Jason Cromack (pictured) adds quintillions of data to an insightful direct marketing strategy and comes up with a happiness factor.
Happiness is a powerful force. The ascent of stockbroker Chris Gardner to become one of American’s leading and most renowned entrepreneurs has provided inspiration to many. His memoirs, entitled ‘The Pursuit of Happiness’, document the struggles of one man to juggle the obstacles of fatherhood and homelessness while launching a career in brokerage. His story, aside from providing the subject matter for a Will Smith Hollywood blockbuster, has come to symbolise the impact that a human’s surrounding can have on one’s life.
Whether it is the motivation to continue to strive for success or merely the deciding factor in which supermarket to visit, a person’s view of their world shapes so many choices. For marketers, the task is always to wrestle with these perceptions and use them to their advantage by ensuring that their message marries timing with relevancy. What’s more, there is no discipline where these two elements have a bigger role to play than in the world of direct marketing and, more specifically, direct mail.
For too long, direct marketing failed to really grasp this. The emphasis has been on volume and a broad scatter-gun approach to reap success, albeit with relatively small returns, and simultaneously creating a negative image of the whole practice both for marketers and the wider public. However, the explosion in consumer data that has taken place in the last couple of years promises to change all this. The rapid evolution of technology driven by consumer adoption and forward thinking brands such as Apple, means that 2.5 quintillion (a one followed by 18 zeros) bytes of data created every day and 90 per cent of the world’s total data have emerged in the last year alone.
This provides marketers with a real opportunity to develop deeper insights into human reaction and behaviour to create campaigns that tap into the emotional triggers and ensure a piece of activity resonates with them in some way. The challenge of leveraging a person’s emotional triggers with campaigns that feel personal is still a primary concern, but it is achievable. By putting data analytics at the heart of everything they do, brands are given the opportunity to elevate the relevancy of the creative and ultimately ensure that a campaign reaches the right person at the right time.
A good example of this is the direct marketing that prefaced the UK Government’s ‘Right to Buy’ scheme, which offered council house tenants the opportunity to buy their property outright. The campaign used data to identify eligible tenants and resulted in the creation of an eye-catching, house-shaped mailer. However, as with any direct marketing activity, the devil was in the detail.
By monitoring response levels, it was possible to identify the consumers that were most likely to buy their property to increase the efficiency of the campaign. It also unearthed a surprising level of simplicity in what was previously considered a complex decision that took into account a variety of factors. The decision to buy was driven simply by the tenant’s perception of the area, which was informed from the view within a few hundred yards of their front door. If they liked the area that they lived in, then the tenant was much more likely to respond to the campaign and ultimately buy the property. Not only did this insight ensure that any direct marketing activity could be better targeted to reach those most likely to buy their property, but it began to unearth a whole host of other insights that had a huge impact on the way direct marketing could be planned for maximum efficiency.
This was a Government example, but could well be used commercially; by charting the inhabitants’ overall perception of an area, a marketer can begin to rank the responsiveness of a prospective recipient to a piece of direct marketing. For example, the nicer an area the greater the likelihood that there will be an increased sense of a community, and the more likely that a new initiative could be shared through word-of-mouth. By delving deeper into the data, a marketer can begin to chart the probability that something will be shared, reducing the number of pieces of direct marketing accordingly while still reaching the same audience, tapping into mavens and influencers in the area who will spread the word for them. What is more, this efficiency only scratches the surface of the effect that a simple and basic human understanding can have. For example, profiling different areas by the inhabitants’ perception of it can provide a profile of the area that can be overlaid with financial and demographic information to build a richer picture of the UK on a broader level.
This goes to demonstrate the more efficient planning that can be put in place based on simple insights gathered from the data at hand. Perception can be a huge hindrance to any marketer, shaping biases and constructing barriers in the consumer’s receptiveness to a marketing message. However, for the savvy marketer, it presents a huge opportunity to communicate a brand’s objectives in the most efficient way possible to the most willing audience.
Jason Cromack is CEO of the GIG at DST.
