epsilon and aimia executive roundtable

Epsilon Executive Roundtable. Sydney, November 2015 epsilon.com

What are the key takeaways?

There are more opportunities to track and measure in the digital world

Data from digital channels is providing the richest source of insights. Identifying the themes

and getting consistency of data is a key challenge. How data is applied and used can impact

the customer experience.

An interesting case was shared on how a company is using data to fill seats in stadiums,

while delivering an engagement fan experience. For example, it sends live traffic reports and

offers for merchandise and food at the stadium. In addition to providing a good fan

experience, it is also great opportunity for upsell and cross sell. And all this activities can be

tracked and ROI can be measured.

Consumers have changed - they are far more informed now, and that has greatly impacted

the way they engage. This means that we need to measure ROI across all channels and

touch points, including in-store, call centers and other areas where marketing may not have

a direct influence or ownership.

ROI is not dead. In the ‘now' world it is about Business ROI and not Marketing ROI as we

knew it in yesterday’s world. With digital and technology enabling business transformation, it

is no longer a Marketing ROI that we measure, it is Business ROI.


There seems to be two camps, one with an effective analytics focus and team to support

and the other that without. The companies with this dedicated focus are far more effective

in measuring marketing efforts, not only at a campaign level but also as an overall business

impact.

Do not under estimate the power of customer service, especially face-to-face interactions.

Understand your customers first, segment the high value ones and leverage the power of in-

person contacts to reinforce loyalty. Tactile experience is coming back.

Measure customer success with this perspective: not by understanding customer needs,

but by measuring needs met. Understanding their digital body language is key to successful

engagements.

Be transparent with your customers. Do not work in silos. Work towards building a single-

customer view.

Do not be afraid to fail. Fail fast and learn fast! Celebrate failure - don’t be a victim of pilot

paralysis.

Success of digital is not just measured in ecommerce. It should also be measured by in-

store attribution.

Who owns the customer? The brand, the retailers, the channel? NO - the customer owns

you! The power is in the hands of the customer. Understanding their needs is the key

differentiator.

There are the bigger picture challenges that need to be addressed

The lack of an effective data strategy is impacting the overall business strategy and how

companies are seeing issues around result measures. It appears that a number of

companies don’t have a data strategy, yet they have access to a lot of data. They are

collecting data all the time, but the challenge is to tie it back to the business strategy.

Most organisations sit on a lot of data but haven’t really tied it together.

Culture and competing KPI’s: “Data Scientist is the tooth brush of your business. They

should be something you use every day and everyone understands the value of using it.”

There seems to be the paradox that the more things change, the more things stay the same.

With the rapid change in technology platforms and capabilities, we are still seeing a gap.

This may be largely due to people’s failure to change. An educational and cultural change is

required for people to understand the new world and how to interpret it and the priorities.

The lack of commercial focus from within the business is apparent when teams are asking

for insights on data that are not aligned to the commercial outcomes and priorities. This

goes back to the importance of understanding the overall business plan and making sure

marketing is aligned with the plan.

Marketing is not the biggest business expense – people, infrastructure and equipment are.

This is why tracking customer lifetime value becomes important. While the way your people

interact with customers has a significant impact in terms of satisfaction and profitability,

tracking only the ROI on marketing tactics is only giving part of the picture. NPS (Net

Promotor Score) and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) need to be incorporated as critical

business metrics and part of an overarching view.

There is no other strategy today than customer centricity – just different supporting

strategies to execute. Many companies don’t have a customer centricity manager, and that


could break the model. Many companies also do not have the right organization structure to

support customer centricity.

Conflicting KPI is a major challenge for large organisations as they work towards achieving

customer centricity.

Business culture, technology and data are the major challenges. As for funding to make

things work, the challenge is that organisations don’t look at the opportunity loss as a result

of funding to support the right things. While most board members are onboard, at the end of

day it is all about the money.

Marketer skill upgrades

Finding and keeping the right talent that can tell a story with data, and can bring people

along for the journey, is not an easy task. Companies are spending a lot of money training

and cross training to keep staff.

“It’s the tail wagging the dog” is a good analogy of how things look at the moment. The

general consensus is that upskilling marketers to understand analytics, and to know what

questions to ask when working with analytic teams, are paramount.

Some of the skill set changes required relate to how marketing brief analytics teams or

resources. Marketing are great at writing an advertising brief, yet fail to understand some of

the basics when it comes to analytics briefs. This means that some of the analytics are

flawed, giving business the wrong picture.

Today lots of marketers see the world through a very narrow lens. Teams need to be more

upskilled and general.