Data – 🔴 Red Button Data

Jul 25 2023

Data Tools and Data Products for Customer MDM

A comprehensive customer master data management strategy and approach to good customer data governance are essential for any organization that wants to effectively manage and leverage its consumer data.

This is particularly important for sales, marketing, and service departments that interact directly with consumer customers.

A Customer Master Data Management (CMDM) solution helps manage and maintain a single, consistent view of customer data across the organization. This can include capabilities such as hierarchy management, data modeling, and governance.

But, the Chief Data Officer (CDO) has many product choices to consider as part of the customer data management strategy apart from a Customer Master Data Management solution. Here are a few to consider:

Data Quality Tools help ensure that customer data is accurate, complete, and consistent. They can be used to validate, standardize and cleanse data, as well as to identify and resolve any data quality issues.

Customer data often contains errors, duplicates, and inconsistencies. Data cleansing tools help identify and correct these issues, ensuring data accuracy and reliability. Deduplication tools enable the identification and merging of duplicate customer records, eliminating redundancy and improving data quality.

The Pretectum CMDM also provides some lightweight data quality capabilities including deduplication at the time of data loading and during customer data lifecycle management.

Data Integration Tools help integrate customer data from various sources into a single, unified view. This can include data from internal systems such as CRM and ERP systems, as well as external sources such as social media and third-party data providers.

Integration tooling can assist in the key areas of customer data integration; if you need to combine data from different sources into a unified format and structure. Data integration can also aid data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL), ensuring that it is harmonized and consistent across systems.

The Pretectum CMDM provides you with various integration options that facilitate integration between systems, particularly if you choose to use the Pretectum CMDM as the data hub.

Data enrichment tools allow you to enhance customer profiles by appending additional information from external sources. This can include demographic data, social media data, purchasing behavior data, and more. Data enrichment enables a deeper understanding of customers and supports personalized interactions.

Data Governance Tools help establish and enforce policies and procedures for managing customer data. This can include capabilities such as access control, audit trails, and data lineage.

Data governance frameworks provide guidelines, policies, and processes for managing customer data. They suggest approaches to compliance with data privacy regulations, established data ownership, defined data access controls, and managed data lifecycle. Data governance tools enable the enforcement of data policies, monitoring of data usage, and tracking of data lineage.

Data Stewardship means rethinking your organization structures and often taking the bold step of selecting and assigning data stewards; stakeholders who are responsible for overseeing the quality, integrity, and governance of customer data is an important step towards better customer data management.

Stewards should establish data standards, enforce data policies, and drive data-related initiatives across the organization. Implementing robust data security measures, including encryption, access controls, and monitoring, to protect customer data from unauthorized access, breaches, or theft along the way.

Configuring solutions like the Pretectum CMDM is an essential part of this process.

Data Privacy and Compliance policies protect customer data and ensure compliance with relevant regulations, such as GDPR or CCPA. Establishing policies and procedures for data handling, access control, and consent management can be reinforced through specific tools and the Precetum CMDM can be leveraged to augment or support such policies.

Depending on how you implement the Pretectum CMDM, the sophisticated Role Based Access Controls allow you to control access, provide audit trails, and also support data lineage views of sources and targets.

Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) Tools: These tools help analyze customer data to gain insights and make informed decisions. This can include capabilities such as reporting, dashboards, and predictive analytics.

Customer analytics tools, in particular, leverage advanced analytics techniques, such as machine learning and predictive modeling, to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and patterns. These tools enable segmentation, trend identification, and data-driven decision-making, empowering sales, marketing, and service teams to deliver personalized experiences and targeted campaigns.

Pretectum’s CMDM provides some lightweight reporting capabilities but also supports your ability to access your Customer Master Data repository in controlled ways for using your own reporting tools.

It’s important to note that a successful customer master data management strategy involves not only the right tools and products but also the right processes, people, and culture. A strong focus on data governance, collaboration between departments, and a commitment to continuous improvement are all essential for achieving success.

To effectively manage customer data from these diverse sources, you need to leverage the most appropriate data tools, policies, procedures, frameworks, methods, and products; Pretectum think that a CMDM is one of those data tools.

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Jul 18 2023

The Crucial Role of Regular Password Changes in Securing Online Systems

In the digital age, where technology permeates almost every aspect of our lives, the protection of our online systems and sensitive data has become paramount. Passwords are the first line of defense against unauthorized access and cyber threats. Unfortunately, many users still underestimate the significance of regular password changes, often opting for convenience over security.

The threat landscape in the cybersecurity realm is continuously evolving, with hackers employing sophisticated techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in online systems. Cybercriminals often utilize brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, and credential stuffing to gain unauthorized access to accounts. Regular password changes are crucial to staying ahead of these threats and reducing the window of opportunity for attackers to compromise accounts.

