactions or demographics. "Customers are demanding that marketers communicate when and how it is convenient for them. Underlying right-time marketing are analytic and predictive capabilities that determine the optimal interaction strategies, automation and incorporation of repeatable best practices” ⁶

One of the key shifts that has occurred is the need to treat customers as individuals and not as segments or clusters: “Successful direct marketing initiatives require firms to predict the behavior of specific individuals.” ⁷

Today’s managers are very interested in predicting the future purchasing patterns of their customers. Faced with a database containing information on the frequency and timing of transactions for a list of customers, it is natural to try to make forecasts about future purchasing.These projections often range from aggregate sales trajectories (e.g., for the next 52 weeks), to individual-level conditional expectations (i.e., the best guess about a particular customer's future purchasing, given information about his past behavior). There is a great deal of interest, among marketing practitioners and academics alike, in developing models to accomplish these tasks.

A new approach to customer data analysis is needed. Customers must be analyzed and treated as individuals.Today it is possible to analyze individual customer behavior and act on it with custom marketing materials, with the right message at the right time. It is intuitively obvious: “The secret to achieving a good marketing ROI is simple: Give customers more of what they truly want and less of what they don’t.”⁹With marketing data analytics and business intelligence, we can figure out what this is and optimize for it.

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¹ Thomas H. Davenport, "Competing on Analytics," Harvard Business Review 84, no. 1 (2006).

² Tyrone W. Jackson, "CRM: From 'Art to Science'," Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management 13, no. 1 (2005).

³ Davenport, "Competing on Analytics."

⁴ Greg M. Allenby, David G. Bakken, and Peter E. Rossi, "The HB Revolution," Marketing Research 16, no. 2 (2004).

⁵ Seth Godin, Permission Marketing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999).

⁶Dan Goldstein and Yuchun Lee, "The Rise of Right-Time Marketing," Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management 12, no. 3 (2005).

⁷ Greg M. Allenby, Robert P. Leone, and Lichung Jen, "A Dynamic Model of Purchase Timing with Application to Direct Marketing," Journal of the American Statistical Association 94, no. 336 (1999).

⁸ Peter S. Fader, Bruce G. S. Hardie, and Ka Lok Lee, ""Counting Your Customers" The Easy Way: An Alternative to the Pareto/NBD Model," Marketing Science 24, no. 2 (2005).

⁹ V. Kumar, Rajkumar Venkatesan, and Werner Reinartz, "Knowing What to Sell, When, and to Whom," Harvard Business Review 84, no. 3 (2006

Not only is fly-fishing on a beautiful, cold water stream relaxing, it is the challenge of imitating nature in it's most pure form that makes me feel alive. Stealthily entering the water you envision the fish in their gin clear world, facing upstream, patiently waiting for the almost invisible aquatic insect to catch their attention. The reaction so sudden, yet so cautious, if you blink you have missed the moment; the opportunity. Imitating the natural environment with a perfect presentation, tremendous focus and the willingness to try variations; different flies, angles, tippets and times of day all make the sport so rewarding when finally you feel the fish on your line. You have succeeded despite the noise of others enjoying the river in their own way, splashing and thrashing, throwing rocks, hitting canoes with paddles...sometimes seeming like they do not care that they are creating havoc for the river residents.

 

Producing Marketing ROI holds the same challenge for me, both the art and the science of direct marketing must combine perfectly to create the opportunity to generate leads, acquire and retain business and ultimately ROI. The marketer, like the fly-fisherman, is faced with environmental factors that can determine the outcome despite a perfect presentation. Customers can be spooked by the economy, by their unique personal situation or even by disruptive competitive practices that create noise that mask the well-designed and timed marketing communication, to the perfect database, you have so carefully delivered.

 

So how can the marketer evolve campaigns to create a higher probability of success? Just like in fishing, one must discover the most fertile waters (data and business intelligence) and then deliver a consistent, relevant and timely message that cuts through the noise and restores the natural order. The marketer must enjoy the refinement of all aspects of the marketing continuum in order to be successful. The variables and iterations are endless; therefore the supporting tools and solutions must be just as robust. Think of Conclusive Marketing as your "Marketing Outfitter," providing unique marketing solutions that allow you to consistently capture the attention of the finicky consumer.