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| Posted on 12/16/2009 by
Ken Howes |
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| Are Your Analytic Tools Deceiving You? |
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I recently came across an old issue of Wired Magazine which contained the article, Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street. It describes the rise and fall of a model that was used by Wall Street from 2001-2007 to price certain kinds of complex financial securities. The problem was that users of the model didn’t really understand its major economic assumptions and limitations, so they continued using the model even after the economy started behaving in ways that violated the model’s assumptions. And the results were disastrous.
In today’s business environment, where analytic tools such as response models, segmentation etc. are widely used to inform business decisions, it is critical for marketing executives to understand the limitations ... 
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| Posted on 11/23/2009 by
Don Ryan |
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| Analytics Is Not Enough |
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A number of popular business books have been written recently about the power of analytics to improve business performance, including Competing on Analytics, the New Science of Winning by Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris and Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres. These books are very good primers on the topic, are easy-to-read, chock full of case examples, and in the end, make a compelling argument. So compelling in fact, that it is hard to imagine any business leader who would try to make a counter argum...
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| Posted on 11/06/2009 by
Mike McGuirk |
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| Don’t Underestimate the Power of Your Data |
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“Garbage in, garbage out.” You may have heard this crude phrase in the past and, although it is somewhat simplistic, it does send an important message to companies that want to compete using information-driven marketing.
Data integrity promotes customer analysis, and leveraging your customer information is a key element in building a profitable business. When data is accessible, accurate and up-to-date, a company can analyze it for actionable customer insights. When applied correctly, these insights can identify opportunities, fuel innovation, and ultimately lead to improved marketing performance.
Data is the key to customer intelligence
Customer intelligence is an extremely powerful business asset. Companies that use it to gain a competitive advantage have a comprehensive plan for capturing it, mining it, and using it to make better decis...
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| Posted on 10/13/2009 by
Bill Duffy |
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| "Using Marketing Mix Modeling to Manage Your Marketing Spend" to be presented at DMA09 |
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iKnowtion Analytic Director, Rafael Bradley, and Constant Contact CMO, Nancie G. Freitas, will co-present "Using Marketing Mix Modeling to Manage Your Marketing Spend" at DMA09 Conference & Exibition, San Diego, CA, October 17-22, 2009.
During this sesssion conference attendees will learn how data-savvy companies are using marketing mix modeling to assess the effectiveness of their multimedia investments, forecast marketing performance, and apply these insights to make key business decisions ...
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| Posted on 08/26/2009 by
Rafael Bradley |
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| Why Price Elasticities Matter to Marketers Today |
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Part I of a Series
Many of us took an Economics course in school. There we learned about price elasticities. In this and another blog, I revisit our college days, reconsider the idea of a price elasticity and examine why it matters today more than ever to marketers.
Today marketers are required to use their limited budgets more effectively. That means, for example, that businesses have to be smarter about how to allocate their limited incentive budgets. One way to improve the effectiveness of direct marketing campaign revenues is through the strategic use of price elasticity.
Before we look at how to use elasticities to optimize campaign results, I provide a refresher on the definition of an elasticity.
Price Elasticity Defined
A price elasticity represents consumers’ “sensitivity to promotions”. The ela...
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| Posted on 07/29/2009 by
Marcy Riordan |
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| How to Identify Pockets of Marketing Opportunity within Your Customer Base |
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Nearly every marketing professional has been faced with the challenge of breaking down a broad population into meaningful segments. The purpose of that exercise may be to identify opportunities to improve a marketing campaign, offer relevant products to consumers, or identify higher-potential targets or subsegments within a given population.
While there are various analytical techniques available to solve these marketing challenges, ‘classification trees’ can be used as a quick and efficient methodology for slicing up an audience, understanding the drivers that differentiate consumer behaviors, and ultimately “sifting out” the best opportunities to achieve a given marketing goal.
Classification and Regression Tree Analysis (CART)
CART analysis has been in use by the marketing sciences community for years. In general terms, the ...
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| Posted on 05/20/2009 by
Bill Duffy |
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| Financial Services Companies are Rethinking Marketing Strategies |
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Recently iKnowtion Senior Partner, Don Ryan, was interviewed by BtoB Magazine, the Magazine for Marketing Strategists. In the article, “Untapped data could help financial companies improve targeting in uncertain times” Don shares his insights about how companies existing in this new financial world can succeed and where untapped opportunities reside.
