Obtaining a True 360° Customer View

* A true 360° view of your customer must include every interaction they have with your brand not just clicks on your website or things they have bought.

* The number of customers in your database is not the same thing as the number of transactions that you have. Knowing your true number of customers especially active customers is very important

* Getting a centralized view of your customers becomes difficult because data vendors do not like to work together making collecting all your data seem impossible.

* To reasonably identify a person in your database you need their Name and at the very least one of either Email or Physical Address. Collecting and having both types of addresses is great and an added bonus would be Phone Number.

* More variety of data is more important than just sheer accuracy and the fact that each data source works together is  even more important, because predicting who is going to do what is not from one channel or one technology it really happens when you are combining all these things and that’s customer 360.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 26 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript:

Damian: Welcome to the Inevitable Success Podcast sponsored by BuyerGenomics, where our goal is to help you, the marketer, make success inevitable. Each episode will discuss the craft of data-driven marketing, helping you uncover new and profitable ideas. You will also learn what works and what doesn’t work from top marketing professionals and thought leaders. I’m your host Damian Bergamaschi and inevitable success starts here.

So here we are at BuyerGenomics headquarters here in Manhattan, New York. As a marketer, almost every single month and week I am seeing messages where the entire marketing team — especially the marketing software space — is starting to use words like “True View of the customer,” and “360 degree view of the customer.” Marketers are using words like “customer centric.”

Today I want to go deep with you and peel the onion on what it really means to be customer-centric in your marketing. And, how do you discern, what is an apples to apples comparison between those terms? How do you identify which one of those you really need; customer centric, 360 degree view, or TrueView? Okay, so kick it off.

Stephen: Well those words all mean the same thing. But there are wrong usage of the word, or right usage. And another way to say that is there are a lot of poseurs out there. Let me just say it.

Damian: Yeah we covered that before, the data posers.

Stephen: Well for the analytical term, but these are blunt lies spoken by software companies, let me go that far. I know because when Dave and I ask them “What kind of a segment did you mail to last time?,” they say. “Anybody who clicked something past 30 days.” OK. So you have a one-channel view that’s not customer 360. Customer 360 means that everything that you did, every breath you take basically — not just what you click that’s a digital view.

Damian: What about offline view?

Stephen: You know one of the things that I often question is how easy it is for you to integrate data through our toolset in the CRM space. Well, isn’t that the first step? I don’t care if somebody bought it from online or offline. Yes, I want to record it differently.

But if the same person went to the store, or next time he figured, “I don’t need to go to the store, I know what I like,” so he ordered online. What is he? How many times did he really buy from you, once or twice? How many items he buy? What is the average order on online or offline?

Defining Attrition and Retention

When we ask Retailers what their biggest focus is one of the most common responses is “We want to reduce attrition and increase retention.” Most people think they are inverses but that is not the case.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 25 of the Inevitable Success Podcast. (Listen Here)

Transcript:

Damian: Today we’re going to talk about a question we get a lot. We get questions about attrition and retention. And specifically I want to ask you, are they the same thing?

Stephen: It’s a different spot in the same timeline because everybody goes through the life cycle of being a buyer. In fact, it starts at the point where you’re not even a buyer. We call them prospects and prospects becomes leads. In the B2B world you further qualify into qualified leads.

Damian: So maybe we’ll back it up a little bit. Specifically how would you define attrition versus retention.

Stephen: So well I’ll say attrition is farther down the timeline.

Basically when you’re going to stop being a customer, that is attrition and the action that a company takes at that moment is churn prevention.

Retention is more like “Okay I’m still building relationships. I want to sell more things maybe cross-sell/up-sell. I want to know more of the value based proposition because I don’t want to just share random things with customers.” So that’s retention. How do you make things interesting for the customers? So we hold them back..as long as possible and maximize the value.

Damian: You know it’s one thing that’s interesting we were kind of debating this internally too and I think when you hear that at first my first reaction was “Oh there are like two different sides of the same coin.” Like you know if you don’t retain people then you have high attrition.

Stephen: That’s right.

Damian: But you know in some ways I think if you’re a proactive and you’re taking action like you should always use the word retention and attrition is like a KPI that you don’t want to have.

