Direct Marketing Magazine Oct 2017

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Royal LePage turns to data analytics to help buyers find their “perfect life”

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Analyticsbased consulting: A new discipline emerges

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Sector report: Embracing the future of print

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vol. 30 • No. 9 • October 2017

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

Data-driven organizations ❱ 10 Are we making progress?

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Vol. 30 | No. 9 | October 2017

Keys to creating a customerfocused culture

EDITOR Sarah O’Connor - sarah@dmn.ca

Data Analytics

PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Jeff Mowatt Emily Anderson Rob Nathan Matthew Bertulli Jim O’Reilly Dominic Clare Jessica Schaeffer Kevin Deveau Stuart Wells Larry Filler Jan Kestle LLOYDMEDIA INC. HEAD OFFICE / SUBSCRIPTIONS / PRODUCTION:

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Royal LePage turns to data analytics to help buyers find their “perfect life”

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Big Data and the future of decision making

Analytics-based consulting: A new discipline emerges to support improved performance and growth Feature

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The retail supply chain is modernizing Three impact areas you need to act on today

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How to train marketers to be better data analysts

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Technical considerations for datadriven customer-centric orgs October 2017

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Customer Centricity

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Keys to creating a customer-focused culture

By Jeff Mowatt

“I

Jeff Mowatt is a customer service strategist, Hall of Fame speaker and bestselling author.

For more tips, training tools or to inquire about engaging Jeff for your team visit www.JeffMowatt.com

’m just doing this until something better comes along—like retirement!” If that sums up the attitude held by some of your employees, then imagine the negative impact on teamwork, productivity and especially on customer loyalty. Chances are that you, as a business manager or owner, are committed to satisfying customers. But what are you doing about employees who see their jobs merely as “fillers”? Business leaders need to create an environment that motivates employees to want to take care of customers. Unfortunately, the conventional methods to create a customer-focused culture through mission statements have often fallen short.

In the late 1980s and early 90s a lot of managers and business gurus seemed to think that if companies just had a corporate mission statement, all of their customer service and teamwork problems would be magically solved. These mission statements almost always touted the organization’s undying “commitment to satisfying customers” Blah, blah, blah. If only it were that simple. A mission statement is a good idea—provided there’s ongoing real-world implementation of the principles and values it conveys.

Without implementation, customers and employees find that mission statements that brag about the importance of customers are annoying.

Managers need a fresh approach to ensuring that customers are satisfied and that employees are personally committed to making it happen. After working with dozens of corporations over the years that have been faced with this challenge, I developed the concept of CAST Meetings (Customer Service Team Meetings). Think of it as a way to breathe new life into your corporate mission.

At CAST Meetings managers and employees gather for a couple of hours once a month to focus on enhancing customer satisfaction. You may think you already do something similar in your organization.

Perhaps you call it a staff meeting. The problem is that staff meetings end up focusing on workers’ needs and managers’ needs—not on those of customers.

So, erase the notion that CAST Meetings have any connection to your current staff meeting. Everyone attending CAST—frontline employees, support staff and managers of all levels—will focus on the most important person, the customer.

When introducing CAST Meetings to our clients, we include these seven key elements.

1. Spread your customers’ words At CAST Meetings, everyone learns the latest results of your customer surveys, letters and comments. One of the most useful, least expensive ways to collect customer feedback that we teach in our seminars is to ensure that employees directly ask customers a magic question, “What can we do to improve our service?”

Asking that question and bringing the responses to CAST not only provides valuable information, it also reminds frontline employees of one of their most valuable roles—being the eyes and ears of the company.

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2. Get people thinking Prior to introducing the first CAST Meeting, we conduct training sessions for our client’s management and staff on ways to enhance customer satisfaction— without working harder. As part of these seminars, we brainstorm ways to boost customer satisfaction at each point of perception. Here we generate a list of ways we might enhance customers’ experience at every point where they form an impression of the company—on the website, when they phone in, as they enter the parking lot, while waiting on site and so on. Later we bring those ideas to CAST Meetings.

We’ve found that employees share ideas that are often realistic, innovative and create tremendous value for customers. As Sam Walton said: “listen to everyone in your company, especially the ones who actually talk to customers. They really know what’s going on out there.” The bonus is that since frontline employees are the ones coming up with the ideas, they are more committed to implementing them.

3. Sift to find the nuggets At the monthly CAST Meetings, we sift through the feedback generated by both the customers and the employees. Just because we’ve collected a list of ideas from these groups, doesn’t necessarily mean that we can or should act on each suggestion. At the CAST we use two primary tools to evaluate the suggestions.

One way is using a feedback grid that we discuss in our management training seminars. This grid reveals how your customers rate the various services you provide and how important those services are to them.

Another approach to evaluating the suggestions put forth is simply to ask all CAST participants to come up with as many pros and cons of the idea as possible.

The result is everyone—not just managers—does a preliminary assessment of the suggestion. That way, when ideas are rejected it’s not just managers rejecting the concepts (which is demoralizing for everyone).

Instead, everyone understands why certain ideas won’t be acted upon. This goes a long way to eliminating the “them versus us” attitude between managers and frontline staff that’s so prevalent in many organizations.

4. Implement now, perfect later Pilot. Pilot. Pilot . When you identify an idea that on the surface looks like it has merit, the next step is to launch a preliminary test run, or “pilot.” So, let’s say for a 30-day trial basis you are going to give several frontline employees in a specific department the authority to make a decision that typically requires management approval. Those same employees volunteer to try the program, monitor the results and report their findings at the next CAST Meeting. If they indicate that the pilot went well, then at the CAST it can be fine-tuned and expanded to other areas within the organization.

One of the great hidden benefits of conducting a continued on page 19 October 2017

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Data Analytics

Royal LePage turns to data analytics to help buyers find their “perfect life”

By Emily Anderson

W

hen it comes to selling a home, sometimes the most important real estate is on the Internet. In the age of online shopping, driving homebuyer traffic to an agency’s website is just as important as holding open houses. And like a brick-and-mortar property, an online real estate site must offer a compelling experience to attract and engage visitors.

Last year, Royal LePage set out to provide a more personal and fun approach to engaging prospective homebuyers. As the largest Canadian residential real estate company offering as many as 160,000 listings at a time, Royal LePage developed a unique web application that helps prospective buyers discover not only their Dream Home but their Dream Neighbourhood.

Called “Your Perfect Life,” the interactive tool leverages market research to add a new dimension to the house-hunting process, letting homebuyers discover and explore neighbourhoods that match their current or aspirational lifestyle.

By adjusting characteristics to reflect their current lifestyle or future changes—say, if they’re anticipating a job promotion, a new child or retirement—buyers can discover how those changes might lead them to different neighbourhoods with different characteristics. The tool connects buyers with Royal LePage agents who use the information provided by the searches to schedule site visits at homes in areas that match the buyer’s lifestyle.

“Homebuyers are not just looking for brick-and-mortar structures,” says Fred Lee, product manager and the project lead ❱ DMN.ca

at Royal LePage. “They are looking to build a home in a place that fits with their stage in life and with their desired lifestyle. With this tool, you can model your current life status or a future lifestyle and Your Perfect Life will recommend neighbourhoods for you to explore. These may be neighbourhoods that a homebuyer hadn’t considered or are unfamiliar with, especially if they are relocating from another part of the country.”

What’s unique about Your Perfect Life is its foundation in hard data and analytics that didn’t exist a decade ago. Web developers, real estate experts, data scientists and graphic designers all joined forces to build the interactive tool based on more than 20,000 data points, including neighbourhood demographics and the PRIZM5 consumer segmentation system from Environics Analytics.

After isolating the demographic, social and cultural dimensions that are important to homebuyers, the project team classified Canada’s neighbourhoods into 38 lifestyle types—with colourful names like Shabby Chic, Jobs and Jammies and Busy in the Burbs— and added backstories illustrating each segment’s qualities. Web developers and graphic designers from Alaia Technologies then created the segment icons and user interface to bring the tool to life.

Recognizing that many online users like websites that increase their self-knowledge, the Royal LePage project team gave Your Perfect Life a fun, almost playful look. When visitors arrive on the webpage, the tool begins working in the background to locate them in the physical world and ascertain what their current lifestyle might be. Users can also submit custom parameters—family size, job type and age of children—which could be real or aspirational.

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Data Analytics

Whether the user is a newlywed looking to move from a funky apartment to a suburban home or a single person whose recent promotion makes a spacious city condo finally affordable, the web tool identifies neighbourhoods anywhere in Canada that align with those variables. By clicking on a neighbourhood, users can learn more about the area and find active listings, along with contact information for a local Royal LePage agent ready to help them.

