Who wouldn't want the 'Visibility' piece online (and my 2012 prediction)

So you think you have perfected the online website channel; conversion rate is optimal, revenue stream is consistent, acquisition spend and performance is spot on (lucky you!).
So, where do you go from here? Sure, you could take an early Christmas and kick your feet up, sit back and enjoy the goodies people bring in to the office to spread the Christmas Cheer. Or, you could be doing something unique - something no one else has mastered yet and something that will make you hugely popular should you master it. I'm talking about the 'Visbility' piece, of course.

I coined this phrase back at the start of the year and it's meaning is very simple; "to provide businesses with visibility of what is happening in the social world and effectively merge it with the web site behavioral data", all in realtime.

Just think about it for a second - you have already achieved your ideal KPI's for the performance of the online channel, but what if you could make it even better, with no real significant change needing to be made to your online business, effectively letting you continue what you are doing well already? (low risk then!). What if I could help your business learn how to target new customers or help your business understand who your influencers' are (to keep them influencing), what your poor performing products/services are (social networks is where most people complain or praise something), what content you should be serving to the individual who arrives on your web site based on their likes/dislikes/hobbies and more.

Now, you have the ability to target each individual with what they want to see (before they even know it). It increases your engagement rate (you already know what they like/dislike, so serve appropriate content), likely conversion rate increases, improve satisfaction rate, help promote loyalty and as a bi-product of these improvements, take more revenue online!

It's a no-brainer really but who does this today? No one. In fact, there are technologies (no single vendor... yet), that exist independently that 'could' do it, if only they woke up and smelt the coffee! Think about the business benefits to you, the customer, the vendor and the Industry as a whole - it's a win win win really.

I predict 2012 will see the introduction to such 'theories' whereby they will become a reality - personally, I'm really looking forward to it!
Customer Insight and Social Networks, merging to provide true 'Individual Visibility' - just got to coin a new, whizzy marketing name/phrase for the new internet phenomenon that is imminently (over?) due!

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.

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.

Example: Customer Insight Delivering Personal Communication

Last night, I was on www.autotrader.co.uk to list my car for sale. As the V5 has not returned from DVLA yet since we moved (it has been 7days now DVLA...), I decided not to complete my advert until such time the revised address on the V5 returns.

Interestingly though, this morning on www.ebay.co.uk, I noticed a creative spot for Auto Trader - and inside the creative messaging was 'Complete your Ad'.

I talk day in, day out about getting Customer Insight into the hands of business folk who need to be able to do just this - reach the right person at the right time in the best way possible. One could argue that promoting an Auto Trader creative with messaging that may discourage me from advertising with eBay might not be in eBay's best interest, but nonetheless, it is an example of individual personalisation which has been gleaned from Customer Insight.

Although I didn't click on the creative, it did get me thinking... if Auto Trader and eBay are already working together to bring together a better experience to their visitors in the online world, why aren't more businesses wanting to do the same? Why the resistance? In most cases, the insight returned by such platforms pays x5 of the spend in ROI and payback to the business (if based on examples I have heard about are to be believed) is within the first 10months!

Just take a read of these additional stories below to learn the true value on gaining detailed customer insight:

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.

20% increase in online conversion rates

By better understanding the reasons behind 'Abandoned Baskets', the discovery was made that there was in fact an stock inventory problems whereby mid-value items were out of stock! By addressing the levels of stock, the number of abandoned baskets dropped and increase conversions occurred.

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 small decrease (but significant) saving in shipping and printing costs.

$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.


Customer Level Insight platforms are an absolute must for businesses and organisations who want to get an advantage in an ever increasingly competitive landscape!

The Future Is Already Here, Businesses Are Just Not Aware

This morning my 5yr old boy asks me for a computer so he can go to the CBBC web site to play games. Now, imagine the CBBC web site profiling children over time - learning what games they play and the time/outcome of them playing it. Imagine the CBBC web site pushing the capabilities of a child playing a 'game', making something easier or harder for a child to help develop their learning skills.

With increasing pressures being applied by the UK Government to raise the bar on a child's development from a young age (the UK is not as strict as other countries within the EU), using fun methods that involve a child to interact on a site that self-learns seems too obvious to many. Couple that with electronic devices that are more and more becoming 'internet-capable' or enabled, and you have multiple channels open to young children today, whether at home or on the move.

It is nothing new to pick on how the gaming sector has shaped the lives of young people today. But perhaps instead of blaming the gaming sector, we should be embracing it (especially in young children).

The future of web site profiling, segmentation and personalisation is already here and the sooner businesses all over the world develop the appetite to perform Individual Visitor Insight on their own sites, the sooner they will be profiteering, performing and over-achieving beyond all targets ever imagined.

Now, if only we could do something similar with the Utilities sector...

Is Customer Intelligence Delivering Results?

I have just read a very interesting blog posting by George Hollister, (someone who I value, listen to and enjoy following on Twitter) where a recent study, "CI Teams: Blocking and Tackling is Not Enough" carried out by Forrester suggested businesses were failing to get valuable insight from the Customer Insight (CI) team as they were focusing on Data Integration rather than gleaning insights from the platform. It is a message I heard all the time in my Web Analytics days...

