3 Steps to Data Mining

Data mining. It is the foundation of great personalized marketing, but it strikes fear into the hearts of many marketers. The reality is that this fear is unfounded since data mining is well within the grasp of any sized marketer.

Let’s break it down into three simple steps. 

1. Find out what’s in there.

The first step is to understand the field headings in your database. Most databases have basic information like name, address and purchase history. Are you also capturing information such as age, gender and home ownership? What data do you actually have?

2. Ask questions.

Knowing what data you have tells you the types of queries you can run. Running queries simply means asking questions of the data. If you are a retailer you might ask, “Which customers purchased hardwood flooring last month?” If you know that these customers are also likely to purchase area rugs and floor conditioning products, this gives you a great start.

3. Look for relationships.

The next step is to run data sorts. Is there a relationship between hardwood flooring and gender? How about income? Are customers more likely to purchase hardwood flooring at different times of year than others?

Even basic software like Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Access provides sorting capabilities. Or you might want to purchase add-on data mining modules or third-party software. If you need to outsource, there are plenty of companies that specialize in this process for very reasonable costs.

Get Curious!

So get curious. Take a few hours to run a variety of sorts just to see what you can find.

Once you know what’s in your data, you’ve asked questions of your data, and discovered relationships within the data, it’s time to act on what you find. That curiosity could make a big difference to the bottom line.

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

 

We keep moving forward, opening new doors and doing new things because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Walt Disney

 

 

Case Studies: Consumers Use QR Codes

QR Codes give shoppers and other consumers access marketing or product information from their mobile phones, but do consumers actually prefer them? Will they scan these codes when other ways to access the information are available? For many, the answer is yes!

Let’s look at three real-life examples:

1. One marketer sent a holiday card to its customers with an invitation to login to a personalized URL to select a charity to receive a donation in their name. Of those responding to the campaign, 11% chose to log in by scanning a QR Code rather than typing in the personalized URL.

2. An online educational institution serving the high school market wanted to boost enrollment. It sent a promotional campaign inviting students and their parents to log in to a personalized URL to learn more about online education and enter a sweepstakes to win an iPad2.  More than one-third (37%) of the logins came via QR Code.

3. In order to refresh its retail location, an herbal supplements and vitamin company wanted to find out what products and services its customers were looking for that might be missing from its existing mix. To find out, it sent a survey via personalized URL to nearly 20,000 contacts. QR Code scans accounted for almost 20% of all PURL visitors.

We could give lots more examples, but you get the idea. People love mobile, but they don’t love typing in long web addresses. If you provide them with a way to skip right to the content they are looking for, they’ll very likely to take it, especially when they are responding to a personalized URL campaign. That’s a huge benefit of QR Codes.

This can also lead to an elevated response rate to the overall campaign. Why? Because the easier it is to respond to a marketing message (including multiple ways to respond), the more responses you’re going to get.  

Jeff Lampert
Director of Marketing & Business Development

The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm. – Thomas J. Watson

Don’t Overlook Your Employees

When it comes to personalized printing, marketers’ primary focus is on customers . . . as well it should be.  The use of data to increase relevance, drive conversions, and increase audience engagement is one of the primary benefits of this technology. But have you ever thought about using the same benefits of personalized print communications to serve your own internal audience—your employees?

1to1 Magazine recently published an interesting article called “Beyond the Suggestion Box” talking about the importance of employee engagement. While the topic might sound mundane, it is actually a critical issue. Employee engagement and company profitability are closely tied. The more engaged a company’s employees are, the more profitable it tends to be.

Despite this connection . . .

·        Only one-quarter of employees at large companies are highly engaged (The Temkin Group)

·        18% of full-time workers in the U.S. are actively disengaged in their work; and

·        52% are not involved in, enthusiastic about, or committed to their work (Gallup)

These low levels of engagement should be a real concern to U.S. businesses. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to improve the engagement of your employees within your organization. If engagement is already high, these same steps can help it grow even more.

Ask their opinion.  Use printed surveys or for topics on which employees may want credit for their input and ideas, you may want to use personalized URLs.

Send individualized cards and gifts on birthdays, anniversaries (including anniversary of their employment start date), and other special occasions.

Publicize how their input and the input of others is being acted upon. Use newsletters, posters, and other print communications to spread the word and let them know that their opinions being heard.

Personalized printing is a valuable tool for communicating with your most important audiences. Your employees should be one of them!

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

 

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. – David Rockefeller

 

Consumers Willing to Give Up Data for Benefits

Retail. Banking. Healthcare. Who do we trust more with our personal data? It all depends on who can give us more benefits.

These are the conclusions of a survey of 5,000 digital consumers in five countries conducted by Infosys. The survey found that, of all global consumers, U.S. consumers are the most comfortable sharing their personal information.

For example:

·        89% of U.S. consumers are willing to share personal information while making a purchase online.

·        83% are willing to share personal information when interacting with their bank online.

·        77% are willing to share personal information when interacting with their regular doctor’s office online.

As more and more companies integrate online and offline (print) data, this willingness to share personal data, regardless of channel, is a huge benefit. This positively impacts every aspect of companies’ multi-channel marketing efforts.