Data breaches have become distressingly common, exposing millions of user credentials to cybercriminals. One of the main reasons behind these breaches is the reuse of passwords across multiple accounts. Regularly changing passwords minimizes the impact of a data breach, as even if one account is compromised, the attacker will have limited access and time to exploit other accounts associated with the same password.

For individuals, regular password changes play a pivotal role in safeguarding personal accounts. Online banking, social media profiles, email accounts, and e-commerce platforms contain a wealth of sensitive information. Regularly updating passwords ensures that even if someone gains unauthorized access to an account, their window of opportunity to misuse that information is limited.

In a corporate setting, password security is of utmost importance to protect sensitive business data and maintain employee productivity. Regular password changes are a fundamental aspect of any robust cybersecurity policy. They act as a safety net against insider threats, disgruntled employees, or unauthorized personnel attempting to infiltrate the organization’s systems.

In various industries, businesses are bound by strict compliance regulations and legal requirements related to data protection. Regular password changes are often mandated by these regulations to maintain a certain level of security and reduce the risk of data breaches. Non-compliance can result in severe penalties and reputational damage.

Multifactor authentication (MFA) is an additional layer of security that supplements passwords by requiring users to provide multiple forms of identification. While MFA significantly strengthens security, passwords remain an integral part of the authentication process. Regular password changes complement MFA by ensuring that the primary authentication method remains up-to-date and secure.

By encouraging regular password changes, organizations can foster a culture of cybersecurity awareness among employees. It prompts individuals to think about their password choices, encouraging the use of strong, unique passwords for each account. This heightened awareness can also extend to personal online habits, benefiting users beyond their workplace.

In scenarios where users inadvertently share their passwords or forget to log out of accounts on shared devices, regular password changes act as a safety mechanism. If unauthorized individuals gain access to a password, it becomes obsolete after a short period, reducing the potential damage caused by unauthorized access.

Sometimes, users may not be aware that their accounts have been compromised until it’s too late. Regular password changes can serve as an early warning system, as sudden login attempts or suspicious activities on an account can indicate potential unauthorized access. This prompts users to take immediate action and report any suspicious behavior.

In organizations that prioritize regular password changes, employees are more likely to adopt other security best practices. A security-first culture fosters an environment where individuals actively seek to protect the organization and its data, making the entire system more resilient to cyber threats.

Regular password changes are an indispensable element of a robust cybersecurity strategy for both individuals and organizations.

By staying ahead of the ever-evolving threat landscape, preventing data breaches, enhancing workplace security, and fostering cybersecurity awareness, the simple act of updating passwords plays a significant role in protecting sensitive information and maintaining online safety.

As technology continues to advance, prioritizing the importance of regular password changes remains a fundamental pillar in our ongoing battle against cyber threats.

Uli LOKSHIN 0 Comments

Jun 22 2022

Customer types, patterns, and segments

Whether you’re in Product or Service management, Sales, or Marketing you know that having an understanding of the customer, analyzing, and keeping track of their behaviour is critical for the effectiveness of your business.

Customers make thousands of calculated and spur-of-the-moment decisions every waking hour of the day from deciding what they will eat to what they’ll wear. It is easy to think that the many ‘buy’ decisions, in particular, are made without too much thought, particularly the less significant ones.

Decoding the thought processes behind customer decisions is no mean feat, particularly if you don’t have the data to back up your hypotheses around why customers do certain things.

We try to decode the thinking because ultimately it can help us understand how customers arrive at their decisions and choices. In the study of customer behaviours, in particular, you’re looking at the processes customers apply to choose, use and dispose of your products and services and this includes factoring in their emotional, mental, and behavioural responses. Behaviour analytics examines the customer through the analytical lenses of psychology, biology, chemistry, and economic practices. For marketers, these analyses help in understanding what influences the acquire, buy and discard decisions. This in turn leads to a rehoning of the message, branding, positioning, promotions, advertising, and even what is ultimately formulated as a product or service.

Only through an in-depth understanding of the customer can businesses hope how best to decide on products and service offerings and how adequately they fill gaps in the market and are needed and wanted.

Revealing the customer

There are three categories of factors that are considered an influence customer behaviour:

Personal: the customer’s interests and opinions as influenced by their age, gender, ethnicity, and culture.
Psychological: the customer’s reaction to particular kinds of messaging, which is dependent on their personal perceptions, attitudes, and mentality.
Social: factors such as family, friends, education level, social media, income, and socioeconomic status all have an influence on customer behaviour.

In addition, there are four principal types of “buy” behaviour outcomes amongst customers; complex, dissonance-reducing, habitual, and variety or variability buy behaviours.

Complex buying behaviour is typically associated with infrequent big-ticket product or service purchases. Such buy activities are complex in that the customers of engaging in a great deal of research before committing to the investment. Examples are purchases of high-end luxury goods, houses, cars, and holidays.

