Archive

We have a brand new white paper online on the topic Brands need People and People need Brands: How social analytics benefit consumers while protecting their privacy.

Using new social tools, consumers can decide, what information they want to reveal to the advertisers and what to keep private. For marketers and advertisers, this is a unique opportunity. They can concentrate on promoting their products and services to those who have already shown interest to them.

In the white paper, we analyze ways of making marketing relevant and useful for the end users. This can be done by targeting the Alpha users, the most influential persons in a social network.

We list six topics to consider when planning social analytics:

1. Provide simple opt-out
2. Inform users on data usage
3. Protect customer information
4. Respect industry guidelines
5. Let users control their privacy
6. Advertise to youth with care

The white paper also presents, how mobile operators can use Xtract Social Links to find effectively the targets for marketing campaigns. The Product Marketing Module for Xtract Social Links can bring this power to targeting specific products effectively to the influential users.

Did you find the white paper useful? Was there something missing? All feedback is welcome!

Download the white paper here.

Helsinki, Finland – 30 October, 2008 – Xtract announced today that the GSM Association (GSMA) selected its Social Links solution as a top finalist for the 2009 Mobile Innovation Global Awards Competition – APAC Tournament. The Mobile Innovation Global Awards Competition encourages breakthrough technology, applications and services in the mobile industry by bringing together innovative mobile products, industry investors and mobile operators. Xtract with its Social Links solution, a social marketing intelligence product, has been selected as one of three finalists in the ‘Most Innovative Carrier Infrastructure or Platform’ category.

Timo Laaksonen, CEO of Xtract said, “We are very proud to be recognised by the GSMA for the second time this year. This shows again that the operator community is starting to utilise their rich user data for marketing, making it more flexible, cost efficient, accurate and relevant to their customers. With Social Links, mobile operators can utilise their marketing budgets more effectively to tackle churn, acquire new customers and launch new products to the market. Operators that have already adopted Social Links are gaining tangible returns on their marketing investment right from the start of taking the solution into use.”

Xtract was a finalist for the 2008 Mobile Innovation Global Award Competition at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last February, and has now been recognised for the second time for the APAC tournament.

About Xtract Social Links
Xtract Social Links is the first carrier-grade product that analyzes customers’ real social networks from massive amounts of calls and messaging data. It utilizes this information to better predict the behaviour of customers in operators’ networks. Social Links can be extended with its add-on modules that are designed for specific business applications including: customer insight, customer acquisition, product marketing and customer loyalty. Social Links has already been successfully deployed by several top-tier mobile operators worldwide with very positive results. Xtract’s customers range from top-tier operators such as T-Mobile to innovating challengers such as Blyk.

About Xtract
Xtract delivers software products for social marketing and advertising intelligence. The company refines social interaction, personal behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time enable companies to utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day to day business of marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of digital advertising, viral campaigns and predictive churn management. Xtract’s products and solutions are automated, self-learning and capable of analysing billions of customer transactions. They make complexity simple with easy to use and actionable tools for marketers and advertisers to define and manage their campaigns. Xtract works with over 50 blue-chip companies with intensive customer data. Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

Meet us at GSMA Mobile Asia Congress Mobile Innovations Zone

“We are similar to oil refining business. There is crude oil but crude oil cannot be used as such. You need to refine it and then you can get useful products which you can use. And that’s what Xtract does. We take raw data from mobile or internet and we refine it so that marketers and advertisers can use it,” says Jouko Ahvenainen, founder of Xtract while speaking in front of a large audience at Marketing Communications Week in Helsinki.

The user data is becoming more and more important as media is becoming more interactive and as advertising is shifting from traditional media to online and mobile. One of the most valuable aspects of using user data for marketing is that we are able to visualise, group and measure customers’ social networks. This has created an opportunity for marketers to utilise word of mouth marketing which is the most powerful selling tool (Nielsen 2007). Mobile operators have the largest social network in the world today. Xtract can refine that rich customer data to create 3D user profiles based on social network, behaviour and demographic information. These profiles for the first time utilise data as a dynamic tool in day to day marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of advertising, viral campaigns and predictive churn management. History has shown that companies who market more and more efficiently are the ones that survive economic downturn. If that’s the case then, now is a good time to turn to a social marketing intelligence solution.

With Xtract Social Links Base, the foundation of Xtract Social Links, you can find the generic Alpha Users. These influencers are the most connected customers in the social network, especially great for customer understanding and feedback, but not directly related to any products. But what if you want to advertise two different products to Alpha Users: one about Mobile TV and a second one about push e-mail? Or, here’s another option, what if you wanted to advertise a new 12 months contract with cheaper rates to those about to churn, and a contract to those with a lot of connections outside the operator’s customer base? Xtract Social Links add-on modules enable you to find specific Alpha Users:

• Product Alphas are the influencers who have a highest probability to buy a specific product, the most receptive neighbours to this product and the highest effect on the product penetration rate.
• Churn Alphas are the customers who have a highest probability to leave the operator and take neighbours with them, so the ones you will want to keep at all prices.
• Acquisition Alphas are the customers who have the most connections to people outside the operator’s network, therefore the best to target for new customer acquisition campaigns.

