Predictive analytics can help ensure you're sending the right kind of email messages to the right customers at the right time in order to improve results.

Using predictive analytics to power up email marketing is nothing new, but it is becoming increasingly popular these days - particularly for e-commerce businesses. The reason for this is that predictive analytics help companies make smarter and faster decisions. Check out the below graph of how predictive analytics, along with AI, help companies in different ways: It's no surprise that email marketing features in this list as it is 40% more effective in acquiring new customers than Twitter and Facebook combined. If you want to market smarter, predictive analysis is the way. Here's how it can power up your email marketing strategy:

Activation or acquisition

Whether you want to send a welcome email, discount…

Predictive Analytics is the future of marketing

Okay, so that title might be a tad misleading. Especially when you consider my knowledge of football is on a par with my knowledge of forensic mineralogy (a rock is a rock, right?). But I do know about predictions. The hyperbole about Predictive Analytics and its potential power to affect marketing has really ramped up in the last few months. Current industry commentary places Predictive Analytics, in terms of power and effectiveness on the far side of miracles, and in terms of its complexity, on a par with Stephen Hawking’s ‘A brief history of time’.

So, I agree with the general thrust of one of those.

The results. The results are phenomenal. They really are startling – to the extent that I’m looking at our client’s results and going back to our Head of Insight because there’s clearly a mis-type here (there isn’t).  But if we…

The 7 elements you need for superior retention automation

It costs a lot to acquire a new customer, but most clients will make a single purchase and leave. A repeating purchase, on the other hand, costs far less than acquiring a new customer, estimated at between 4 and 7 times less actually. Retention automation has a simple, well-known theory that deals with this issue. Retention automation aims to get better ROI by turning one-time buyers into repeat customers and keeping them, rather than focusing on acquiring additional new customers. Retention automation can be done with the basic understanding that customers are different, then analyzing them as groups, connecting them to automated campaigns designed to move them in the right direction. There are plenty of examples that demonstrate programs and multichannel campaigns addressing customer retention according to the customer’s current lifecycle situation and their importance to the business. Surprisingly, although the theory is so…

Chart of the Day: Predictive Analytics Users Get Better Results

Predictive Analytics isn't a new marketing technique, but interest in it has increased with the hype around using Artificial Intelligence for Marketing. This typically involves using Machine Learning, a key AI technique for marketing, by analysis of historical results of campaigns to inform future targeting and creative. In this research, analysts Aberdeen Group review the impact of Predictive analytics on different ROI metrics as presented in the chart below. But, before we take a look at the results, what is predictive analytics? Aberdeen define  predictive analytics as: 'A technology allowing firms to analyze structured and unstructured data, be it captured in the past or in real time. Such analysis reveals key trends and correlations while also predicting the likelihood of things such as customer churn'. This is a broad definition since most marketing applications focus on analysis…

Using a bottom-up model to guide your analysis, you can gather amazing insights from the data you already possess

The key to data analytics lies in asking the right questions, but success can often hinge on the person who is asking those questions. Traditionally, organizations have analyzed their businesses from the perspective of the boardroom, approaching problems from the top down. But in trying to address how to best use their data to solve problems without first understanding the data itself, errors of human bias and oversimplification of the issue may occur. Consequently, company leaders may invest time, money, and resources into technology and products that don’t deliver on expectations. Just because a software package comes with a flashy dashboard and a colorful knack for highlighting correlated relationships doesn’t mean it’s all that great at proving the causal ones. But there’s no turning…

Predict what your email database will do to improve your click rate

The growth in Data Science techniques during the last few years has generated a vast interest in using analytical techniques to optimise engagement on email campaigns. Whether a company wishes to compare the performance of two email templates, compare the performance of multiple email templates or see the association between several characteristics of an email and a single metric, Predictive Analytical techniques allow them to acquire the answers they need. Below we are going to outline 3 techniques you can implement from ‘getting started’ lists of around 500 subscribers, to highly advanced models geared towards enterprise users.

Understanding Sample Size

For these techniques to make sense, it is important to have a basic understanding of statistical significance and what size of list may be required for your tests to be useful. Very basically, the larger the sample size, the more statistically significant…

Use predictive modeling to give your campaigns an edge over competitors

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s 2015 State of Search Industry Report provides several valuable insights derived from both marketer and agency practices over the past year. The most useful conclusions center on three forms of advertising: paid search, social media, and display media. In general, marketers were more confident in managing paid search advertising efforts in-house, whereas social media advertising was a responsibility better left to outside agencies. This shows how marketers are often more comfortable managing “tried-and-true” tactics as opposed to navigating the more complex and fast-paced landscape of social media advertising. Throughout the report, a continuous theme emerges regarding success in measuring return on investment. For a paid search campaign, it’s a relatively easy task because the data and tools used to properly interpret those data are…

Using predictive analytics effectively will allow you to increase sales, but only if you have right data

Applying predictive analytics to marketing campaigns will enable businesses to increase sales and returns through visualising the campaign outcomes. Below is an introduction to Predictive Marketing and how you can begin to experiment with these ideas in your business.

Introduction

You may have heard of predictive marketing – it’s an increasingly popular topic. You may not, however, understand what it really means or how it could benefit your business. In short: it involves using expected future events and expected future customer behaviours to create a marketing plan. It has become a lot more relevant to businesses as digital marketing campaigns have generated far more data which is analysed in far more detailed ways. Intuitively, most marketers can see a clear value from understanding customers better and getting detailed numbers around a campaign’s expected returns before it has started. However,…

How Big Data and Predictive Analytics improve marketing

Predictive Analysis research and 'Big Data' is helping companies to improve their marketing, through accessing multiple sources of data and employing specialist staff to 'understand the data', providing actionable data which Marketers and Decision-makers can use to improve performance. This IBM and the Aberdeen Group  'Big Data for Marketing' research set out to identify the ‘Best in Class’ practices for companies providing accurate information in an efficient way, to support key Decision-makers and their planning processes. The Infographic below summarises the top strategies, results and capabilities: It highlights that it has helped companies to become more efficient, improve their decision-making and overall performance, through actionable high quality data analysis. The detailed report draws out the technologies and business…