Dissonance-reducing buy behaviour sees the customer encountering difficulties in determining the differences between specific products or brands. This ‘Dissonance’ often occurs when the customer fears making a bad choice. Clothing purchases may manifest this but equally, this can be present when buying appliances or electronic goods. Habitual buying behaviour.

Habitual purchases typically involve very little preference, bias, or influence in the product or brand category because the risk is relatively low and there is no major emotional or cognitive investment. While grocery brands will often suggest that this implies brand loyalty, the reality is that in many cases the customer chooses based on past positive experiences which may be tied to price, look, feel, scent, taste, or overall experience. The repeat purchases are habitual rather than carefully thought through.

Variety and variability in purchase behaviour are typically directly associated with past frustration, disappointment, or a bad experience with a previous purchase decision.

The highly configurable Pretectum CMDM schema

Pretectum believes that for you to have the best effect in terms of influence on the subscription to your services or the purchase of your products, you need to have the best possible understanding of your customer through the customer master data repository. This can help to inform your business in relation to how to target customers, what their purchasing power is like, their likes and dislikes and who influences their decision-making processes.

The Pretectum CMDM enables you to decide the aspects that you need to maintain within the customer master, from an understanding of buying patterns to what they are buying, where, and when they buy, and how they pay.

Consider what you store about your customers today and consider what you could store with the Pretectum CMDM to help your business in getting closer to your customers and being able to more appropriately understand and provide them with the goods and services that they want.

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Jun 3 2022

Social Shopping and Social Commerce

Social shopping or S Commerce is a type of eCommerce that seeks to involve people with similar tastes in an online shopping experience. Sites like Pinterest claim to differentiate because on the one hand they offer the ability to pin items of interest but on the other hand they allow targeted marketing and click-through referral opportunities through image relationships. Arguably TikTok and Snapchat are also powerful channels for brands to launch their eCommerce campaigns. In fact, perhaps more than 50% of Snap’s business is in Direct Response advertising.

Many social shopping sites are similar in feel and design to social curation site Pinterest. E-commerce experts suggest this is not coincidental, that the approach is catering to a new generation of shoppers who enjoy and expect a “Facebook experience” where users like and share as part of their online life and are seen to do this.

Social shopping sites, like Kaboodle and ShopStyle, offer recommendations to members in the same way that you’ll see on Amazon Etsy and eBay.

The concept of Social Shopping makes presentations personal, by providing members with the ability to create personal boards, preferences and lists. For these sites, stickiness comes in the concept of community and the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with friends and peers. The goal is to build community by encouraging members to talk about products and preferences and make suggestions directly to their friends and social contacts as they might if they were shopping together in actual bricks and mortar stores.

Social commerce is that segment of eCommerce where sellers can actually sell and not just market their products directly through the social media platform, they can also browse goods catalogues and make those direct purchases.

Unlike the more limited, social media marketing, true social commerce gives the customer the option to perform a direct checkout and settlement.

Right now this is a $90Bn market, so what are the implications for customer data and your business?

Social commerce is a subset of eCommerce makes it easy to measure and evaluate the performance of your ad spend with the various platforms. The social media platforms have built-in eCommerce metrics for impressions, engagement and reach. you can see the number of clicks, the number of views and the level of engagement and perhaps even the response sentiment. All these capabilities come at a price which erodes your potential customer lifetime value. With the average consumer spending around $400 – $500 per annum on social commerce, there are the many costs that are loaded up by the platforms to consider, from the ad spend through the commerce fees and charge and pay commission.

In reality, social commerce is there for shoppers, not businesses. Since the entire process is focused on the particulars of the Social Media platform and if it includes checkout you lose website traffic and the opportunity to harvest some important customer characteristics.

Further, unless you build customer contacts from your shipping or Logistics Execution System (LES), it is questionable who owns the actual customer. The more social platforms take over the buying process, the more they take power away from your business. The less data you have the less personalised the experience you can offer both online and offline.

If those same platforms also sell the customer data they have to others, the further the cut into brand allegiance with shoppers potentially being redirected to competitors including the platform itself if it decides to branch out into retail.

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Mar 28 2022

What is a CMDM platform?

Answering the question of “what is a Customer MDM?”

Across the globe, in all industry segments, data drives business processes, and systems.

The overall organization, its employees, and its customers benefit when this data is shared and accessible across all business units. A unified single point of access for the same customer lists and data used to run the business. On the whole, business data users within the organization generally assume that the customer data that they have access to is consistent across the whole business until they identify anomalies.

The reality though, is that customer data evolves in a more organic and somewhat haphazard way than data management professionals would prefer. This is especially true in larger organizations. Mergers and business acquisitions, projects and initiatives, and other general business activities often result in multiple systems being created, that often perform a similar or exact same function but for a variety of reasons, these redundancies must coexist.

The result is that these conditions inevitably lead to inconsistencies in the overall data structures and the data values between the various systems. This variance leads to increased data management costs and organizational risks.

The general consensus is that both data management and organizational costs and risk can be reduced through the dual strategies of Master Data Management and Reference Data Management.