Stephen: So actually the subject, the people who are on the side of the coin are different. Retention is the action by marketers or sellers.

Damian: Yeah.

Stephen: Attrition is what customers do. Yes it’s the same continuum but in a different position in terms of timeline. And one side is that something that marketers do and the other side is more that customers status if you will.

Damian: Right. So where do you want to start on this?

Stephen: Well let’s go back to the whole funnel concept here because in the beginning it’s just from the big bang. No you don’t want to go that far back.

Damian: That’s pretty early. It’s 14 billion years ago.

Stephen: Let’s go back to the beginning of your business. In the beginning you don’t have a customer. You have to prospect and bring in more customers whether you’re in new or whatever. I mean the thing is this, we all know and we talked about one time buyer  problem in the past. People leave.

The goal is bringing down the one time buyer, or the trialers if you will, but people do leave. That means acquisition and retention are continuous effort by the marketers. If you say you do just one thing. Well guess what? You’re going to go out of business.

Imagine a big barrel, which has a hole and the hole is people that are leaving your business and on top of a barrel you pour water in and that is acquisition but you’re pouring wat...

Does Your Purchase History Tell Companies All They Need to Know About You?

I’m going to give you superpowers so that you become rich by predicting what people are going to do next. I’ll give you two choices and you can only pick one

First choice: I’m going to give you the superpower that whatever the person sees on the website or store you can see everything. In other words, it’s like walking into the store in a mall and you’re going to install the camera on their shoulders and you could see everything what they see.

The second choice would be I’m going to just give you her past purchase history. Which one would one you pick?

The answer is number #2.

Find out why in Episode 23 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 23 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript:

Damian: We’re going to have a discussion with about what does what you buy say about who you are from the marketing perspective. So how much can we learn about somebody based off literally the products that they purchased?

Stephen: Well the first thing that you have to do is to convert such product description into the descriptors of buyers and you may say that “Oh that’s crazy it’s the same thing”. No it’s not.

Damian: Give me some examples.

Stephen: A very simple example, and by the way, this is stemming from…let set up a little bit of why we value this. It’s not the product data that they we’re interested in.

What we’re looking for is a product purchase data because if nobody bought it, who cares? We only look at the things that people bought. So premise number 1: we’re not doing this for better taxonomy, for inventory management system. The premise of this discussion is that we’re doing this to sell more things to people by finding the right propensity and affinity of products by the people.

Example: We have a product, let’s make it a supermarket item as an example. You have food labels on every food item right? So for inventory management you only look at it as okay that’s sugar whereas this cookie is gluten free or peanut oil free or fat free. Or it could be organic. Well that’s another way to throw it in there. So we look at that as a description as a product but if you flip it to “Oh she’s only buying organic food” that tells you something. Right? She’s only buying sugar free or what they call “diet items”. Maybe she’s into weight loss. I don’t know. I don’t want to offend her by saying it explicitly but I can gently nudge some products like that if I make an offer of something. Just by looking at the same thing in a different angle okay? So instead of just looking at the food label you start describing buyers of such products. I’ll pick another example: baking soda & baking powder.

Well how many use of those can you think of?

Damian: First I was confused and then I started thinking about it.

Stephen: Well you could use it to bake things right? That means that person who bought it is a baker right? But then a housewife could be using it because their refrigerator stinks. I would put an open box of baking soda in there and then what is she? She’s not a baker yet. Or you could be using it to brush your teeth for personal hygiene.

Damian: You can use that to clean too.

Stephen: So the same item can be used in multiple ways. And if you understand the purpose of it or the context of it then you can describe the person’s attitude better. So I’ll give you another example. Awhile back we were helping out all kinds of different merchants by putt...

The Best Type of Customer Data

* Purchase behavior is king. It is the simplest form of behavior but it is the most powerful i.e:

* What they bought.

* How much they paid for it?

* When did it happen?

* Through what channel?

* Was it in store or online?

* The best kind of data all depends on what you are trying to predict. But in general past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

* Income is a very popular type of data but it is a dangerous one. For example \”One may spend everything they have and then borrow some. Someone else may hoard it in the bank, and then a third person may donate it all to charity. There couldn’t be three more different people.\”

* Attitudinal data is the hardest data to get but is incredibly powerful.