The blog (and study) goes on to suggest Web Analytics is a platform being used to glean such insights, and to me at least, there in lies the problem! Web Analytics platforms are not CI focused, typically run as a SaaS model and are therefore a) costly to export, b) time consuming to extract data into a EDW whereby analysts can really use it, c) it is aggregated!


The blog (and Forrester study) goes on to suggest the problem does not lie with the CI team themselves, or Data Integration but in fact an it is an Organisational Integration problem. Yet again, disparate data silos is the problem! Data that is needed in one silo is 'unavailable', causing delays in being able to glean insight, making it difficult for the marketing analytics or CI team (who are usually located in another business unit, building, city, country...) to include the data, resulting in reduced insights from increasing efforts - all in all, producing far from eye watering results!

To fully empower the CI team, businesses need a platform that delivers insight in a contextualised manner and at a non-aggregated level into an EDW within seconds of the event occurring. Preferably with a platform that is tag-free too! (who needs or wants the pain, time delays and cost of identifying and deploying tags to then build charts and graphs from?). As I understand it, most Web Analytics platforms struggle to populate EDW's in less than 72 hours... Hardly 'realtime'...

I know customers who have done just this and with a CI team to hand have experienced significant benefits in doing so (have shifted them to be a leader in their game in online commerce).

Realtime delivers results; not just in promoting the right message at the right time to the right prospect, but also in getting valuable insights delivered to analysts in all business units, in all departments, in all office buildings and in all cities/countries to glean actionable and relevant insights from to achieve (and most often exceed) their primary (and often secondary) business goals in a very short space of time.

Can you bend technology too far?

I hear it all the time. I need this tool to deliver this, that tool to deliver that then a year or few later, they retire to the fact that the technology will never be capable of delivering on a 'false promise'. It didn't stop the vendor selling the software and happily taking Mr Customers money though, did it!

So, perhaps we are now living in an era where there really is no-one platform that is capable of providing a definitive business platform. After all, I'm sure (like me) you have worked on projects where horrendous amounts of time have been spent (as well as money!!) to deliver on 'false-promises'. Add up the amount of money spent, then work out the ROI on that spent cash! I bet its not as good as you were hoping for, huh?

I find myself speaking more and more to businesses that can and do provide a solution to address the modern day business pains, but it's not by using one business reporting platform. Businesses need to consider what it is they need/want to deliver and then work out what they need to deliver it.

For example (and speaking from an Analysts point of view), I might need full, rich data from every data silo, including the search platform, telephone/ivr platform, email platform, web platform, marketing attribution platform and more. In fact, the more data I have, the better an Analyst I can be and the better the insight I can provide! I need BigData then! Problem with 'BigData' is it can sometimes be too much!
So, I need a Business Intelligence platform that can handle BigData; one that is with me at all times, not just restricted to the desktop and one which is scale-able and quick to deploy (and one which won't hurt the budget!!).

So, which vendors make claims to be able to do all this today? I know a few and I also know a few end-users who have a lot to say about a vendors inability to deliver on the promise, now known to me as the 'false-promise'. And that's after a VERY EXTENSIVE tagging discussion, time consuming and detailed documentation and testing processes... I really believe businesses are tired of tagging everything they want insight on. There are alternatives, Atomic Labs with their PION platform or Celebrus Technologies spring to mind - both working very differently but neither requiring 'tags'.

Disparate data needs to come together, I appreciate that. If you think back a few years ago, this was a big problem with such badly fragmented data, however now platforms exist which can 'power customer data hubs' and I can speak from 15 years experience, that these platforms ARE delivering a step change within organisations, are winning awards and and delivering on the promise (with customers shouting about their successes - how many have done that before?!).

Perhaps now then businesses need to step back a bit and take a look at their infrastructure, where they want to be, how they plan to get there and the value to the business on getting there sooner. Cloud based storage is now cheap enough, fast enough, efficient and secure enough to become a possible hosting platform for most types of business, business platforms can feed into 'the cloud', tag-free platforms exist, cost effective BI exists, individual visitor level tracking exists, real-time communication exists... Need I go on?

What Do Visitor, Weather, a CDH And Online Performance Have In Common?

We all know that today we live in a world of readily available technology gadgets providing almost an unlimited ways and means to access information on the WWW. We also appreciate that Social Networks can now play a big part in driving traffic to our web site, as well as away.

But what happens when the weather outside is hot or cold? Wet or dry? Have you, as a business, considered the effect weather plays to your online and high street sales? Usually, it's one or the other; strong high street sales in nice, warm weather or strong online sales in nasty, cold and wet weather. But could you literally have your cake and eat it by addressing online better, regardless of the weather outside?

Which brings me to my purpose of this blog posting; you can now feed Weather data to your Customer Data Hub (CDH for short) which is THE place to store all your offline and online data. Couple that with a Real-Time engine and you have a powerful combination for providing relevant content to the appropriate people!

