TARGUSinfo Interactive Insights

Love it or hate it, we learned early on that doing your homework makes a difference.  So now that you your mind is made up and you are committing resources to leverage predictive analytics– what’s next?

You’ve gained acceptance from the top (see, “The First Step is Always Acceptance”) and your leadership has bought on to the idea that analytics is going to be the foundation of your future strategies. Your next step must be to gain a better understanding of  how your peers are using analytics. 

How is your industry using analytics?  Have they already started segmenting their customers?  What types of results have they seen?  Which partners are they choosing if any, to help achieve their goals?

During our recent Scoring Summit, I heard countless applications of real-time preditictive analytics.  For example, Clearwire leverages a data-driven customer acquisition strategy that offers a clear direction for others to follow.

A research-based strategy can help you better understand and evaluate the additional steps that will be necessary to achieve your analytical-based goals. 

When you achieved company buy-in, hopefully you established whether or not you have the right personnel, IT infrastructure and any other necessary tools in place.  Deciding the necessity of those tools will lead you down the path to acquiring the right software, people or both.

The best part of the research process will be training your personnel’s collective minds to start using the analytical sides of their brains.  Asking relevant questions, seeking answers, and implementing actions (wash, rinse, repeat) will enhance your internal analytical processes.

If the project you are researching has anything to do with customer scoring, segmentation or platform-based analytics stay tuned to my updates about how our customers are leveraging real-time analytics to enhance their customer’s experience and bottom-line.

Deryck

@DeryckDC

What if?  What if a strategic initiative for your company is to better “qualify,” “value,” or “score” someone over the phone, on the web, or in a specific market?  

Our clients span across many industries and could each outline specific steps that were imperative in the success of creating, utilizing, and maintaining scoring models.  The most important step that each organization had to take however is one that should never be overlooked by any organization.

The first step on the road to “scoring” should always be an underlying agreement by the decision makers of your organization that the key to future growth and earnings is to enhance your analytical practices.

Once the leaders of your organization buy-in to the idea that analytical solutions should be embraced and used to drive customer acquisitions, then it is just a matter of allocating the correct resources to accomplish future projects.

A recent article from Marketing Profs painted a beautiful picture of performing a lead scoring project “in-house,” with sales, marketing, and other teams working seamlessly together to develop a real-time model that will allow sales reps to instantly qualify future leads.

However, a company can lose considerable amounts of time, energy, bandwidth, and (most importantly) money to perform the necessary research and analysis that are required to develop a successful, real-time scoring model especially if somewhere along the course of implementing the project other fires need to be put out or it is simply placed on a backburner.

I believe that with practice, understanding, and drive companies do have the ability to develop models in-house; but why go down the road alone?

This would be similar to developing and implementing a strategic long-term plan for your retirement without asking the advice of someone who has had experience in such planning.  Your organization should be having many conversations with experienced players that are equipped to answer the many questions that can come out of the discovery phase.

As in many business practices, this first step of acceptance and “buy in” is by far the most important.  If a scoring project is an “interesting” idea that could have long-term financial benefits, why not talk to experienced leaders in the industry that can relay appropriate expectations about the time, data, and bandwidth necessary for analytical projects?

Once your organization has taken the crucial first step to believe and agree that analytical projects are an important foundation for long-term growth, the chances that a project like “real-time scoring” will succeed are exponentially greater.

-Deryck B
@DeryckDC

I recently posted a link to an announcement that was made by DePaul University out of Chicago. The nation’s first Predictive Analytics Master of Science program is a testament to the momentum of analytics in our society and will undoubtedly be followed by similar programs from other esteemed universities.

Reading some of the comments at the end of the article, however, made me realize the stigma that can oftentimes be associated with terms that are used on a daily basis at TARGUSinfo.

Contrary to popular belief, “Predictive Analytics,” “Lead Scoring,” and/or “Customer Segmentation” are NOT solely used by huge Fortune 500 companies or institutions that generate and buy hundreds of thousands of leads a month.

Don’t get me wrong, custom scoring algorithms are proving to be powerful tools for larger companies who want to better understand who their best customers are, eliminate churn, and determine cross-sell/up-sell strategies. It’s important to understand, however, that smaller organizations can make use of the data that they regularly see as well.

Whether it is an “off-the-shelf” type of scoring model or simply coming up with a more efficient way to collect customer data, there seems to be no excuse in today’s day and age not to use analytical strategies when making the decisions about how to interact with your customers.

So here’s to the next generation of analytical minds coming out of DePaul University (and others). More importantly, here’s to your organization for taking the necessary steps to transition from making “gut” decisions, to those that are powered by the readily available data provided on a daily basis by your customers.

If you (or anyone in your organization) have any questions about how big or small organizations can benefit from “Predictive Analytics,” “Lead Scoring,” and/or “Customer Analytics,” I would be more than happy to help get you answers.

Deryck
@DeryckDC