Archive

Propensity or influence? During the past months we’ve had several discussions internally and with our customers about virality. Our experience clearly shows that not everything is viral in marketing. Churn virality varies in different networks and there are cases where churn is not viral at all. Product marketing is a more potential case, but it’s become clear that the viral spread totally depends on the attractiveness of the offering.

This week I attended a seminar on how to do marketing in Facebook. One of the success stories was the launch of a new IKEA store in Malmö – a campaign designed by ad agency Forsman & Bodenfors in Sweden (check IKEA Facebook showroom campaign ). They succeeded in creating an incredible viral spread by allowing people to tag IKEA items on the store manager’s profile page, and get the items for free. Obviously a compelling offer – but the point of the designers was that if you want things to spread – it’s all in the offering. Simple ideas usually work best. You are fighting for your customers’ time, to succeed you need to offer them something worthwhile, and your brand needs to be something they are willing to promote. How do you find such ideas? These guys advice was – gut feeling.

This basically means that you are working on a trial and error basis. It also means that finding so-called influencers in your network will not guarantee viral spread. Influence is always context related, and you need to find the first tier targets to get any results at all. That’s why we put so much emphasis on finding the people that have the highest propensity in each context. At the same time we find the ones with the highest influence on others. So, if your gut feeling was right and you have a killer offering, you’ll get both the high first tier pull rates and the virality. But if you cannot find even the first adopters for this particular offering – you’ll have no virality either. Simple.

The good news is that if your offering is relevant but not viral (and you will have lots of these), you need to find the customers with the highest propensity in each case. These revenue streams are what matter for your business and they directly affect your bottom line.

More than two thirds of the world’s mobile subscriptions are prepaid. Yet the marketing discussions mainly revolve around postpaid topics, and the problematics in how to know more about and reach the prepaid customers are left in the background.

Lately, Xtract has worked closely with several large prepaid focused operators on both churn and product marketing. Together, we have found critical issues that we have solved, for instance in churn definitions as part of the analytics process.

At the end of January, our Product Marketing Manager Mikko Röntynen will speak on these topics in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at the IQPC event called Prepaid Mobile Summit 2010. His topic will be:

Driving the value of prepaid customers using Social Intelligence
· What is Social Intelligence and what can it reveal about your prepaid customers?
· Demographics prediction as a basis for targeting in marketing campaigns
· Finding right targets for effective customer retention, product up-sell and customer acquisition campaigning

Improved insight and targeting to prepaid customers is a key strategic focus for Xtract in 2010.

I recently attended two events for the mobile industry: Mobile Asia in Hongkong and an IIR event on Customer Segmentation and Intelligence in London. I had the opportunity to listen to numerous speeches, and two themes in particular caught my attention:

· The necessity to use microsegmentation to reach and engage consumers and

· The challenge and opportunity of data services and applications for mobile operators

As Garrett Johnston from MTS Russia put it In his presentation in Mobile Asia, the key to operators’ success in the future lies in the long tail of brands – and these are the brands of their application partners. How can operators matchmake between the varying and versatile needs of their customers and the supply of niche applications? Analytics was seen as the answer by many, but several open questions remain on the implementation, especially on truly making analytics part of marketing processes.

Operators have worked on segmentation models for a long time already. The projects have been long, cumbersome and internally focused (!). Are these static segmentation models going to help in selling a large variety of products, services and applications to subscribers? Yes and no. When resuming the key learnings at the IIR event on segmentation, one of the groups came up with the idea of hierarchical segmentation where the operator works with a few high-level segments on a strategic level, but uses dynamic segmentation with more variables as input on a tactical level . I believe there is food for further investigation in this idea – more flexibility to really engage the versatile consumers with niche marketing, offerings and flexible pricing through microsegmentation, based on strong but easy-to-use analytics.

This year’s Customer Segmentation and Intelligence conference will focus on the development of actionable strategies for mobile operators’ main challenges – drive ARPU and minimise churn. As the recession bites and customers radically change their behaviour, how can you use your segmentation tools and strategies to establish what they really want and develop valuable propositions that meet their needs?

The conference will cover what data, tools and models operators should use to develop meaningful segmentation strategies at both the macro and micro levels.