Once you have the Alpha Users to target, you can for example create one or several personalised campaigns based on your segmentation. Read more about these add-on modules on the Xtract Social Links page.

Helsinki, Finland – October 16, 2008 – Xtract announced today that the company’s board of directors has appointed Michael Hallén as chairman of the board effective immediately. Hallén has a solid experience from several technology companies.

Michael Hallén’s most recent operational assignment was as president and CEO of Stockholm listed Boss Media AB, a leading systems supplier in digitally-distributed gaming entertainment. His team contributed in revitalizing the company and then to a successful public bid process resulting in Boss Media being acquired by US based GTECH in April 2008. Previously, Hallén was president and CEO of IFS AB, a provider of business applications, also listed in Stockholm and operating in some 50 countries. He played a key role in the company’s international expansion and has also been establishing its offshore capabilities.

“I am thrilled to be elected chairman of the board of Xtract and to contribute in building the next successful step in the company’s fast development,” says Michael Hallén. “Xtract has built a unique proposition and track record providing software products that enable highly accurate customer targeting and profiling for telecom operators and online social media. I am impressed by the results and the dramatic increase of return on marketing investment for the Xtract customers.”

In support of his interest in building entrepreneurial companies, Hallén has held board positions in a number of other technology companies. He is currently active in the boards of Extenda, a supplier of software for the retail industry; Cambio, provider of healthcare administration software; and XDIN, an engineering consultation firm.

“Michael is the right person to head Xtract’s board through these exciting and challenging times,” said Timo Laaksonen, Xtract’s CEO. “He brings hands-on experience combined with in-depth knowledge and vision of the market that Xtract needs to strengthen our long term strategy and execution.”

When I read Jay Alabaster’s article on the Japanese behavior on social networking websites, it made me realise how difficult it must be for some companies to get any customer insight from their customer base.

According to Jay, “the vast majority of mixi’s roughly 15 million users don’t reveal anything about themselves” and keep in tight groups, to which he adds that “fewer than half of Match’s paying members in Japan are willing to post their photos, compared with nearly all members in the U.S”.

Must be so frustrating to sit on so much data and not be able to get any useful insight extracted. I wonder how companies like pixi.jp handle it, considering users have fake profiles, or then companies like match.com considering how differently users behave from culture to culture around the same service.

Last night I had a great time listening to Marc Davis, Chief Scientist of Yahoo!, talking about the new developments that they have been cooking at Yahoo! However, the night was first started with two presentations from Idean, who also paid for the pints – thanks guys! So, where is all this free beer and good talks? At MobileMonday, which returned to the roots of where it all started – Molly Malone’s Irish bar in Helsinki.

Marc Davis at MobileMonday in Helsinki

Marc started his presentation of by outlining Yahoo!’s visions of how to combine social networking and mobile into something that is ubiquitous and easy to use and develop for. I’ve always viewed the mobile phone as very good tool for social networking. Of course, you can call your friends, but I’ve also been texting to them for over 10 years now by both SMS and email, nowadays I can do video calls from the mobile too. So how is that changing? Well, I guess it isn’t. We’re just adding more ways to communicate to the same device. Which, let’s face it, is not a mobile phone anymore, but the most personal computer you have.

Marc also told us about Australian Aboriginal tribe, the Achilpa. They carry a sacred pole with them all the time as they wander around the desert to find food and water. To them, the pole marks the center of the universe – Which is very convenient as they never get lost (unless the pole breaks). “Where ever you go, is the center of the universe. And your people are always with you.”

The mobile has definitely become our sacred pole. (What three things do you take with you always when you go outside your home?) If our modern pole breaks, or runs out of battery, we would be lost and without any contact to our people.

However, is it too easy to think that you are in contact with our friends and loved ones if you just check their Pulse? I sometimes think that we are becoming more and more like the people in Solaria, a world envisioned by Isaac Asimov. Solaria is a world that is extremely sparsely inhabited and the people never meet each other in person, only through holographic viewing systems. They even have strong phobia about meeting in person. Isn’t this the direction we are going? Soon all that is required is to broadcast yourself and read the Pulse of your friends? And, in the best or worst case – depending how you look at it, that Pulse is already filtered by some ingenious system that tells me what is important.
I hope not. However, even though it was very nice to go home and give my wife an old fashioned analog hug, I have to admit that I’ve been away from home so many times that to be able to send at least digital hugs is very welcome.

What about the bag of ideas? Well Marc gave a good presentation of new Yahoo! technologies, like BluePrint and Fire Eagle. Take a look, and I’m sure you will get some great ideas. I did.