Jeff Zabin is well known for his customer data capture and marketing techniques. Currently, Jeff is the Director of Marketing at Fair Isaac Corporation, a company whose analytics help brands acquire customers more efficiently. Jeff is also the co-author of two books: The Seven Steps to Nirvana, and Precision Marketing.
Zabin addressed the iMedia Brand Summit in Florida in February. Read the first part of that presentation here, and part two here. Here's more:
Jeff Zabin: We are going to talk about context. I mean, what is context? It is really that which surrounds and gives meaning to something else, right? You think about the descriptor of context. It is: who are you? And, this is a challenge for consumer branded goods companies in many cases -- capturing that information in the first place. Where are you? And, not just physical "where," but how are you interacting with the brand? Are you at a kiosk in the physical store? Are you on your cell phone? Are you on your PDA? Are you at your computer? Are you reading a catalogue? What is around you? What are you trying to do? So, think about the entire activity sequence. It may be that you are trying to bake a cake and you are buying flour and that is just one part of the activity sequence. Or, you are buying a home entertainment system, and you are buying one module, but there may be a lot more where that comes from.
So, where are you coming from? What is happening in your world? "Where do you want to go today?" to borrow a Microsoft tagline. I have always wondered about, why are we using context sensitivity points? Why are we using gross rating points? Isn't this concept obsolete? Is it really about frequency and reach? Or, is it about the relevancy of your audience? All right, I am going to lobby for something new here.
I am going to talk about making marketing smarter. This is the framework that I came up with, and I really think of these as the five steps to making marketing smarter. You need to capture, integrate and enhance your customer data. Analyze the data. And then, use these insights to drive more efficient and profitable customer interactions. And, I won't bore you by walking through this (I am going to do it anyway, in the slides ahead) but, I want to say that the first three steps are really, really, the cost of entry. It's the minimum ante you have to put on the table just to stay in the game, in my opinion. And, it is really the real big upside. That is, in analyzing and then acting upon the data. So, I think these first stages are just really the prerequisite for the fun stuff.
Why don't we talk about actively capturing customer data for a minute here? There are lots of ways of doing this, and you are familiar with most of them. You can create dynamic survey engines in which you ask your customers for information about themselves. You can use all kinds of cool analytics behind the scenes. You can use conjoint analysis, and (what else do we use? I forgot) … but, you know, the idea is that you can capture information off of different iterations, and then, eventually, you can begin to understand what the levers are that determine the purchase decision. So, that is kind of interesting.
The back of the macaroni and cheese box drives customers to a website. This is a campaign we did several years ago using these web decoder cards. I think what Staples is doing is really interesting. This was something I am sure you have all seen by now: doing the easy rebate. It is not clear to me how much of that information they actually capture themselves and how much of it they pass on to the manufacturer. I will have to find out; I will ask Shira Goodman, the CMO, but I think this is a fantastic mechanism for capturing customer information. It is surprising to me that other retailers haven't put this system in place already. There are lots of other ways …
Let's talk about an interesting TV-to-online campaign that took place, I think it was about three months ago on "The Apprentice." With the decline of mass marketing effectiveness with people using TiVo to skip their 30-second ads, obviously marketers need to become much more creative about product placement. And, as you become creative about product placement, you also have to begin to think about, "Well, how do I measure the value of that placement?" So, this was something that, actually one of our strategic partners, ePrize came up with. It was a campaign (I don't know if you remember this episode), but the idea was that two teams needed to convince people to use this new Crest product and, at the end of the episode, there was a little announcement that you go to the website and you could compete in this contest if you have a better idea for how to promote the new Crest product. So, I think that is interesting. It was very successful.
I want to talk about my good friend, the Greek scholar, Archimedes. Does anyone have a favorite Archimedes quote? Mine is, "Give me a place to stand on, and a lever that is long enough, and I shall move the Earth." So, if you think about that, you know, I think the "lever" is referral engines. It is the internet. It is, you know, one begets 10, and 10 begets a hundred, and getting people to refer other people to the site, as ePrize was successful in doing with its Palm One campaign. And, I think the "place to stand on" is your existing customer base. It is your customers, right? So, think about that word "lever." What is a lever? Really, it is a mechanical device that allows you to lift loads well beyond your natural capacity. And, I think that applies nicely in the context of marketing. Think about how you can use the lever to drive your marketing programs without spending a lot of money. So, those are ways to actively capture customer information.
There are also ways to passively capture customer information. I am sure you have all walked into a consumer electronics store, or a big box discounter. And you buy something on your credit card and they ask you for your zip code, right? And, you know, the reason they are doing that, of course, is because they are doing a reverse look up on your name. They are capturing your name on the mag stripe on the back of your credit card. They are doing a reverse look-up in real time, coming back to the store, and then they know exactly who you are. And, if you buy a DVR two weeks later you get a promotion in the mail saying, "Twenty percent off DVD players now that you have a DVR." So, that is one way of capturing information. It is passive. Some customers resent it because they don't know quite what's going on. But, it is kind of interesting.
Additional resources:
Crest Launches Product on "Apprentice"
Tomorrow: Integrating information and advanced analytics.