Xtract’s VP of Product Management & Marketing, Sari Aapola will speak in the morning of Day Two of the Conference. These are some of the points her presentation will cover:

Engaging Consumer 2.0 – Understanding And Exploiting Social Intelligence In Operator Segmentation And Marketing

• Consumer 2.0 is in the driving seat – understanding how a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour is changing the rules of marketing
• Defining Social Intelligence and determining how it can be used to tackle the most burning business challenges of churn and product up- / cross-selling
• Identifying the deliverables of Social Intelligence today and establishing how it can be integrated into the operator’s marketing processes and systems
• Where is Social Intelligence going next?

UTalkMarketing featured an article by Jouko Ahvenainen of Xtract. In this article, Ahvenainen looks at word of mouth marketing in a pragmatic manner. Here is a quick peek with some of the requirements for starting a positive word-of-mouth effect:

• Identifying who within the social ecosystem of your customers is influential. In this way, any company can consider its customer base as a social network; we aren’t talking just about Facebook users

• Targeting these influential people (what can be called ‘Alphas’) with campaigns that are most relevant to them, which they are likely to want to share with their network

• Making real-time marketing decisions based upon actual data and the way it’s analysed.

A full version of the article can be found from: UTalkMarketing

Several leading research organisations including the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) and Juniper Research have recently released reports on the current mobile advertising market and its future.

This year represents the first time truly quantitative research has become available on mobile advertising, and the numbers indicate conflicting trends in this nascent market, points out Xtract, providers of social intelligence software.

For example,
• The first expenditure study on mobile advertising in the UK, taken by the IAB and PWC, showed that the mobile ads market is growing 99.2% year on year, even when advertising in other forms of media dramatically decreased in the same period
• The huge growth in mobile advertising has been attributed to its exceptional targeting, immediacy and return on investment, says the IAB
• It also showed an impressive 44% of 16 – 24 year olds have checked social networking profiles on their mobile phones, suggesting younger generations are at the ready for mobile web and advertising
• Source: [http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/mobileadvertisingexpenditure120509.html]
However,
• Juniper Research’s study released in June indicates that by 2014, mobile advertising would still only account for up to 1.5% of total global adspend, despite mobile advertising offering ’substantially higher’ response rates than advertising in other media

“There is clearly a conflicting trend at present,” said Jouko Ahvenainen, co-founder and VP at Xtract. “Mobile ads are the most interactive, compelling forms of advertising for many brands, and offer far better response and click through rates when they are done well. And usage of the mobile web is growing rapidly. Other forms of media are struggling to sell advertising, in particular newspapers, and are shutting down. Yet even in five years time, leading industry bodies predict that mobile advertising will remain a mere drop in the ocean in terms of overall global ad spend.”

“This is leaving the industry scratching its head about how to cash in on the promise of mobile advertising. One thing that we constantly hear from advertisers and marketers, who hold the purse strings, is that they need far more intricate levels of targeting than are generally available today; measurability; accountability; and clearly defined ROI, in order to choose mobile over other media platforms. Clearly, highly-targeted forms of advertising that can be measured back are the way to continue the upwards trend in mobile ads. If marketers can’t see exactly who they are targeting, and understand the likely behaviours of these customers socially, they can’t trust the most personal advertising channel available today, and mobile will continue to be insignificant in the overall global ads picture.”

More information about Xtract’s social intelligence approach, on the frontiers of targeting in the mobile advertising market, can be found at www.xtract.com.

Press contact:
Emily McDaid (emily(at)hatch-pr.com | +44 7748 6333 55)

Helsinki, Finland – 24 June 2009 – Xtract’s VP of product management Sari Aapola will deliver a speech today at the Customer Retention Forum. In her talk, titled ‘Can Consumer 2.0 be a loyal customer? Understanding and utilising social intelligence in retention marketing,’ Sari will discuss how gaining social intelligence and knowing your customer better can become a key anti-churn strategy for mobile operators. The presentation will delve into capturing the power of communities and word-of-mouth in the battle against churn, a social problem faced by all telecom operators.

The presentation will discuss:
• Consumer 2.0 in the driver’s seat
• The power of communities and word-of-mouth
• What does Social Revenue reveal to you that ARPU does not?
• Churn is the symptom – what’s the disease, and is there a cure?

To schedule a one-to-one briefing with Sari after her talk, or via phone, or to obtain a copy of the presentation, please use the press contact details below.

