Date: 3 July 2012

Venue: Hotel Fort Canning

SponSoreD by:

More than 90 marketing professionals gathered at Hotel Fort Canning on 3 July for the topic “Harnessing the power of analytics: What leaders need to know about optimal marketing performance” – a half-day seminar dedicated to discussing customer-focused business strategies using customer intelligence and an integrated marketing management framework. Experts from OgilvyOne, Intelligence Delivered and SAS were on stage to share and reflect on issues pertaining to strategy formulation and execution of analytics to understand and enhance customer experience.

William Adeney, data and analytics consulting practice lead, OgilvyOne Topic: Harnessing the power of analytics …math marketingWilliam Adeney began his presentation with a brief introduction of the history of advertising, and the struggle it has always had with measurability. Citing renowned advertising pioneer Claude Hopkins in 1923 – “the time has come when advertising has in some hands reached a status of science. We know what is most effective, and we act on basic laws” – Adeney reminded the audience that the

quest to make marketing more measurable and accountable was not a new one, and was still undergoing constant refinement.

Taking the audience through different eras up to the digital age, Adeney expounded on deriving actionable insights from data to make better marketing decisions today. “Everywhere I go (geographically), I leave imprints,” Adeney said, illustrating the power of simple data. When it comes to such data, Adeney asked the five fundamental questions in setting business objectives – who are your best customers; how can you find prospects; what drives profitability; what makes customers and prospects engage; and how should you communicate with them?

By addressing these issues, Adeney said marketers were better positioned to determine corporate objectives and achieve business goals by applying metrics to everything they did.

Describing metrics as “fundamental pinnacles to achieve,” Adeney pointed out they needed to be aligned with corporate objectives. He said one method for this was by measuring and analysing data carefully before optimising it via a mix of key metrics. Adeney referred to this method as math

marketing. This method was further enhanced by employing statistical modelling and building a marketing dashboard. On metrics, he stressed companies needed to identify changes in their engagement strategy to improve KPIs. In return, KPIs should align with the brand’s business objectives. “We should perfect how we treat customers each day,” Adeney said, directing the audience to move beyond a single customer view by adopting what he called the three-step digestive insight – prioritisation, personalisation and precision.

In conclusion, Adeney wrapped up by

What leaders need to know about the tools for optimising marketing performance. Marketing reveals all in its latest Insight discussion.

The Power of AnAlyTics

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If you weren’t there,here’S what you MISSeD

“Start thinking about integrating social data, and capture it.”

william adeney

“What looks like sales in year one may not be applicable for year two – you’ve got to know who your best customers are.”

Graham flower

“Every marketer needs to show what he/she is delivering for the business. Don’t just gather data and listen to customers, but act on the feedback as close to real time as possible.”

Dermot McCutcheon

highlighting that organisations need to determine their talent needs, form a centre of excellence and forge external partnerships, all with the aim of allowing analytics to help maximise the customer experience.

Graham Flower, managing director, Intelligence DeliveredTopic: In search of relevance – adapting your business to sense and respondGraham Flower opened with a challenging question – are today’s businesses relevant? By studying the drastic decline of the US credit card industry’s direct mail response rate, Flower emphasised his point, “as Albert Einstein puts it: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

As the purpose of a marketing function is to help customers buy, organisations have to first understand the behaviour of their target audience. The issue lies in the broad gap between customers’ preferred purchase methodology and the available channels. Put simply – “how customers want to buy” and “how customers are able to buy” are not moving hand-in-hand.

And when such expectations are not met, customers lose confidence.

“If your customers can trust you, their value increases,” Flower said, as he illustrated the power of customer trust using a case study graph, which depicted high efficiency in acquisition, retention, the growth of lifetime value and referral increment.

“Metrics do not align to the measurement of value,” Flower said, adding to Adeney’s previous points regarding metrics and their objectivity. The challenge remains in understanding the new world is not about selling the most. On the contrary, it is recognising where sustainable value is created. Brands have to consider the risk, current customer value and future customer value.

Moving in-depth, Flower focused on building propositions that meet needs along with value, and subsequently shifted to the thematic line of “Insight-driven anticipation”. According to Flower,

brands must rely on their customers’ behavioural data and attitudinal data. With customer insights and analysis at hand, this raw data is then converted to fitting propositions.

Lastly, Flower highlighted the power of real-time personalisation by using the example of Netflix, an American provider of on-demand internet-streaming media. “You log on to Netflix, they get you to rate some films, and from there they recommend films you would actually want to see. They’ve got a refined knowledge about you through this simple data,” said Flower, attributing Netflix’s success to its personalised service.

“Your best customers are becoming self-directed.”

Dermot McCutcheon, head of customer intelligence, centre of excellence, Southeast Asia, SASTopic: From insight to performance – the case for predictive analyticsBecause a marketer’s mandate correlates with the customers’ expectation, there is an undeniable shift in delivering customer experience both inside and outside marketing. To trail the ongoing trends closely, Dermot McCutcheon focused on turning data into knowledge, and ultimately enhancing business performance. Which retail products are customers most likely to add to their basket? How do banks maximise their customer value across all channels? Have public sectors considered which community services should they employ in the coming years? Taking these questions head-on, the answers are hidden in the data that can be

unlocked by analytics, therefore enabling decisions to be made quickly about the next best action.

Sources have illustrated real-time interaction yields an optimal 40% successful response rate.

Real-time interaction, as defined by McCutcheon, is customer-initiated and relationship-driven. When it comes to such a social approach, he calls for a defensive social position.

“Even the best plans may crash and burn,” said McCutcheon as he gave a case study of a failed social media campaign. Despite the high success rate of social marketing strategies, organisations have to know how they measure social engagement, which is often depicted in the number of online user endorsements.

“You may know how many people ‘like’ your Facebook page, but how many are paying any attention to what was being posted?” McCutcheon asked. “Brands have to know that the impact of social media is reverberating across enterprises.”

The key to optimising social media conversations and sentiment is to ensure integration with all other customer data available – by strongly relying on data mining to help businesses sift through large volumes, variety and velocity of growing data to gain value.

Summing up, McCutcheon reiterated a marketer’s unique mandate by understanding the system’s infrastructure that supports business processes. Driving home his subject of turning insights into performance, he showcased sample sets of formulated recommendations, thus giving brands ammunition to enhance the efficiency of their current marketing processes.

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