Best at Customer Data Customization: How Optimove is Decoding Marketing Creativity
Many great ideas for campaigns are halted because the data just won’t play along. Optimove has the perfect answer for any marketing concept: “let’s do it”
Data is everywhere, data is the buzz, the best. We’ve talked about data an endless amount of times, yet managed to cover only parts of its importance and the effect it has on our day-to-day life. But as a marketer using this data regularly, have you ever felt that it restrains you from creating the campaigns you really want?
Ideas for campaigns are halted by data limitations constantly, for various reasons: marketing technology tools allow you to add data into them, but this data is restricted to the boundaries of the tool itself, to the developers’ mind set, experience and needs at the time, and can be added only in a specific format. This means the marketer has to first re-structure the data to meet that format, and only then add it to the tool.
Furthermore, once this data is added – it can’t be manipulated: Attributes that are created have a fixed predefined logic and are calculated in that fashion. Thus, many lovely ideas that marketers come up with get stuck, and more sophisticated logic simply can’t be applied.
Taking care of this exact point – this “attributes wall” if you will – was always one of Optimove’s main mottos. Any data is welcome, no manipulation is needed, there are no limitations whatsoever to the creativity and logic. Our data science team is dedicated to the customization of each customer’s site. The data scientists start with flattening the customer data, using the existing data format, to create a Single Customer View containing any number of customer attributes. Any desired attribute can be created (assuming the data exists) and these can be added or changed at any point, and in virtually no time at all.
A customer attribute can be used for two main purposes: to better understand customers and to better execute campaigns. Large numbers of customer attributes will improve the ability to create sophisticated campaigns, by extending segmentation capabilities and analyzing groups behaviors. Optimove’s clients can change and add attributes as they wish, as they acquire more and more data and logic about their customers. Any desire and need is taken care of, and the more creative the request, the better. This is what we call data democratization.
Bring your Attributes!
A few examples: One of our marketer clients wanted to create a set of birthday campaigns during the week before every customer’s birthday, so that 7 days before their birthday they would receive the first campaign. The next day they’ll receive another one, and so on.
In order to automate this campaign an attribute is needed – ‘Days until birthday’, which this brand would use in order to create 7 daily recurring campaigns. However, the tool the marketer was using didn’t allow to create that attribute, so they were left with 2 options: Create the campaigns manually every day using the birthday date attribute they did have, or not creating these campaigns…
One of Optimove’s ecommerce clients wanted to reveal to his customers just how much money they could save using the company’s promotions. To do that, Optimove created an attribute indicating the customer’s recurring savings, based on the number of times they fulfilled a specific promotion, and how many more of the same promotion they had left to use.
Another customer requested that we create the following attribute for a cross-sell campaign they were planning. The attribute created defined the customer’s favorite category according to the percentage of purchases for each category, taking both order value and quantity into consideration.
After a short discussion, we came up with this formula – if 50% * (Total purchase amount brand A)/(Total Purchase amount) + 50% *(Number of purchases brand A) / (Total number of purchases) > 65%, favorite category is A
The campaign targeted customers based on their favorite department, offering them to shop in a more profitable one. 31% of the campaign’s recipients had changed their favorite department to a higher-priced product category.
Set your reminder
In the gaming industry, one common practice is the balance reminder campaign – which alerts players to place a bet since they still have balance in their account (very relevant for churned players). These campaigns are usually sent to players that have a balance of greater than zero. However, identifying that a player has a balance in his or her account is not enough, as it does not take the player’s betting activity into consideration. If it’s a player who usually bets 50$, then of course a balance of 20$ is not a sufficient amount.
Considering this, we created for one of our clients an attribute called ‘remaining bet factor’. The attribute indicates whether the player has enough balance to complete his usual bet and is calculated by comparing the player’s balance to his average daily bet.
Remaining bet factor = Remaining balance / Avg. daily bet amount
A remaining bet factor of greater than or equal to 1 indicated the player has more balance than what they usually bet on, and we would send this player a reminder, encouraging him to place a bet. The response rate for the players who received the balance reminder campaign using the new attribute was 130% higher than that of the control group (which consisted of players with similar behavior) and their average bet amount was over 5 times more.
Enjoy your New Campaign
Another gaming client was looking for a way to identify VIP players in risk of churn. VIP players are extremely valuable in the gaming industry, where a very small percentage of the customers is responsible for most of the company’s revenue. These players usually have a very high frequency, making it difficult to predict whether they are at risk of churning.
An attribute that has been added to one of our customer’s sites compared the customer’s deposit amount over the recent period to their usual deposit activity. Customers who have a significant decrease in their deposit amount are at risk of churn.
Activity Drop = Deposit amount last 7 days/Average deposit amount of last 4 weeks prior
The response rate for the players who received the churn prevention campaign using the new attribute was 42% higher than that of the control group and their average deposit amount was 68% more.
In conclusion: These simple examples are a window into our working ethos. Getting the amount of data out there working for your benefit is one of the biggest success factors in relationship marketing. And in cases where creativity stalls, Optimove’s platform allows our customers to open their mind, nurture their imagination, to build the exact campaigns they so vitally need and want to better communicate with their clients.
Leigh leads the Solutions Engineering activities (Pre-sale) in EMEA and is very experienced in working closely with leading marketers to create and optimize their marketing strategy. Leigh holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and management