Master Data Management is about the management of data that relates to organizational entities. These organizational entities are objects like logical financial structures, assets, locations, products, customers, suppliers, and employees.

These same structures provide the necessary context for smoothing of business transactions and transactional and business activity analysis.

Within them, are entities, real-world persons, organizations, places, and things as virtual objects. These same entities are represented by entity instances. In digital forms, they are effectively digital entities but really they are data records. Master Data should represent the authoritative, most accurate data available about key business entities.

When managed well, Master Data entities are trustworthy and can be used by employees in partner engagement with confidence. Surrounding these entities, are business rules that dictate formats, allowable ranges, and characteristics that should be applied to appropriately frame the master data values held.

Common organizational master data may include data that relates to partners that are made up of private individuals, organizations, and their employees. That same data may describe their role, their relationships, and essential attributes that might be useful for engaging with them as an organization.

Typical people-based master data entities are objects like customer, citizen, patient, vendor, supplier, agent, business partner, competitor, employee, or student.

Seeking the truth

When multiple repositories of these entities exist, there are potentially different versions of ‘the truth’ and it becomes difficult to work out which one is correct and whether in fact, two or more entities are referring to the same thing.

In order to do so, one must have an understanding of the origins of the data. A defined System of Record (SoR) is often considered an authoritative system where that data is created/captured and maintained in a disciplined and controlled way.

The capture and maintenance are undertaken with defined rules and expected outcomes. Historically this would mean that the Point of Sale system is there to support selling activities, ERP to support make-to-sell or buy-to-sell, and CRM to support selling, service, and support of customers.

For any of these systems to be deemed trustworthy sources, they need to be generally recognized as holding “the best version of the truth” in relation to records they hold, based on automated and manual data curation. That trusted source is sometimes also referred to as a Single View. Within that system, the entities are often referred to as Golden Records.

Systems of Reference similarly, are authoritative systems where reliable data is held and maintained to support proper transaction processing and analysis. Those systems of reference may or may not originate their own data.

Historically, Master Data Management (MDM) applications, Data Sharing Hubs, and Data Warehouses have often served as systems of reference.

The challenge is that different systems have different purposes and often no single system describing the same entity, needs to be describing the exact same characteristics of that entity. The question then becomes, can any of these systems truly be “the single source of truth”?

Master data management efforts often pursue the consolidation of entities from the many sources that create and contain them and then formulate a composite record that may be incomplete and only a partially accurate representation of all the entities held. For different entity users that can mean that they have less faith in the “golden records” that the system presents. When this is the situation, the representation may switch from “Single Source” to “Trusted Source” suggesting that measures are in place to drive consistency, accuracy, and completeness in the entity records with minimal ambiguity and contentiousness.

Gartner defines Master Data Management as “a technology-enabled discipline in which business and IT work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency, and accountability of the enterprise’s official shared Master Data assets.”

MDM is therefore a discipline, made up of people, processes, and technology. There is often no specific application solution despite the fact that vendors will often use the acronym to describe their products, systems, and platforms that manage master data but that does not mean that they are effectively managing the master data, simply that they have characteristics that, when used correctly. can assist in proper master data management.

As you can imagine then, when something is described as a Customer MDM, it is a practice that relates to the management of digital customer entities. That practice could be paper-based also but we’re assuming that at scale you’re more interested in digital record-keeping.

The CMDM systems then, are the people processes and technology that support the customer master data management practice. The CMDM platform concept is therefore a composite software application on-premise or in the cloud, that provides metadata and data that relates to the management of the customer entities.

CMDM Platforms and related technologies for Customer Master Data Management are offered by many of the leading global software brands as parts of multidomain MDM like SAP, Oracle, IBM, and Informatica but there are some specialist offerings that you might not have heard like Ataccama, Pretectum, Profisee, Reltio, Riversand, Semarchy and Stibo Systems

_{The original version of this article was posted as What is a CMDM platform?}

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Mar 9 2022

CONSUMER LOYALTY AND CUSTOMER MASTER DATA

Pretectum previously mentioned how some airlines leveraged their loyalty programs to secure loans from various backers. At face value, this tells you that though we as consumers store value in our reward points or air miles, so do the airlines and retailers themselves!

Customer loyalty programs like Airmiles and rewards are forged relationships between brands and customers. This is one of the reasons that when a rewards or loyalty program changes the terms and conditions of the relationship, sometimes you will see a sharp uptick or drop-off in the use or support of that program. Launching a loyalty program is also expensive and complex.

In the US alone, companies spend a staggering $2 billion on loyalty programs every year according to Capgemini.

Typically loyalty programs serve as a way for the brand to offer membership-related exclusive products, promotions, or pricing. The reciprocated offer from the customer is their agreement to sustain the relationship with preference against that product line or service through repeat purchases or brand engagement.

