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| Posted on 12/27/2007 by
Don Ryan |
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| A Vote for the Patron Saint of Database Marketing |
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At the recent NCDM conference on database marketing in Las Vegas, I introduced my talk on customer segmentation by discussing the famous 20/80 rule. Everyone in the room had heard of it and knew what it meant. I also referred to it as Pareto’s Law, a term many also knew.
But when I asked if someone could tell me who Pareto was I was met with stony silence. This was troubling for two reasons. First, I had a small prize of a pair of dice, which I hoped to give to the first person with the right answer. Little did I expect that no one would answer. So I was caught in an awkward moment. I prodded, thinking that maybe people were just reticent. Still no answer. “Aw, come on,” I pleaded, “Pareto is the patron saint of database marketing. Surely someone must know him?”
Finally, some brave soul ventured an answer. But it wasn’t right. Then, I got another wrong answe... 
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| Posted on 12/17/2007 by
Mike McGuirk |
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| NCDM Conference - "What Happens in Vegas?" |
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I’m on my way home from attending the NCDM conference in Las Vegas and I’m sure to be chastised for sharing some conference observations, after all, “What happens in Vegas, supposedly Stays in Vegas.” Let’s hope the State of Nevada PR police don’t find out.
After studying the conference agenda and sitting through a number of client and vendor presentations it became clear to me that innovation in the database marketing industry has often followed a very predictable rhythm. Historically, the most influential driver of innovation has been the advent of a new marketing platform. It doesn’t matter if the channel was intentionally or accidentally discovered, the innovators rise to meet the opportunity. Electronic mail and the Internet certainly supercharged investment in hundreds of new database marketing tools and services. And now, according to expert opinion at the NCDM, the...
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| Posted on 12/10/2007 by
Bill Duffy |
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| Test & Learn Strategies - The Surest Test of Discipline is its Absence! |
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Profound words from Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross – and seemingly appropriate for some thoughts I’ve had lately on the state of “Test and Learn” business practices in many companies we’ve encountered.
Consider the following scenario….
A senior marketing executive wants to improve the way his organization develops marketing campaigns and decides that marketing analytics should be driving more of the process. That could mean any number of potential alternatives ranging from simply emphasizing more pre-campaign analysis of consumer purchase or interaction behavior to incorporating more sophisticated analytic approaches such as segmentation or propensity modeling.
So he commissions his marketing sciences team to develop various analytic tools intended to advance the way the organization sets priorities, targets consumers or tailo...
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| Posted on 12/03/2007 by
Don Ryan |
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| Who You Gonna Believe, Me Or Your Own Eyes? |
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In the prelude to the famous mirror scene in the Marx Brothers’ movie Duck Soup, Chico, disguised as Groucho, defends himself from Mrs. Teasdale’s accusation that she saw him (meaning Groucho) leave her room by saying, “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” This line is also apropos of the dilemma that marketing analysts face when trying to decide whether to rely on customer opinions captured in attitudinal surveys or transactional data amassed in a data warehouse to predict future customer behavior. The former represents what the customer says he is going to do, while the latter is concrete evidence of what the customer has actually been doing.
In recent years psychologists and economists have repeatedly teamed up to study human behavior and decision making and have uncovered some curious findings. And - surprise! - they’ve learned that people aren’t always the mos...
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| Posted on 11/26/2007 by
Mike McGuirk |
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| Marketing Strategies - Inquisitive By Nature |
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Human beings have long been considered extremely inquisitive creatures. Why do scientists, investigators and business analysts pursue these careers? Because they have a strong desire, some bordering on obsession, to search for answers, especially when the answer is well concealed and hard to find. However, even the most devoted analysts will become despondent and less effective if they don’t have the right tools and environment to practice their craft.
As marketing professionals we need to make a commitment to promote and reward this inquisitive behavior and not suppress it. My concern is not with the lack of business intelligence or data mining tools available to analysts. In fact, I believe most companies are making commendable investments in these toolsets. My concern is that too many companies stop there! They under-invest in training and building an environment where ...
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| Posted on 11/14/2007 by
Marcy Riordan |
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| Show Me the Lift - Lift Modeling Explained |
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While the science of marketing has become increasingly sophisticated, we have been trying to solve the same problem for many years. That is, how to ensure that marketing investment is producing incremental results. It's the basic premise that marketing managers gravitate to and finance managers question: How do you know that you're not just rewarding customers who would have purchased the product anyway?
So, we have our test and control groups and we can demonstrate incremental benefit. Most stakeholders will not dispute the results. But was the approach optimal? Could there have been a better way to squeeze out even greater incremental sales (and presumably profit) by shifting the target audience, the communication, or the pricing offer?
Today, most marketing decision makers have some going-in assumptions about which groups of customers will produce the mos...
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| Posted on 11/12/2007 by
Don Ryan |
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| I am a Segmentationist! |
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I'm not a guy who wears his religion on his sleeve, but, on the other hand, I'm not afraid to proclaim that I am a segmentationist. As in customer segmentation. That's because I think segmentation is one of the critical aspects of what we, as data-driven marketing analysts, do to help companies understand how customers differ.
In fact, if truth be told, I think segmentation is an absolutely necessary tool for today's customer-focused marketers. Whenever we start working with a new company one of the first things we ask is if it has a segmentation scheme and, if so, how is it used. The answers are often early clues to discovering how advanced the company is in using information to drive bigger and more cost effective business results.
After all, it is commonly accepted that not all customers are alike or have the same value (thanks largely to Pareto's Law, a....
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| Posted on 11/12/2007 by
Bill Duffy |
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| Power's On….Let’s Talk About the Math Behind the Marketing! |
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It’s our inaugural BLOG posting – and so on this special occasion (at least for us), I thought it appropriate to reflect on this comment from an early marketing practitioner and one of the most influential people of her time:
“A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.”
If you guess these words are from some famous techno-futurist or yet another self-proclaimed digital marketing guru, guess again.
It was actually Catherine the Great, the 18th century Russian empress, who uttered these words, referring to a time of great change and challenge within her country and across the continent.
When Russia’s societal and economic development was stagnating relative to its neighbors’, Catherine set about to acquire the latest knowledge, tools and practices in agriculture, mining, manufacturing and educati...
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ABOUT iKNOWTION |
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iKnowtion is a marketing and analytic consultancy that helps Fortune 1000 companies optimize the impact of marketing
expenditures from demand spending to customer focused initiatives.
iKnowtion's industry knowledge and expertise,
combined with a comprehensive and proven analytic approach provides Global leaders in automotive, financial services,
retail and consumer goods businesses with the marketing insights and analytical engines required to dramatically
improve business results. Founded in 1999, the company is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. To learn
more about us, please visit www.iknowtion.com.
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ABOUT Wiseguys |
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With so much change going on in the field of marketing, we felt that it was high time we try to stimulate
a dialog that focuses on the significant transition taking place within the marketing sciences area of many
companies.
Most experienced marketers agree that new tools and approaches are needed to help allocate and measure
marketing resources more effectively. If you're trying to tackle these kinds of issues in your company, join us
at Wise Guys - we'd like to hear from you.
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