Meanwhile, Royal LePage’s agents can use the information provided by the buyers’ searches to identify appropriate listings and schedule visits. “Buyers have October 2017

effectively narrowed down their search and provided agents with a lot of qualitative information that helps them help their buyers,” explains Lee. “It’s been a real plus for our agents.”

Launched in September 2016, Your Perfect Life became an immediate hit, logging more than 10,000 unique visits in its first week of activation. And it’s satisfied a number of sales objectives for Royal LePage. In the first full month, sales leads generated by the website jumped 73% year-over-year to nearly 12,000 and the conversion rate of users to leads rose 67%. Just as important, the new web tool sets the company apart from competitors in the crowded real estate marketplace and reinforces

its position as an innovative industry leader. While many sites offer searches based on factors like price, number of bedrooms and square footage, only Royal LePage allows shoppers to leverage market research to discover the perfect neighbourhood for their lifestyle.

“More than floor plans and house fronts, these lifestyle portraits engage prospective buyers while building brand awareness and generating sales leads,” says Phil Soper, president of Royal LePage. And while the web tool was designed for all prospective homebuyers, it especially targets always-online Millennials who are increasingly entering the home buying market.

Since the launch, improved SEO has continued to drive traffic to the

Royal LePage website and visitor dwell time has grown significantly.

“It’s been a great success for Royal LePage,” says Soper. “Bottom line: No one is doing a neighbourhood lifestyle matching tool like this one.”

Royal LePage continues to investigate new lifestyle-related information—neighbourhood features, parks and cultural amenities—to increase engagement on its website and drive fresh leads to its agents. With Your Perfect Life, buyers now have a tool to find their dream home and Royal LePage agents have a way to find their dream customers.

As a director of business development at Environics Analytics, Emily Anderson helps real estate and retail clients better understand their markets, trade areas and customers.

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Data Analytics

Big Data and the future of decision making still proves challenging in practice.

According to a recent study by 451 Research, 85% of organizations say they are not yet able to exploit Big Data for competitive advantage.

By Stuart Wells and Kevin Deveau

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s individuals, it is estimated that we make about 35,000 conscious decisions daily. Get up with the alarm or press snooze? Walk or drive to work? Make that large up-front investment for your business now or hold off until next year? The act of decision making is complex and yet it is about to get even more sophisticated due to the technological advances underway.

One of the biggest game changers is access to data like never before. Now consumers are able to order from across the globe and have goods arrive within the week when previously options were limited by proximity. To help consumers make these purchase decisions, there has been a surge of online review forums tracking consumer sentiment data. In fact, according to a survey by BrightLocal, nearly nine out of 10 consumers say they check reviews on websites like TripAdvisor or Yelp! before deciding where to spend their money.

In response, businesses have had to become more strategic when it comes to reaching their audiences, and this is where the increasing importance of analytics comes into play. Today, business analysts have access to an ever-expanding amount of Big Data—the growing mass of information created by applications, devices, point-of-sale systems, social networks and more.

If used correctly, Big Data can provide organizations with valuable information to shape their businesses. This idea is exciting to business executives and, as a result, the collection of Big Data has proliferated across industries in hopes of increasing sales and improving margins.

However, many are discovering that deriving value from this data ❱ DMN.ca

The problem with Big Data Why the gap? Why do organizations have such big hopes for the implantation of large-scale data collection but come up so short?

The answer here is that it is extremely difficult to pull value from Big Data if you do not know the specific question you are trying to answer. Organizations must be able to isolate the data they need from the bulk of it, otherwise they are essentially trying to “boil the ocean” when that ocean is growing larger every moment. If the data set is too large, decision makers run the risk of unintentionally selectively pulling or eliminating values that may result in misleading correlations.

Lightning strikes—but not often Without proper analytic tools to sort and manage the data coming in, companies are relying on strokes of luck to lead them to success. For example, Pfizer beat the odds with their drug UK92480, which was a washout during trials to treat angina in the 1990s. Just as the company was getting ready to give up on the drug, someone noticed a strange, yet consistent side effect being reported by trial participants. Now drug UK92480 is marketed under a different name: Viagara.

This is one of the biggest commercial drug success stories in history and the possibility of such a fortuitous accident has encouraged businesses to save every scrap of data they have in hopes of lucking out. However, they are more likely to grow their success by using science and analytics to make informed, strategic decisions based on their collected data.

Harnessing Big Data through investments in analytic technology

As technology improves, consumer demands increase and industries continue to become more complex, the demand for data scientists to interpret and propagate the masses of collected data will also continue to grow. Yet according to a McKinsey study, by 2018 only 200,000 data scientists will be available to fill more than 490,000 jobs. This means that the act of business decision making and interpreting data will have to continue to adapt and evolve through the adoption of highly sophisticated software and processes, in conjunction with a fierce battle for talent.

To make world-class decisions, you must start with a focus on the decisions—not on the data.

Five strategies to strengthen your organizations focus in the right areas are: 1. Capture subject matter expertise. Organizations will benefit from gathering the expertise and perspectives of subject matter experts, codifying these perspectives and incorporating them into a decision process. Unfortunately most organizations are either unequipped to do so or are unaware it is possible.

2. Accelerate intelligent solution creation. Only 16% of the average IT budget goes to fund innovation, with the rest devoted to maintaining legacy platforms built to solve yesterday’s problems. This can delay the creation of innovative decision management applications for months and sometimes years. With the appropriate technology, the time needed to create intelligent solutions can be shortened to a few weeks.

3. Speed insight to execution.

It is assumed that the faster organizations can deliver new applications, the better when, in fact, decreasing the time it takes to update and improve analytic models can be even more important.

Organizations are discovering that change management isn’t just an important attribute of a successful decision management solution—it’s a hallmark.

4. Build institutional memory.

When decision makers are promoted or leave, they tend to take with them valuable knowledge. Once they are gone, their replacements don’t know why certain decisions were made or what logic drove certain actions. The ability to capture that knowledge and create a real knowledge-management infrastructure has become mission critical.

5. Increase analytic accessibility.

Experience has taught us that providing an open framework to easily add powerful and advanced analytics is both unique and tremendously valuable. In fact, it may be a game changer for the analytics industry at large because it holds the key to democratizing analytics and decision science.

By quickly and easily leveraging powerful and flexible analytic IP anyone can quickly plug in analytic modules into a business flow or decision orchestration.

Ultimately, analytics-powered decisions will help improve many of the 245 trillion decisions being made around the world daily. The ways companies choose to use these breakthroughs in technology may be one of the most important decisions they ever make.

Dr. Stuart Wells is executive-vice president and chief product and technology manager at FICO. Kevin Deveau is vice president and managing director, Canada, at FICO. FICO is a Silicon Valley analytics software company, helping businesses in 90+ countries make better decisions that drive higher levels of growth, profitability and customer satisfaction.

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environicsanalytics.com

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Data-driven organizations

Analytics achieving results: Are we making progress?

By Jan Kestle

T

he purpose of marketing is to connect people with products and services that they want or need. Understanding your customer’s motivation and mindset—along with past patterns and behaviours—and combining these insights with the right offer, message and “hot buttons” at all points of interaction with your brand ultimately lead to success.

Does this new era of evidencedriven decision making— characterized by data and analytics increasingly being embraced in the marketplace—mean that great insight will be the foundation for great marketing programs? Are we really in the era of analytics delivering real results?

From where I sit, the answer is yes… but there remains lots of room for improvement.

Working with so many organizations in Canada and the U.S. across many industries, we at Environics Analytics have seen a tremendous step forward in the use of data to drive better decisions and better results.

For example, one of the largest ❱ DMN.ca

owners, developers and operators of retail, office and mixed-use properties in North America invests a lot in developing insights into the consumers who live in their various mall trade areas. The challenge for the analytics team has always been about managing the volume of information—too much data turns off the end users, while too little leaves important questions unaddressed.

Recently EA conducted a segmentation project for this developer, bringing together primary research and data products from EA covering demographics, lifestyles, purchase patterns and media preferences. Analysts developed consumer segments in the trade areas around the malls to identify how consumers lived and what they bought. Then they created highly visual personification presentations that brought each segment’s consumers to life.

The team turned the data into snapshots of each property and created a library that managers could refer to when making decisions about their customers and trade areas. As stakeholders used the analyses they began asking

more—and better—questions.

Working with a consulting company that specializes in visualization software, the team developed a tool that combines mapping functionality with EA data in an interactive dashboard designed to meet the needs of senior executives and anyone who needs answers in a hurry.