In a nutshell, a loyalty program is another marketing mix element. A part of any marketing strategy Loyalty Programs is designed to encourage customers to sustain their shopping or use the services of a business associated with the brand and program.

Loyalty programs cover most types of commerce, each having different features and rewards. Industry segments that have leveraged broad loyalty programs include financial credit, hospitality & travel, retail and entertainment.

According to Sallie Burnett, a loyalty consultant and Founder of Customer Insight Group. in a Forbes article, one of the most successful loyalty program examples is that of Nordstrom retail stores. Nordstrom customers move up through levels from Member to Insider, Influencer and Ambassador.

Annex Cloud a loyalty experience solution suggests however that not all loyalty programs are a guarantee of success. Annex Cloud cite, a report by Capgemini wherein a high percentage of loyalty programs are considered to be failing.

53% of consumers stated that they abandoned at least one loyalty program within the last year which means businesses are putting money and energy into strategies that aren’t being successful. The main reasons vary, from a lack of reward relevance, flexibility, and value (44%) through a lack of a seamless multi-channel experience (33%) to customer service issues (17%).

Pretectum feels that one of the ways to mitigate some of the aspects of customer service and multi-channel interaction is through the convergence on a single-source-of-truth in relation to the customer master. If your sales, service, support and loyalty programs are all reading from the same song-sheet, a centralized customer master data hub, then the ability to service the same message consistently and coherently is greatly improved. This in turn leads to a greater likelihood of retention.

Here are some interesting statistics in relation to loyalty programs and the customer relationship.

82% of companies say retention is cheaper than acquisition.
75% of consumers say they prefer brands that offer rewards.
56% of customers stay loyal to brands that “get them”
58% of companies use personalization to retain customers

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Jan 24 2022

Reimagining Customer Data

Brands and retailers need to reevaluate how they think about customer data

In a survey conducted by SuperOffice, it was found that 45.9% of business professionals are prioritizing customer service over products (20.5%) and price (33.6%).

There has been a customer revolution of late, brand loyalty is now not limited to just products or price; they are willing to invest more in a purchase if the customer service is above average.

It goes without saying, that customers want straightforward answers to their queries and that they appreciate brands that personalize the interaction experience from the start with offers that communicate clear expectations on what the customer can expect in return. Businesses that fail to customize the message and fail to personalize the offer in the presence (or absence ) of customer data are likely to leave customers disinterested or frustrated. Neither of these outcomes is desirable and puts retention and repeat purchases at risk.

Statistically speaking, brands that offer omnichannel experiences retain 89% of their customers compared to 33% of those that don’t. The reason this is an important “stat” to pay attention to, is that the old paradigm of perhaps exclusively engaging in business via brick-and-mortar stores often now sees those same customers expecting a digital experience too. Leveraging digital channels means that they can interact regularly with brands in a way that they couldn’t before. These could be by way of email, website chatbots, mobile apps, customer service chat sessions, Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, telegram, and a host of other platforms and interaction methods.

If you believe that data can fuel your digital transformation journey then you will also recognise that it offers the potential for more interaction and communciation consistency. By leveraging centrally stored well-managed detailed customer information, all manner of services and support can be made use of in the honing of the customer message to provide a personalized and distinctive customer experience.

Curbside Pickup as a data point

A curbside pickup service is one where retailers allow customers to place an order online for them to then self or courier pick up at a local store. In some respects this is an evolution of drive-through with the principle difference being that curbside pickup can simply be an extension to normal pick and pack but without the ship part.

When the order is ready, the customer is notified, either by email, SMS or mobile app message and the consumer walks or drives to the store and in a designated area collects their order. In some instances they may nominate a courier or home delivery service provider to make the collection for them. Either way, the seller is not responsible for collection/delivery beyond making the consignment available for pickup.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw demand for curbside pickup increase by 85%. Customers would often make this choice because they want to be safe and prefer the click-and-collect method instead of physically visiting the store.

For businesses that already supported a click-and-collect (C&C) operation, the pressure was more on whether infrastructure could cope with the increase in orders. For those who had never offered C&C the pressure was to implement the data capture mechanism for not just the customer details but also their payment processing, preferences, contact information and a eCommerce or webshop element. The stores would also need to be geared up to do more order-based picking where previously the main focus would have been on shelf packing and checkout.

Connecting the web front with back end systems may sound like a straightforward IT integration but often that would not be true where the logistics execution or point of sale systems operate in complete isolation from eCommerce and webshop systems. From the Pretectum perspective, this is where Customer Master Data Management can operate as a central hub for the many functional spokes that represent different aspects of business operations.

Data is a key to aligning the customer experience

98% of Fortune 500 companies leverage data to enhance the customer experience. Businesses need to have a defined data strategy that helps them scale to an ever-evolving environment.

Business decisions and marketing initiatives are ideally driven from data insights and those are best established when they come from analyzing the various aspects of your customer’s data.

