Database Marketing January/February 2017

issue

193 | february/march 2017 | www.dbm.today

putting insight at the heart of marketing

AUTOMATION IN A DIGITAL WORLD

INTEGRATION REMAINS A CHALLENGE

WHAT LIES AHEAD IN 2017?

THE INDUSTRY PREDICTS

ASPIRING TO TRUE B2B INSIGHT ACHIEVING GENUINE, ACTIONABLE INSIGHT IN B2B MARKETING MEANS MORE THAN SIMPLY INVESTING IN A NEW ANALYTICS SOLUTION

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EMAIL MARKETING GETS CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH | TACKLING BREXIT | RECRUITMENT UPDATE |THE IMPORTANCE OF MINORITY DATA 10/03/2017 09:13:06

ALL

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Sector permissioned data – including financial services, automotive & retail

Data held in-house – quick profiles and even faster counts

...or nothing?

Choosing the right data partner can be a tricky business. That’s why we built ALL.

We’re confident that ALL – The UK’s first Sector-Specific marketing database has ALL you need to drive the most insightful decisions you’ll ever need to make about your existing and prospective customers.

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We’re pretty proud of the work we and our clients achieve. It makes us extra proud when other people recognise that too.

And that’s about ALL!

We take the time to listen and to understand your business needs, and your market – and then plug in ALL, and let it do its whizzy stuff to find you the most relevant prospects, with the right permissions for you and your marketing needs.

ER RECOGNITION

And that’s about ALL!

Are the records you’re getting up-to-date? Are they actually right for your product or service?

Are they the people most likely to take you up on your offer?

10/03/2017 09:13:09 FINALIST 2016

Comment

Tel: 0845 686 0125 Fax: 0845 686 0249 PUBLISHER & MANAGING EDITOR Antony Begley 0141 222 5380 • abegley@55north.com EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Iain Hoey 0141 222 5385 • ihoey@55north.com CONSULTING EDITOR James Lawson DIGITAL EDITOR Findlay Stein 0141 222 5389 • fstein@55north.com ADVERTISING MANAGER Philip Campbell 0141 222 5301 • pcampbell@55north.com SENIOR DESIGNER Richard Chaudhry 0141 222 5300 • rchaudhry@55north.com DESIGNER Lisa Deakin 0141 222 5388 • ldeakin@55north.com EVENTS & OPERATIONS MANAGER Cara Begley 0141 222 5381 • cbegley@55north.com EVENTS & OPERATIONS ASSISTANT Chloe Buchanan 0141 222 5383 • cbuchanan@55north.com

Database Marketing is published bi-monthly by

55 North Ltd Waterloo Chambers, 19 Waterloo Street Glasgow G2 6AY www.55north.com Database Marketing is distributed free to qualifying readers.

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Database Marketing 3

ARE WE TAKING GDPR SERIOUSLY? It’s tempting to think that the UK’s marketers - or a lot of them at least - aren’t taking the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation particularly seriously.

But it’s quite difficult to understand why.

Of the many studies and pieces of research carried out on this very topic, the vast majority seem to clearly indicate that many businesses are nowehere near achieving compliance, despite the fact that we have just over a year to get our respective houses in order. The DMA’s latest study, for instance, finds that around a quarter of marketers feel that their businisses are underprepared for the the sea-change that is on the horizon.

If that’s a concerning figure, then try this one for size: a third of marketers are confident that their business won’t even be ready for GDPR in time for the May 2018 deadline.

There’s no question that achieving compliance is a complex task for data and insight-driven marketing business, given the intricacies of their work and how much it will be affected by the new legislation but that’s no excuse for failing to hit the deadline. And the nice people handing out the punishments for failure to comply are certain to agree.

Are these firms simply negligent? Are they under-estimating the amount of time that achieving compliance will take? Or are they still holding out for some sort of Brexit-fuelled last minute reprieve?

(I certainly hope not because that’s a racing certainty recipe for disaster.)

Whatever the reason, it’s time that every data marketing business in the UK took stock of where they are and what state of preparedness they are in because May 2018 is going to be here before they know it.

Meanwhile, in amongst all the doom and gloom that GDPR inspires in marketers, it was encouraging to read some positive takes on what GDPR might bring to the industry.

New research by Callcredit has revealed that around four fifths of UK consumers say they are more likely to share their personal data once GDPR is in place. Helpfully, it also found that almost a quarter (21%) say that Brexit has made them feel their personal data is less secure.

So where does that leave us? You tell me.

Antony Begley Managing Editor

ISSN: 1465-2900 Copyright 55 North Ltd 2017. All rights reserved

GOT SOMETHING TO SAY? EMAIL ABEGLEY@55NORTH.COM

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Contents

Database Marketing 5 Feb-Mar 2017 Issue 193

Cover Story Achieving true B2B marketing insight involves more than simply shelling out on a new analytics solution.

News

Recruitment

6 FORMER RAPP BOSS JOINS TWENTYCI Former top agency boss Colin Bradshaw joins life-event marketing business.

Fancy a new challenge? There might be one that’s right for you just

7 QUARTER OF BUSINESSES UNPREPARED FOR GDPR New survey finds significant number of businesses feel under-prepared for impending legislation.

around the corner.

7 READ GROUP NAMES STANDING AS CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR Former DBM Rising Star award winner Dean Standing promoted to role of Client Services Director.

10 SOLETRADER BOOSTS EMAIL REVENUES BY 14% Footwear retailer Soletrader boosts email revenues by 14% using Fresh Relevance solutions. p24

11 NEWS EXTRA: B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION Latest researrch from CommuniGator examines key trends in marketing automation in the B2B market place.

Opinion 12 MINORITY REPORT Richard Webber, Founder, Webber Phillips In an increasingly diversified world, it’s time marketers got to grips with minority data.

Call It Like You See It REaD Group CEO Jon Cano-Lopez offers his view of the handling of the Brexit debacle and what marketers

Business

needs to be aware of.

20 WHAT’S IN STORE FOR 2017?

The industry predicts what 2017 may hold for the data and insight-driven marketing community. p27

Features 23 AUTOMATION IN A DIGITAL WORLD James Lawson Integration remains a key challenge for marketers in 2017 as they pursue their automation goals.

Notebook

DBM.Today Remember to visit

18 RESEARCH ROUNDUP A digest of the latest research to hit the streets in database marketing land.

our website www.dbm.today for an up-to-the-minute news service.

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6 Database Marketing Proximus chooses Neustar Real-time info provider Neustar has been selected by Belgian telecoms operator Proximus to help understand and optimise its marketing campaigns across the country. Using the Neustar MarketShare DecisionCloud service, Proximus is now able to get a complete picture of its sales and marketing investments to understand the value of its campaign placements.

Proximus is also taking up Neustar MarketShare’s consulting services to improve its data management, gain further insights and increase ROI from its campaigns.

DMA vice chair named

News APPOINTMENTS Former agency boss joins life event management outfit

Former Rapp MD Colin Bradshaw joins TwentyCi TwentyCi, the data science and insight business specialising in customer engagement through life event contextual marketing, has appointed Colin Bradshaw to the new position of Chief Customer Officer (CCO). His role has been created to add an additional level of support at a senior level as the company continues to expand.

Bradshaw will be responsible for managing growth and investment in the company’s client management and sales activities across all sectors, products and channels.

Bradshaw joins from his role as CEO of IBG World, a disruptive business in the data, analytics and digital tech space and has held previous positions include c-suite roles as Managing Director of media agency RAPP and Head of Data Strategy as well as numerous other senior marketing roles for Royal Mail.

The company claims the UK’s largest database of homemovers which is being tapped into by marketers looking to boost campaign effectiveness through the addition of ‘context’ and recently

launched TwentyCi Digital to help advertisers and agencies reach known homemovers through programmatic advertising as well as through other digital channels including social media, PPC and TV, and has plans to extend into other international markets.

Bradshaw commented: “I am joining TwentyCi at a really exciting time. They have amassed the best life stage data in the UK combined with excellent CRM, data, digital and e commerce credentials. It is one of the best marketing tool kits available”.

Firas Khnaisser, Decisioning Manager at Standard Life, has been unveiled as the new Vice Chair of DMA Scotland.

Khnaisser Firas joins Chair Lynsey Fusco and they, along with the other members of the team, will be working hard on behalf of members in Scotland.

Candy Crush former chair invests in Audiense Mel Morris, former longterm chairman of Candy Crush creators King Digital, has invested £3.8m in Audiense, a software-asa-service developer which delivers consumer insight and consumer engagement capabilities to many of the world’s biggest brands and agencies. The company is one of only two Twitter Official Partners worldwide for both Data/Insights and Advertising.

Audiense leverages the IBM Watson cognitive computing platform to determine powerful personality insights from audience data. Audiense works with a range of enterprise clients including sports brands and Premier League football clubs, major news publishers, digital agencies, music brands and the UK government.

DATA PROTECTION ICO set to fine 11 separate charities for data protection breaches

ICO issues eleven charities with Notice of Intent to fine The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has informed 11 different charities that it intends to fine them for breaching the Data Protection Act. The ICO has refused to publicly name the charities involved but each was given 28 days to respond to its findings. The ICO will then consider representations made by each charity before making a final decision about enforcement action.

The charities were investigated

by the ICO as part of a wider operation sparked by reports in the media about repeated and significant pressure on supporters to contribute.

The ICO has already fined the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the British Heart Foundation. There are no other outstanding investigations into charities as part of that operation.

The ICO is now focussing

its attention on ensuring compliance within the charity and fundraising sector. The Fundraising and Regulatory Compliance Conference has been jointly organised by the ICO, Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator. It will set out the regulatory requirements and expectations for fundraising bodies and their boards under current and forthcoming data protection legislation.