The dashboard made the insights accessible and actionable by many.

Then the team hit the road, meeting with the management teams at mall properties to find out which data variables were most important to their work.

Many wanted answers to the same questions: what’s the income of my trade area, the projected population growth, the presence of visible minorities, household size, real estate values and net worth?

The dashboards are now being used by 70% of the company—vice presidents and people in marketing, leasing, development and operations departments.

This is one of many exciting initiatives where business needs are identified, stakeholders are aligned and data are turned into insights and made understandable

and accessible. The results speak for themselves In many industries, analytics are routinely contributing to better business results. Where there is success, there is one key element: a culture shift. And what does that shift look like? Here are some key indicators: ❯❯ Collaboration is taking place between data, IT and business people, with organizational silos breaking down. ❯❯ Strategies are being developed for analysis; the number crunching is less ad hoc. ❯❯ Data governance is a priority. ❯❯ Suppliers are being asked to work together. ❯❯ Outputs are shared across the enterprise, in tools and formats designed for different levels of business accountability. ❯❯ C-suite support for data-driven decision making is emerging.

This is good news, but as in many marketing developments, it doesn’t come without a “but.”

Two concerns: First, we need a lot more of these strategic analytics programs. Second, we need to ensure that the insight October 2017

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Data-driven organizations

Is creative king? Does analytics make the most difference? How do we reconcile the art versus the science of marketing? from analytics gets precisely implemented in the execution.

In online, mobile, digital, direct, in-store and other forms of one-toone or near one-to-one marketing, there is good opportunity to use the data in execution. But we need to go further. The silver bullet is to get to data-driven content and data-driven creative.

As long as I have been on the data side of marketing, it has puzzled me that there seems to be a tug of war between the art and science of marketing. Is creative king? Does analytics make the most difference?

How do we reconcile the art versus the science of marketing?

My colleague Peter Boggs—a creative, geeky guy who’s worked both in advertising and the analytics space—recently addressed this dilemma in a thought-provoking October 2017

article for Strategy magazine’s Marketing C-Suite newsletter.

“While many people are embracing the growing use of analytics,” he writes, “others view data-driven creative as an oxymoron.” He cites articles that ask, “Can big data and analytics replace intuition?” and “Is data the big bad wolf?”

For Peter, the art-versus-science argument has been simmering since at least the 1990s, and he goes on to explain why the two realms always seem to be odds. “In the agency world, art requires taking risk but science seeks to reduce risk. Art is imagination; science is optimization. Art is intuition; science is evidence based. Art reflects what drives people to act; science looks at what people did and predicts what they probably will do.”

The key to realizing the best of both art and science, according to Peter, can be summed up in one word: craft. Craft serves as the intermediary—or as he calls it, the interpreter—that feeds and drives both parts of the equation.

“Craft interprets the business problem that then enables data scientists to mine the right data and develop the best algorithms and models,” he asserts. “Craft interprets the models and analytics, giving them meaning for creative teams to unleash their creative magic. It is what successful marketers and strategic planners do day in and day out. They don’t compartmentalize one discipline over the other. They make the two work together.”

Peter calls this unified approach the Three “Eyes” of Marketing: Inform, interpret, inspire. In successful marketing teams, work among the various disciplines flows seamlessly as these three elements interact and are acted upon. “Data scientists interpret numbers to inform and inspire strategies. Creative teams tease out insights to inspire and inform customers. And strategic planners

and clients interpret results, which then inspire data scientists to refine their work and inform the work of creative teams,” he writes.

And it is through this natural collaboration, facilitated by the common language of marketing analytics that the divide between art and science disappears.

To Peter, “craft” is the lynch pin of good marketing. And because craft inherently involves collaboration, I have to agree.

We live in exciting—and rewarding—times with organizations increasingly adopting analytics to achieve success in a crowded and competitive marketplace. But challenges remain in spreading the word about the value of analytics and how to integrate it into everyday operations. The progress made in analytics achieving results can be traced to organizations where cooperation and sharing across departments have become a cultural norm. And it’s the only way we’ll continue to progress in the future.

Jan Kestle is the president and CEO of

Environics Analytics.

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Data-driven organizations

How to train marketers to be better data analysts

By Jessica Schaeffer

M

arketing is shifting and, with it, the priorities of marketers and how we work.

Today, with Big Data, AI, predictive modeling and a slew of new tools to help us better understand our customer, our decisions are better informed than ever before.

However, utilizing and analyzing data doesn’t come easy for all marketers. After all, that might have been a reason many of us chose the profession to begin with—the absence of number crunching and Excel spreadsheets.

So how do you train your team to become more data minded regardless of their role?

1. Make it safe For some people, one of the hardest things to do is admit you don’t know something. Talk candidly with your staff about their comfort level using data in their day-to-day work. Point out instances where ❱ DMN.ca

they are already using data to make decisions. This way, they will feel comfortable asking questions about how to better utilize data and they will likely gain confidence when they realize they know more than they thought.

2. Dip their toes in the water Introduce them to Google Analytics, a social media analysis tool like Sprout Social or Hootsuite, or an email marketing tool like Constant Contact—something they don’t use already but that you have in your marketing stack that uses data and produces reports.

Give them a short tutorial and have them do some tutorials on their own before playing around in the back end to become acclimated. It’s amazing what exposure to a tool will do to increase comfort level and pique interest.

3. Use your resources If you’re fortunate enough to work for a company that has a

data analytics, market research, accounting or operations team, tap into those resources. Ask them to partner with your employees on some of their work, or share best practices. These groups tend to bring a data-driven mindset to everything they do and can help instill that into your staff. If possible, ask them to host Lunch and Learns on topics they know well. For example, if Excel is a weak skill for your team but that’s what’s used to analyze data, cover V Look Ups one week and Pivot Tables the next.

4. Try new products If you’re tired of all the sales calls from analytics companies, task your team with vetting vendors.

It will empower them to make decisions, while simultaneously exposing them to new tools and forcing them to learn a new type of analysis. You could end up with a great new tool as a result.

5. Have data play a role in team meetings Begin to incorporate data in your team meetings. If necessary, start small. Have the content team share how the blog is performing, covering views and comments. Have the social media team share engagement and reach numbers. Leave time for questions and ensure staff understand the information that is being discussed. Then, move toward incorporating data into the decision making process. Have staff present data as ammunition in their argument for why a decision should or shouldn’t be made.

Jessica Schaeffer is chief of staff and director

of marketing & communications at LaSalle Network, a national staffing, recruiting, culture firm recognized by more than 70 culture and revenue-based awards. Schaeffer has been at LaSalle Network for six years and is on the board of directors for the American Marketing Association.

October 2017

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Data-driven organizations

Technical considerations for data-driven customer-centric orgs

By Jim O’Reilly

T

he CEOs read the news.

Your company is falling way behind and it’s all because Amazon is much more customer centric. So out goes a memo telling everyone to be more customer focused and HR sets up a compulsory training class. Does that echo something you’ve seen?

Of course, it doesn’t make any noticeable difference. A new CEO is hired to really move company thinking and she understands that this requires a huge cultural change. Many employees don’t know what a customer is (I can attest to that from experience at large corporations) and the idea of being “centric” goes right over their heads. A conversion to customer centricity requires senior-level dedication and an organized plan.

Unsurprisingly, that plan has a heavy IT element. Knowing what makes each customer motivated to buy and making it easy to close the deal are important facets of the new approach. Another key aspect is responding to competition and market trends rapidly. These are summed up by the term agility.

The first problem facing many older organizations is the legacy app set that runs the business.

A surprising number of older, established companies have COBOL or early UNIX apps running their business core, with accretions of modern tools and APIs such a .NET. These IT solutions work well enough, but they are like a building that has had layers of buttresses added to hold it together. Any change requires a lot of testing and takes forever. That’s anything but agile!

At this point the head of software announces that any move to a data-driven customer-centric solution will take years and billions and is very risky. Now this has happened in IT every time the issue of a new approach has come up, so whenever a major change

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was needed it got shelved!

The answer is lateral thinking.

I would look to Software-as-aService for alternatives. If someone else has figured out a solution to your problem, why not use it? The immediate complaint is that the SaaS approach doesn’t match how you do things, but take that with a large pinch of salt. Often, your procedures date back to the Stone Age and a good shake out will help agility to no end. Yes, change has costs and risks, but not changing is a doomsday scenario.

