2013 has emerged with a familiar ring: Growth! More customers! A better, faster, less expensive way to get to market, and now!  We’ve been working across all business sectors, in both the US and Canada with blue chip clients, startups and those looking to reinvent themselves and this has not changed.

The challenges are quickly stacking up against marketers.  First, the number of channels available to speak to consumers is growing exponentially and consumers have more choices with more digital, mobile, social and traditional touch points to interact with your brand.   These touch points create a double-edged sword for marketers – easier, customer-preferred communication channels, but more channels to monitor and collect data.

And what we have today is more data, a lot more data… commonly called BIG DATA.  Compounding the problem of increased data collection channels is customer identification.   Customers have multiple e-mail addresses, phone numbers (for a home phone, mobile phone, IP addresses and work phone), and unique handles for each of the major social media websites.  With customers allowing marketers more access to their personal information than ever before, communications with customers should be getting more targeted (hopefully effective) and yet I personally see at least 10 emails and 3 text messages per day of offers and communications that aren’t relevant at all… not really working!

For example, one restaurant brand emails me 3-5 times a week with offers (same offers each time) and yet I can’t remember the last time I went there!  Or how about a regional sports store that thinks I’m loyalty club member because the only way to get the discount coupon was to sign up?  I haven’t been back since, nor am I likely without communication that speaks to me directly about why I should return.

Finding a way to navigate more channels, more data collection, and more targeted communications to customers across channels is challenging.  There once was the promise of low cost technology, huge data warehouses and CRM technology and business practices that all pointed to consistent business growth for our brands.  More recently, cloud computing has emerged as the next great hope for BIG DATA: low cost, immediate communications with consumers, and reduced need for technology capital. You can be up and running in hours not months.  With the current economic environment, the march towards zero-cost solutions increases the pressure on marketers.  Do more with less.

It feels like we collect, we process, we compile, we filter, we design and execute campaigns, we have tons of meetings and in the end it’s all too often hit or miss on the results… if you even measure the impact.

Frankly, that’s why CAC Group was founded and has continued to work with clients; Our Mission is Your Customers. Today we help clients navigate BIG DATA to build highly intelligent connection points between their customers and brands. We know what data you need, what data you’re missing, how to find that data, how to connect and integrate the data, build out actionable segmentation with predictive models that work in all channels. So you can truly focus on Your Customers to win.

We’d love to hear from you, let us know what’s working for you!

While the year isn’t over yet, I’d say that 2012 is going in the history books. The overarching theme we’ve heard from our clients is “do more with less.” I’d like to report Mission Accomplished.  We did more with less, we worked smarter and helped our clients to achieve their business challenges. This brings us to three questions we have for you:

• Did you meet your new customer acquisition goal in 2012?
• Did you increase your share of wallet for your customer in 2012?
• Did you implement an actionable customer segmentation plan in 2012?

Successful companies say yes to these questions and are focused on doing even more in 2013. This is what we do all day long, helping our clients go from problem to solution … do more with less in as little as 30 days. Start the year with a real plan!

We have a publication that we call The Segmentology^® Report and for those of you not familiar with it or the term, I wanted to share what Segmentology^® is and the last two newsletters for your review.

Segmentology^® is the art and science of understanding your customers – in behavior, mind, and need – to deliver on the promise of customer intimacy.

Segmentology^® incorporates the best advancements in data collection and integration, from your data and ours, advanced analytics, marketing theory, and technology, to deliver profitable customer relationships through customer intimacy.

Here are the last two issues for your review:

Q4 2012

“Something significant has happened in marketing, data and analytics – something more important to marketers than the cloud, big data, or social media….” Continue reading the Q4 2012 issue of The Segmentology^® Report.

Q2 2012

“We are opening this issue with a focus on the customer. We are in the early- to mid-stages of what I believe are monumental shifts in the consumer mindset. Let’s actually start with the term itself. Consumer. Consumes. Buys things. Walking wallet. Well, maybe we should shift to the “person” for a minute, for whom “consuming” is but one aspect of our lives. What is changing in the mindset of people?…” Continue reading the Q2 2012 issue of The Segmentology^® Report.

Additionally, we invite you to connect with us on Linked in or visit our new website.

We’ve been thinking long and hard about how to best ensure that insights about our clients’ customers – their needs, propensities, attitudes, and buying styles – are best integrated into all possible consumer touch points.   See, we know that more relevant communications occur when insight is translated into a thoughtful communication strategy.  Talking to someone who is price-sensitive?  Focus on a savings message.  Convenience-minded?  Focus on a bundled all-in-one strategy.  Fashion sensitive?  How about a preview of the coming season’s styles or events?

The issue becomes one of data integration.  How can we utilize segmentation insights (our Silhouettes™ solution, for example) at the point of a consumer interaction?  There are many ways.  Web interactions (where I provide information or log in as a consumer), mobile, call centers, POS systems, direct mail, all have data passing back and forth.  This information can be used to identify a likely prospect or customer, by name, address, phone number, email, etc.  Once this happens, we can add insights – segments, model scores, etc. – to the conversation.

Imagine a consumer going to your website, asking for more information on a product (say, a brochure for a group travel experience, or an education program).  If, in real time (2 seconds?), we could identify that they are high priority, you could version the follow-up (upsell?  Promotion?), and also send the record to a call center for “priority” calling.    CAC Group’s realtime scoring does this.

Our POS solution utilizes information from tickets and payments to return information about the customer – their location, their segments, models scores, etc.  Retailers can tap into this with an unbelievable amount of accuracy.  This allows for tracking email campaigns, building customer contact strategies, and identifying “best” customers without the need of a loyalty program.  CustomerConnect, again, gets insights into the hands of the marketer, and closer to the point of contact with the consumer.

There’s always a need for better insights, but tapping into those insights in real time, and showing economic value due to heightened relevance of interactions and communications, now there’s a marketer’s dream come true.

Want to learn more? Call us at 847-805-9800 or visit us at Booth #30 at the CRMC conference!