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News LEGISLATION A quarter of businesses still not ready, finds survey

‘One in four’ businesses still unprepared for GDPR A quarter of marketers (26%) believe their companies are still unprepared for the introduction of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), with just over half (56%) reporting feeling prepared and 5% believing it’s not their responsibility, according to the second edition of the DMA’s ‘GDPR and you’ series of studies.

In addition, just two-thirds (68%) said their business would be GDPR compliant in time for 2018, The results show that two-thirds (66%) have ‘good’ awareness – up from 53% in June 2016 – and that marketers’ ‘personal’ feeling of preparedness has increased from 49% to 71%. However, there is still a need for urgency with many not believing their businesses will be

compliant in time.

Over a third (37%) said profiling is one of their biggest concerns under GDPR, while half (50%) said it was legacy data.

The runaway winner is consent with 70% agreeing that it would change under the GDPR. The result of these concerns is that the biggest priorities for business are ‘conducting impact assessments’ (42%), ‘giving data subjects greater control of their data’ (36%) and ‘revising your data policy’ (31%).

‘Auditing your data privacy policy’ on the other hand has dropped from 39% to 30% since June 2016.

Chris Combemale, CEO of the DMA group, commented: “May 2018 should be a date that is in every marketer’s diary. The finish

line for GDPR readiness is fixed and the risk to businesses of not being compliant is significant. Our advice is to continue preparations in earnest over the coming year.

Not making it across the line in time is not an option.”

While it’s unlikely that Brexit will change GDPR for the UK, the new laws are set to come into force in May 2018 before any exit agreement is finalised.

RESEARCH Latest GDMA report recognises primacy of data

Data now ‘indispensable’ to marketers across the globe The third edition of the annual Global Review of Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (DDMA) has once again revealed “the starring role that data-driven marketing and advertising plays in the success of any business”.

According to the report, data has become an indispensable marketing asset with 79.6% of global survey respondents stating that customer data is critical to their marketing and advertising efforts, similar to the 81.3% and 80.4% of panellists, respectively, who voiced similar sentiments over the past two years.

Growing investment in data reflects the importance that marketers vest in the customer and their experience: 89.6% of survey panellists said that their practice of DDMA was focused, at least in part, on the maintenance of customer and prospect databases – with those resources typically aimed at supporting better and

more relevant offers and general customer communications.

2016 was “The Year of Measurement”, concludes the report, with a larger numbers of panellists declaring their organisations “sophisticated” when it comes to cross-channel campaign measurement as well as campaign measurement across single marketing channels.

Over half of global panellists said they increased their spending on DDMA in 2016 against the previous year, while 35.8% said their investments remained flat. Spending increased most substantially across digital channels and related execution functions, as it has for the past two years.

“Technology is rapidly changing every day and has a big impact on how customers interact with brands, which is why data is critical for driving many aspects of businesses,” said Jodie Sangster,

Chair of GDMA and CEO of ADMA. “It’s a positive sign for marketers to see more and more CEOs and Board members understanding the value and importance of data. However, for businesses to deliver on customer experience, emphasis must be placed on sophisticated data management and analytics models.

Also at the heart of the data-driven revolution is building consumer trust – as businesses look at securing more personal data, consumers value transparency and want to know if their information is being well-protected. Moving forward, trust will and should play a critical role in an organisation’s business strategy.”

These findings were put together through an online survey of 3,283 thought leaders spanning across the advertising, marketing, media and technology industries in 18 countries, between July and October 2016.

Database Marketing 7 Redgate eases SQL burden The release of SQL Monitor v7 from Redgate Software sees a rich reporting suite added to the popular SQL Server monitoring tool. The new feature can instantly generate accurate, informative reports on the performance of SQL Servers using customisable as well as standard metrics, and is a direct response to the increasing need for Database Administrators to provide a range of reports across their entire SQL Server estate.

Once created, the reports are available to view online or download as a PDF, and can be automatically emailed on a scheduled basis.

LoopMe/adsquare integrate LoopMe, the world’s largest mobile video platform, is now integrated with adsquare, the neutral mobile data exchange, following a successful campaign collaboration with Ad Tech unit, Cadreon.

One application of the integration is that LoopMe’s clients can use mobile video advertising to seamlessly complement their DOOH campaigns, allowing them to retarget all users exposed to the DOOH ad, creating a personalised advertising experience across multiple digital touchpoints.

Noetica champions outbound Call centre technology business Noetica has announced a raft of new technologies for contact centres within a platform that ensures compliance with new Ofcom rules, coming in to effect on 1st March, to enable organisations to continue using Answer Machine Detection (AMD) and predictive dialling, without the risk of silent or abandoned calls and the penalties associated.

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8 Database Marketing ‘Click Injection’ threat “Click injection” fraud is set to become one of the dominant forms of mobile marketing fraud in 2017, according to Adjust, the mobile attribution and analytics company and the market leader in fraud prevention tools.

Click injection allows fraudulent app publishers to get money by injecting fake “clicks” from a user’s device just as the user installs an app. The clicks are generated from within a fraudulent app and timed perfectly to be received within a second of the app download.

Datavail acquires Navantis Datavail, North America’s largest provider of managed services for data integration, management and database administration, has acquired Navantis, a 200-person Microsoft Premier Partner based in Toronto, Canada.

Founded in 1998, Navantis has deep Microsoft application modernisation, development, integration and management expertise while Navantis has long been a Microsoft ‘go-to partner’ with its current nine Gold and nine Silver Microsoft Partner certifications.

Sky Betting recruits Qubit Sky Betting & Gaming have chosen Qubit, the leaders in context-driven personalised experiences, to help anticipate the growing demands of their consumers and innovate ahead of their competition.

With over 50 million content updates across Sky Betting & Gaming brands daily, and 53 million transactions processed on their busiest days, the company is eager to seize the opportunity that this volume of behavioural data represents.

Qubit Visitor Cloud will give Sky the ability to understand how customers engage across their brands and identify opportunities to personalise.

News APPPOINTMENT Data communications group promotes from within

REaD Group names Standing as Client Services Director REaD Group, the UK’s largest independent data communications group, has announced the appointment of Dean Standing to the role of Client Services Director.

Standing will be responsible for leading the client services team, ensuring the delivery of the highest levels of service while also expanding the company’s portfolio.

Standing has been integral to REaD Group’s growth since joining as a graduate over 10 years ago and will now be key part of its

future. He was awarded employee of the year in 2009, shortly before being promoted to Bureau Sales Manager.

He also won the Database Marketing Rising Star Award in 2011 whilst working as Head of Bureau Sales.

Jon Cano-Lopez, CEO at REaD Group, said: “Dean is one of those rare people who has the ability to identify the challenges facing clients and quickly and efficiently get to the solution.

“He really understands data and

how it can deliver the best possible results for his clients.”

Standing commented: “Having worked at REaD Group for over a decade, I continue to be passionate about delivering the best possible results and service to our ever growing client base.

“The next few years are to going to be extremely challenging for brands and REaD Group is ideally positioned to help advertisers maximise the asset that lies dormant within their database. I can’t wait to get started.”

DATA VISUALISATION Contactlab sponsored solution to drive marketing strategies

Data visualisation simplified Engagement-marketing platform Contactlab has sponsored RAW, a data visualisation web app built

by DensityDesign, a research lab of the Politecnico di Milano university, and created by design studio Calibro, in recognition of the growing importance of visualisations in brand marketing strategies.

RAWgraphs is an open source data web app built to make complex data easy to understand, providing what the company calls the missing link between spreadsheet applications and vector graphics editors.

Luca Olivari, Chief Data Officer of Contactlab, commented: “The Data visualisation initiative aims to help companies build solid arguments and unveil the hidden connections of complex systems through data using innovative and engaging interfaces. The cooperation between DensityDesign, Calibro and Contactlab aims to accelerate product development and build an active community of data visualization.”

Paolo Ciuccarelli of DensityDesign, Politecnico di Milano university, commented: “Our mission as a research lab is to steer the public culture of data and information. Building partnerships to support the development of open, accessible and usable tools to transform data into visual artifacts is definitely one of the main pillars of our strategy.”

Main features of the release include the change to Apache 2 License to foster cooperation with a broader community, an updated technology stack and the availability of new charts and visualisation.

DATA PRIVACY First fines issued since ICO took over TPS

ICO issues its first TPS fine A Bognor Regis firm that broke the law by calling people registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) has been fined £40,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) .

This is the first fine for nuisance calls issued by the ICO since it took over management of the TPS from Ofcom in December 2016.

Steve Eckersley, ICO Head of Enforcement, said: “Ironically, IT

Protect Ltd was making nuisance calls to people to sell them a call blocking device. But by phoning people registered with the TPS it broke the law and that’s why we’ve issued this fine.”

IT Protect told the ICO it had purchased a list of people and phone numbers from another firm.

The investigation found IT Protect had not carried out sufficient checks to ensure that the people

on the list had given consent to receive the calls.

The law around electronic marketing says that calls should not be made to anyone who has registered with the TPS unless they have told the caller that they wish to receive such calls from them. Companies failing to screen against the TPS, who then call people without consent, can expect enforcement action by the ICO.

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News SOFTWARE New solution to create, manage and measure remarketing campaigns

Yieldify launches new Platform Marketing technology solutions provider Yieldify has announced the launch of the Yieldify Conversion Platform, a “smart and simple way for any business to deliver great visitor experiences that increase leads, conversion rates and customer value”.