Another option is to buy an app, rather than rent it. I’ve found the hidden costs of the new app always will increase five-year TCO past the SaaS approach. The biggest error of buying a package is that you will want to customize it to your processes. This is often a fatal mistake—just ask the British Government, whose IT updates often remind me of Fawlty Towers episodes.

The good news is that a SaaS solution usually allows easy access to the data behind it, while often coupling out to add-on services.

Take retailing as an example. ERPCRM ties are standard and many packages handle both. In addition, APIs to other recognized programs are provided, so creating a mashup is common.

If you write you own app, you can get to the same position but it’s more work. There are pre-canned modules for doing this that can be loaded from online libraries, though care has to be taken that the source is secure and free of malware.

In the end, migration of legacy apps by rewriting might be the only viable alternative, but the most painful and risky. The “modern” way to do this is a micro-services approach where the rewrite is broken down into tightly definable functions that can be interfaced to the existing app, proceeding through all the services until a modern,

cloud-ready app is the result.

As all of this happens, the importance of data and data management increases. Most of what you know about the customer is in that data, so part of any customer-centric plan is to milk it for all it is worth and so to anticipate need, improve interest in your product and to close a deal.

This is the kernel of an idea—to mine the salient data for trends and pointers.

Going one step further, it is possible to gather much more data on a customer, both as background and as real-time pointers. Background data includes demographics, credit status, employment and net worth, among other things, and comes from sources such as Experian and Equifax. Criminal records might be important as an indicator of trustworthiness and past purchases are an indicator of future interest—most retailers consider that very proprietary.

Recently, we’ve started adding sensor data to the pool. Sometimes called the Internet of Things, the general idea is that if we add sensors we can learn hidden details about operational patterns. An example might be an elevator company logging all the usage data and analyzing it to figure out better preventive maintenance or to detect if an elevator is full and not stop at every floor.

In retailing, click-data (what web pages are selected) is a common pointer to buyer’s interests, but this can be extended to include eye tracking, mouse-overs and the amount of time the cursor is in one position. The same is true in bricks and mortar stores, where cameras can show what you are interested in. In both cases, instant feedback is possible, augmenting sales.

To munch all that data, with a lot of it “real-time,” requires a computer approach with a lot

of horsepower. Fortunately, the architecture of computers is rising to the task, with in-memory databases and GPUs boosting the ability to crunch all that new data almost as soon as it is created.

The third leg is SSD storage, which makes possible storing and accessing data very rapidly.

The resulting Big Data analytics is making retailers, financial companies, brokers and logistics firm all much more agile.

Analytics is not for the faint of heart, though. There are staffing issues with needs in psychology and parallel processing high on the list. An alternative is to rent services that range from providing complete tool kits to offering digested data from either your own data streams or from digested industry data. Cloud providers like Google and AWS are entering this area of Analytics-as-a-Service and Google is taking things further into machine learning and artificial intelligence. IBM has Watson online, handling complex searches in several areas including healthcare.

With mobile apps gathering all sorts of data on their users, the flow of “IoT” is turning into a torrent. The faster you process that data, the faster you can monetize it. Be agile or die!

Jim O’Reilly has been an executive at a number

of corporations and startup companies.

Recently, he was vice president of engineering at Germane Systems, creating ruggedized servers and storage for the U.S. submarine fleet. He has also held senior management positions at SGI/Rackable and Verari; was CEO at startups Scalant and CDS; headed operations at PC Brand and Metalithic; and led major divisions of Memorex-Telex and NCR, where his team developed the first SCSI ASIC in the industry, now in the Smithsonian. Jim is currently a consultant and writer, focusing on storage, infrastructure and software issues.

His book on the future of storage, Network Storage, has just been published.

October 2017

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Advertorial

Sink or Swim: How Cross-Border Commerce is Changing Canadian Retail

By Greg Zakowicz, senior commerce marketing analyst, Oracle + Bronto Global ecommerce has changed the way we shop. Smartphones give consumers unprecedented access to find any product they want, regardless of where it’s located in the world. The average mobile phone user checks their device 150 times each day, giving retailers, and their competitors, amazing potential to reach customers.

This unrestricted access is one barrier of global commerce that’s being broken down. Meanwhile, the cost and speed of worldwide delivery is improving, and key pieces of technology, like ecommerce platforms, being more readily able to support multiple currencies and languages have made global commerce a reality.

For Canadian retailers, this global marketplace will impact their business in one of two ways: It will allow business to grow, or cause business to shrink. Staying static in a global marketplace is next to impossible.

yet only 3% actually do. This drastic disparity presents an immense opportunity to grow cross-border sales. While many may point to the ocean separating the countries as a primary reason for this disparity, it’s not. U.K. consumers are willing to cross that same ocean to purchase from the U.S. In fact, the U.S. ranks as the country U.K. consumers not only consider purchasing from the most (78%), but that 56% actually do purchase from.

Focusing on Customers and Preventing Decline Last year we saw two-thirds of Canadian consumers purchase from outside their own borders. This is only slightly behind cross-border shopping we see in Australia (72%), and drastically ahead of both the UK (44%) and the U.S. (42%).

This should serve as a wake-up call for Canadian retailers.

In today’s age, the opportunity to prevent cross-border sales exists, but it is up to the retailer to provide an experience and price-point convenient to the shopper.

As consumers become increasingly connected to brands This year, like in years past, it’s predicted that more than around the world, there is a critical need for retailers to focus on creating customer loyalty. We live in a remarkable, half of Canadian ecommerce will take place with merchants complex and ever-changing period of consumer marketing. of US consumer outside of Canada. With customer-centric Amazon creating purchasing from Barriers to global commerce are being broken down, and a stronger presence in Canada, and consumer expectations consumers are more connected now than ever before. higher than ever, it’s time for Canadian retailers to put more Focusing on delivering a personalized and engaging focus on preventing customers from straying, not only experience with consumers will be the key to not only keep locally, but globally. Retailers need to look at how the global of US consumers are open to The Internet has removed barriers tobut keep them loyal to your brand. them buyingthe domestic, marketplace and increased consumer expectations will purchasing from Canada. shopping across borders. The data is clear – impact their business.

72%

72%

The Internet hasthe removed the barriers to shopping About Greg Zakowicz US is fertile ground for Canadian merchants a former consultant more than 10 years of experience in email, mobile and social across borders. The data is As clear – the US iswith fertile Opportunities For Growth looking to find new customers. media marketing, Greg Zakowicz has first-hand knowledge about the challenges facing When looking at cross-border growth opportunities, Canadian ground for Canadian merchants looking to find the retail industry. Now, as Senior Commerce Marketing Analyst at Oracle + Bronto, he retailers can look no further than their neighbors to the south, new customers.

How can you provides get your shareinsight of this pie?

Focus thoughtful to the Internet Retailer Top 1000, and is a frequent speaker at

the United States. U.S. consumers have an inherent trust in ecommerce events. are interested Only on the reasons US consumers Canada and Canadian retailers. According a 2016 Howtocan you Bronto get your share of this pie? Focus in Canada’s products: unique merchandise and report, when U.S. consumers look to purchase from outside Only About Oracle + Bronto on the reasons US consumers are interested in their own country, 72% consider purchasing from Canada. better prices. Oracle + Bronto arms high-growth retailers with sophisticated marketing automation to Canada’s products: unique maximize merchandise and revenue opportunities.

The Bronto Marketing Platform powers personalized For U.S. consumers, this makes Canada the most considered have d multichannel content that generates the higher engagement needed for retail success. have done so. better prices. country in the world. However, purchases don’t follow For thatmore information, visit bronto.com.

Keenly focused on the commerce marketer, Bronto continues its long-standing tradition as a same trend. In fact, Canada ranks third for purchases, behind leading email marketing provider to the global Internet Retailer Top 1000 and boasts a client Forthis more bronto.com.

China and the U.K. respectively. Closing gapinformation, can be the visit roster of leading brands, including Rebecca Minkoff, Timex, Lucky Brand, Theory, Brooks, boost Canadian retailers need to grow their business.

Ashley Homestore and Christopher & Banks. For more information visit bronto.com.

20%20

When it comes to potential U.K. consumers, there is perhaps an even greater opportunity. Forty-five percent of U.K. consumers consider purchasing from Canadian retailers,

October 2017

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Data-driven organizations

The unique value of analytics-based consulting A new discipline emerges to support improved performance and growth

By Larry Filler and Dominic Clare

I

n the current business environment, with data proliferating and demand for data analytics growing, many organizations are seeking direction on what data they should be accumulating, how to obtain and integrate the data and best practices for harnessing the data to generate business insights.

