“Marketing optimisation is the latest buzzword in the CRM world”

Companies have been using operational CRM systems to analyse customer behaviour to plan and optimise their initiatives.

Specifically for campaign management, marketing automation offerings enable marketers to plan, test and execute marketing campaigns of any size or level of complexity. Focus is on using resources to gain insight into customers and also automate campaigns to specific customer segments.

The availability of campaign management tools and software is certainly not new but the ability to use  the features of these tools for more effective decision-making is still a scarce capability, says Richard Boire, partner, Boire Filler Group.

By using these tools optimally, marketers can gain insights on when to offer, what to offer, and in what channel to offer.

Marketing optimisation is the latest buzzword in the CRM world, says Boire.

“But it is through the use of these tools and more importantly, the process of how these tools are used which will provide those keen insights regarding marketing optimisation,” added Boire, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Business Analytics Summit to be held in San Jose (November 12-13).

Analytic offerings are also becoming more automated.

By automation, this means that canned procedures and routines are created to produce standard dashboard/KPI type reports.

Boire says the ongoing developments  of `Cube’ Technology have also significantly enhanced the level of reporting by end users who are not technical from a computer programming perspective. Business reports can now be produced that are relevant for the specific user who can produce them without the intervention of more technical personnel.

“The real objective behind this focus on automation is to eliminate and reduce  time from needless and repetitive data intensive tasks that require more resources  both in terms of time and people and to allocate this saved time and resources to the area of analysis,” says Boire.

Overcoming challenges

As the volume and availability of customer data increases, companies are turning to customer analytic applications. Customer and marketing analysis presents unique data complexity and analytical workflow challenges.

Boire says while assessing these platforms, one needs to consider the following capabilities in terms of being to  `work’ the data:

1.     Assessing the quality of data for missing values, number of unique values, and how values distribute across a certain field.
 
2.     Can software provide capability of rolling up records to customer level or household level? In marketing to businesses, can we roll up the data at different levels as well: contact vs. branch/site vs. organisation level?

3.     How easy is it to join and link files together - both internal (existing customer behaviour data) as well as external data (demographic data such as Statistics Canada or Donnelly data in the US)?

4.     How easy is it for data to be summarised?

5.     Can we link files together and summarise data across a number of files in order to produce one view of the customer? 

Analysing behaviour

According to Boire Filler Group, as with all marketing the objective of CRM programmes is to change customer behaviour. The measurability of CRM enables effective testing and learning to improve practices. Results are shared and used to further enrich customer insights and validate customer value inputs. In this way, an effective CRM programme is iterative and require on-going management to optimise their return.

Users need to deploy a measurement system. This deployment results in closed-loop visibility to customer behaviours and interactions throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

According to Boire, this really requires a process, similar to a campaign management process, where key behaviours and interactions are recorded at certain periodic intervals.

“These intervals represent points in time where we can observe changes in customer behaviour or interactions. The purpose of being able to track this information overtime is to identify changing customer behaviour/interactions but more importantly to identify those changes which are significant,” he says.

Those changes which become significant should be flagged and so-called trigger reports should be produced to identify these customers with significant changes.
 

 

Business Analytics Summit

Business Analytics News is scheduled to conduct the two-day Business Analytics Summit at San Jose in November (12-13) this year. The conference will feature  leading Business Analytics executives including ones from Monster Worldwide, JetBlue Airways, New York Times Company, Boire Filler Group and Data-Miners Inc.

For more information, click here: http://www.businessanalyticsnews.com/usa/agenda.shtml

Or contact: Ben Satchwell by email ben@businessanalyticsnews.com