The platform enables customers to target their chosen visitor segments with attractive overlays and notifications that trigger based on visitor behaviour, engaging with the right message at the perfect moment. The product

enables marketers to reduce website and cart abandonment, speed users through to checkout, increasing newsletter sign-ups and drawing visitor attention to promotions and sales.

The Platform is designed to be fast and easy to use by any marketer. Integration via a simple JavaScript tag ensures a swift speed-to-market and the code-free campaign builder allows customers to easily design campaigns that suit their brand. Targeting and triggering options based on

Yieldify’s experience delivering over 50,000 campaigns for brands worldwide can be deployed in a few clicks. Performance can be measured in metrics including revenue and sales, and rigorously tested to make optimisation decisions easy.

Jay Radia, CEO at Yieldify, said: “The Yieldify Conversion Platform takes the experience and data that we’ve amassed over years of running campaigns and made it accessible to anyone from a global brand to a growing business.”

SMS Google development opens opportunity for marketers

Textlocal.com pioneers Google marketing innovation Textlocal.com, the mobile messaging platform, is working with an innovation from Google to boost business productivity and customer connectivity.

Google’s new ad extension will enable businesses to add an SMS button alongside a call button in their mobile AdWords adverts. It follows Google’s announcement last year that smartphone searches on

their engine had overtaken searches from computers for the first time. Textlocal.com says Google’s new Message Extension is a more targeted, efficient and cost effective way of allowing customers to engage with businesses in a way that’s convenient for them.

Over 33.67 million mobile users in the UK opted in to receive text messages from businesses in 2016.

Database Marketing 9 New Chair of DMA North The DMA has confirmed the appointment of a new Chair for its North Council, Kirstie Buchanan, Sales & Marketing Director at Idox Group-owned digital agencies Rippleffect and Reading Room. Buchanan brings with her over 16 years digital industry experience.

ICM Direct Confirmit deal ICM Direct, a specialist in data collection and real-time Market Research data solutions, has agreed a new three-year deal with research specialists Confirmit. The deal continues the existing relationship between the two organisations and makes Confirmit Horizons the primary data collection tool for all of ICM Direct’s research activities. Confirmit enables ICM to deliver realtime, hierarchical reporting dashboards to its clients.

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10 Database Marketing R&SA fined £150,000 The ICO has fined Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance PLC (RSA) £150,000 following the loss of the personal information of nearly 60,000 customers. An ICO investigation looked at the theft of a hard drive device containing 59,592 customers’ names, addresses and bank account details including account numbers and sort codes. The device also held limited credit card details of 20,000 customers, although CVC numbers and expiry dates were not affected.

Rocket Fuel restructures for growth Rocket Fuel, the predictive marketing platform provider, has announced organisational changes that are designed to accelerate its ongoing transformation into a SaaSbased, artificial intelligence powered, platform solutions company. The company will organise its operations around two core offerings – predictive marketing platform solutions and media services. UK based David Gosen, currently SVP and Managing Director of International, will expand his role to become GM, Platform Solutions & International, and Simon Hayhurst, currently SVP of Product, is becoming GM of Media Services.

Hootsuite acquires LiftMetrix Hootsuite, the most widely used platform for social media management, has acquired leading social analytics company LiftMetrix.

The addition of LiftMetrix to Hootsuite’s social marketing solution enables organisations to drive more effective marketing campaigns by giving them tangible insight into the ROI of their paid, earned and owned social campaigns.

LiftMetrix was previously a key Hootsuite partner.

News EMAIL MARKETING Footwear brand boosts email revenues by 14%

Soletrader boosts email revenues Nationwide footwear retailer Soletrader has announced that it has added 14% to email revenues by implementing Fresh Relevance Cart Abandonment and Countdown Timers.

When the company launched its new website the marketing team took the opportunity to introduce a cart abandonment solution from Fresh Relevance, not only for its expertise in recouping lost revenue via abandonment emails, but also its comprehensive suite of

innovative SmartBlock features.

The solution means a personalised email is automatically sent to a customer 30 minutes after a cart has been abandoned, reminding them of the products that remain in their basket and inviting them to checkout.

Each month Soletrader sends around 800 emails, with Soletrader Outlet sending a further 700.

Digital Marketing Executive, Toni Bowater said: “Compared to our bulk email campaigns, our

ANALYTICS Home credit specialist partners with analytics experts

DataShed drives SD Taylor success Home credit specialist SD Taylor has partnered with analytics and data integration experts The DataShed to digitise its entire operation, reduce expenditure and achieve its growth plans. SD Taylor provides personal loans under its trading name, Loans at Home, The DataShed began by creating a fully automated credit decision platform for SD Taylor which was capable of streamlining the decision making process and completing a range of complex checks and a scan of six years of credit history in a matter of seconds. The current industry standard for the completion of an online credit check is around 30 seconds, whereas SD Taylor’s platform can deliver a decision in under five.

In addition, The DataShed also streamlined the company’s data architecture, which allows SD Taylor to react faster to market changes and reduce risk, as the digitisation process has minimised the likelihood of data loss or fraud.

Ed Thewlis, Managing Director at The DataShed, said: “Our partnership is focussed on implementing ultra-modern technology and ensuring cost efficiency. Over the course of our relationship it become clear that a number of SD Taylor’s competitors have spent millions of pounds on offerings with high technological footprints, whereas we have been able to provide a cutting-edge service for a fraction of the price, affording SD Taylor a significant competitive advantage and putting it on course to achieve its business goals in the process.”

abandonment emails have an open rate that is 333% higher, as well as a 1,000% increase in click through rates.

“We have added 14% to our email revenues and we expect to add an impressive 18% to our email profits in the following year.”

Organisations using Fresh Relevance’s solutions include household names such as Homebase, M&M Direct, Emma Bridgewater, Thorntons, White Stuff and Cottages.com.

DATA ANALYTICS Analysis a primary skill

Data analysis ‘more important’ than social media skills 72% of marketers consider data analysis to be the most important skill for their organisation to acquire over the next two years. That’s according to the new report from marketing technology brand BlueVenn.

The report, which incorporates research from over 200 UK and US marketers, revealed that 72% of marketers hope to acquire data analysis skills in the next two years and that data management is now considered more vital than social media (65%), web development (31%), graphic design (23%) and search engine optimisation (13%). Despite this fact however, 27% of marketers are still handing over the process of data analysis to the IT department.

According to BlueVenn’s

research, this focus on understanding customer data is especially prevalent in large enterprises, where 4 out of 5 marketers (80%) consider data analysis to be a “vital” skill. In addition to this, data segmentation and modelling were also considered highly soughtafter marketing skills, ranking as more important than both web development and graphic design within the enterprise space.

Anthony Botibol, Marketing Director at BlueVenn, said: “Marketers have a better opportunity than ever before to truly understand their customers’ decision making processes.

Unfortunately, most marketers simply don’t have the time, knowledge or tools to undertake this task.”

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News Extra

Database Marketing 11

Marketing Automation New report examines emerging trends

MANAGING B2B MARKETING AUTOMATION IN 2017

CommuniGator launches research highlighting how marketing automation is not being utilised as it should be in B2B organisations and predicts five key marketing trends moving into 2017.

In collaboration with Dave Chaffey from Smart Insights, marketing automation provider CommuniGator has published a report that shows that the use of marketing automation has steadily increased over the past 10 years. It is now an established category and has gained a lot of attention as a method of integrating prospect and customer relations across the customer lifecycle. However, there is an indication from the report that many potential features aren’t being used, suggesting a missed opportunity for marketers.

1. ADOPTION OF MARKETING AUTOMATION GROWS IN B2B While marketing automation has been around for some time, it is still a relatively new concept to many B2B organisations. Research shows that 18% of B2B marketers are not using automation at all, and 45% of those that are, are only using either the core features or not many at all. With only 2% using platforms to their full potential, there is scope for vendors to seriously improve the use of their software while targeting that remaining 18%.

As with any new marketing technology, adoption of the services and the features available will vary based on the value marketers place on them. Given that marketing automation has grown out of the back of email marketing platforms, it is understandable they are not currently utilised to their full potential.

2. EMAIL MARKETING TECHNIQUES BECOME MORE TARGETED 2016 showed that email marketing is still the preferred way for B2B marketers to communicate with their prospects and customers with over 68% using marketing automation to drive their email campaigns.

With automation giving marketers the chance to trigger emails in advance, as well as base them on behaviour and actions, email is set to continue to be the most popular marketing communication channel in 2017.

However, there were many techniques that are not taken advantage of. Triggered, remarketing, progressive profiling and nurturing based on lead score were all identified as techniques that have yet to become mainstream for B2B marketers. With tools such as dynamic content and workflows being part of automation platforms, these techniques are

expected to become more widely used.

Targeting a segment of users to tailor messages is a core email marketing technique.

With the likes of B2C brands such as Facebook and Amazon creating mega-personalised content, B2B audiences will soon start demanding a similar approach.

3. WEB-BASED PERSONALISATION BECOMES THE ‘NORM’ There are several web-based techniques used by B2B marketers, including personalised landing pages, A/B landing pages and personalisationrules for content promotion. Landing pages were considered the most effective, according to the report. The least effective was predictive analysis.

Other techniques, such as IP tracking and social sign-in aren’t proving to be as effective in practice.

4. BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIERS Similar to last year’s results, the biggest benefit of marketing automation was improving lead quality. Following shortly behind it was improved conversion rates, user experience and the generation of leads. The main barriers appear to be limited knowledge in lead scoring, and setting up rules and sequences.

There were also the additional barriers of integrating data systems and lack of resource to help with implementation. This indicates that marketing automation providers need to make sure their platforms are agile, adaptable and – most importantly – offer an implementation process that B2B marketers aren’t afraid of.