Your customer data management system can serve as your single source of truth and can neutralize the concept of data silos. Silos of customer data can be very common in businesses that have implemented systems and approaches to dealing with customers in an isolated and tactical way.

Every department that is potentially customer-facing, including sales, marketing, finance, service, and support, requires specific kinds of information to undertake their role. This information when stored separately can become fragmented, inconsistent, and incomplete. thereby making it difficult for other departments to access and draw conclusions that may be tied to the data held cross-operationally.

Data silos might seem harmless and fit for purpose through the narrow lens of a particular department or function but even within a narrow frame of focus, that data will develop inconsistencies over time. With so many business area-specific data silos popping up, it will be difficult for business leaders to draw appropriate conclusions and in turn provide customers with an optimised experience.

Breaking the silos is crucial for businesses. The route to this elimination of the silos is to provide data centralization and save time (and resources) that is spent on dealing with trying to create an optimized picture of the customer and the customer circumstances

Customer Master Data Management offers the potential for the controlled flow of batched and real-time customer data through all appropriate business channels with a consistent and unified aspect.

Almost all C suite execs believe that customer data is critical for their businesses to get ahead of competitors.

Uli LOKSHIN 0 Comments

Jan 4 2022

What Is Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): All You Need to Know

Each client is important, but some lay the foundation and keep you afloat.

They exist at the core of your business – sometimes they are responsible for most of your revenue; in other cases, a valuable customer that stays with you is more important than bringing tens of new ones.

How to identify them and use the knowledge of their lifecycle to repeat that success? The answer is measuring CLV – an incredibly important metric in every marketeer’s book. What is customer lifetime value? Read on to find out.

CLV meaning is, relatively speaking, how much a customer is worth to your business. When the client first receives any information about your business, service, or ware and decides to check it out, their lifetime value begins to accumulate. It sums up the amount of revenue a customer has brought to you, creating a clear picture of the dynamic between your company and them.

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Pretectum

Dec 28 2021

Customer Lifetime Value – The Essential Marketing Mantra

Post-Covid the basic human lifestyle changes have started to happen. To put it in a nutshell, slowly the mouse and keypad will be antique pieces, and “voice and hand gestures” will be the new user interface with all devices.

Don’t be surprised if your 55-inch TV becomes “obsolete” as more and more wearable glasses or even contact lenses become your basic visual devices. We all would be having our very own virtual assistants who will help us throughout the day doing all the work and chores. Therefore, the predicted mobile traffic by 2025 is going to be more than 100 exabytes.

With so much talk on technology, where does it leave the marketing teams of the future?

The digital trends used for marketing are bound to change as more artificial intelligence, voice search and gestures, mobile-oriented campaigns and emotional visual content will be used.

But having used all these latest or future technologies, how do you measure the Return On Investment (ROI)? The future marketeers who may refuse to acknowledge or ascertain the returns will not succeed and fade out soon. Irrespective of the trends or means of marketing the one thing we all need to keep in mind is the “Customer Lifetime Value.”

Uli LOKSHIN 0 Comments

Dec 21 2021

Customer lifetime value modelling

A customer lifetime value (CLV) is one of the most important metrics in marketing, outlining the total value a company is expected to reap from a customer relationship. But how can a marketer determine a customer’s lifetime value? And what modelling provides the best outcome? Rokas Salasevicius and Justas Jankunas from management consultancy CIVITTA shed light on the topic.

While there are different definitions of customer lifetime value, at CIVITTA we follow the following definition: “Customer lifetime value is a concept which estimates how much money the customer is going to bring to a company in the long run.”

Calculating and tracking customer lifetime value is of huge importance for marketers, for a number of reasons. First, it enables marketers to observe the business – CLV is used as one of the KPIs that provide information about the health of the business and customer base. CLV allows understanding how strong the current customer base is and track how it is changing over time, as well as identify reasons why it is changing.

Juwel Tan 0 Comments

Pretectum

Dec 14 2021

Calculating Customer Lifetime Value Is Tricky

A customer’s lifetime value is more important for an organization than the profits on the first, or perhaps even the first several sales.

Many companies offer discounts — sometimes steep ones — to obtain the customer’s initial business. Some may even make the first sale at a loss, with the idea of making it up on subsequent sales. But to determine if a discount will pay off in the future, a company needs to know how to accurately calculate customer lifetime value (CLTV). It’s not as easy as it might first seem.

Attracting and retaining the highest value customers is key for every business. Knowing your customer’s lifetime value can help you make sound marketing decisions.

Uli LOKSHIN 0 Comments

Dec 7 2021

How to measure your sales enablement ROI

Sales reps need to wear many hats and have a lot to juggle during a working day. With so many demands on reps today and having to navigate long B2B sales cycles, a tool that can help sellers along the way is welcomed.

Sales enablement and using enablement technology is becoming increasingly important for B2B organizations. According to research released by McKinsey & Company, “roughly two in three buyers prefer remote human interaction or digital self-service.