* Different data becomes more important in different parts of the Customer Journey or the Buyer Lifecycle.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 22 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript:

Damian: Today  we’re going to be talking about Data, particularly, ‘what is the best type of data’. In the age of Google and Facebook where everybody is trying to sell their data as the absolute best data that you could buy, there seems to be this premise that there is a best type of data. So I would ask what do you think is the best type of data out there?

Stephen: That’s an interesting question because there’s no such thing as the best type of data because it depends on what kind of problem you’re trying to solve. I say this all the time that when you get into data and analytics planning, you’ve got to define the goal first. You have to ask yourself, ‘what are you trying to solve here?’ ‘What is your problem statement? Is it about acquiring customers, expanding your footprint, or acquiring best customers or best potential customers? Well, it could be that I already have these guys. So how do I milk more money out of them? How do I sell more? How do I convert one timers to two timers? How do I cross-sell or upsell? If they try to leave, how do I hold them back?

In each stage of the customer’s journey, you will yield different data, like little bread crumbs. When you try to face those different problems throughout the customer journey, it calls for different kind of data. So, for me to say that, ‘Yeah, this is the most powerful data,’ it really depends on when you need it and for what purpose. In all my career, for example, the most useful data for when trying to predict what the person’s next move will be, is to look at their past behavior, but of course people change.

Related Thought Leadership Content* * * * *

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Implementing Personalization

*  Everybody likes to feel special and if you feel special, if you think that a message is carved out for you, without even knowing it, you’ll have more of a chance for that recipient to open an email and look at it because they think, “Hmm this is interesting. It’s really about me.”

* Another definition of personalization is that acting upon the things that you learned about somebody.  Reacting to the little bit of information that you collected and just harping on it, well people call that personalization and it is actually.

*  The ultimate personalization is personalizing for everybody, every chance, through every channel.

* Don’t just use data just to react to certain things that you know. You’ve got to learn how to bring out the potential of that.

* Marketers need to think about what the limits are of personalization and have some conscious decisions to make in terms of what would you want to do with it to avoid getting creepy or to personal.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 21 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript:

Damian: In today’s episode I’m going to get personal with Stephen. It’s funny because while Stephen and I both like puns, we’re going to be talking about personalization and what it means to you. So what does personalization mean to you?

Stephen: Well I know what it means to me. It’s very simple, I’m dealing with this merchant xyz and I’ve been dealing with him for a long time and if they know about me and actually analyze me…not about my whole personal life…I mean if they start asking me “how old is your daughter?” or creepy questions, I’ll turn that off.

But I really believe that as a buyer of services or products they really understand what my passion is. For example, say you go to the deli in the morning every day. If the barista knows how you take your coffee it’s easier for her. It’s easier for me. So you save time on both ends and I get the service that I normally want to get without saying much. If you do that for millions of people at the same time using the power of machine and modeling and all the other things and that’s personalization to me. Well, that’s one way to say it.

Damian: You tell stories that always remind me of stories. So there actually is a deli that I used to get breakfast from every single morning and they got so good at knowing who I was that I didn’t have to say anything. They would just make my sandwich. But it went to the point where at some point I decided “I think I want to do this keto diet thing” but they anticipated what I wanted so they just made me a bagel every time. It was almost like, you guys are too good right now and they make me think that there may be some situations where anticipating personalization can backfire.

Stephen: Yes. If you imagine that you don’t have any human interaction and you know that the machine is doing it, sometimes you don’t want to be too good because it becomes creepy. You have to draw the line. But let’s talk about the most rudimentary form of personalization and then start from the bottom. Instead of starting with the most elaborate kind and dialing it back. I’ll get to both ways.

So this is a question that I ask when I talk about personalization. I have been speaking about this in conferences for a number of years already because I thought that the natural next step of a big data movement is about personalization. What are you going to do with all this data? The premise is very simple. Everybody likes to be special and if you feel special,

How to Identify a Data Poser

*

* Be on the look out for people who over-use Buzzwords. They use them because they are an inch deep and are flashy. Always ask those people to prove the value of those buzzwords.

