Here at OnQue Digital we deliver seamless end-to-end marketing solutions for our clients. We believe marketing should be based on knowing who your customers are and what their attitudinal beliefs are, rather than guessing what they like. We begin by gathering and analysing big data sets which allows us to tailor creative marketing solutions that uniquely fit our customers’ business, whatever the size of their organisation may be.
We work across small businesses and multinational companies, which have much more in common than you may think - especially when it comes to data. Both ends of the spectrum generate data that can have a profound impact on their ability to drive marketing and sales decisions across multiple platforms. Check out below how multinational companies apply big data in their organisational and marketing practices with great success.
Procter & Gamble (P&G)
Procter & Gamble’s CEO, Robert McDonald is on a mission: to make Procter & Gamble the most technologically enabled business in the world, starting with big data. P&G utilise data mining in areas outside of marketing, including procurement and sales and are known for their wide range of products and ability to juggle a wide variety of different consumers.
The company have developed a system to scan online comments called “consumer pulse”. The system uses Bayesian analysis, which categorises comments by individual branding, and then assigns them to the screen of the relevant individual.
In an interview with Mckinsey Quarterly Magazine, McDonald outlines the importance of using big data within the multinational company. He says P&G use “data modelling, simulation, and other digital tools” to reshape how they innovate with modelling being an important component for P&G to predict consumer purchases and trends. McDonald believes, “It would be heretical in this company to say that data is more valuable than a brand, but it’s the data sources that help create the P&G brand and keep it dynamic”.
eBay
eBay brings in a yearly revenue of over $18 billion and employs over 33,500 people around the world. Recently the company have been enhancing their “CRM capabilities in order to leverage real-time data to drive relevant channel messages and personalisation”.
Applying data management to their CRM is one thing, however, CMO, Richelle Parham explains that one of her largest most successful initiative’s to date is eBay’s data-driven homepage, “The Feed”, where consumers can "follow" categories of items.
In 2013, eBay began sharing Its customer data with marketers. eBay’s Head of Digital Display Stephen Howard-Sarin believes that user data will exist “for the benefit of other marketers who want to reach shoppers”.
eBay explains that their plan for the future involves continuing to ”improve customer engagement, leveraging data and insights to deliver personalisation, inspiration and relevance at scale - basically connecting the right customer with the right product at the right time, on and off our platform”.
Here is some more info on the impressive multinational company:
• Each day, eBay generates 50 terabytes of new behavioural/transactional data
• Every five minutes, a car or truck is bought via the mobile app in the U.S.
• Every 12 seconds, a women’s handbag is bought via the mobile app in the U.S.
• There have been 260 million downloads of eBay’s mobile app
With eBay’s track record it’s no wonder big data is continuously changing the company in turn tailoring customer experience and enhancing the online retailer’s future prospects.
Amazon
Amazon has been selling customer data long before ebay. For many years Amazon uses that data to build a ‘Recommender System’ that suggest products to people who visit Amazon.com.
Amazon uses ‘big data’ analytics to determine what a customer has placed inside their virtual shopping cart, which items they’ve recently viewed and what items they have purchased in the past. Amazon calls this technique, “item-to-item collaborative filtering”. This essentially means that for each item Amazon builds a neighbourhood of related items that a customer may find interesting.
Amazon is currently expanding its big data utilisation methods by adding the Dash button, via Amazon Web Services (AWS), to their already massive product and service offering. The small remote button device can be placed around a user's home; and is associated with various brand products. The device links to prime customers' home Wi-Fi and the Amazon Mobile App to enable one-click orders. Newly released data from Amazon highlights the rapid growth of its Dash Buttons.
Amazon claim to know their customers better than anyone else, recently unravelling a bank of data on online consumer purchasing behaviour, that it can mine from its 152 million customer accounts.
Along with data insights, Amazon is known for their online advertising techniques including paid search marketing, interactive ads on portals, e-mail campaigns and search engine optimisation.
American Express
American Express capitalised on the 20th century content marketing forefront, with the 166-year-old company sweeping up their marketing success with a drive into data. Whist passing over a trillion transactions, behind the scenes, a team of data scientists are developing algorithms to determine the most relevant offers to put in front of their customers.
Ash Gupta, chief risk officer, notes the importance of data collaboration in the big data marketing process. Technology innovators and data providers collaborate to better understand customer experience end-to-end, whilst looking at touch points and areas where customers interact with the brand.
Gupta explains that data collection plays a pivotal role, yet at the end of the day when a decision is made it’s because, “we put a full package together for our business colleagues and partners so that a decision is made upon an convincing argument.”
Dean Chadwick, Vice President of consumer acquisition and customer loyalty at AMEX, explains that American Express is exploring data options that will ultimately bring together art and science “in order to interact better with customers in real-time” and put data at the heart of commerce. Chadwick also believes the company will ultimately “move away from random acts of marketing, and have data drive those contextual experiences”. AMEX attribute their marketing successes by explaining that a brand must have the ‘ability to see both sides of the transaction through data’.
American Express is currently using data to build great mobile-led customer experiences. This is just the first taste of how they could marry their data and marketing capabilities.
Stay tuned
The era of big data is upon us and the above examples are only the beginning. This ever-increasing quantity of data generates enormous challenges, but also generates significant business opportunities. If you or your business is looking at generating extensive data insights to advance your marketing capabilities contact us today at info@onque.com.au.