That last aspect is key, because analyzing data without creating insights for solving a business problem relegates the work to an academic exercise.

The imperative to embrace data and analytics is one reason why forward-thinking organizations are seeking analytics-based consulting

❱ DMN.ca

assistance. Unlike management consultants that specialize in developing techniques for dealing with problems, analytics consultants collect, organize and interpret data to execute and evaluate solutions. Traditional management consultants may recognize the value of data and analytics, but they do not have the expertise to offer their clients specific recommendations on how to leverage internal and external data sources to improve performance and become datadriven organizations.

While many companies are getting pieces of the process right, many more are challenged with

bringing all the components together so they can realize the full value of their data and analytics efforts. Organizations big and small, in all industries and sectors, voice similar concerns: ❯❯ Lots of data but difficulty uncovering insights from them; ❯❯ No clear road map or analytics strategy; ❯❯ Lack of appropriate data structures; ❯❯ Unable to convert insights into meaningful action; ❯❯ Unsure how to obtain corporate alignment and C-suite buy-in; and/or ❯❯ Undisciplined reporting and measurement make it difficult to

develop a solid business case.

Solving these challenges to develop evidence-based decision making is not an easy task. It requires bringing together people from different disciplines, with different skill sets and extensive experience in their craft—a scenario that’s uniquely suited to an analyticsbased consulting team. Whether the project requires strategy, implementation, measurement or all three areas, an interdisciplinary consulting team can help organizations turn analytics into a competitive advantage, as highlighted in the examples that follow.

October 2017

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Data-driven organizations Streamlining not-for-profit operations Ottawa-based Canadian Blood Services’ mission—to manage a safe, secure and cost-effective blood system—was being challenged by budget constraints and operational inefficiencies.

Administrators turned to analytics to improve performance. But first they needed to develop a strategic analytics roamed that would help them leverage its wealth of data in order to optimize its marketing costs and still achieve its blood collection targets to meet the public demand.

The road map project began with a transformational needs assessment that involved documenting Canadian Blood Services’ current abilities, infrastructure and resources; identifying gaps and risks; and determining the steps necessary to integrate analytics into its operations. As an analytics-based consulting team from Environics Analytics helped guide them through the assessment, a specific project was identified that could help demonstrate the value of the analytics road map initiative and the opportunities it offered.

The goal of the project was to identify ways of reducing inefficiencies and costs in blood donations. The consulting team reviewed existing reports and analyzed current performance, focusing on donor appointments, cancellations and no-shows as well as those who arrived and gave blood as scheduled. The analysis also included an environmental scan of work performed in other markets and reviewed other industries to look for potential solutions that might help Canadian Blood Services.

In a series of business discovery and alignment sessions, Canadian Blood Services’ stakeholders identified specific information goals they wanted the initiative to achieve, such as: ❯❯ Identify donor patterns and score the value of each donor; ❯❯ Predict attendance at events and forecast donor attendance; and ❯❯ Increase retention rate and reduce the time between collections.

The feedback helped define the group’s needs and also revealed some organizational October 2017

challenges. “We have lots of platforms, spreadsheet reports and dashboards,” one participant noted. “But how do they come together and what are the insights?” Another asked, “What are the missing pieces of data in the organization?”

The analysis allowed the team to validate Canadian Blood Services’ high-level analytics requirements that would help it achieve overall goals as well as specific improvements in the blood donation process.

Among the key performance indicators identified: a predictable appointment flow, consistent blood supply for everyone and operational efficiencies for budget control. Other goals of the broader analytics strategy included managing donor assets, creating value in donor experiences, enforcing requirements of core infrastructure and supporting an analytics culture.

The team then produced an analytics road map that identified and prioritized opportunities that would enable Canadian Blood Services to achieve its goals.

Among the recommendations: 1. Leverage models to improve retention of active donors.

2. Develop models to improve “win back” rate of lapsed donors.

3. Develop models to identify those who have potential to give more units per year.

4. Create onboarding strategy for new donors to encourage the habit of giving blood.

Finally, the team developed a number of business models that showed how even small improvements in donor no-show and cancellation rates would have a big impact on blood collections and cost reductions. Quantifying the benefits of the analytics-based solution was an important element in gaining senior leadership approval. The road map document also included a list of short-term (one to six months), mid-term (six to 12 months) and long-term (over a year) activities Canadian Blood Services could do to achieve its goals.

“Part of the challenge involves our executives wanting to know the ROI of analytics,” says Tony Steed, director of market knowledge and donor insights at

Canadian Blood Services. “The project showed ways we could generate several million dollars in savings, according to predictive modelling. There’s potential all over the place, but we have to prove that first.”

Higher analytics education Another example of analyticsbased consulting involved the alumni office of a university— though it could just have easily been a financial services company or a retailer. The university was struggling with how to measure the impact of customer or, in this case, alumni engagement on the organization.

Working collaboratively with the school’s internal business and data analytics teams, a consulting project team reviewed how the office measured engagement.

Metrics included email openings, click-throughs and participation rates, as well as alumni attitudes and feelings toward the university brand. While these are meaningful metrics, none were directly related to the financial goals of the alumni office. The team worked with key stakeholders to gain consensus on what metrics they should be concerned with, how these metrics would be calculated and what data were required to assess the results.

The project team’s analysis led to a series of reports that demonstrated the impact of alumni engagement on donor value, retention and satisfaction.

The team produced similar reports based on key lifestage segments that had been determined previously by the client.

The consulting team also calculated expected return on investment associated with engagement levels. Engaged alumni, according to the assessment, were shown to be ten times more valuable to the university in terms of donations received than unengaged alumni—thus demonstrating the incremental value of increasing alumni engagement levels through social and academic events.

With this analysis in hand and the new and improved reporting and measurement methodology, administrators were able to justify and optimize the cost of their alumni engagement efforts.

Automotive in the driver’s seat But if there is one industry where analytics-based consulting offers considerable value it’s the automotive industry. Auto dealers and manufacturers spend a lot of money on advertising and customer management, and they have access to a lot of data and many touchpoints along their sales and support cycle. But in today’s very competitive and very mature market, it is difficult to know which triggers are most influential in a consumer’s purchasing decision and which channels offer the best return on investment.

To gain insight on the touchpoints that may be most relevant for sales, an analytics-based consulting team recommended a data audit and development of dashboard reporting capability, which would make it easier to analyze the impacts of various touchpoints.

The dashboard would provide a foundation for analysts to develop a suite of models to better understand relationships within the data and how they impact business. For example, a sales attribution model can help marketers understand the relationship between various advertising and marketing channels, and a predictive model can assist with forecasting sales for a specific time period.

These examples demonstrate how analytics-based consulting can help organizations in a wide range of industries and sectors further their analytics strategies for improved performance and reduced costs. And by demonstrating how relatively inexpensive initiatives can produce clear returns on investment, analytics consultants help create champions within client organizations. Their value is not just in illustrating the power of analytics but in helping an organization achieve its goals. If you need to justify an investment in analytics to senior executives, you’ll find that working with an analytics consulting team can deliver results as well as true believers.

Larry Filer and Dominic Clare are senior vice

presidents, consulting, at Environics Analytics.

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Feature

The retail supply chain is modernizing Three impact areas you need to act on today

By Matthew Bertulli

I

f you’re a brand manufacturer, your retailers are undercutting you and going right to the factories to make their own versions of what you sell. If you’re a retailer, your brands are going direct to the consumers and bypassing the retail supply chain.

This isn’t new, but it still feels fresh doesn’t it? At least that’s the impression I get when I walk into Main Street retailers and talk to the owner/operator. There’s still a lot of talk about what this means for the average retailer and the average brand in the short and long term.

I call this the “cannibalization of the food chain.” All the battle lines have been blurred and from where I sit there aren’t any rules anymore.

Not that there ever were any hard and fast rules, but there were definitely some unspoken ones that most companies followed. It used to be that brands would work with their distribution and retail partners to get products into the hands of consumers. Now, for a whole host of reasons, brands can very easily get in front of their customers directly and bypass the

big enough and bought enough.

Now, retailers are increasingly going right to the factory and having their own products manufactured under in-house brands and labels.

Distributors, well, they are a bit stuck. When you look at the business model of your average wholesale distributor they exist because of inefficiencies in our supply chain. Distributors primarily buy up large enough quantities of products from brands/manufacturers and then take care of selling small-lot quantities to retailers that wouldn’t be able to buy enough from those same brands to “go direct.”

What does this mean for you, the brand, retailer or distributor?