The current perception is that marketing

automation is too complicated and time consuming for the busy B2B marketer, let alone learning all the encompassing features. More user-friendly platforms are expected.

5. TAKING THE LEAD WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION Lack of accountability has always been a challenge when it comes to marketing automation management. This is caused by teams not taking responsibility and can lead to a problematic, unfulfilling marketing automation approach. While 62% claim marketing take responsibility for the platform, 27% shared the responsibilities with sales.

With the platform affecting both teams’ responsibilities within the sales funnel, we can see this number growing in the year to come.

In saying that, 78% found encouraging sales and marketing to work together to implement marketing automation was a challenge. Yet, those that did manage to balance the responsibility saw higher results from their automation suite. By creating an agreement, along with an action plan with clear accountability for both sales and marketing, marketing automation can be a smooth experience for all.

Lee Chadwick, CEO at CommuniGator, commented: “We are always looking at the current drivers and barriers for B2B adoption in the automation arena. There is a key difference between the practices of marketing automation and the reality of use. For us, the findings from the past year are key indicators of what we can do with marketing automation moving forward.” n

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12 Database Marketing

Opinion

Minority Groups Data Professor Richard Webber, Founder, Webber Phillips

MINORITIES MARCH ON MIDDLE ENGLAND IN AN INCREASINGLY DIVERSIFIED UNITED KINGDOM, IT’S TIME THAT MARKETERS GOT TO GRIPS WITH MINORITY GROUPS’ DATA TO UNLOCK A NEW WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY.

PROFESSOR RICHARD WEBBER In an age drowning in data, it surprised many to hear HM Government complaining about the absence of information, in this case on the 12% of UK consumers belonging to minority groups. Quoting Louise Casey, tasked by the government with publishing a review of opportunities and integration, “in many cases [my] report acknowledges that the available data are already feeling out of date, for example where we rely on the Census…the most recent results [of which are] coming from 2011. In others, data are not available at a sufficiently granular level to pick out trends that might exist or be emerging in smaller or newer groups in society. In general, better data and research are needed across a range of issues relating to integration”.

IS THE COMMERCIAL SECTOR DOING ANY BETTER? To address this information deficiency, Trevor Phillips and I examined changes between 2011 and 2016 in the size of minority populations in each of the UK’s million residential postcodes (eg N6 6DJ). We concluded that Britain’s minority populations are on the march from inner city neighbourhoods towards middle England. In the last five years it is medium-sized towns in the SouthEast and East of England where their numbers have grown the fastest. During these five years Watford, Slough, Peterborough, Luton, Boston and Corby have all seen a six per cent or more increase in the share of their overall population with non-white names.

Marketers who thought about it mostly assumed that once minorities became settled, their consumer habits would converge with the host population’s.

Not so, or much more slowly than observers had expected. It is still at Chinese New Year that the Chinese community spends most freely.

Hindu Indians, whatever their income, still confer with their extended families before making major items of expenditure. Whilst a South Asian leisure outing involves a large party, a Japanese person happily shops or goes to the theatre alone.

Half of shoppers at my local Tesco are from minority ethnic groups.

Yet world foods claim just 2% of its floor space. Clearly it’s not just from these aisles that minorities buy groceries. But that doesn’t mean that they choose product categories or brands in the same proportions as white British consumers. Few retailers and manufacturers yet know what these differences are.

There was a time when new arrivals clustered in neighbourhoods where they could speak their own language and buy their preferred foods from shops owned by members of their community. Since 2011 virtually all minorities have experienced a huge exodus to outer London suburbs and it is towns like Watford and Luton which have experienced highest growth.

From analysing consumer names it’s evident that once in these new locations minorities are far more likely to shop at multiple retailers.

Many fewer are within walking distance of ethnic-owned convenience stores. So how will off-licences and pubs in Oxford adapt to the arrival of Muslim populations? Can yams and plantains now be bought in Bexley’s supermarkets? Do pharmacists in Milton Keynes stock beauty products its West Indian population wants to buy and have their technology retailers adapted to the rise in South Asian numbers? No doubt there are travel agents in Erith who can fly Nigerians to Lagos or CTNs in Corby that sell Lithuanians international phone cards. But does a car dealer in Harlow understand how this march on Middle England affects demand for the marques it distributes, or a department store in Peterborough the colours and styles which excite its fast growing Polish population?

No doubt many will eventually catch up with these changes in demand – but like Louise Casey we believe that ethnic change data can help those who want to get ahead of the curve. n

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Opinion

Database Marketing 13

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14 Database Marketing

Cover Story

True B2B marketing insight James Lawson, Contributing Editor

ASPIRING TO TRUE INSIGHT IN MODERN B2B MARKETING If today’s B2B marketers genuinely aspire to true insight and turning those aspirations into workable realities, it takes more than simply splashing out on a new analytics system, says James lawson.

Contributors:

SIMON LAWRENCE Founder & CEO, Uncommon Knowledge

NIGEL MAGSON Managing Director, Adroit Data & Insight

JON CLARKE CEO, Cyance

ADAM ERBERT Business Development Director, Market Location

A

pplying data-driven insight helps B2B marketers learn from past customer and prospect behaviour to improve today’s B2B campaigns.

That might involve profiling current customers before finding lookalike cold targets or building sophisticated multivariate predictive models to inform targeting, timing and creative. But simply buying a new analytics system isn’t enough.

“Most of the companies we speak to are much richer in data than they were ten years ago, but much poorer in information or insight,” says Simon Lawrence, Founder & CEO of consultancy Uncommon Knowledge.

“Despite lots of talk and interest in advanced analytics, it still remains an aspiration rather than reality.”

If marketers aspire to true insight, first they need to put the foundations in place. That means going back to data basics to build a clean, well-ordered view of customers and prospects across channels. The challenges are familiar: siloed source systems with incomplete, inconsistent and out-of-date records.

“We often have to do a lot of pure data engineering work first,” says Nigel Magson, Managing Director at Adroit Data & Insight, citing the Supply Point Identification Numbers (SPIDs) used by the water industry.

“You have to link to the operational business address of the water meter to the business’s billing point or HQ. Organisations are often unaware that multiple supply points are all in fact one customer and so misunderstand the value they represent.”

Forging bespoke linkages to construct a practical operational view of parent and subsidiary companies is a common task for B2B experts. The trick is to paint a full picture of each customer and prospect while avoiding unnecessary detail in the database.

“There’s no point in linking to Tata Group over in Mumbai if you want to target Jaguar Land Rover,” Magson says. “We automate heavily but very often it does come back to bespoke manual research and eyeballing.”

One current Adroit database supports the British Medical Journal’s subscription email marketing. A bespoke data model lets it accept vast quantities of international cold

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Cover Story

lists, such as Ringgold’s incredibly detailed academic taxonomy.

Calor’s database is another Adroit example of how B2B throws up unusual hybrid combinations. Calor might initially sell to a property developer on a building site but, when those properties are built and sold, the database has to be updated with the names and freshly minted addresses of the new consumer owners using sources such as the Royal Mail’s Just Built and Not Yet Built files.

Discovering this kind of data complexity means asking the right questions in the first place. At one publishing client, Uncommon Knowledge had to pull data from multiple silos to form a joined-up view of marketing: salesforce, two different marketing automation tools, a research survey platform and two systems for tracking online activity.

“Online activity is usually heavily analysed using tools and dashboards within the various execution and automation platforms used,” says Lawrence. “But these analytics are micro in nature – informing the specific activity – rather than macro, like asking whether the audience is the right one to target in the first place – and whether we’re targeting them with the right product.”

That comes back to the need for a single view, where identifying the best existing customers is the usual first analytical step.

RFM scoring is a great way to start, highlighting high value buyers whose profile might be used to select new targets.

“You always start with the customer data,” says Adam Herbert, Business Development Director at Market Location. “Are the client’s customers over-represented in certain sectors?

Profiling can quickly indicate opportunities they may have overlooked.”

Running multivariate analysis to identify customer profiles helped Uncommon Knowledge gauge existing penetration and the attractiveness, volume and potential of remaining prospects for its publishing client.

The SCV also underpinned further work to understand the customer journey using historical campaign data.

That showed the path prospects took to become customers and which “touches” prompted those journeys. However Lawrence notes B2B data limitations make it difficult to analyse in detail and then apply those learnings universally.

“We still really only have SIC and company size to play with,” he says. “These don’t provide sufficient insight to explain decision making behaviour or inform targeting. What’s

needed is new data or new ways of thinking about businesses and decision making behaviour.”

He points to the popularity of personas as an encouraging sign, now a standard way to inform user experience and content development. However, personas are more anecdotal than based on hard data.

Linking bespoke market research to standard business demographics is a common solution here, giving a wide-ranging, consistent universe that also offers detailed insight into the motivations behind business actions. For his publishing client, Lawrence used the results of several surveys to develop a model of business sector maturity.

Imputing those research results to the SCV helped further segment the prospects based on attributes like procurement maturity: did companies take a “big stick” approach to pushing down suppliers’ prices or form more sophisticated partnerships? That in turn informed the choice and tone of content used

Database Marketing 15

in all channels.

Uncommon Knowledge is itself now developing a new segmentation focusing on the owners and directors of small businesses.

With echoes of Lawrence’s previous work in this area, it classifies individual values, preferences and prejudices and their influence on their company’s purchase behaviour.

“Using primary data that can be attributed to all businesses,” says Lawrence, “we are in a much stronger position to serve content that is directly relevant and create richer personalisation and engagement.”

Content personalisation, web engagement: those digital applications are where much of B2B insight investment is now focused.