But if you’re selling “across the pond,” don’t look for quite the same openness. British consumers are less willing to share their personal information (especially with their doctors), and if you’re marketing into France, they are even less so. Only 75% of French consumers are willing to share personal information with online retailers, dropping to 62% for banks and 60% with doctors.

But still, even for these more skeptical consumers, these numbers are pretty darn good. Consequently, even these data are good news for marketers. Consumers are simply more and more willing to give up data if they get something in return.

Source: Engaging with Digital Consumers (Infosys, 2013)

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

 

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. – David Rockefeller

 

Learning the Basics of Great Campaigns

1:1 printing. Personalized URLs. Multi-channel marketing. Today’s marketing strategy is a lot to absorb. Not surprisingly, when clients are transitioning from traditional marketing to personalized, on-demand, or multi-channel strategies, one of the questions we most often get is, "How do I learn all this? How do I get started?”

First, we can help you. That’s part of our job. But if you want to delve into the learning process on your own, there are some simple steps you can take. Start by remembering that any campaign is made up of multiple elements. These elements include (but are not limited to) . . .

·        Business objective

·        List (in-house or purchased, level of demographic refinement)

·        Additional targeting (segmentation, personalization)

·        Marketing offer

·        Creative (graphics and copy)

·        Programming (if necessary)

·        Integration with other marketing channels (email, social, mobile, web, out of home)

·        Results tracking

With these elements in mind, every time you attend a trade show event, read a case study, attend a webinar, or peruse a blog post or magazine article with customer stories, do a quick mental rundown on this list. Pick out each of the elements, identify how each was handled in the campaign (whether well or poorly), and notate how the details of the implementation likely impacted the results.

Go through each case study or customer story strategically and methodically, filling out the mental checklist on each one. Think of it as a self-paced course. Even after the first dozen or so, you will start to see patterns come together and have those “Ah, ha!” moments. You will start to see how the elements synergize, where certain elements are missing, or where poorly implemented (or under-implemented) elements caused the campaign to stumble.

Try it. You might be surprised how quickly this simple exercise can pay off in spades.

Jeff Lampert
Director of Marketing and Business Development

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
Henry Ford

5 Reasons Print Still Rocks

 

Is print still relevant in today’s world of ubiquitous electronic media? Yes! Here are a few reasons not to overlook when you are planning your next marketing campaign.

1. Print adds a dimension to the media experience not possible with digital media.

Print is warm and inviting. You can create dazzling special effects that make readers want to touch and feel your message thanks to a new generation of papers, inks, varnishes and coatings. It’s a tangible dimension that electronic media can’t impart.

2. Print is universally accessible.

Printed documents don’t have batteries that run down, they can easily be read even in direct sunlight, and they can be read even in locations where wireless is not available, such as subway stations and airplanes.

3. Certain demographics don’t go online.

Some demographic groups, particularly older consumers, simply prefer print collateral over digital options. In some cases, print may be the only way they research their options. Don’t overlook the disposable income of this demographic group!

4. Consumers are multi-channel.

When looking to make a purchase, today’s media-savvy consumers seek multiple sources of information. Rarely will they use online only or print only. They seek out multiple media and compare and contrast responses. Print is a critical part of that mix.

5. Print is more trusted for high-dollar purchases.

Consumers love electronic media for its immediacy, but research shows that they seek print when it’s time to buy. Web technologies provide quick answers, but the responses are often contradictory. Print shows that you found your message to be important enough to commit it to paper and you stand behind what you’re saying.

Overlooking the role of print can prove fatal to a marketing campaign. If your objective is to inform, teach, persuade or entertain, print marketing is a must.

 

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing and Business Development

 

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes.  It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations.

Steve Jobs

 

Want to be a Best-in-Class Marketer?

Do you want to be a best-in-class marketer? In survey after survey, we find that it is well worth the effort. Regardless of how best-in-class marketers are defined, these companies consistently stand out in profitability and customer retention. 

According to one research study (“Analytics for the CMO: How Best-in-Class Marketers Use Customer Insights to Drive Revenue,” the Aberdeen Group), best-in-class marketers were found to receive 9.9% average YOY improvement in incremental sales lift resulting from marketing campaigns. This compares to 1.1% for “average” marketers and a 3.6% decline among marketing laggards. Best-in-class marketers were also found to receive 9.5% average YOY increase in customer retention rate vs. 2.1% among average firms and a 3.2% decline for laggards.

How do they do it? According to the study, they have intentional, strategic processes in place to track, measure, and report on all marketing campaign results, both print and online. These efforts include:

• Website visitor tracking (86% utilizing)
• Tracking, measuring, and reporting on all marketing campaign results (82% utilizing)
• Establishing processes to test effectiveness of campaign content (64% utilizing)

Best-in-class marketers also make a 60% average marketing contribution to the sales pipeline versus 10% for industry average firms and 3% for laggards.

What’s clear from this data is that best-in-class marketers understand the value of making planned, strategic investments in monitoring their campaigns and their results, then the importance of wrapping those results around to their next campaign to reap the benefits of what they have learned. The good news is, these are strategies that any marketer can put into place.

Need help setting up intentional processes for your marketing campaigns? Give us a call!

 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing and Business Development

 

“When you compete with a person, you only have to be as good or better than the
person to win. If you compete with yourself, there is no limitation to how good
you can be.”
Chu Chin-Ning