Here are the three areas you need to start taking action on: 1) Margin impact The most simple and obvious impact I see most often is on margins. Without distributors there is more margin for the retailer and the brand since there is at least one less hand in the

Now brands can very easily get in front of their customers directly and bypass the entire supply chain we’ve grown so accustomed to. entire supply chain we’ve grown so accustomed to.

Retailers used to buy from their distributors and sometimes directly from brands if they were ❱ DMN.ca

margin cookie jar. This means that both brands and retailers have an opportunity to capture more margin per order, which means more profit and more profit

Should you capture more margin in this new, modern supply chain? Absolutely, but it’s far from a free lunch. provides more sanity. If the goal is building a sustainable business, more margin is not a bad thing.

However, capturing more margin also means that brands and retailers are going to have to invest in areas of business they are not used to investing in. For example, things like customer service, small quantity fulfillment and returns management are not areas that brands have decades of experience doing. They’ve trusted retailers to do this. Retailers conversely don’t have muscle built up around manufacturing, things like quality control and work in progress.

Should you capture more margin in this new, modern supply chain?

Absolutely, but it’s far from a free lunch.

2) Relationships impact The second most common impact area is on consumer relationships. Everyone wants to own the relationship with the end customer which means there is going to be more and more conflict amongst retailers, distributors and manufacturers (brands). I’ve seen this play out in countless boardrooms. Brands in their quest toward selling their wares directly to the customer have been very conflicted about how to do this without causing pain in their wholesale/retail channels. Often they are having to create very strict guidelines for themselves on what they can put on promo and when

they can run promotions in their direct channels.

Brands and retailers are approaching this new supply chain very carefully and for good reason. If they jeopardize their current supply chain relationships too much, this puts their present day business model at risk, which raises the question—will we even have a future if we kill sacred cows today?

3) Planning impact The more complex area of impact is on how you plan your business.

I’ve always been a believer in understanding where someone has the most incentive as that tells me how they will make decisions and how I will need to react.

If we know that the retail supply chain is going to continue to shift, we should have a pretty good idea where each type of business is thinking of going. This can and should absolutely shape your own road maps. Taking small steps now that will lay the groundwork for how you move into the future is not just a nice to have, it is critical.

Matthew Bertulli is the co-founder & CEO of

Demac Media based in Toronto, an awardwinning commerce agency serving midmarket to enterprise merchants with online and in-store technology products. His book Anything Anywhere: The Future of Retail and How to Build a Digital-First Roadmap to Growth is available now on Amazon..

October 2017

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Customer Centricity Keys to creating a customer-focused culture continued from page 4

monthly CAST Meeting is that those participants who agree to test a pilot project suddenly have a deadline. Moreover, they’ve committed to present their findings to their peers and supervisors. Giving a public report of what they’ve done serves as a tremendous incentive to actually get something done—without pleading, nagging or cajoling.

5. Replace policies with parables Perhaps the most critical element of any CAST Meeting is “storytime.” During this part of the agenda, managers call upon selected frontline employees who recently provided exceptional service to share a specific on-thejob incident and explain why they did what they did. These stories become your organization’s parables—living examples of your beliefs. Parables have been used to teach history and values since before the creation of the written word. They endure because they are interesting, teach us lessons and are easily remembered. These stories become your “code”—the way you do business. In other words, these real-life stories not only reflect your organization’s mission, vision and values—they become its living and breathing embodiment.

6. Coach instead of fighting fires We often hear one of the roles of the manager is to act as a mentor or coach. Yet managers get so busy that the only time they “coach” people is when a subordinate fouls-up. Worse still, only one person at a time learns from the mistake. That’s not our idea of being a mentor. An effective coach is more proactive.

One of my colleagues, fellow professional speaker, Joe Bonura, told me, “spaced repetition is the mother of memory.” At CAST Meetings one of the roles of the manager is to take one of the customer service ideas that we’ve shared in the training seminar and reinforce its application.

That way, simple vital customer service tips are repeated and are more likely to be remembered and applied. So rather than reacting to individual crises, managers help October 2017

all employees to prevent customer service problems before they occur.

7. Celebrate service, not seniority In a study of Fortune 500 corporations, researchers found that a top two motivator of employees is recognition—knowing that they are appreciated (the number one motivator is interesting work, FYI). CAST Meetings give managers a forum to provide recognition that’s not based on seniority but on exemplary customer service. Perhaps even more important is that the recognition doesn’t just come from management, it comes from the workers’ peers. That means you’re creating a shift in culture right at the grassroots. Add to that a few words of open praise from the senior manager to the team and everyone feels like they are part of a greater good. Combine it with pizza, snacks or lunch and you’ve created a customer-focused event that employees look forward to.

Bottom line—it gets results It’s easy for corporate leaders to pay lip service to the importance of customers. Mission statements may play well for advertising purposes and look good on the boardroom wall. But employees see beneath the veil of slogans. They need to know that you as a leader actually mean what you say—and that you’re willing to back statements with action. Simple logic dictates that if that kind of integrity is missing, even the best employee will eventually become de-motivated and start marking time.

With CAST Meetings employees discover that the company indeed practices what it preaches. That’s the kind of trust that translates into improved performance for everyone. One of our clients found that within the six months of using CAST, morale had noticeably improved and employee productivity increased by 34%.

Meanwhile, they reported that number of customer complaints plummeted fourfold. That’s a corporate culture where all the stakeholders benefit. After all, ensuring that everyone wins is very likely what your mission statement is all about.

Check us out online dmn.ca

For online advertising opportunities contact

Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca For online editorial opportunities contact

Sarah O’Connor, sarah@dmn.ca DMN.ca ❰

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In the mail This column is sponsored by

To learn more about Canada Post’s integrated direct marketing solutions, please visit canadapost.ca/smartmailmarketing.

Smart targeted direct mail campaign leads to a 578% ROI for Primus

By Jennifer Campbell

Telecom’s challenge of customer acquisition Primus Canada is the largest independent telecommunications service provider in Canada; it gains its market share with more value through lower rates, rewards and better service. But competing with much larger brands means Primus must work hard to build brand awareness and acquire new customers, while meeting consumers’ higher expectations.

Why is it smart to have direct mail in your marketing mix?

• With direct mail, motivation response is 20% higher • With direct mail, unaided brand recall is 70% higher • On average, advertising mail is kept for 17 days ❱ DMN.ca

From advanced analytics to detailed targeting Primus and its agency partner, RIVET, work with Custometrics, which specializes in advanced analytics.

They use a very detailed targeting model that allows them to predict the activation rate of a campaign for a given neighbourhood, at a given time and with a given product. Every penny invested can be optimized.

In fact, the predictive power of the model is such that Primus can invest confidently in its campaigns, because the analysis allows for a good understanding of the results to expect. Armed with this knowledge, Primus then shapes marketing campaigns and messaging to maximize its marketing budget. Over the past 10 years, one key finding kept showing up: Canada Post’s Unaddressed Admail (now Canada Post Neighbourhood Mail) has consistently been a top performer and solidified itself as a core element of Primus’s media plan.

From wise to Wisers RIVET created a family of owls called The Wisers who made the smart choice and switched their telecom services to Primus. Among other offers, the owls touted a good deal: fast unlimited internet and home phone for $44.95 a month for a guaranteed two-year term.

Thanks to the predictive model and the attention-

grabbing creative, the Fall 2014 campaign reached the right clients with the right message and the right offer.

Building success on measurable results The campaign was a tremendous success. At 578%, ROI was well above the 200% target and marked an all-time-high ROI for Primus’s unaddressed programs.

Responses and activations were so numerous that they challenged Primus’s call centre to keep up.

“The right channel, a disciplined test-and-learn approach, a competitive product, smart analytics and compelling creative all combined to deliver the phenomenal success that we saw during this campaign,” said Stefanie Neheli, manager, marketing communications, at Primus.

Advanced analytics leading to targeting models that accurately predict activation rates by neighbourhoods? That’s smart marketing.

To learn more about the key elements of a winning direct mail campaign, go to canadapost.ca/ smartmailmarketing.

Jennifer Campbell is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.

October 2017

Embracing the future of print

By Sarah O’Connor

Growing customers’ businesses through print Innovative Response navigates challenging market through continuous improvement

F “We’ve got to be better than we were yesterday.”

or over 20 years Innovative Response has offered its customers direct mail and fulfillment services and they have also been offering print internally through their digital department or through partners for a number of years.

Mark Stephens is president of Innovative Response.