Allied to marketing automation technology, bringing together online behaviour with offline demographics is helping target and prioritise prospects and companies.

Lead scoring is a particularly fertile area. By allocating different scores to prospect activities like

>>>

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16 Database Marketing

Cover Story

True B2B marketing insight James Lawson, Contributing Editor

website visits, content downloads or response to an outbound email, marketers can find out how close a prospect is to conversion and so allocate the type of marketing treatment to employ.

IP and multiple other digital tracking methods are central to lead scoring, helping link email recipients to web visits and linking anonymous website browsers to a recognisable business.

As part of the email campaigns Adroit runs for one client, it built a points-based lead scoring system to gauge the implications of subsequent activity by those clicking through.

Adroit weighted visits to different website pages to reflect their engagement importance.

Recency and number of site visits also feed into the final metric, along with negative inputs that reflect unwanted behaviour.

“We knit this together with scores derived from other channels,” explains Magson. “If there’s no response from email, then we can switch to a different channel.”

Adroit uses Communigator’s GatorLeads to manage the IP tracking, with its data one of the feeds to a SQL database that gives a full single view of each company and its associated contacts. A selected base from a UK B2B universe is another input, which enhances the client data.

“We’ve built lots of other linkages to digital platforms like Dotmailer and Adestra through their APIs,” says Magson.

Account-Based Marketing vendor Demandbase is a leader in this kind of IP linking, supporting an account-level view of prospects and also helping cut waste in paid search and RTB display ad buying. Knowing who is on a web page means marketers can choose to serve ads only to prospects from companies they are targeting.

However Market Location’s Herbert warns IP tracking and automated scoring methods may not be as effective as software vendors would like us to think. “Lead scoring can be very misleading at time and may not accurately predict conversion,” he says.

That’s fair comment. Though we might know that IBM have checked out our product information, it’s hard to know who the person browsing our website really is and their real intention. Is their activity indicative of what the business they work for really wants – or are they a relatively lowly employee rather than a senior decisionmaker?

“If a company keeps visiting your website, maybe they are looking to sell you something rather than the other way round,” says Herbert.

“IP tracking is absolutely brilliant in consumer

marketing where you can track the individual but in B2B it’s not so effective, especially at larger companies. Also, you only have around 800,000 business IPs which is less than a third of the businesses out there.”

Cyance’s Nexus platform is the latest to take this digitally-driven cross-channel approach, linking online tracking to offline activity to build an integrated view of channel activity.

Using techniques like machine learning to detect patterns and to gather reliable data, Nexus supports automated predictive model building to prioritise the most likely prospects for contact.

While partnering with established vendors to handle tasks like ETL, Cyance has put a lot of effort into developing Nexus itself albeit with some input from predictive experts Warwick Analytics.

“We looked at various different solutions but wanted to build our own IP,” says Cyance’s CEO Jon Clarke. “It uses a mixture of open source algorithms which we tune to suit our own uses. With automation, you can crunch through vast data sets with little human input but we also overlay decades of experience to provide human context.”

The other vital part of the Nexus solution comes in matching prospects to buying signals identified from the same individual or business elsewhere on the web, again using techniques like IP matching. This kind of background data gathering is another hot area for B2B innovation with the likes of Lattice Engines, Mintigo and Infer attracting a lot of investment over the last few years.

Cyance collects this online data itself and also takes in feeds from multiple data partners, adding it to the hundreds of millions of

conventional records on its Global Multiverse database.

“Today, pretty much every buying journey starts online and, increasingly, it ends there too,” says Clarke. “We capture data on web buying behaviour, determine its relevance for our client and what point that person is at in their buying journey.”

This intelligence adds another layer of “behavioural intent” to predictive models. “That combination gives us the reliable and effective scoring logic for model building,” explains Clarke.

That means more accurate ranking of target lists: those that show additional buying signals along with a high propensity to buy based on standard business demographics or previous purchase go to the top. Cyance claims dramatic improvements in targeting based on subsequent conversion rates.

One client used Nexus to rank its outbound telesales list. “That gave a 300% increase in appointment setting success based on cold leads,” says Clarke. “That’s largely because we knew what they were looking at on third party websites. In a further 50-50 AB split test, 80% of appointments came from our modelled data.”

Those figures are compelling but Herbert ends by reminding us that there are always going to be limits to analytics in B2B and that certain sectors, companies or products can defy analysis. Factoring (selling payable invoices to a third party to aid cashflow) is a good example.

“Either they need it or they don’t,” he says.

“It’s not related to company, size, age or anything else. Analysis can’t tell you everything – so use it as a guide rather than a rule.” n

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The Campaign is Dying Google says that 80% of all purchases now start with an internet search and buyers will progress 60% of the way to making a decision before they even raise their hand to you.

As a consequence, the traditional campaign is becoming irrelevant.

With buyers potentially touching your brand and content 24 / 7 on multiple devices isn’t it about time your marketing and lead generation evolved too?

Uncommon Knowledge creates lead generation programmes that orchestrate relevant, one to one engagement across all channels in real time to build long lasting, valued and mutually beneficial relationships.

Contact simonl@uncommon-knowledge.net to find out more.

2017.indd DBM Jan-Feb Mag Full Page Ad 17 2016.indd 1

10/03/2017 09:13:16 28/07/2016 10:50

18 Database Marketing

Notebook

GDPR TO DRIVE ENGAGEMENT Research by Callcredit reveals that 81% of UK consumers will be more likely to share their personal data once the general data protection regulation (GDPR) is in place. It also found that almost a quarter (21%) say that Brexit has made them feel their personal data is less secure.

The findings paint a picture of a discerning and savvy consumer who is taking control and ownership over their personal information. This is a trend which strongly aligns with the prolific rise of the Me2B economy, where consumers are far more aware of their interactions with organisations. The research shows consumers understand the benefits of sharing their data with brands as 47% admit that it saves them time by enabling them to have the same conversation with a brand on-line, on the phone and in-store and 39% recognise the opportunity to receive more personalised offers.

The research also suggests there is a role for businesses to play in providing reassurance, as 55% admit they would share more information with organisations and businesses if they had a better understanding of how it would benefit them.

32% OF RETAILERS DON’T HAVE AN APP A third (32%) of the UK’s top retailers don’t have a mobile shopping app, reveals the new State of Digital Commerce report from Episerver, which examines the trends set to shape 2017.

The report analyses the mobile presence of 100 top UK retail brands and draws on research with 1,200 consumers and 100 marketing professionals.

In addition, 66% of marketing professionals no longer include mobile apps within their mobile marketing campaigns. Instead, the majority (56%) are choosing a responsive mobile presence, with 80% of the top retail brands opting for a responsive ecommerce site.

One in ten marketers admit their emails aren’t relevant Email remains a central pillar of marketing programmes, but new research from the DMA suggests marketers have some work to do to ensure they’re relevant and trusted.

E

mail remains ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for the majority (95%) of marketers, but less than one in 10 (9%) say all their emails are relevant to their customers. According to the DMA’s latest Marketer email tracker 2017 report, sponsored by dotmailer, two in five (42%) marketers say that at best ‘some’ of their emails are relevant to consumers, a clear disconnect between what marketers want to achieve and what they produce.

The research also reveals that marketers and consumers agree that ‘trust’ is the leading factor for persuading someone to sign up to receive emails from a brand. For marketers, having a ‘trustworthy reputation’ was the most effective way to ensure signups, with 38%, and almost 29% of consumers agreed. However, ‘Money-off’ (45%), ‘% off’ (41%), ‘Free samples/gifts’ (35%) and ‘Free delivery’ (35%) were all more popular among consumers, who appear to be swayed by the offer of something for free.

The biggest concerns for marketers when it comes to email is ‘lack of strategy’ (28%), ‘lack of data’ (27%) and ‘data siloes’ (26%).

Last year’s biggest concern for 42% of marketers was ‘limited internal resources’, which has now dropped out of the top three but is still a significant issue for a quarter of marketers (25%).

‘Lack of content’ has increased consistently since 2012 to also be an issue for 25% of respondents, but with marketers

needing this content to feed their campaigns this issue only looks likely to grow.

Average ROI for email has increased slightly year-on-year, with average returns of £30.01 for every £1 spent, which is up from £29.64. However, the ability to calculate ROI is now less than half (45%) and has been on a steady decline since 2012, with a significant disconnect between junior (10%) and senior (54%) marketers in whether they can make the calculation.

According to marketers, most brands are still not consistently testing emails, with 40% reporting less than a quarter of emails included a test. While fewer marketers say they do not conduct email testing at all, down from 17% to 8% this year, there was an increase in those who feel they have ‘no competence’ in email testing, up from 5% to 14%.

Rachel Aldighieri, MD of the DMA, comments: “Email has never been so important to marketers and has become the channel round which others can be built to create a truly integrated multi-channel marketing programme. Although with this growth in email, we’re already starting to see issues with the access to good content and the knock-on effect this has on relevance. Trust is the key to any long-term relationship and if marketers want to continue to see the impressive returns on their email spend, they will need to heed consumer concerns and take care to give them what they want.” n

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Notebook

DMA benchmarking report finds email in good health The DMA has announced the latest edition of its stripped down Email benchmarking report for 2016, which makes for largely positive reading for marketers.

Total emails delivered – Of emails sent, 98% were

Unique open rates – Since 2010 unique open rates

delivered. This is the highest delivery rate yet

have varied from 16% in 2011 to a high of 20% in

recorded, increasing by 11% since 2010.