About Customer Retention Forum
The conference, held from 24 – 25 June in Singapore’s Amara Hotel, will focus on minimising churn to maximise customer retention and profitability. Companies at the show include Vodafone Australia, Tibco, Bharti Airtel and Chunghwa Telecom.

This is the direct link to the event for more information: www.churnforum.com

Press contact
Emily McDaid
emily(at)hatch-pr.comout Xtract

Xtract’s Helsinki office is moving to Espoo. Our new office will be the tenth floor of the brand new Panorama Tower in Leppävaara district. Choosing a suitable location was not easy. We started the process already in March as our contract with the current landlord was getting close to its end. After hours of search and classification, we came up with 8 candidates. From those we picked 3 most suitable ones. After a series of tough negotiations with the providers the Panorama Tower was chosen as our new location.  Now we are preparing the seating which always raises questions and starting to pack our staff before holiday season. I look very much forward to working in Panorama Tower and getting things settled there.

Helsinki, Finland and London, England — 29 May 2009 – Xtract co-founder Jouko Ahvenainen will deliver the opening speech at London’s Mobile Web 2.0 Summit on 3rd June, at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower in Knightsbridge. In his presentation, titled “Mobile 2.0 Business – how to fund and monetise the new ecosystem,” Jouko will discuss how mobile and web operators can make money from social media and the 2.0 revolution, while steering clear of strategies that don’t work such as contextual advertising on social media platforms.

Jouko’s presentation will discuss:
- Delivering advertising over ‘hot’ media that users get involved with, including Wikipedia and Facebook, versus ‘cold’ media such as one-way broadcasting
- Social networkingis about people, not content. Social sites are places to make connections with others, and advertisers must understand the people behind the networks to best leverage the opportunities they provide
- The ‘active’ footprints that users leave behind in social media and how they can be analysed for improved, more individually relevant, marketing and advertising
- 2.0 monetisation and the sometimes-competing goal of maintaining user privacy

About Mobile Web 2.0 Summit
Speakers from companies including Xtract, Orange, Microsoft, Admob, Flirtomatic, Symbian and Telefonica will help lead the two-day conference, focusing on monetising the next generation of the mobile web, via a roundtable format.

About Xtract
Xtract (www.xtract.com) refines social interaction, behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day-to-day marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of campaigns and advertising. Xtract’s Social Links is an automated, self-learning solution capable of analysing billions of mobile transactions with easy to use and actionable tools for operators to define accurate target groups for their marketing campaigns.

Press contact
Emily McDaid
Hatch PR
emily(at)hatch-pr.com

I run into an interesting website the other day. It’s called “My Parents Just Joined Facebook”. The site is edited by Jeanne and Erika who love their parents dearly (their words). I laughed while reading the cuts of conversations between the young kids and their parents over Facebook. If I were a mother of a teenage kid I would for sure visit this site often hoping to find new conversations and opinions every time I visited it. But, I do have other good reasons. As a marketer, I want to understand the new generation of “digital born”. I often ask myself the question: Do I get them?

Jeanne and Erika are good examples of the customer 2.0. Born digital, the customer 2.0 can be very different from what we’re used with. Why? Because, in most of the cases, we are simply just not well prepared to start a dialog with them. Customer 2.0 is asking us to make their experience with our brand fun, social and engaging. They are asking us to participate in a conversation with them. They can and do express their opinions about our brand freely and with as sophisticated tools as we do. This way, contributing in building our brand’s image. So, ready or not, we have jumped on the same boat with our customers and started a dialog.

Holding their attention
Here comes the next question: If we’ve handled the dialog part well and they use our services today, does that mean they will use them tomorrow? Holding the attention of the customer 2.0 means we need to hold the attention of their friends and community too.

We must learn more about communities and try understand how social networks work. Take churn in telecoms as an example. It has been shown that churn is highly viral. The churn behaviour within one’s community affects the individual’s churn decision. Combining information about social networks with the more traditional information about customers such as demographics and behavioural data in churn prediction can maximise the total number of saved customers through loyalty campaigns.

“Can customer 2.0 be a loyal customer” is also the topic of Sari Aapola’s speech at the 9th Customer Retention Forum on June 23rd in Singapore.

Further resources about social network analytics and solutions can also be found at our website: www.xtract.com.