If you would like to share your insights by posting a comment or have a private discussion, simply click the designated button below, and if you’re interested in reading more about how data and marketing analytics can be applied, visit our website at www.iknowtion.com.
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| Posted on 05/11/2009 by
Mike McGuirk |
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| An Untapped Opportunity for Gaining Customer Insight |
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Marketing analytics professionals are certainly aware that the strength of their analyses and the accuracy of their predictions are linked to the quality of the input data.
Fortunately, businesses that want to compete with analytics have invested heavily in new information technology to improve the collection of marketing and customer data. In addition, the proliferation of third-party data providers, ranging from collaborative databases to online panels has helped augment our understanding of consumers and expand the types of actionable insights we can offer our clients. This is indeed progress.
However, the purpose of this blog entry is to encourage companies as well as the marketing analytics community to continue to search for new sources of business and customer information.
In my opinion, one source of untapped insights rests quietly, wa...
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| Posted on 03/31/2009 by
Don Ryan |
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| What More Can Web Data Tell Us? |
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The web is giving us a greater opportunity to see how consumers behave – how they interact with a brand, what they’re interested in, what captures their attention, and how they like to shop. Clearly, consumers who visit a company’s website frequently are engaged with the brand. This fact alone can tell us a lot about who might be more willing to respond to an offer, try a new product, or participate in an event or discussion. Web visits can also alert a company about who might be in the shopping mode -- a key piece of knowledge, especially if you sell large ticket items that are not purchased frequently, such as automobiles or technology hardware. Web data can also enhance what is known about consumer preferences by pinpointing what content the consumer views and how much time he or she spends looking at that content.
But how often is this information bei...
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| Posted on 03/09/2009 by
Don Ryan |
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| Using Marketing Dashboards for Fact-based Decision Making & Accountability |
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I recently read a New York Times article, “1,000 Points of Data,” which extols the benefits of a comprehensive database of key national indicators. The main point was that to provide greater accountability in Washington we need a tool that enables all Americans to gauge whether we are making progress on vital issues of national concern, and a shared frame of reference would enable us to practice collective accountability.
As someone in favor of, yet concerned about what we are going to get for our trillions of recovery and redevelopment dollars, it sounds like a good idea to me.
So good in fact that I feel commercial companies should use the same concept to tighten up accountability within their own businesses and provide decision makers with a common ...
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| Posted on 01/29/2009 by
Don Ryan |
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| Using Marketing Analytics to Improve Results During a Recession |
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A new study* on the use of analytics asserts that retailers are increasingly looking to leverage their stockpiles of customer information as a way to gain competitive advantage. As study author Dr. Thomas H. Davenport put it “retailers today are searching for ways to derive more customer intelligence, marketing savvy and operational insight from their overflowing databases.”
This makes eminent sense and should come as no surprise to anyone who has been involved in information-based marketing. For instance, over the years we have seen that retailers that have used analytics to understand their customers better have been, on the whole, more successful in building loyalty and generating greater value from their customer marketing activities.
What makes this recent stu...
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| Posted on 01/15/2009 by
Rafael Bradley |
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| A Marketing Analytics Resolution for the New Year! |
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What New Year’s resolutions are you making this holiday season? I have my usual list of personal improvement promises and maybe you do too. On a professional note though, one suggestion I’d like to pass along is that, if you don’t do so already, consider using an analytic sample in your test and learn practices in 2009.
Recently, one of my clients asked about building a response model for use in direct mail list selection. Here’s an overview of the situation:
Client’s problem: They had never randomized their mail offers across customer segments.
Lack of randomized offers meant that not only was there a biased representation of offers across customers, but certain segments received only one type of offer. This constrained our ability to use the ...
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| Posted on 01/12/2009 by
Bill Duffy |
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| iKnowtion in the News |
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Recently, DM News devoted a column to marketing tactics that were likely to be most effective at inspiring consumers to shop and spend money this past holiday season. In that column Don Ryan, our Senior Partner, provided his perspective, discussing how a robust testing plan could be used to create a capability to provide highly individualized offers to consumers vs. broad, uniform discounts which can negatively affect a retailer’s bottom line.
To read Don’s thoughts, please refer to the complete article at DMNews.com and, if you’d like to learn more about offer optimization, read about MORE on our website, <...
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