2013. In 2015, average unique open rates fell to 15%.

Unique click-through rate – Unique click-through rates

Unique click-to-open rate – Click-to-open rates have

have fallen every year since we began collecting data

also declined to 20% from the high of 32% in 2013,

in 2010, to a low of 2% in 2015.

although this also remains higher than the figure for 2010-11.

T

he DMA has published the latest edition of its Email benchmarking report which finds that email remains in good health, with emails delivered at a new high, unique open rates and unique click-to-open rates remaining steady. The Customer Acquisition Barometer 2015 highlighted that the vast majority (84%) of marketers use email, which was also rated as the best-performing channel by the highest proportion of marketers (41%). Data comes from a large number of Email Service Providers based on more than 57 billion emails.

This report has undergone a significant transformation including a reduction in the data being reported to focus on the key metrics that help to define email’s effectiveness.

Marcus Gearey, Chair of the Email Council’s Benchmarking Hub and Analytics Manager at Zeta Global, explains: “Collecting only key email metrics – sent, delivered, opens and clicks – allows the report to concentrate on what those contributing to the DMA panel discussions wanted most: an accurate performance barometer for email both across the board and by key industry verticals.

“We hope this method will not only provide a better, more accurate means of aggregating email performance data but that the stripped down approach encourages more ESPs to contribute their own data in the knowledge that the collective approach to intelligence gathering ultimately benefits the whole group with each addition.” n

Database Marketing 19

CRM SUCCESS MEASURES FOR SMES UNVEILED A new survery of 300 EMEA SMEs has found that 84% of SMEs regard ‘improving process efficiency’ as the primary business objective for their CRM deployments. An analysis of the survey commissioned by CRM solutions provider Maximizer Software aims to help fill the knowledge gap on SME CRM usage.

The study has revealed a very clear tactical benefit from CRM solutions, delivering measurable hard cash savings. However, a significant minority (31%) of SMEs have adopted the objective of strategic business growth and are putting their CRM at the heart of their business. The research highlights the growing evolution of CRM, with businesses adopting the solution as the ‘go to’ platform for delivering customer experience and linking it with other IT systems. CRM is now being employed as a company-wide repository for customer intelligence, and that intelligence is used to drive growth in every aspect of the business. The study also looked at key benefits achieved by CRM and confirmed that the centralisation of customer data is a key advantage as stated by 87% of respondents, with 70% also achieving improved data quality and value from their CRM.

ONLY 25% DID CHRISTMAS SHOP ON HIGH STREET

According to a survey of 2,250 shoppers of whom 600 were in the UK, only 25% of UK consumers did most of their Christmas shopping on the high street, down from 29% last year. The researchby insight platform provider Qualtrics indicates that the move online is gathering strength with 75% of respondents doing most of their seasonal shopping online, up from 71% who said they shopped online last year.

A total of 69% claim they check online and high street prices before buying.

Eighteen percent do so occasionally and only 13% say they rarely price check.

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20 Database Marketing

What’s in Store for 2017?

2017:

IN YOUR WORDS

After another turbulent year and with plenty of significant change lying ahead, we ask the industry what they think the next year might bring for data and insight-driven marketers…

GDPR

CHARITY MARKETING

Chris Combemale, CEO, DMA group

Elizabeth Denham, Information Commissioner

“May 2018 should be a date that is

Everyone must stop focusing on the paperwork of privacy and move towards commitment to the people

in every marketer’s diary, giving us

whose data they have – commitment to managing personal data legally, sensitively and ethically.”

“The most successful organisations think of data protection as something more than mere compliance.

around 16 months before the GDPR comes into force. It is concerning

Gerald Oppenheim, Head of Policy, The Fundraising Regulator

that only half of our industry feels

“It is important that charities and fundraisers understand their responsibilities in relation to data protection and

their businesses are prepared for

data consent, which should be based on consideration of the rights and the wishes of the individual.”

the new rules and not that many more believe they will be ready

Paula Sussex, Chief Executive, Charity Commission

in time. The finish line for GDPR

“Charities are subject to the same legal requirements as all other organisations and we expect them to

readiness is fixed and the risk to

properly safeguard personal information according to the law. Trustees should have systems in place so

businesses of not being compliant is

that there is the right level of knowledge and awareness about the rules and expectations, and that they are

significant. Our advice is to continue

adhered to.

preparations in earnest over the coming year. Not making it across the line in time is not an option.”

Mark Davison, Chief Data Officer, Callcredit Information Group

B2B MARKETING Jon Clarke, CEO, Cyance “Today’s customers are fast becoming dissatisfied with companies due to the traditional B2B marketing

“The digital revolution has led

methods they’re using. These methods include using mass marketing techniques, which involve consistently

to an unprecedented explosion

targeting enough people in the hope that statistically, they’ll hit enough people at a time when they have a

of personal data that continues

need or are looking for a solution.

to erupt at an astounding rate.

“As established as these techniques might be, they can easily result in people being spammed with

Naturally, consumers are curious

unwanted or too many messages which, in turn, can instantly lead to unhappy customers and even

about how this data gets used

customers resenting and totally tuning out to a brand.

and how safely it is stored.

“Fundamentally, listening to buyer behaviour signals enables companies to communicate the right

Businesses have a crucial role to

message, to the right people, at the right time. It’s this insightful approach that enables companies to

play in ensuring the security of their

help people overcome their challenges and pain points and become trusted partners, turn prospects into

customers and communicating the

customers, and customers into satisfied, loyal brand ambassadors.”

steps taken to achieve this at every stage of the customer journey.

Andrew Dalglish, Managing Director, Circle Research

“More must be done to ensure

“Research we’ve carried out predicts four themes will dominate in 2017 – personalisation, data, integration

that people feel they have full control

and creativity. B2B environments being defined by the 80:20 rule is nothing new in many cases. But agency

over their own data and a deeper

leaders think that 2017 will bring an increased focus to the principal of a disproportionately high proportion of

understanding about how brands

spend being made by a relatively small number of customers. .

are using it. This will accelerate growth of the hotly anticipated rise of the personal information

“Most important will be the relationship between marketing and sales. Though not always easy, this relationship will become crucial to success as a more personalised approach to marketing emerges.

“Agency leaders anticipate that 2017 will see a blurring of the lines as B2B becomes more like B2C. There

economy to the mutual benefit of

will be a stronger focus on building the brand, tapping into buyers’ emotions and taking a more creative

both businesses and consumers.”

approach to campaigns.”

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What’s in Store for 2017

GDPR

Database Marketing 21 Adroit Data and Insight

A STIMULUS TOWARDS RETHINKING MULTI-CHANNEL CAMPAIGNING?

M

uch has been written on this subject already. And many will ignore it! But Brexit or not, hard or soft, GDPR will happen come May 2018. Many organisations are getting ready for it now, but many won’t until it’s too late. The likely outcome will be a scrabbling across the latter part of 2017 and into the first quarter of 2018, as companies try to preserve their customer base and get that all vital Double Opt-in.

For those of you not familiar with GDPR, it’s essentially new European legislation, carrying a heavy fine if not adhered to, that involves ensuring that all personal data must be processed lawfully, fairly and transparently.

As such, that’s essentially what the current UK Data Protection legislation enshrines, but it particularly impacts email and SMS channels, bringing them in line with more traditional channels; and, vitally, requires proof that opt-in has been obtained. For email, this can only be done via a Double Opt-in. Come May 2018, if you’ve not collected a proven double opt-in, you won’t be able to communicate with that customer or prospect. Between now and then therefore, we are strongly advising our clients to get as many opt-ins as they can.

It might seem a long way away, but you should expect only 5% to consent from each double opt-in attempt you make – and that doesn’t give you many more opportunities. So across 2017, we anticipate increasing panic as companies realise that their post-May 2018 contactable bases will shrink rapidly.

Third-party data-sets are likely to be severely impacted, and provenance, a word mostly associated with understanding where your food has been sourced from, will become increasingly important when applied to data too. As for email, it’s probably quite inevitable that opted-in bases will reduce in size, but on

the up-side, potentially they will become more responsive. It may also reduce the dominance, for many organisations, of email as the primary contact channel, and necessitate a shift to multi-channel campaigns. We have seen some exceptionally high engagement rates for email/SMS campaigns we have run; mobile, in particular, will become increasingly more important across 2017.

We anticipate that multi-channel campaigns engines, like FastStats PeopleStage, will be adopted to allow for the diversity of available channels, and, in the post GDPR world, the channel that organisations are permissioned to use. These engines allow for a more sophisticated hierarchy of contact approach, which maybe blended with “Next Best Action” or propensity modelling, and delivered across the range of available channels – from pushes to call centres, email, social media, or other digital platforms e.g. TrustPilot etc. and behaviourally triggered automated activity. E.g. serving response rewards, offers etc.

So in 2017 we see GDPR as a stimulus that will lead many organisations to rethink not just channel preference, but to review their comms programmes to engage with customers or supporters across multiple media. n

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22 Database Marketing

What’s in Store for 2017?

WOMEN IN MARKETING

Getting Ready

Jessica Fardin, Senior Director of Marketing and Channel Programs, Episerver

for May ‘18

“One in 10 women believe they have been held back in a marketing role as a result of their gender, according to new research commissioned

Thanks to the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulations in May 2018, every business with dealings in the EU will – or will need to - have data at the forefront of their 2017 plans.

I believe many clients will be looking to have the right processes in place by the time the fireworks go off on New Year’s Eve to ensure that the complexity of adoption does not result in a 2018 hangover.

And this agenda-driving revolution in data management comes at a time that could arguably be seen as data’s 2.0 moment.

Businesses are no longer afraid of data. The journey from basement to boardroom is complete, and this has inevitable consequences.