“Obviously the print and mail industries have gotten their butts kicked over the last decade or so, but I think Canada Post has done a very good job as far as combatting the other channels [digital, social, etc.],” says Mark Stephens, president of Innovative Response. “They’ve also spent some time with educational associations, ad agencies to get the younger generation coming out of school and into those jobs thinking about print and mail. I think they have laid the groundwork and the rest of us have gone with that.”

Stephens notes that the print industry has been engaged in what he describes as a “retool” over the past several years. “The last two years we really are starting to see some of that business come back; there seems to be a lot more willingness to pay a little bit more for a print campaign because of the return on investment. That’s really where we focus a lot of our conversations—not necessarily on the upfront costs but, ‘what are you expecting to get out of this?’

“With our print partners we’re really trying to stay away from the race to the bottom—that commodity-based pricing. Obviously we’re sensitive to market pricing, we want to be able to work with people as much as possible but at the end of the day… the purpose of any campaign is to grow the business. And so we really focus on the value we have to offer, the quality of what we’re doing. And that seems to be working for us.”

While market conditions are improving, Stephens and his team know better than to rest on their laurels. “We’ve got to be better than we were yesterday. We’re in a very competitive industry so the way we look at it is that we need to be better than all of our competitors as well. I challenge our team to do that, right from front office to the shipper, because each one of us has a role to play. We’re all linked together in a chain and all it takes is one of those links to fall apart and the whole thing will fall apart.”

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Sector Report

Hitting the bullseye with flexible services

Torpedo Marketing succeeds by embracing multi-channel marketing

“2011, 2012 that’s when people started to come back and realize they weren’t getting the ROI they were expecting from digital.”

❱ DMN.ca

T

orpedo Marketing is a full-service marketing firm communication company with full variable print capabilities, as well as bindery, fulfillment, lettershop and database services.

Susan Robinson is president of Torpedo Marketing.

“We’re multi-channel marketers—we’re not just a lettershop and we’re not just a printing company,” explains Susan Robinson, president. “We have the ability to develop and build the campaigns based on a problem that the customer’s having, or if they want to do an acquisition or awareness campaign we actually can build a campaign and start from beginning to end. And I think during tougher times [in terms of printing and mailing], like 2009, we would focus on other aspects of the business, which kept us thriving.”

The company has deep roots in direct mail and open its doors in its current form in 2009, which Robinson describes as a the height of the print crisis, when clients were diverting budgets to email and other digital channels. Robinson describes 2011 as a turning year and says that they have seen a resurgence over the past four years, with clients reinvesting in print due to digital experiments not paying off.

“When the recession hit, that was right when I started [Torpedo Marketing],” says Robinson. “2009 to 2011 was a crazy time. The trend was really to go online. I found 2011 was a turning year— 2011, 2012 that’s when people started to come back and realize they weren’t getting the ROI they were expecting from digital.”

Robinson credits Canada Post with becoming more supportive and responsive to the industry through challenging times. “Canada Post, for us, doing the Partner program and then the Expert Partner program, and the courses that they are doing… It’s been really great,” says Robinson. “They are finally, truly partners.”

Having made it through the past decade, Torpedo Marketing is now well positioned for the future. “For me it’s a good time to be in this business. A lot of companies have closed down or downsized, so there are a lot of great people out there looking for jobs—people who know print, who know direct mail.”

October 2017

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Sector Report

Lowe-Martin expands services, goes green Acquisition of RP Graphics strengthens direct marketing capabilities

I

n January 2016 Lowe-Martin, a full-service printing company since 1908, acquired RP Graphics, a full-service print communication company. Marc Fortier, who had served as president of RP Graphics and who now manages LoweMartin’s business in Toronto as senior VP and general manager, Marc Fortier is senior VP and general manager, describes this acquisition as Lowe-Martin. primarily a technology play that greatly enhanced Lowe-Martin’s abilities around one-to-one printing.

This followed the acquisition of Dollco Integrated Print Solutions, a publications and web printer in Ottawa, in 2012.

Fortier explains that the company now has three primary lines of business—large format digital printing, direct mail and e-commerce.

There is now some redundancy in the Toronto and Ottawa locations and Lowe-Martin is able to broaden the services they offer existing clients.

In November 2016 Lowe-Martin was recognized with the Gold award in the Most Environmentally Progressive Printing Company at the Canadian Printing Awards Gala. This accolade was attributed to their carbon management program and use of greener alternatives, such as

“We see [being environmentally progressive] as a significant differentiating factor”.

100% renewable electricity from Bullfrog Power. In 2016 the company reduced the absolute carbon emissions of its Mississauga operations by 20% and purchased carbon offsets for the remaining balance in order to achieve carbon neutrality. Overall Lowe-Martin decreased its electricity consumption by 8.6% in 2016 while increasing their volume of work.

“As we look to move in the marketplace with some of the trends that are taking place, we see [being environmentally progressive] as a significant differentiating factor, as many of our clients are engaged in sustainability-type initiatives,” says Fortier. “It’s not just about using FSC paper, and so on and so forth. [Clients] are really looking at their partners to have environmental initiatives that reach beyond just the purchase of environmentally friendly substrates.”

Looking ahead, Lowe-Martin is committed to letting its clients drive the evolution of its business and looking at market challenges as opportunities to evolve.

Green Print Solutions "Our overreaching environmental goal is to reduce the environmental footprint of our operations, drive change in our industry, and contribute to a reduction of the environmental footprint of our customers." - Ward Griffin, President and CEO of Lowe-Martin

CPA Gold Award Winner for Canada’s Most Environmentally Progressive Printer

We've been at the forefront of the green printing revolution for over a decade, so you can rest assured that your needs (and those of our planet) are in good hands.

We are deeply honoured to be recognized for our efforts and are committed to living up to the expectations associated with such recognition.

Lowe-Martin has been recognized as an industry leader for encouraging investment in greener processes. We share ideas and best practices with our customers. We believe that environmental sustainability truly does provide a competitive advantage. To find out more about our print capabilities and environmental initiative please contact Suzanne Olley at 905.507.8782 ext.4255.

www.LMGroup.com

October 2017

DMN.ca ❰

// 24

Sector Report

Integrating print prowess with digital savvy The AIIM Group looks to the future with expanded suite of services

Mario Giorgio is the chairman and CEO of The AIIM Group.

“E

verybody knows that print has been declining over the last 10 to 15 years,” says Mario Giorgio, chairman and CEO of the AIIM Group (formerly Avant Imaging & Integrated Media Inc.). “So we really had to reinvent ourselves.

When we first started the company we were strictly a commercial print company, but over the last 20 years we had to reinvent ourselves and become more of a media company.”

Mario founded Avant Imaging & Information Management Inc. in 1990 in partnership with his brother, Frank Giorgio. While the company began as a traditional commercial printer, today AIIM offers a wide range of direct marketing services, including: ❯❯ aiim•PRINTSMART; ❯❯ aiim•ON·DEMAND; ❯❯ aiim•FULFILLMENT; ❯❯ aiim•CONNX; ❯❯ aiim•ANALYTICS; ❯❯ aiim•1:1; ❯❯ aiim•DIRECTMAIL; ❯❯ aiim•SMARTSTATEMENTS; ❯❯ aiim•VICIMAP; ❯❯ aiim•LARGE FORMAT; ❯❯ and aiim•SOCIAL.

“We are not order takers anymore. We talk about solutions.”

Through these services, AIIM helps their customers maximize their marketing budgets while eliminating the onerous headaches of the past.

“We are not order takers anymore,” says Giorgio, noting that today when talking to potential or existing clients “the word ‘print’ doesn’t come up. We talk about solutions.”

With 90 full-time employees and a 100,000 square foot campus in Aurora, The AIIM Group has thrived so far by embracing the integration of print with new technology, and that will not change any time soon.

“Integrating paper with digital is where the future is,” says Giorgio with confidence.

❱ DMN.ca

October 2017

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The consulting firm charges hefty upfront fees and only delivers a strategy framework without a plan for executing or realizing the value and cost savings.

In the past 25 years we have seen this scenario many times where the consulting firm establish relationships with print providers and affix hefty fees to the customer. Our approach is to offer from our One-Source Solution, a Strategic Plan and Cost Savings. Our comprehensive cost and process review will quickly establish a path towards savings and efficiencies.

TODAY AIIM EXCELS IN PRINT MANAGEMENT with both onsite and offsite programs. We can have our Communications expert onsite at your location providing direction and expertise. Alternatively, if an offsite solution better fits a client’s needs, we can have a dedicated resource allocated to your account located at our facility.

Both solutions offer a web based knowledge centre accessible to all the individuals in your organization to help you select the proper method of production, including logistics fulfillment.

