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.

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!!

Demand on the increase for detailed individual insight

It's not news to say 'if you don't have a web site, you're missing out', but what if that conversation became 'if you don't know who is on your web site, you're missing out'?

Numbers these days mean great things when they're tangible. Take for example a bottom line sales number for an online travel agent - sales are down, 50% to this time last year (a worrying thought for those in the travel industry). But why was that? Who influenced that?

If you don't know who or why, how can your online business recover?

Take this scenario, which is typical of a customer insight platform - a visitor (known as ID 12345) arrives on the web site, looks around Summer holidays for 2012 and in particular, focuses on Caribbean cruises worth in excess of £3000. They go away and come back later that evening.
During the day, they phoned the call centre to ask about whether the travel insurance included covered over 65's with existing health complications - bad news, history of cancer rules them out. Deflated, the caller ends the call, but makes further enquiries with another insurance company who WILL cover them. A great result!
They go back on to the web site later that evening, and go to buy the holiday - they enter all their details for the cruise, name, age, address, phone number and more. It is during this process the platform discovers that the traveller is Mary Smith, a long time, loyal customer of the brand. However, the web site doesn't accept their booking due to availability no longer being available.

Consider this in a Customer Insight world - you have all their web browsing history (individual, not aggregated insight), you know they looked for Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises, you know they called in to the call centre and spoke to John Doe on x2233 and you know the message they got during their purchase was 'no availability', so what can your business do for this traveller?

You have a phone number, postal address, email address... Why not follow up via any of those marketing channels to re-engage Mary and show her you care about her business. Offer an alternative cruise and at a discounted price for the inconvenience caused (effectively saving Mary the cost of separate travel insurance).

As a result of this typical customer insight story, the travel company has reinstated it's brand with Mary as a company that cares, Mary still gets her holiday and the travel company still makes some money instead of losing money! All from some simple insight.

Tangible results mean everything. To say a bottom line is trending up, down, static or is +/-xx% doesn't mean much when you want to take action on the information you are presented with.

Use aggregated insight reports to tell you how well or how much you could improve your online business by, but don't try to bend it to do something it was never built to do - provide detailed individual insight. Leave that to a platform that has been doing it for years, has experience and is more cost effective than you might imagine.

If only all online businesses operated this way...

iPhone5 - Why All The Surprises?

Yesterday was an exciting day - Tim Cook, now CEO for the World's richest brand, took to the stage to announce all the great things and gadgets Apple have been working on over the last 12months. Most were widely expecting the announcement of the iPhone5, but as we all now know, that didn't happen.

I've read blogs from others that it was disappointing, no one really cared about the other Apple products, it was afterall the iPhone5 they all wanted. But has anyone thought about the history of Apple since the iPhone 3G came out? Has anyone considered the Worlds richest brand went through an internal re-structuring process to replace an inspirational and truly thought leading CEO, Steve Jobs with Tim Cook?

One thing is for certain though, we can't ignore the sentiment from the public - that knocked 5% off the value of Apple yesterday due to NOT releasing a new iPhone5.

I watched an Apple video a few days back when they were talking about iOS and how iOS is what makes the mobile Apple devices as fantastic as they are today. What is the point to release a new iPhone if the OS is not capable of fully exploiting it yet?

iOS 5 is being released on 12th October - I'm excited! This should make the already great iPhone4 even better - but think back to when the iPhone 3G became the 3GS, a similar pattern occurred. Think about what happened when the iPhone4 was released and how everyone went crazy over how revolutionising it was - if you kind of forget the really bad launch with 'Antennagate'. Now think about just how impressive the iPhone5 could be if it is going to be such a marked improvement over the 4S as the 4 was to the 3GS.

Will I upgrade? I don't know. I like recording my children when we play as a family - will 1080p make me think it's worth the upgrade? Unlikely. Do I care about the 8MP camera when I take pretty good shots with my 5MP in the iPhone4? Not really. Do I care about the increased memory and A5 chip? Maybe; I really fancy using AirPlay mirroring through my Apple TV2. I guess it depends just how well it all takes off.

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 Emergence Of Social Networks Has Not Just Changed How People Communicate And Share Information With One Another

The emergence of social networks has not just changed how people communicate and share information with one another. It has the power to fundamentally change business in ways that are just beginning to be discovered. The social network is no longer just an interesting technological showcase; it is a cultural phenomenon and the most disruptive technological force in society today.

Consider this, you are a representative for Sports personalities; you make money off the back of the success (or failures) of individuals through PR. The people or personalities you represent are high profile, always in the limelight and sometimes get things wrong, or very right!
Wouldn't you, as their representative, like to know the value (and risk) the individual holds in the Social Networks?

That is where you need individual 'customer' insight. This term 'Individual Customer' insight, is often associated with end-user web sites where personalised content can be promoted or served based around the ongoing profile being built around an individual, from the very first click! But, such technology now exists to analyse in microscopic detail the behaviours that are occurring on Facebook, for example.

Facebook is the world’s biggest self-updating data source, with over 750 million members, who willingly give up around 150 crucial bits of lifestyle information about themselves.

Consider the value of knowing a high profile personality has 250,000 fans - now consider the marketing opportunity you have to those 250,000 fans. Perhaps you can establish partnerships with leading brands such as Adidas or Nike, Cannondale or Scott, BMW or Mercedes and so on. Suddenly, 250,000 fans in the Social Networks have a seriously attractive financial attraction - increase the wealth of your Sports personality, keep their loyalty and increase your own wealth and portfolio by becoming increasingly more successful and popular.

You have the connections, technology exists to feed you with the valuable insight you are yearning for. What are you waiting for?