Since the financial meltdown of 2008 turned the advertising industry on its head, all spend is subject to far more rigour, and justifying every penny spent has become more than the pastime of fastidious financial directors.

In the early clamour to obtain a 360° view of the customer, budget requests were signed off and a lot of money was invested in a lot of competing or conflicting systems.

Companies are now beginning to unpick these silo systems, which will result in a cull of a number of solutions and the introduction of others.

This is hugely exciting for Alchemetrics given our focus on building an ecosystem of platforms capable of delivering on all marketing demands, under our award winning service framework Software With a Service.

Whether e-voucher, real-time customer journeys, mobile apps, data mining or analytics platforms, collaboration is at the heart of what we do and will continue to be the case throughout 2017 as the demand for capitalising on all those silo’d data points grows.

As the recession hit, the internet was just not able to deliver the rich user experience it does today, and a billboard was considered targeted marketing purely because of the demographic of the postcode it was plastered in.

Brands demand more now, rightly so. And they have come to recognise the value the SCV holds for driving everything - online and offline - to finally deliver that 360° experience for the consumer.

And that is exactly what Alchemetrics’ informa platform does.

Brands of all description are recognising the value of data. From making strategic boardroom decisions to influencing the experience customers have with a brand, it is all now driven by data.

This year will arguably be the most important for data marketers since their businesses were established. We’ve got the attention of boards, and now they want to be impressed by what we can do.

Our industry’s hard work is about to pay off, to the benefit of our businesses, our clients, and ultimately to all those consumers we know a lot better than we used to.

from my company Episerver as part of our ‘Digital Ninety-Nines’ project to promote female leaders in digital marketing, IT and tech.

“The research reveals that female marketers are four times more likely than men to feel they’ve been held back as a result of their gender.

“We have witnessed major developments in the digital marketing industry over the last twenty years, yet the industry is lagging in its inclusion and appointment of women in significant technology leadership roles. Women make up only 17% of the UK technology sector – a figure that drops for senior positions.”

EMAIL MARKETING Skip Fidura, Client Services Director, dotmailer

“This year’s insight into the view of consumers and marketers on email paints a worrying picture. While both love the channel, consumers continue to say they get too many and irrelevant emails from brands.

Over half of consumers have considered deleting their email account to control the flow of marketing emails they receive. As email marketers, we have a responsibility to our customers, to ourselves and to our businesses to keep our channel viable and thriving long into the future.”

Nick Keating, Director EMEA, BounceX “2017 will see a shift in the current attitudes toward email and pave the way for a transformation in email marketing strategies. An email address is the ultimate individual digital identifier, and B2C companies will begin to realise the true value of this as consumers continue to accumulate and engage on more devices (consumers possess, on average, 3.5 connected devices). Companies will adapt strategies to own audience and create channels for direct communications. In order for email to deliver on its full potential, companies will need to rethink their ‘batch and blast’ approach and reconnect with the individual behind the device.

By utilising a Behavioural Email Strategy, email will deliver high ROI and become a more effective revenue channel.”

DATA ANALYTICS Anthony Botibol, Marketing Director,BlueVenn

“With the potential of big data, marketers have a better opportunity than ever before to truly understand their customers’ decision making processes. Unfortunately, as it stands most marketers simply don’t have the time, the knowledge or the tools necessary to undertake this task in a practical and effective way.

“While there is definitely a skills shortage when it comes to data analysis, I would argue that marketers shouldn’t have to skill-up in order to achieve this. Nobody should need to have a degree in data science in order to generate value from their customers’ information, what they need are tools and technologies that can simplify the task. Until marketers are provided with these tools, they will never unlock the true potential of their customers’ data.”

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10/03/2017 09:13:20

Marketing Automation

Database Marketing 23 Automation in a digital world James Lawson, Contributing Editor

AUTOMATION IN A DIGITAL WORLD Integration remains a key challenge for marketers in today’s digital world, says James Lawson

Contributors:

RAJ BALASUNDARAM Global Head of Solutions, Emarsys

ROBIN COLLYER Leader in Next Best Action & Contextual Customer Engagement, Pegasystems

TOM HUTCHINGS Head of Insight & Analysis, Quant

ADAM OLDFIELD Managing Director, Force24

KIYOTO TAMURA VP of Marketing, Treasure Data

NICK WORTH CMO, Selligent

A

s digital continues its global takeover, automation is now vital just to cope with, let alone optimise, today’s complex marketing processes. However marketing still struggles to fuse disparate systems and data into a workable solution.

“It’s long past time for organisations to stop shouting and start listening,” says Robin Collyer, Leader in Next Best Action & Contextual Customer Engagement at Pegasystems. “To do that successfully, they need to get away from a channel-centric view and start thinking with one central brain.”

As Collyer’s title suggests, Pegasystems thinks handing off decisioning to a dedicated engine is the way to orchestrate the many different channel systems that large organisations employ. That kind of Marketing Automation (MA) solution demands a mix of static data and real-time feeds from critical sources like web sites or social, with links WWW.DBM.TODAY

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running in both directions to ensure the very latest information is always used as the basis of each decision.

“We build up a custom ‘movie’, an ongoing interaction picture, and use that to inform Next Best Action (NBA),” says Collyer. “We’re moving to a world when that NBA movie will populate at the time the customer, for example, opens an email.”

But when there are so many data sources and when marketing automation technology itself is so complicated – chiefmartec lists over 3800 different MA solutions – how can you procure and build an infrastructure that supports this kind of true hands-off, multichannel operation? Even with less ambitious strategies, marketers must master data flows, pick out critical events and then deliver the appropriate reaction as swiftly as possible.

“Sending contextually relevant messages to consumers in

>>>

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24 Database Marketing

Marketing Automation

Automation in a digital world James Lawson, Contributing Editor

the moment can be difficult when data and execution functions reside in different systems,” agrees Nick Worth, CMO at Selligent. “That challenge can be largely overcome by choosing single-vendor modular solutions that have native integrations for the core functionality.”

The traditional answer to integration woes, modular suites started with the big b2c vendors as they built or bought in new functionality. The newer, more b2b-focused vendors have also taken the modular route to add coverage for channels like social to their own core platforms.

As it often comes built into the initial software, adding extra native functionality to a suite is a matter of hours or even minutes.

Configuration rather than customisation is also the aim for the likes of Apteco, well known for offering pre-built connectors from their own MA and analytics offerings to third party channel systems.

At MA specialist Force24, managing director Adam Oldfield claims his MA platform can connect and integrate seamlessly with over 700 different data points. “The most intuitive MA solutions are now enabling marketers to become ‘super-connected’, connecting to programmes like Slack, Skype, Google, CRM systems and more,” he says.

However, these integrations tend to be derived from previous bespoke client projects while there will always be new, unknown channel systems and of course data sources to deal with. Tom Hutchings, Head of Insight & Analysis at Quant Marketing, cites Email Service Providers (ESPs) as one example.

“ESPs can only be integrated if there is enough demand,” he says. “Developing new channel integrations can be time consuming and cause delays in the set-up because

they are managed by third parties. Given the broad range of service providers in the market, it’s unlikely that your chosen MA tool will be integrated with all your client’s favoured options.”

As MA infrastructure complexity and heterogeneity increases, more vendors are positioning themselves as open, integrationcapable hubs while dedicated integration middleware is also gaining more adherents for marketing applications. Mulesoft’s Anypoint Platform is one of the leaders in the latter, connecting on-premise and cloud apps, data and devices across SOA, SaaS, and APIs. “Mobile companies in particular who are tech-heavy are tending to go towards Enterprise Bus-style architectures to orchestrate other standards,” notes Raj Balasundaram, Global Head of Solutions at Emarsys. “They often tend to use what they have in place already rather than buying in separate systems for marketing.”

The modern standards built into SaaS tools themselves are also making integration swifter and simpler. JSON is a good example, helping data ingestion and storage systems speak in a common format.

“It significantly reduces the cost of exchanging, parsing and communicating data,” says Kiyoto Tamura, VP of Marketing for Treasure Data. “This is why our open source data collector Fluentd, in use at companies like Atlassian, Microsoft and Nintendo, embraced JSON as the common data format from day one.”

However, these open IT standards work at a low level and only go so far in enabling commonality between disparate systems. For example, each company and its suppliers will still have to define for themselves how best to represent the many different variables used to

define customers, campaigns and treatments that are exchanged between systems.

“My sense is that we need something layered on top of JSON because it only addresses syntax and format issues, not semantics,” says Tamura. “For example, which field should be interpreted as the vendorspecific customer ID? These things require standardisation and as far as I know, no open effort is in place yet.”

If a modern infrastructure is already in place, it will certainly facilitate MA integration, but simply plugging in any old data to disparate applications doesn’t in itself enable marketing.

Wearable fitness vendor Runtastic is a case in point.

Though it had a bang-up-to-date, cloudbased set of IT platforms, it was still unable to form a coherent view of customer data and use it to inform its marketing actions. To trigger relevant and engaging messages to subscribers, it needed a system capable of processing huge amounts of activity data in real time.

“They had a customer database but it wasn’t properly structured for marketing, which led to massive amounts of attrition,” says Balasundaram. “You need marketing to lead integration efforts rather than IT. Because Runtastic now has our open marketing architecture, it makes it very easy for them to consume data.”

The latest buzz phrase on the data integration side of MA is the Customer Data Platform (CDP). Coined by industry guru David Raab a few years back, he defines a CDP as a marketer-controlled system that builds a multisourced customer database and exposes it to external execution systems. The last criterion is the vital one: systems only qualify if their data (or derived data such as model scores) is

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10/03/2017 09:13:21

Marketing Automation

available to other systems for campaigns and messaging.