AVANT I MAG I

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Within a five (5) year period, one of our clients was able to cut their Marketing Print Collateral COST by 40% plus by utilizing our aiim·CONNX Web to Print portal. With editable templates they were able to further reduce 1200 InDesign graphic assets to 43 editable templates, reducing their Graphic Department staff from 15 to 3 achieving an additional $500,000 savings annually.

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416.798.7110 • www.aiim.com 205 Industrial Parkway North Aurora, Ontario, Canada L4G 4C4

Schedule a no-obligation print management assessment Contact Mark Phillips ext 177 mphillips@aiim.com

// 26

Sector Report

St. Joseph bets on the future of direct mail Bassett Direct to continue as a St. Joseph Communications company

Rich Bassett is vice-president of Bassett Direct, a St. Joseph Communications company.

A

fter 22 successful years providing direct marketing services and variable printing programs, Bassett Direct was acquired in October 2016 by St. Joseph Communications.

“St. Joe’s were looking for a partner in the one-to-one marketing space,” explains Rich Bassett, former owner of Bassett Direct and now vice-president of Bassett Direct, a St. Joseph Communications company. “That’s what Bassett has been since we started the company.

We are exclusively in the direct marketing industry—one-to-one communications all driven by data.”

Bassett explains that the timing was right, as Bassett Direct was in the midst of succession planning when they were approached by St. Joseph Communications.

“It’s early days, it’s been a year,” says Bassett, “there’s still some integration and some learning that we need to have.” The plan is for Bassett Direct to remain a separate brand indefinitely.

“I still have a fire belly,” Bassett says. “What’s very exciting about the opportunity with St. Joseph is the opportunity to grow this business. We will be a world-class one-to-one communications organization—not just in Canada but internationally. The technology, the skills, the commitment to customer care—that’s the foundation of what everyone is looking for. So, for me, that opportunity to grow is very significant.

“The opportunity to see my team who, without question, are the best in the business, grow beyond what I could have offered them as a private business owner is great. And I think just the opportunity to change this business. This business was very much a mom and pop business for a long time, and I think that there are some skills that we have acquired as an organization that resonate.”

Looking ahead, Bassett says “print will always be part of what we do, but the most important part of what we do is bringing personalized communications to our customers with skill and care.”

❱ DMN.ca

“We will be a world-class one-to-one communications organization—not just in Canada but internationally.”

October 2017

If your message can’t get through, you have to go around The detour is a new medium: print, enhanced by technology. It’s called ResponsivePrint™

A dynamic printed postcard or letter, created within hours of online activity Targeted Personalized to the product in the abandoned cart, with an offer of your choice to re-initiate the purchase Quick Mails within 24 hours International Deliverable across Canada, the US and Europe Turnkey Works with common eCommerce platforms

Online events trigger printed mail within hours CALL ME! Ted 289-796-1500 thaberer@primedata.ca

// 28

Resource Directory CALL CENTRE PRODUCTS / SERVICES

FULL SERVICE OPERATIONS CMS PRINTING SERVICE. For all your printing needs.

Call 416-755-7761 ext. 227 mdavid@completemailing.com NEW LOWER PRICING!!!

DM CREATIVE

Date:

July 4, 2013

AD:

Carter

Client:

Cleanlist.ca

AM:

Sinclair

Docket:

3540

Version:

F6

Application:

Print, 4x4.325", 4C

Media:

Direct Marketing Magazine

PLEASE NOTE This file has been optimized for its intende application only. For uses other than inten please contact Seed for alternate formats

Direct Marketing Resource Directory To Advertise Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

Harrison Mailing

817 Brock Rd - Unit #1 Pickering, ON L1W 3V4

Limited

your mailing experts

Harrison Mailing Limited offers services for all Canadian, United States, and International classes of mail, including file preparation, fulfillment and distribution.

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Call Stuart Sullivan for more information ssullivan@harrisonmailing.on.ca

Ask for a FREE EvALuATioN and pricing!

1-800-454-0223 sales@cleanlist.ca

)

to advertise Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

cleanlist.ca an interact direct company

// 29

Resource Directory LIST SERVICES

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[Service] Charlotte Johnston 1.800.889.6245 x2012 Charlotte.Johnston@bhemail.com

bellhowell.ca

NCOA

© 2014 Bell and Howell Canada Ltd. All rights reserved.

U.S., Canada & International

Unaddressed Delivery

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Consumer, Business & Specialty

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Direct Marketing represents all areas of the DM industry: from small businesses to Canadian Business 1000 companies. No matter what our reader's size, resources or strategies, each and every organization we reach is driven by data, powered by orders and striving for loyal customers.

To advertise in Direct Marketing Resource Directory Contact: Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

Excellent Execution

// 30

Integrated payments are changing business operations and the customer experience

By Rob Nathan

I

Rob Nathan, EVP integrated solutions,

CardConnect, has more than a decade of technology consulting, operations and business development experience. Since joining CardConnect in 2009, Rob has led the company’s integrated payments initiative and oversees the strategic growth of technology and core product offerings.

n a world where customer needs are rapidly evolving, how will your organization remain accessible and relevant? One area not to overlook is how a business accepts payments.

The successful operation of a business requires multiple systems to keep the back office organized, your frontline humming and customers happy. But should it really require multiple, separate systems? It doesn’t have to. An integrated payment solution allows a direct connection to your business management systems, working in harmony through a single source that will allow you to increase profits and enhance the customer experience. While the integrated payment solution is specific to software companies, it is likely that if you are not a software company, you utilize a software that either requires multiple systems to conduct business or has an integrated payments platform, which means your production numbers are up and you’re spending your extra free time doing what you enjoy, right? At least I hope so.

For those unfamiliar with the world of integrated payments, it is simple: software companies choose a payment processor and integrate with their platform to accept payments, automate reconciliation and view full transaction reporting from a single source.

This collaborative pairing offers a range of payment solutions, from semi to full integration options depending on the company’s needs.

Hopefully your head isn’t spinning, because we’re just getting to the good stuff. Below are the key advantages of an integrated payments platform: Streamlined business management A process that took the services of multiple vendors can now happen seamlessly within the comfort of your software, allowing you the option to consolidate. This not only saves time, but increases company revenue by saving you dollars that would have been allocated to the additional business management resources.

Streamlined operations will also eliminate human error and allow your team to focus on primary tasks rather than spending time toggling between systems to track payment activity or manually reconciling daily transactions.

An integrated payment solution provides your team an opportunity to have a 360° view of customer, product and payment activity. There is power in this type of information, as it will provide transparency between the front line and back office, allowing you to identify productivity and customer traffic patterns that will assist with strategic planning and development for the days ahead. Another added value to consider is the enhanced customer support that your team will be able to provide as they rely on one source of information as they resolve customer issues.

❱ DMN.ca

Enhanced customer experience Utilizing an integrated payment solution not only consolidates the business management tools but can provide users peace of mind if they’re working within a payments platform that’s equipped with security features such as tokenization and point-to-point encryption (P2PE). These payment security features protect your business from potential data breaches by masking your data with valueless tokens, making it useless to the hackers seeking a vulnerable system.

These features also eliminate the headaches that come along with managing PCI compliance, by essentially removing your systems from PCI scope.

During the transaction, the security benefits (tokenization and P2PE) protect your clients on the back-end, but a user-friendly terminal with features like EMV and signature capture, or a seamless shopping cart transition for e-commerce users will help ensure the customer confidently completes the transaction.

To keep up with the demands of customers, the payments world is continuously adding new terminals to accommodate the needs of your company. A fully equipped payments platform is ready to grow with you and will compliment your business model.

Increased revenue stream By aligning your information channels, you streamline business management tools and enhance the customer experience which increases your revenue stream organically as a direct result. To ensure continued growth and success of the integrated platform, a properly equipped payments partner will provide additional support to their software users and clients.

Support will increase client participation on the integrated platform through various efforts that include profit share and incentive based programs, along with a dedicated team to build strategic marketing efforts. This provides an opportunity to gain additional exposure and acquire new clients thus increasing profits. Remember the option to consolidate vendors as a result of a single source? Those dollars that were placed back into the budget allow you to seek revenue driving opportunities such as industryspecific events and advertising opportunities.

Clients utilizing a single source payment solution will gain access to a seamless activation and transaction experience. Integrated payments allow a single solution to accommodate the ever-changing needs of a customer through omnichannel payment features and a support team to ensure continued growth. The question all software companies should be asking is not if you will choose an integrated payment solutions partner, but when.

October 2017

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