* A specific buzzword, especially today, is A.I. (Artificial Intelligence). Posers love to throw that word around for pretty much anything related to intelligence or automated scoring. They use it because it sells but they don’t really know what it means

* Identifying a Non-Poser is easy because Non-Poser’s, or Data Players, are goal-oriented people.  They look at what the problem is, set the problem statement, gather data, and then see if they have enough data to solve the problem in the first place.

* Posers on the other hand just want to sell whatever they can and make as much as they can off that sale. As stated before they like to use buzzwords and when challenged on those buzzwords they most likely can not defend the implementation of high priced systems like large CRMs.

* Posers do not care about your challenges. They set unrealistic expectations and do not go into detail as to how their solution solves your problems.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 20 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript

Damian: Today we’re going to talk about exposing the fakes and the posers in the world of data.

Stephen: There are a lot of posers in this industry. The easiest way to identify a poser is buzzwords, posers love them and use them a lot. They’re all an inch deep.

Damian: Give me a buzzword. What are we talking like synergy.

Stephen: I’m talking like data industry type buzzwords. Big Data was a big one. Still big in certain circles.

Damian: So, if somebody uses that it’s a yellow flag.

Stephen: Yeah always ask the question, “Well great how are we going to make money using Big Data?” Another big one is A.I. these days. Anything and everything related to any algorithmic thing, even when it is not algorithmic, people still call it A.I.

Damian: Why is that?

Stephen: Because it sells.

Damian: It sells, ok. Well what is A.I., and it can be a definition for you no need to give us a Webster’s definition.

Stephen: So artificial intelligence. Well they think about things for you. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. To me it is about automation really. In other words, you do certain things again and again and you go like I don’t want to make any decisions, so I let it go. The machine will pick it up and do things if is wrong it will learn all by itself and then it gets better.

Damian: Right. I mean we kind of mock some of the A.I. things that we see people doing. I know I do anyway, because when you look at it you can see that it is just conditional logic, not A.I. Sometimes it is just an Excel lookup table.

Stephen: Posers call just about anything related to intelligence or automated scoring, A.I. The best thing was when big data was really big like 3-4 years ago. Before Big Data became a term I had to explain what I did for a living. I use to say, “So yeah, we analyze the data, we summarize the data ,we clean the data, we get intelligence out of it, it will give you some action and then you do things and you measure it and you make it better as we go along.”

Now that’s a long-winded way to say the same thing. But instead all I had to say was, “I’m in the big data space” and I realized that it worked with my uncle with my own mother. It worked with a lot of people. So why not.

Damian: I found out a couple of months ago that for years my dad has been saying that I work a...

The 4 Types of Data Analytics:

* Business Intelligence Reporting (B.I) – The most common type of analytics, also known as data mining, and it is really all about understanding your environment. A few examples are: “I blasted this e-mail and this campaign is going well.” “I have a very small bounce rate, or delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate.” These metrics are normally displayed on dashboards not to dis-similar from your car. These metrics give you an idea of your marketing’s performance.

* Descriptive Analytics – Descriptive analytics are about describing who your customers are with real data. For example, “What is the median income? What kind of neighborhood is this? Or, what is their income level? What kind of car do they drive?” With descriptive analytics businesses understand who they are dealing with in their database. A perfect example of descriptive analytics are clusters, a “cluster” is a group of people who have similar attributes (they look-alike).

* Predictive Analytics – Predictive analytics, the word itself, is about the future: who are more likely to do something? But in the age of big data, it’s not just about future prediction. It also fills in the gap of incomplete data.

* Optimization Analytics – Optimization Analytics are about finding what combination of marketing efforts will yield the most revenue or profit. This is a multi-channel, omni-channel world. You have a limited marketing budget. How should you spend your money? That’s optimization.

Below is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 19 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.

Transcript:

Damian: We touched on this a little bit in our previous episode, but we felt: hey, let’s go deeper. And today we’re going to talk about the four main types of analytics and high level. They are: BI reporting, descriptive analytics, predictive analytics, optimization analytics. And by the end of this episode, you’ll have an understanding of what each is; an example, so you kind of relate to it; and then we’ll talk a little bit about solution-ing, as you call it, what to do.