Recently, Google launched its own Weather API. So, Consider this theory with an online retailer:

With real-time content injection into a browser now possible, based around various attributes known or unknown of a visitor, a business can promote relevant items which a shopper might well be in the mood for buying.

For example, let's assume for a minute that I'm visiting your web site in October and I'm from Southern England. It's now Autumn and according to Google Weather, it's windy, raining and chilly (but not freezing cold) and I happen to be in the market for something that will take the chill off a chilly day whilst I'm out walking the dog, keep me dry for the rainy days and hopefully keep me from being too windswept!
So, when I arrive on your web site, why are you promoting big winter coats, scarves, bobble hats and gloves?
However, in northern England, it's bitterly cold, significant amounts of snow have fallen in the higher grounds and I'm in the market for a big warm coat, scarf and gloves.
Your current web site setup is only really appealing to 50% of your customer/visitor base today.

When it comes to relevant and appropriate communication, we need to consider the above scenarios. Just because we have seasons doesn't mean the current weather reflects the season we're supposed to be in.

If, as a business, I know weather for the region a visitor is coming from, surely as an online clothing retailer, I can promote the relevant products, to the right people, at the right time. Better still, if I know their purchasing history, also at the right price!

Simply putting the location you're interested in at the end of a Google Weather API string, I get back a vast amount of information back about the weather forecast for the rest of the week: http://www.google.com/ig/api?weather=Newbury

Give it a go and change your location from Newbury to somewhere else above and look at the XML returned. This could take online clothing retailers to the next level of offering personalized, relevant content. All you need as a business is the location (and you can gleam that from a registration process).

What Do Your Reports Look Like?

Too many businesses buy an analytics tool because of it's the market presence and the eye-candy the reports bring.
Having previously been a data and web analyst for many years, data is typically always extracted and placed into everyone's ever so familiar, favorite reporting platform, MS Excel. So why use the charts and graphs provided by an aggregated data platform in the first place? I know many analysts and businesses who would agree with me and say they don't use them (possibly even the analyst(s) in your organisation right now).

It takes a brave person to make a purchasing decision based around the above two key mentioned areas. I can testify (by speaking from experience) just how many businesses adopt this 'strategy', having worked over many years with a lot of organisations across multiple business sectors, including financial services, travel, retail, utilities and telecommunications. Just because the few charts/graphs you have look good doesn't mean the data in the report(s) it provides to the business are with any insight which is actionable. The charts/graphs need to be interactive!

Most of us have MS Excel on our desktop machines. It doesn't take a semi experienced MS Excel user long to build a dashboard from scratch. The hardest job with any dashboard build is the collation and consistency of the data.

One of the most recent dashboards I have built in MS Excel can be seen below. This incorporates non-aggregated visitor data covering all marketing touchpoints (not just first and last click, but all clicks inbetween) which have been weighted to provide a true picture on what channels, promotions, activities, placements, offers, partners and so on actually are working to influence a prospect to engage and convert with a web site.

Additionally, if you have a Business Intelligence platform such as SAP Business Objects, Crystal Xcelsius, Microstrategy, Qlikview, SAS and so on, you can do even better things with the charts/graphs. All with interactive controls and functions, enabling you to get to the lowest level required (which in my case is often the visitor level - their phone number, email address, social security number and so on).

So in reality, if you wanted, your Business Intelligence dashboard could actually look like the screenshot below. Most Business Intelligence platforms today are appreciating Mobile BI is the future by empowering analysts to influence, make decisions and provide real-time insight whilst on the move. The example below is taken from the Microstrategy blog but it shows Mobile BI at its best and certainly provides much better 'eye-candy' than any other online analytics and optimization tool I have used before.

What I love best about interactive dashboards is the involvement of data from more than one channel (typically the web). In the above example, data is being collated in a Customer Data Hub (more about what defines a CDH later), but for a business to see how all channels are performing, volumes of calls, revenue attributed when compared with other channels, trends compared to last year and so on, this insight is like 'Gold Dust'. BUT, what makes this all the more appealing, is the ability to go down to Visitor/Customer/Prospect level and then actually do something with the data extracted; perhaps send a list of possible fraudulent applications to the anti-fraud team by email to investigate, or abandoned insurance purchases to the call center for a follow-up phone call. These are only a few of the actions very few businesses are actually doing today with their marketing insight platform, whilst others so desperately want to be able to do the same.

Without any shadow of a doubt, aggregated data and the charts and graphs associated with them, have limited shelf life. Yes, they are good for spotting trends and identifying upcoming demands, but they are not good enough to give businesses today what they really want. The good news is this, what businesses want from their online/offline marketing channels can be achieved today. But, the right platform needs to be in place. So, the question to ask is: 'Does your marketing insight platform have a Customer data model? (have you seen it? does it address/meet your analyst/business requirements?). Does it provide aggregated or non-aggregated visitor level insight? Can you slice and dice the data quickly, repeatedly, over time, integrate other channel sources and so on? Do you have a Business Intelligence platform in place already? If not, would MS Excel cut the mustard for you?

Done correctly, Customer Insight can be very powerful. The most surprising bit though is the cost to achieve it - it's not as much as you might imagine.