Wednesday 30 November 2011

eMetrics London 2011

The day has started off well, lots of sunshine and blue sky in Islington, London - at eMetrics too!

eMetrics conferences are a place for all people who are interested in the world of Predictive and Web Analytics to fall into an exhibition hall and attend speaker sessions to learn more about the wonderful world of online visitor behavior and learn about the new features of traditional web metric and predictive platforms (ie. based on this happening, you can conclude that is might happen, type thing).

I'm at the eMetrics London event today promoting a platform I passionately believe in - Individual Customer Insight; not aggregated, no charts and graphs to wow people with, no predictive modelling either - just REAL BigData and the ability to do things with it.

More to come later, as the event unfolds...

Friday 11 November 2011

What happens when you get Individual Insight right?

I've been preaching, for what feels like FOREVER, about Individual Insight and the benefits it brings to any business. The art of perfecting the offline message based around online behaviours, or perhaps the other way around - knowing what you have done offline and how we should attribute that activity or sentiment to the online world.

Well, I decided it was time to share with everyone some insight I have gathered over the years from customers who have deployed such Individual Insight platforms and the benefits it has brought to their organisation. I should also point out that no one has not benefited from such a platform - all have seen an uplift in online activity, some more than others but all have paid back to the business within eighteen months of being deployed (in fact some have paid back well within year one; try getting that payback with any other technology!).

So, here we go. My Top Five are as follows:


10 x increase in revenue per email  (up to 500 x increase for high value items)
Customers who have previously been browsing high value items on the web site, were targeted with personalised emails during a 'SALE' campaign. The association of high value items, such as Bluray players/LED tv's/iPod's, which were relevant to the individual, saw the average return per email increase from $0.30 to $3 overnight.

$1.0m p.a. incremental revenue from hot online leads passed into the call centre
Where a prospect failed to complete car insurance online and also failed to call in to the call centre within 2 days after the failed online conversion, contact/product details were passed to a dedicated call centre whereby follow-up calls were made by insurance representatives. This resulted in 1/3 of every call being converted into a new customer - previously, that 1 in 3 was a lost online opportunity.

240% improvement in click-to-buy ratio
All products 'touched' by each online individual visitor are distributed to each individually subscribed 'customer' on a weekly basis. This has resulted in a 240% increase in click-to-buy ratio for one particular customer.

3% reduction in # catalogues shipped ($4m saving)
By simply being able to identify which home shoppers were receiving a catalogue but never quoting a catalogue reference number whilst online as well as never calling into the call centre, the decision to stop sending catalogues to identified residential dwellings resulted in a significant saving in shipping and printing costs - without affecting the bottom line!

$1.2m p.a. saving due to online fraud detection
By identifying behaviours that were 'not-typical', such as entering 6 different credit card numbers incorrectly within a few minutes or by flagging up high risk addresses which where known fraudulent activity hot-spots, customers using Celebrus have benefitted from being able to identify fraudulent online activity taking place, in realtime, online. Now, they are stopping shipments at the tailgate, saving on the associated expense and improving customer satisfaction/loyalty.

There are more, there's always something new you learn every day in the world of Individual Insight and I would be happy to share these with anyone who's interested - just comment in the box below with your contact details and I will send out updates as and when I have them to hand.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Online Individual Insight - Is It Really A New 'Big Brother' Practise?

Standing on the Celebrus Technologies booth at ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 yesterday, I had a couple of references made to me that got me thinking "That's a bit Big Brother like to me...". That may be true in the online space, but you telling me most of us who drive a car, use a debit/credit card, travel on the train, walk into a high street shop, are naive enough to think that you're not being 'tracked' by an even bigger brother?

Every road near the office has a road 'traffic' camera on it - but are we sure it's only traffic they're monitoring? Are we sure they don't take down your registration number and count the number of times a day you use that road?
What about when you walk into a shop - what are they doing with the camera footage they have taken of you?
What about every transaction made on your credit/debit card? How much YOU spent, where YOU spent YOUR money, WHO you paid it to and so on.
What about the London Underground - what station did you enter, which station did you leave - what was your route?

You see, BIG BROTHER is everywhere - isn't it therefore only 'normal' that some online monitoring is also taking place? Perhaps more to the point, if I really can make your experience better (online or offline - and I really do mean, make it better!!), then is a platform that performs detailed observations a bad thing? After all, if the platform is genuine and not malicious in any way, you can always 'Opt-out' by the click of a mouse button...

Either way, the choice is yours. Personally, I encourage it.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

ExactTarget Connections UK 2011 - The Power of One

The alarm went off at 0510 - couldn't stomach another 0445 and felt 0515 was a little late (if not to mention lazy!), so I compromised with 0510.

After an early start, I finally arrived at Battersea Evolution, London, for the 2011 ExactTarget Connections event. We arrived early yet it still felt late based on the number of people in the hall already!

Either way, after setting up the stand, seeing many ex-colleagues from my Webtrends days and listening to keynote presenters, it was my turn to talk at the booth (maybe I can present at Connections 2012? Hint/nudge...).

Customers very quickly got the message: "Ah, so you provide tag-free, individual online customer data which can be fed into ExactTarget for more granular visitor targeting in eMarketing and their Audience Builder platform" - yes! We do, and have been very good at it with other customers in the same space as you - after all, wouldn't you like me to turn £100,000 into £350,000 for your business? Overnight? What an ROI! How about if I managed to save you £300,000 in eMarketing activities which were not impacting your business in terms of an uplift in sales?

But you know what, my biggest takeaway and most interesting Breakout of the day was the 'Offline and Online Marketing Integration' presentation. We had Tony Mooney from SkyIQ presenting (a subsidiary of BskyB), and he was talking about how hard it all was. We also had a presentation about Doordrop marketing (you know, the fliers through the door that we all love to hate??).
This is when it dawned on me that Doordrop marketing isn't dead! Far from it. In fact, I think it will make a comeback - how about doordropping marketing campaigns to particular known visitors in the online world who failed to convert online, or haven't been back for some time since their last visit?

It's the complete reverse to what we think today, but I think it could make a comeback.
Time will tell, I guess...

In the meantime, thank you ExactTarget for a great Connections UK 2011 - I look forward to the event next year - hopefully with me presenting!!