Stephen: Exactly. Solution-ing is nothing but understanding what situation you are in and deciding what to do. But to do that, you have to know what each of these types of analytics do for you and what this is for, and…it’s like doctors knowing what treatment does to a patient. You’ve got to know what it is, actually. Even as a patient, you have to know what those treatments are. I’m not asking you to treat yourself. You’ve got to know what those things are.

Damian: So the first one: BI reporting—business intelligence reporting.

Stephen: So that’s the most common type, by the way. A lot of folks who say, “Oh, I’m in the world of analytics.” Data mining is really all about understanding your environment, what is going on in the world. And the easiest example that I can give you is that when you drive a car, you have to look at your dashboard. How much gas do I have left? How fast am I going? If I drive at this rate, how far can I go? And will I reach the next gas station? So ‘how long was I in the car?’ and all that kind of stuff. So that’s like what’s going on. So, in the marketing world, if you translate all this to the term that we always use, it’s like: Yeah, I blasted this e-mail and this campaign is going well. I have a very small bounce rate, or delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate. Or: how much money did I make on each click?

Marketing Analytics Problems (Solved)The main reason companies give up on analytics is because they do not get the proper results out of all their hard workSometimes analytics initiatives fail because they are defined wrong, because you didn’t ask the right business questions first.Asking the right questions also helps to avoid death by KPI. Too many KPI’s cause businesses to be indecisive on what to measure and what actually impacts their businessThere needs to be a culture shift, from the top down, to commit to analytics and think of the future not the past when making decissions and investmentsWhat follows is a lightly edited transcript of Episode 18 of the Inevitable Success Podcast.Transcript:Damian Alright, so today we thought we would touch a topic that is very near and dear to both of our hearts, and it is, “Why is it that some businesses struggle to commit to using analytics in their marketing?”Stephen There are many reasons. Um, the number one reason, that comes to my mind, is that well, one is that they don’t get the proper result out of all these analytical endeavors, if you will. So they have this notion that, yea, this thing is complex…it’s expensive. It takes a long time, and you know, “I talk to analysts and they are talking about things that I don’t understand, so I just automatically hate it.” Another thing is that a lot of successful companies, they think that they have been successful without analytics, so to introduce this new element, it’s bit of a cultural war. Like your gut feeling versus actual numbers. It’s a bit of a training on the non analytical people as well, meaning, you cannot just hire a bunch of analysts and say “Hey, you’re an analytical company!” You have to have a culture of consuming such analytics, without that, it fails. There’s no question about that. Damian So, you know, when we say the word, you know, “use analytics,” what does that actually end up meaning? Stephen You know, I think of it in one way, you may think of it another way. I think we’re probably thinking about it more similarly. When I think of it, it is, you know, informed decision making, but maybe there’s a few different angles that might mean different things to different people.I look at it from the timeline point of view. And that scares people to say, “Oh we’re talking about predictive analytics.” Yes I am, but it’s not the scary thing. Most interesting notion is what they call prescriptive analytics.Damian That’s interesting. What is that anyway?Stephen It’s totally bogus. It’s just that you know some people, who are probably some stat geeks, made up this chart, and it’s a pyramid chart. At the bottom, they have business analytics and reporting. Ok, fine, it seems relatively simple, but is it that simple? I don’t think so. Number two is a descriptive analytics.Damian It’s like a food pyramid for…? Stephen Yea, it’s kind of like a pyramid….Exactly. At the bottom you have a BI and…Damian Got it. So we have an analytics pyramid scheme. Stephen Second tier, is what they call descriptive analytics. That’s where segmentation, profiling, clustering…those wonderful things fit in. In other words, I know what’s going on. The BI reporting will tell you… that yeah, “What is the best time to blast e-mail? Thursday morning is the best time.” Or “What are the things that are happening right now? What is going on right now?” So I blast this e-mail. There’s a clickstream open…All those wonderful things. That’s BI. Now descriptive analytics is, “Who’s behind all these actions? What do they look like? How many groups of people, how many pockets of people, am I dealing with here?” For example, we just consulted another company yesterday,

So today we're going to talk a little bit about the one-time-buyer also known as lots of different names. The one-and-done customers that permeate almost every retailer's database. And you describe it as a major challenge to retailers.