But if you are using an enablement platform now, or are considering it, have you done an ROI calculation to quantify how much time and money you could save by having one?

Juwel Tan 0 Comments

Pretectum

Nov 30 2021

Customer Fundamentals – time to take a big step

Master Data Management may be positioned as a “silver bullet” for the woes of poor customer master data but it doesn’t solve for long-standing systemic organizational deficiencies.

Any organization embarking on any kind of Master Data Management (MDM) initiative will need to look long and hard at a number of characteristics of how data is created, described and managed that are independent of the MDM itself if they wish to get the best value from their MDM.

That highly desirable 360º view of the customer, for example, what is it exactly?

Benefits as described by vendors and industry experts are numerous, but perhaps a small handful is the most important and most achievable.

Reducing the costs and risks of customer data ownership
Reducing friction in transacting or engaging with the customer
Improved customer segmentation and targeting lists

All three of these outcomes are however heavily contingent on a number of important behaviours and organizational culture shifts.

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Pretectum

Nov 30 2021

Some customer data is missing

How often does this come up as a problem to solve? It may happen more frequently than you think.

Having clean, comprehensive, and consistent data is paramount to the most appropriate customer engagement and interaction. If your business is also an advocate and heavy user of automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence then your technical teams will tell you that the results of their efforts are commensurate not only with their efforts but also with the quality of the data that they are working with.

Without the best possible customer data, your staff and systems are exposed to a partial picture which can result in bad decisions, model bias and skewed results.

The US National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health (PMC) journal contains an article from May 2013 describing three types of potential data deficiency in any given data set. While the focus in this case by the author, Hyun Kang would be on suitability for studies, this basis is useful for considering customer master data in general.

The three types are Missing Completely at Random (MCAR), Missing at Random (MAR), and MNAR (Missing Not at Random). Each with its own cause and potential solutions.

We’ll look at this through the lens of a customer master data management system. Read more at Pretectum.com

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Nov 30 2021

The ROI of email and why it matters

The email has long been an essential weapon in the marketer’s arsenal and many businesses have increased their reliance on the channel during the pandemic.

In Validity and the DMA’s Marketer Email Tracker 2021, almost three-quarters (72%) of brands reported that email is their preferred and most used channel to engage with customers across the customer journey, compared to 66% who said social media.

While email’s popularity and effectiveness aren’t disputed, calculating exactly how valuable it is as a marketing channel can be tricky. In fact, Validity found that one in three marketers aren’t confident calculating the ROI of email, which presents a significant challenge when it comes to reporting on performance and securing budget and resources ongoing. (This can become a vicious cycle – with less budget and resources, performance is likely to decline).

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Forbes

Nov 25 2021

How Manufacturers Can Get Started Selling Directly To Consumers

Let’s face it: Manufacturers’ traditional sales models can hurt both the company and the customer. Because of the pandemic causing havoc on supply chains, selling direct has become a more popular option for many manufacturers.

Looking forward to the 2020s, the old model of selling through a distribution/broker/retailer channel may still be alive, but many company leaders are finding that their customers prefer to buy directly from them. On top of that, restrictive middleman margins can increasingly put a chokehold on manufacturers’ profits.

When Covid-19 hit, people ran to the internet to shop for just about everything. I think manufacturing as an industry reached a tipping point between the pandemic, a global supply chain malfunction where production halted and even stopped for some companies, and some online retailers refusing to change policies to adapt to these situations.

These factors led many manufacturers to ramp up and increase their investments in a direct-to-consumer (DTC) strategy, where they have 100% control over pricing, inventory levels, and — increasingly — access to critical customer data. As the co-founder of a company that creates digital sales channels for manufacturers, I have some advice for those just getting started with selling directly to consumers.

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Nov 23 2021

Customer Data’s impact on Digital Transformation

When we hear the words “digital transformation”, the first thought that might come into your mind might be the shift from a traditional manual office environment into one that is leveraging all things digital.

That perspective is valid to some extent. Many companies and businesses shift from traditional physical business practices to more modern digital ones to improve not just operational efficiency but also to accentuate their digital presence.

They might do this either by creating a mobile app, revamping or launching their website to support e-commerce or even by ramping up their social media presence. All of these decisions and behaviours fall under the umbrella of digital transformation initiatives.

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Nov 23 2021

Net Promoter 3.0

As a consumer, you’ve probably encountered this sort of question dozens of times—after an online purchase, at the end of a customer service interaction, or even after a hospital stay.

If you work at one of the thousands of companies that ask this question of their customers, you’re familiar with the Net Promoter System (NPS), which Reichheld invented and first wrote about in HBR almost 20 years ago. (See “The One Number You Need to Grow,” December 2003.)

NPS has spread rapidly around the world. It has become the predominant customer success framework—used today by two-thirds of the Fortune 1000. Why has it been embraced so enthusiastically?

