Individual customer profiles let’s you address all your customer on a personal level with an offering that you know they need in a tonality you know is appealing.
In four blogs here at Previsions we go through the algorithms you need for your future marketing automation excellence. Today’s blog is by intention general advice on what you should be able to accomplish with a professional analytics partner. We of course believe that Previsions can do this better than our competitors, and we would love to get the chance to meet and describe more concretely how we can help you succeed and how our approach are in more in detail. We believe we can help you excel in your market through analytics for best in class campaigns and the best in class aligned customer journeys. Our contribution is a cost-efficient way to create precise and powerful individual customer profiles for all your customers. Stable personality profiles as well as agile behavioral profiles on every single customer. Profiles your marketers can use to make your customers your brand’s advocates and give you the ability to time and craft your offers to better fit your customers’ needs and desires.
This is the second blog and it will be followed by a key blog focusing on individual customer profiles. The last blog will be on the future of segmentation.
Before we go into today’s blog. Let’s again remind us of the current scene. The world is becoming digital; human intelligence and artificial intelligence will work hand in hand. The fundamentals of marketing such as segmentation, targeting and positioning will prevail, but execution will fundamentally change. Advancements in analytics, machine learning and digital customer touch points will move marketing and sales execution focus from segments to individual customers.
Marketing is about addressing customers on a personal level with an offering that you know your customer need and in a tonality you know is appealing. To do this you need to know who you talk to and what that person needs. The better you know a specific customer the more likely you can timely reach that customer with an attractive offer. This is what individual customer profiles are about. They days of force fitting individuals into one of few segments are gone.
Imagine you are a brand like Apple. The value of such an innovative brand comes from its ability to emotionally and rationally attract people with an early adopter personality. When iPhone hit the market in 2007 it personalized what is a playful InfoTech TOY. The success was very much about the amazing user experience. App store gave a further freedom wow-factor. Multiple finger touch brought the instant gratification, color screen and revolutionary design further added the pleasure. All emotional propositions that fitted well with Apples brand as well as explorative early adopter consumers. The Brand and the product empowered each other. Gradually adoption also gave the iPhone the opportunity to diffuse into new segments and people with different personality. In this diffusion process Apple “cooperated” with the early adopters’ who acted as brand advocates willing to recommend. At the same time, Apple adopted its communication to the new targets without compromising the Apple brand. Traditionally such adoption has been based on a lot of guesswork “gut feeling”. Marketers had to use their experience because actual feedback from market on how well and how timely the campaigns hit the intended new target groups came too late for the marketers to be able to tune.
In near time future, rich data profiles on every single customer can increase precision, timeliness and effectiveness of such campaigns many 100 %. Additionally, will the learning cycle be much shorter and precise. Quick informed iteration thereby can improve effectiveness even further. To build a such a powerful analytics solution you need to integrate many different data sources. The main vehicle is the coral reef of [Rich Data] (RD), the nutrition factory for your business, that we touched in the previous blog. The rich data coral reef’s main role is to secure a “calcium carbonate” structure that hold all your data sources together. The reef secures an environment for refinement and curation of various data sources and between individual data and collective data. This refinement increase your insights into individual customers. Deeper insights that transforms to better personalized offerings that lead to more sales and better margins. But the reef is useless without the data sources so let’s add them to the picture. They are; [Customer Base] (CB), [Market Research] (MR) and [Total Market] (TM).
[Customer Base] (CB)
To become truly customer centric, you need to be able to address every single customer on a personal level, fundamental to achieve this is your [Customer Base] (CB).
(CB) is the big data lake of your customers that includes a data record of every single customer. Typically, CB is dominated by transactional data. The key value of (CB) is that the individual records in (CB) refined with the customer profiles identified in (RD) allows to predict a comprehensive profile for every single customer. This way we create a very operational and powerful analytics solution where individual customers can be reached with the right message at the right time. It’s mainly refinement and inference of transactional data of (RD) and (CB) that is the foundation for the prediction. The customer base might also include some useful demographic data that simplify an accurate prediction.
In addition to being the key for predicting customer profiles are the transactional data in (CB) very valuable for understanding the customers’ current and historic behavior.
[Market Research] (MR)
It’s critical to get a comprehensive picture of your customers. This apply for the market today as well as your potential market tomorrow. Your whole prediction ability depends on this. While (RD) drives the refinement it needs wide data to build individual comprehensive customer profiles of every single customer.
The “outside in” perspective of your customers is an extremely important complement to the inside-out view of the customer from the transactional data in the customer base (CB). The outside-in data gives valuable information on why people do one thing or another. This “WHY” is the foundation for any prediction of the future. Such deep survey insights on a selection of customers are critical to build powerful personality profiles on every single customer. Personality profiles that helps you set the right tonality of your communication.
[Total Market] (TM)
TM is the data for the total addressable market beyond current customer base. Total Market data is critical for you to understand how your current customers relate to the total market and how to acquire new customers. TM preferably include fresh transactional data for near time potential customers. Such data can be collected through for example a smartphone app that is attractive also for none customers.
[Individual Record] (I)
The power of future marketing comes from the ability to directly and individually address individual consumers. This makes the data record for each individual customer as well as potential customer critical. The foundation is individual transactional data. The transactional data is analyzed and organized into an individual record for each customer;
[Transactional Customer Profile] (TCR) = f3([Individual Record], [ Customer Base], [Total Market])
Through refined results of modelling and predictions on the customer base, additional data is added to (I). The additional data are used to build a complete understanding of each individual customer. More about this in next week’s blog on individual customer profiles.
From data to deep individual customer understanding
Based on above, individual customer profiles are identified. These profiles are cornerstones for more precise and agile customer interventions. Next week’s blog will focus on these critical and powerful customer profile algorithms
[CBP] = f1([Individual Record], [Rich Data], [Market Research], [Transactional Customer Profile])
[CPP] = f2([Individual Record], [Rich Data], [Market Research], [Transactional Customer Profile])
It’s from these two algorithms every single customer get a rich powerful individual profile. Unique individual consumer insights profiles that bring you better competitiveness through improved more timely campaigns and better aligned offerings. Short term campaign efficiency can improve some hundred percent. Midterm marketing efficiency even more, as you will gradually increase your capability to augment your offering and predict demand.
Individual customer profiles will speed up and refine the feedback loop. Continues learning through fast accurate feedback will bring you closer to your customers and help you become truly customer centric. It will enable you to address every single customer on a personal level with an offering that you know your customer need in a tonality you know is appealing.
Individual customer profiles – the key to growth!
Henrik Pålsson
Chief Visionary Officer
Previsions AB
