Marketing Interactive Event - Harnessing the Power of Analytics
1. Date:
3 July 2012
Venue:
Hotel Fort Canning
Sponsored by:
More than 90 marketing professionals
gathered at Hotel Fort Canning on 3 July for the
topic “Harnessing the power of analytics: What
leaders need to know about optimal marketing
performance” – a half-day seminar dedicated to
discussing customer-focused business strategies
using customer intelligence and an integrated
marketing management framework. Experts from
OgilvyOne, Intelligence Delivered and SAS were on
stage to share and reflect on issues pertaining to
strategy formulation and execution of analytics to
understand and enhance customer experience.
William Adeney, data and analytics
consulting practice lead, OgilvyOne
Topic: Harnessing the power of analytics …
math marketing
William Adeney began his presentation with a brief
introduction of the history of advertising, and the
struggle it has always had with measurability. Citing
renowned advertising pioneer Claude Hopkins in
1923 – “the time has come when advertising has
in some hands reached a status of science. We
know what is most effective, and we act on basic
laws” – Adeney reminded the audience that the
quest to make marketing more measurable and
accountable was not a new one, and was still
undergoing constant refinement.
Taking the audience through different eras
up to the digital age, Adeney expounded on
deriving actionable insights from data to make
better marketing decisions today. “Everywhere I
go (geographically), I leave imprints,” Adeney said,
illustrating the power of simple data. When it comes
to such data, Adeney asked the five fundamental
questions in setting business objectives – who are
your best customers; how can you find prospects;
what drives profitability; what makes customers
and prospects engage; and how should you
communicate with them?
By addressing these issues, Adeney said
marketers were better positioned to determine
corporate objectives and achieve business goals
by applying metrics to everything they did.
Describing metrics as “fundamental pinnacles
to achieve,” Adeney pointed out they needed to
be aligned with corporate objectives. He said one
method for this was by measuring and analysing
data carefully before optimising it via a mix of key
metrics. Adeney referred to this method as math
marketing. This method was further enhanced
by employing statistical modelling and building a
marketing dashboard. On metrics, he stressed
companies needed to identify changes in their
engagement strategy to improve KPIs. In return,
KPIs should align with the brand’s business
objectives. “We should perfect how we treat
customers each day,” Adeney said, directing the
audience to move beyond a single customer
view by adopting what he called the three-step
digestive insight – prioritisation, personalisation
and precision.
In conclusion, Adeney wrapped up by
What leaders need to know about the tools for optimising marketing
performance. Marketing reveals all in its latest Insight discussion.
The Power of Analytics
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2. If you weren’t there,
here’s what you missed
“Start thinking about integrating social
data, and capture it.”
William Adeney
“What looks like sales in year one may not
be applicable for year two – you’ve got to
know who your best customers are.”
Graham Flower
“Every marketer needs to show what he/
she is delivering for the business. Don’t
just gather data and listen to customers,
but act on the feedback as close to real
time as possible.”
Dermot McCutcheon
highlighting that organisations need to determine
their talent needs, form a centre of excellence
and forge external partnerships, all with the aim of
allowing analytics to help maximise the customer
experience.
Graham Flower, managing director,
Intelligence Delivered
Topic: In search of relevance – adapting your
business to sense and respond
Graham Flower opened with a challenging question
– are today’s businesses relevant? By studying
the drastic decline of the US credit card industry’s
direct mail response rate, Flower emphasised his
point, “as Albert Einstein puts it: doing the same
thing over and over again and expecting different
results”.
As the purpose of a marketing function is to
help customers buy, organisations have to first
understand the behaviour of their target audience.
The issue lies in the broad gap between customers’
preferred purchase methodology and the available
channels. Put simply – “how customers want to
buy” and “how customers are able to buy” are not
moving hand-in-hand.
And when such expectations are not met,
customers lose confidence.
“If your customers can trust you, their value
increases,” Flower said, as he illustrated the power
of customer trust using a case study graph, which
depicted high efficiency in acquisition, retention,
the growth of lifetime value and referral increment.
“Metrics do not align to the measurement of
value,” Flower said, adding to Adeney’s previous
points regarding metrics and their objectivity. The
challenge remains in understanding the new world
is not about selling the most. On the contrary, it
is recognising where sustainable value is created.
Brands have to consider the risk, current customer
value and future customer value.
Moving in-depth, Flower focused on building
propositions that meet needs along with value,
and subsequently shifted to the thematic line of
“Insight-driven anticipation”. According to Flower,
brands must rely on their customers’ behavioural
data and attitudinal data. With customer insights
and analysis at hand, this raw data is then
converted to fitting propositions.
Lastly, Flower highlighted the power of real-
time personalisation by using the example of
Netflix, an American provider of on-demand
internet-streaming media. “You log on to Netflix,
they get you to rate some films, and from there
they recommend films you would actually want to
see. They’ve got a refined knowledge about you
through this simple data,” said Flower, attributing
Netflix’s success to its personalised service.
“Your best customers are becoming self-
directed.”
Dermot McCutcheon, head of customer
intelligence, centre of excellence,
Southeast Asia, SAS
Topic: From insight to performance – the
case for predictive analytics
Because a marketer’s mandate correlates with the
customers’ expectation, there is an undeniable
shift in delivering customer experience both inside
and outside marketing. To trail the ongoing trends
closely, Dermot McCutcheon focused on turning
data into knowledge, and ultimately enhancing
business performance. Which retail products are
customers most likely to add to their basket? How
do banks maximise their customer value across all
channels? Have public sectors considered which
community services should they employ in the
coming years? Taking these questions head-on,
the answers are hidden in the data that can be
unlocked by analytics, therefore enabling decisions
to be made quickly about the next best action.
Sources have illustrated real-time interaction
yields an optimal 40% successful response rate.
Real-time interaction, as defined by
McCutcheon,iscustomer-initiatedandrelationship-
driven. When it comes to such a social approach,
he calls for a defensive social position.
“Even the best plans may crash and burn,”
said McCutcheon as he gave a case study of a
failed social media campaign. Despite the high
success rate of social marketing strategies,
organisations have to know how they measure
social engagement, which is often depicted in the
number of online user endorsements.
“You may know how many people ‘like’ your
Facebook page, but how many are paying any
attention to what was being posted?” McCutcheon
asked. “Brands have to know that the impact of
social media is reverberating across enterprises.”
The key to optimising social media
conversations and sentiment is to ensure
integration with all other customer data available
– by strongly relying on data mining to help
businesses sift through large volumes, variety and
velocity of growing data to gain value.
Summing up, McCutcheon reiterated a
marketer’s unique mandate by understanding the
system’s infrastructure that supports business
processes. Driving home his subject of turning
insights into performance, he showcased sample
sets of formulated recommendations, thus giving
brands ammunition to enhance the efficiency of
their current marketing processes.
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