If you are not using analytics, you are really not marketing. Customers expect to be treated as individuals, so if you do not know who is who, and what they expect, and do not get it right the vast majority of the time, they will punish you. Analytics is the core of the whole process.*

Analytics is greater than technology. Effective analytics requires technology to be coupled with a perspective that continually addresses customers as people, and processes that maintain customer centricity.

Analytics for multi-channel communications

In today's multi-channel world, it is virtually impossible to run an effective campaign or build strong brand across diverse customer touchpoints without significant analytical efforts.

The more you know about your customers, the more accurately conversations can be targeted to address their specific needs. To do this, marketing needs to understand the insights in the data to leverage the unique way in which customers interact and engage with your organisation, and so achieve a sustainable, competitive advantage in the market.

From online conversations that represent the voice-of-customer to tracking transactional use of services, it is easier now to gather real-time data – and act on it – than ever before. SEMA provides its clients with significant analytical services:

• Customer profiling
• Propensity modelling
• Enrichment data
• Reporting dashboards

SEMA's campaign marketing provides sophisticated analytics that will work in the real world and can be rapidly operationalised to deliver faster better decisions to the customer interaction points.

Multi-channel customer identities indicate the need to compile and refine composite profiles of customers, combining behavioural data with channel usage and transactional data, as well as augmentation data around syndicated consumer and lifestyle information. Similarly as important is to incorporate the voice-of-customer content analytics profile to ensure representation of individual customers and their communities.

Analytics have proved to be the predictive power supporting improved decision-making. The outcome results in competitive advantage through the leverage of information. Analytical models can resolve uncertainties and provide probabilities of future performance out of complex data sets. SEMA adopts a transparent analytical process, explaining what is behind the insights, therefore enabling appropriate decisioning.

Customer profiling

Analysis can be conducted in the form of profiling from a univariate (comparing one variable at a time with the target variable) point of view where the main statistic will be index (which will explain an over- or under-representation within the target group). SEMA will provide insight on all key discriminatory variables that fall within the realm of a database. Each profile will pivot around the defined dimensions so as to make the analysis actionable through direct marketing campaign activity.

Analysis could contain, for example:

• Profile of responders age (split by channel type)
• Comparison analysis (what differentiates responders versus non-responders)
• Profile of churners (customer or product)

Propensity modelling

SEMA regards effective propensity modelling as core business and has developed and applied significant models to numerous blue chip organisations. Through our analysts equipped with a range of analytic and predictive tool sets, SEMA specialises in developing real-time analytical models and integrating these with dynamic, responsive marketing campaigns.

SEMA can leverage data into a single customer view and then profile the data to build more sophisticated forms of campaign target selection criteria through various propensity modelling options for: acquisition, next-best product, cross-sell, up-sell, churn, response models and bespoke segmentation.

Enriching data

Markets are now defined by empowered and vocal consumers socialising on a one-to-many basis. SEMA can help you to understand not only who your advocates are, but also who are the influencers and how they like to be engaged. Developing a scorecard that supports your segmentation models ensure that the right investment is made into developing advocates for maximum influence. A complete scorecard would reflect the social and product value of each customer represented trough scores representing:

• Advocacy and influence scores
• Churn propensity
• Service adoption propensity
• Engagement rate

Reporting dashboards

Reporting

We provide a variety of weekly management and activity reports including inventory, invoicing, and work-in-progress status. On a quarterly basis, we also produce a report which contains a balanced scorecard, lodgements summary, postage summary, overtime costs, and suggested savings.

Customised dashboards and analytics

Users are able to have reporting home pages personalised with summaries of their key business metrics, and quick access links to their personal as well as shared reports. And, through the automatic triggering of alerts based upon user nominated data events, users will also be automatically prompted so that they can manage by exception.

* David Norris, Senior Analyst, Bloor Research.