PowerMarketer Q&A with Dr Neil Skilling, Pitney Bowes Business Insight – Part One

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Power Marketer caught up with global marketing expert Dr Neil Skilling at last week’s Data Day. Here, he share his insights on using data to improve your business.

Your Data Day presentation demonstrated how failure to take data seriously can stall a company’s growth. Why do you think so many companies are failing to recognise the power of using data to drive marketing campaigns?

 I think most companies recognise the ability to use data to drive their campaigns but actually achieving that is the difficulty. I think that a lot of businesses are drowning in huge quantities of data, which they’re not managing to organise correctly. Businesses often struggle with building the right customer views and making those available in the right places.

 I would always encourage the collection of all that data because you will come to terms with organising it. But building the customer views that you want and making those views available in the right places is what many businesses struggle with. We’ve seen a lot of people jump on the data warehouse bandwagon as it allows them to perform back office data analysis and gain insights but it’s more about getting data into the front line, into the front parts of the business to use it successfully to make recommendations and increase operational effectiveness. That’s where the main challenge is.

 I think most people now understand what the kinds of models are they should be building, but they don’t have the data organised in the right way and they don’t understand that sometimes holding back on data can be a good thing, ie holding back in terms of marketing to customers. One of my stated life goals is to be able to bring measurement to marketing and understand what the true effectiveness is. If you always target the top valued customers with the same messages it will be self defeating – whereas if you target different customers you would get a big lift.

The fundamentals of direct marketing are built on list, offer and creative, but the wealth of intelligence now available through data is changing the conversation in marketing. What do you see as the fundamentals of best practice in database marketing today?

 I’d like to take away one of those fundamentals – the list. Yes, it’s a good concept for a marketer to think about a list. But as soon as you’re on a list, it’s static – you might make the wrong recommendation. Lists are basically going to be replaced by dynamic segments. We’ve moved from a world of marketing where you construct your creative and your offer and you build your list and then people on the list all receive exactly the same message. The message is pushed out the door and marketing go to holiday for a week and then come back to see all the results. We’re moving to a point where marketing is always on, marketing is about this ongoing dialogue and the messages that you’re putting out. So it doesn’t really matter when marketing goes on holiday because marketing will always happen. Marketing should be reactive and proactive in the messages they push out.

 You spoke about how businesses have lost sight of the “relationship” part of customer relationship marketing. What have been the most important shifts in customer relationship marketing in the last few years?

 So we’ve learnt for example in banking, a bank manager within a branch would know all of their customers, and actually be able to make lending decisions based on the knowledge of those customers. But when banks closed a lot of branches and centralised operations it was one key point where they lost the relationship with the customer. In more recent years, the competitive pressures have bought the value of that relationship back. I think that people should be engaged with their bank brand to the extent that they act as advocates for that brand. I think the new competitive advantage is in service– being able to deliver good service is now the differentiator.  

Stay tuned for Part Two of this series where Neil offers best practice advice on predictive modelling and building a relationship with the cross-channel shopper. 

Article by Neha Kale

Neha is a writer and editor for The Media Pad, publisher of Power Retail. She has a background in business, arts and film journalism and an interest in new media and digital strategy. She is looking forward to exploring how marketers are impacted by the online space for Power Marketer. Neha is a magazine junkie whose other addictions include coffee, travel and live music. She likes to run but has a long-time allergy to team sports.

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