That still gives CDPs a pretty wide remit, running from B2B predictive lead scoring and customer success management to data management platforms (DMPs) that support online advertising. Marketing clouds with an integrated customer database are natural contenders too.

Selligent is one example, with its built-in single customer view functionality making customer profile information available to users of the different modules within its engagement platform. “Simplifying the marketers’ ability to use SCV data creates the real opportunity for winning action,” says worth.

But because the use cases for customer data are so broad, a single vendor is always going to struggle cover everything with enough flexibility, scale and ease of use. That native marketing cloud ability to push and pull data to and from the different channels it supports must always extend to other third party systems. Marketers need data repositories – or CDPs if you will – that impose as few limitations as possible.

“My big gripe with the Ensighten, Lytics and BlueVenns of the world is that they can end up becoming data silos themselves,” says Tamura. “They do have APIs, but it does not give nearly the flexibility or scale of cloud data warehouses or Hadoop-style analytics infrastructure. As marketers become more sophisticated, the level of flexibility and scalability typical in the “big data” systems and missing in MA will become an issue.”

Bringing MA customer data together with online display and so having to deal with non-PII records demonstrates this need for flexibility and scale clearly. Emarsys has deep experience here, building customer-specific

data exchanges that work with both PII and non-PII data.

“If we are integrating with a DMP, you need a bespoke data exchange project but I expect this to be a standard production solution in the next 12 to 18 months,” says Balasundaram. “DMPs and MA will become one platform in future.”

Even when we do see vendors finally starting to converge the currently separate towolsets for MA, sales CRM and adtech into one suite, expert provider input will still be essential to build the database and put together the final system. Simply piping data into a warehouse is one thing but resolving identities across different systems like CRM, display ads or internal databases is far harder.

“In our experience, this is the most valuable and challenging phase in building a unified view of customers and also the area where we end up spending most of our time in onboarding our customers,” says Tamura.

Gaining this kind of knowledge through training or recruitment can very difficult and expensive for in-house client teams. They will also often have to move quickly to meet short project timescales.

The larger enterprise MA suites in particular are often sold via a network of partners and resellers who have already invested considerable time and effort in technical training to configure, integrate and optimise the functionality of the software. They will have hands-on experience gained through previous integrations with detailed understanding of releases, software quirks and bugs). However the same level of support may not be there for today’s midmarket SaaS tools.

“Often clients don’t have the appropriate technical skills or available resource within their existing IT teams,” says Hutchings. “Migrations also complicate things further with the potential

Database Marketing 25

need to run old and new systems in parallel.”

Turning to an MSP to build and run their marketing systems has long been a popular solution for marketing, solving many of those in-house integration and resource issues.

Many suppliers now offer this kind of support for the latest generation of MA tools.

“Provided they have the experience and skill sets to deliver the project, then the agency should deliver a better solution in less time,” says Hutchings. “We’ve been told by software vendors that the biggest reason for client churn is under-use of the MA system.”

Following system installation, expert support helps train up new users rapidly, build out new interaction strategies and rapidly achieve ROI. There are also often other related services like email delivery and campaign management available.

“Ideally agency involvement should only be a short-term fix, perhaps to accelerate learning,” says Oldfield. “That said, an MA vendor that offers creative and strategic marketing support is the perfect hybrid.”

This is particularly the case with a US vendor that has a limited UK presence. Trying to obtain help from tech support in a different time zone is never ideal.

“The guidance of a UK-based partner that is entirely clued up on the goals of your specific organisation is often a huge help,” notes Oldfield.

Realising that deploying or extending MA systems will always throw up integration challenges is the first thing to accept. A new off-the-shelf platform might well have the potential to integrate with hundreds of other platforms and tools, but it won’t make those links by itself. With that in mind, marketing can plan ahead, set realistic lead times – and engage expert help if required. n

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10/03/2017 09:13:21

26 Database Marketing

Recruitment

THE ANALYTICAL RECRUITMENT AGENCY FOR ANALYTICAL, STATISTICAL AND DATA JOBS... datatech.org.uk Campaign Delivery Manager - South West

Head of Customer Analytics - Europe

This position involves influencing future campaign activity for a very well-known service provider. You will build complex strategies and ensure they are delivered in a cost-effective manner. Responsibilities of the role include- manage and lead the campaign delivery team. Manage the selection process for all personalised marketing & mandatory campaigns. Provide a comprehensive consultancy service for delivery of all communications. Ensure effective delivery and management of customer and prospect database infrastructure. The ideal candidate will ensure campaigns are delivered to agreed timelines. Have at least 5 years plus experience in a multichannel campaign and content management delivery role. Detailed knowledge of modelling, statistical analysis, profiling and segmentation. Proven ability to lead and shape campaign delivery strategies. Interpret and manipulate data streams. Strong leadership skills. Knowledge of SQL, SPSS, SAS and Microsoft Office would be advantageous.

Come and head up this expanding Customer Analytics Centre in a sunny idyllic location with great water sports and sandy beaches. This company is growing fast but steadily and is endeavouring to create a better experience for their increasing customer base. Responsibilities include- recruit and manage a high performing team, work with and mentor junior team members. Show a deep knowledge and understanding of customer analytics. Be highly energetic, team-player who can work with multiple teams in a collaborative manner. Work effectively in an autonomous fashion. Highly organised with a great eye for detail. The ideal candidate will be- educated to degree level in a numerate subject. Possess several years’ experience in Analytics and Online Marketing.

Proven team management experience. Be responsible for driving both execution and strategy. Experienced in the use of advanced Excel, coupled with Google Analytics. Working knowledge of programming languages such as SQL, R would be advantageous.

Salary Negotiable plus benefits - Ref: J9390

Insight Analyst - London

Salary to £28K plus benefits - Ref: J9362

This organisation is a product innovator, enjoying considerable success in launching products and services. They have developed a unique loyalty scheme and because it is so user friendly found themselves acclaimed by retailers with over 4 million members. This position includes: providing commercial, actionable insights across the company. Undertaking projects across the whole group. Explore data and systems to deliver analytical solutions. Use the correct analytical techniques to provide actionable business insights. To be considered you must have been educated to degree level in a numerate/computer science related discipline.

A formal MySQL Qualification required. The ability to interpret client briefs and undertake remedies to answer the business requirements. 1 – 3 years’ analytical / problem solving experience a must. Solid experience working with SQL in a commercial environment essential. Proven experience of working on multiple campaigns simultaneously advantageous.

Call us on 01256 314660

Negotiable Salary plus benefits - Ref: J9332

Customer Data Manager – FTC - Bucks Salary to £65k plus benefits - Ref: J9389

This is an internationally known manufacturer of high-end products who is recruiting to fill this senior position. You will be responsible for: providing cover for and release the Data & Insight Manager to undertake other projects. Develop and enhance data quality, accuracy and completeness for the Group. Develop and implement a world-class data quality measurement framework. Provide each Brand with a comprehensive view of its customers and prospects. Manage Brand collection of data. Monitor and manage all inputs and outputs. You will be educated to degree level in a numerate subject i.e. maths, stats etc. Must have “hands-on” database marketing or MI analyst background. Proven managerial experience essential – three direct reports. Experience using the following tools essential– SQL, Business Object and Qlikview.

email: analytics@datatech.org.uk

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10/03/2017 09:13:22

Call It Like You See It

Database Marketing 27

Brexit planning Jon Cano-Lopez, CEO, REaD Group

PM’s

outlook: the way I see it I’m becoming slightly irritated by the media debate around whether or not the Prime Minister has ‘done enough’ at this stage to set out what the next steps will be in negotiating Brexit. How is it in any way reasonable for the government to go into negotiations, having first told the public how they plan to do it? It seems that the less is said at this stage, the better our chance is of reaching the best possible deal with the EU. The British public needs to take a step back and allow Theresa May to do her job. But for those wondering how our industry will be affected over the course of Brexit negotiations and beyond, here are my thoughts:

International trading Whilst the Prime Minister’s promise to ensure smooth implementation is encouraging, in my book I know of very few ‘smooth’ divorces. This is going to be a bumpy ride.

However, the saving grace is that the majority of European countries still want to continue trading with the UK (even if they are reluctant to admit it), therefore it is not all doom and gloom.

It is simply not possible to leave the EU and remain part of the single market. However it will be possible to have trading agreements with individual EU member states as well as the rest of the world. In my view we are the world’s fifth largest economy ‘despite’ our membership of the EU and who wouldn’t want to do business with the world’s fifth largest economy? I suspect that even outside of the EU that Britain will be seen as the base of most European

footprints. Brexit could, in fact, mean more business for British marketers as international companies rely on local knowledge and expertise in order to operate here.

Data talent pool Whilst it is inevitable that immigration will fall following the vote to leave the EU, I suspect we will revert to times gone by when nationals from countries outside of the UK will simply apply to work here and be granted a position or not.

I think a significant part of the vote to leave was due to a desire for numbers to be more aligned with infrastructure, and for Britain to be able to control that. A request based worker policy gives us that without disproportionately limiting the talent pool.

Data regulation Companies that think that a detachment from the EU means that implementing GDPR is not a requirement are wrong in their assumptions. Clearly there will be a length of time whilst we are still part of the EU and their regulation will be governing. It is important to remember that the current governing legislation is really not fit for purpose. It is out of date and needs reforming. GDPR does this and, whilst still containing some highly ambiguous clauses, will move the industry forward in terms of consumer trust and confidence.

My hope is that we will use GDPR as a template from which to build a data protection and processing framework that will be both globally applicable and world leading.

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10/03/2017 09:13:23

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