Because it solves a vital challenge that our financial systems fail to address.

Financials can easily tell us when we have extracted $1 million from our customers’ wallets, but they can’t tell us when our work has improved customers’ lives.

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Pretectum

Nov 18 2021

Building a growth-centred digital marketing budget for 2022

Twenty months of pandemic uncertainty and a complete shift in consumer behavior have left many CMOs scratching their heads as they prepare their 2022 digital marketing budgets.

Performance marketing specialist, Incubeta, shares some insight into how local brands can use their budgets to help shift up a gear and prepare for longer-term growth, including seven tips on how to apportion their 2022 spend.

“Over the last five years some omnichannel companies have shifted their attitude and their budgets, moving spend from above the line, especially TV, to the digital platforms such as Youtube and other digital video outlets.This has, in part, been driven by the tracking and measurability offered by digital channels,” explains Julien Fievez, operational team lead at Incubeta.

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Nov 16 2021

How To Calculate (And Improve) Lifetime Value

Lifetime value (LTV) is a significant metric that helps estimate the growth of a company.

By comparing LTV to customer acquisition cost, the results can help make crucial decisions. This might include devising your advertising and marketing budget, for example.

Businesses can use LTV to acquire and retain high-profile customers.

This means more income, thus scaling. But, if customer acquisition costs are higher than LTV, scaling is impossible.

For you to predict and improve customer lifetime value successfully, you’ll need to know how to measure customer lifetime value.

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Nov 15 2021

Deploying AI beneficial for firms and may help governments identify corruption networks

Fintechs are already looking into methods to leverage data and artificial intelligence (AI) in services and products so that they can provide relevant, trustworthy insights, suggestions, and controls.

Today, businesses employ supervised and unsupervised machine learning to train models so that they can detect fraud attempts faster than they can use human (rule-based) methods.

KYC and identity verification are other important areas where AI can be very effectively used. Earlier, humans had to manually verify if the given documents of customers are accurate or not. This tedious task used a lot of time and resources. Now, AI can assist banking applications and other online financial services in automatically and securely verifying clients’ identities. This is referred to as KYC.

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Nov 15 2021

The Key Factor in Marketing to Hispanics This Holiday Season

With more than $1.5T buying power on the line, brands must understand what matters most to the Hispanic and Latinx community

A look at Americans of Hispanic origins, three-fourths (77%) of surveyed Hispanic adults in the U.S. stated strong familiarity with their origins and 71% stated that they felt a “strong connection” to their roots—nearly double that of white adults surveyed from Pew Research

The data comes as no shock to those of us who are either part of, or at the very least familiar with the Latinx communities in the U.S. As Cynthia Correa says “Our roots cross every element of our lives, from our tastes in food and music, to the sports we love, the hobbies we enjoy and the holidays we celebrate with loved ones. It’s a core part of our identity, a sentiment I’ve long known but Pew has given us the data to back it up.“

Costco customers complain of fraudulent charges before company confirms card skimming attack

Costco is offering victims 12 months of credit monitoring, a $1 million insurance reimbursement policy, and ID theft recovery services according to ZDNET.

Costco has sent out breach notification letters to an unknown number of victims after multiple people took to social media to complain about fraudulent charges connected to the company.

First reported by Bleeping Computer, the letter says payment card information was compromised through a card skimming device at certain Costco locations.

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Pretectum

Nov 11 2021

How to solve the marketing reporting conundrum without being a magician

In a recent survey shared at SMX, C-Suite executives report sales and leads as top performance indicators for marketing teams.

If sales and leads are what our leadership teams, whether internally or externally, care most about, what does this mean for PPC marketers?

Such preferences can lead to a level of expectation that marketers are going to create a magic sales faucet, a fountain of fortune, or that there’s a secret Google leads button hidden in our toolbox somewhere.

And hey, PPC marketers can help make some pretty magical things happen, but we’re definitely not magicians, at least not in the Gandalf the Grey or Albus Dumbledore kind of way.

There can also be a limiting belief that there is no value in marketing components and efforts that don’t have a direct correlation to exact dollars, and by some sort of wizardry, it’s somewhat expected a visitor will just magically appear on a business’s website and then (poof) become a customer.

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Nov 10 2021

Startup Datafold raises $20M

Datafold, a startup that automates workflows and maintains data quality, today announced it has raised $20 million in a series A round of funding, led by NEA (New Enterprise Associates). The investment, which also saw participation from Amplify Partners, Databricks, and Dbt Labs, will be used by the company to further develop its data reliability platform and expand its team.

For any data-driven organization, ensuring the quality of data pipelines on a day-to-day basis is the key to having well-functioning dashboards, properly trained AI and ML models, and accurate analytics. However, with an explosion in the variety and volume of data as well as increasing requirements to deliver data products faster, data engineers using manual methods of testing, monitoring, and quality assurance often find themselves struggling. They fail to keep up with the complexity.

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Tag Archives: Data

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