Natasha Cleary, Author at CACI

Transforming the Post Office’s digital offering

Posted on: 22 June 2021

The Challenge

As part of the Post Office’s strategy to modernise the business and turn it into a mainstream retailer, there was a need to transform the digital offering across a number of product/service lines.

The Solution

Mentoring programme, consultants working on-site with digital campaign managers, advising on marketing strategy and focussing agencies on performance
Multi-channel audit to provide a clear understanding of digital presence and opportunities to optimise current spend, increase channel performance and drive incremental sales
New reporting channel dashboard and KPI framework to provide visibility on performance across all products/channels

The Results

Re-defined digital strategy including SEO, Biddable Social, Programmatic Display
Built up the digital team, bringing channel management in-house resulting in cost savings and sales growth
Implemented new management processes and best practice across digital disciplines
New reporting framework resulted in closer management of agency and enabled impactful decision making

How Virgin Media successfully met the new End of Contract Notification Regulation

Posted on: 16 June 2021

What is EoCN?

The new Ofcom regulation launched 15th February 2020 outlines that customers must be sent an End of Contract Notification 10-40 days before their contract ends. These should include details of the account such as current contract deal and associated offers. The regulation is designed to raise awareness to the customer that they’re out of contract and their price may change.

Our systems didn’t have anything which could produce this, and we hadn’t done this before. We had absolutely nothing in place that could do this, it would be starting from scratch

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Creating an End-to-End Solution in Adobe Campaign

Virgin Media requested the support from a dedicated CACI Adobe Campaign Consultant to assist with the creation and the facilitation of the end to end solution. CACI’s Senior Consultant, Fraser Rallison joined the team to support Virgin Media with its EoCN campaign.

Resource and timelines were very very short, and it was a mandatory timeline with a big financial impact if this was missed. We needed someone very good. We needed that confidence that whoever came onboard could run with the project and Fraser’s prior experience was perfect.

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Identifying the Most Appropriate Way to Contact Customers

The EoCN approach consisted of passing data through several different data systems. The process began by selecting all eligible customers using Virgin Media’s source billing system. This data is then released to be transformed into a more customer friendly format. Once complete, the customer specific offers are appended, and the data is delivered into Adobe Campaign.

Within Adobe Campaign, 6 individual workflows were created to release over 20 different data files. These workflows ensured that the data coming through was correct and accurate with no missing values which could cause confusion to the customer. The data is also checked to ensure all offers are correct and make sense to the consumer.

Once these steps are complete the data is reviewed to identify the most appropriate way to contact customers. This is identified by reviewing their previous email engagement, quality of email address and whether they require a notification in a special format (such as Audio or Braille).

Once these checks and classifications are complete a bespoke report is built from Adobe and shared with project stakeholders with a request to approve the counts should they match the project plan. Once sign off is agreed the data passes a final two stage quality assurance check before then being released to separate Email and Direct Mail agencies.

A Flexible and Dynamic Approach

The level of granularity within the workflows allowed Virgin Media to better understand the offering provided to customers. The flexible and dynamic approach has also lead to a significant amount of customers communicated to since 15th February 2020 when the regulation came into force. With the support of CACI, Virgin Media have kept within the EoCN regulations and avoid substantial fines.

I seriously don’t think that without CACI and other members of the project team that we would have hit that go live date

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Read the full case study

You can view the full PDF of this case study here.

To discover more about how we’re supporting Virgin Media with their customer communications, read our next case study – Enabling Virgin Media to Implement Ofcom’s Annual Best Tariff Notification Regulation.

How Virgin Media successfully met the new Annual Best Tariff Notification Regulation

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What is the Annual Best Tariff Notification regulation?

As part of a set of Ofcom regulations launched in February 2020, all customers who are out of contract are to be communicated to on an annual basis from when their contract ended or if they’ve never had a contract. These should include details of the account such as current contract deal, price & services, future premium as well as recommendations for alternative tariffs available based on customer usage and current services.

Implementing the Annual Best Tariff Notification (ABTN)

Following the success of the implementation of End of Contract Notification, Virgin Media approached CACI to assist with the implementation of Annual Best Tariff Notification (ABTN).

The impact of the ABTN regulation was an unknown to Virgin Media. Whilst initial tests had been put in place in 2019, the bulk of these customers were on complex product holdings, predominantly out of contract and disengaged with Virgin Media’s existing communications.

These customers are likely to be paying significantly more than those customers who have re-contracted in the last 18 months. For the business, we had zero idea of the impact, even after testing due to the restrictions we needed to put on the data

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Designing a Flexible Solution within Adobe Campaign

Within Adobe Campaign 9 individual workflows were created to deliver the ABTN solution to customers. This involved an initial deep dive into the Virgin Media customer base to identify all eligible customers to be communicated to before the 15th February 2021. Once this was complete, this information was shared with the Virgin Media commercial team to design and map out the best strategy for communicating to these customers which would not only be effective but also ensure the lowest revenue hit would occur.

CACI supported in designing the solution to be flexible, which allowed Virgin Media’s commercial team to adapt to changes in the market and changes to customer behaviour as a result of COVID-19. Evolving tried and tested methods from EoCN, the workflows allowed Virgin Media’s commercial teams to specify which ‘cohorts’ they would like to target for that month and this was then implemented into the solution.

Launching Within Regulation

The project was launched within regulation and is already having an impact in clearing the required customers before the deadline in February 2021. With over three separate runs completed the project was handed over the Virgin Media Insight Operations team to continue the project.

Without CACI the impact of trying to achieve ABTN would have had a significant impact to the business involving taking colleagues off from pre-planned work and cancelling other activity such as sales, cross-sell, retention.

– Ben Gibson, Senior Campaign Delivery Manager

Read the full case study

You can view the PDF of this full case study here.

You can read more about how we’ve been supporting Virgin Media with Adobe Campaign in our additional case study – Enabling Virgin Media to Successfully Meet Ofcom’s End of Contract Notification Regulation.

Acorn data enables The RSPB to deliver relevant and targeted supporter communications

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Why The RSPB Chose Acorn

As well as birds and wildlife, the RSPB also loves its supporters and volunteers! Knowing where they live and come from and so distance travelled to, for instance, a nature reserve, is an important part of understanding the RSPB’s audiences. The simplicity of Acorn is one of the main reasons the RSPB chose and continue to use Acorn: the data captured whilst at a reserve or in the high street just requires a postcode, something which most of the RSPB’s supporters are happy to provide.

How The RSPB is Using Acorn

The RSPB covers a wide spectrum of activities: managing nature reserves, involvement in species recovery and large-scale conservation projects, deploying national and local fundraising initiatives, operating an ecommerce site, listening to members’ requirements and concerns and ensuring resources are optimally deployed. Acorn, with its combination of location and demographic information, enhances the organisation’s understanding and evaluation of member and volunteer interactions across all of these activities.

Acorn is used for profiling, campaign selections, reporting and insight; for example, understanding participants in the RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch event held every year in January. Ultimately Acorn helps the RSPB to deliver relevant communications to its supporter base.

The Benefits

Acorn is applied to records on the RSPB single supporter database, hosted by CACI, ensuring consistency of the organisation’s understanding of its supporters and volunteers
Helps to personalise communications and content, thereby enabling marketing spend to be distributed with improved efficiency and effectiveness
Understand audiences for whom only a postcode is known
Overall, Acorn plays an important role in keeping RSPB audiences engaged with its brand for longer

With a network of reserves across the UK, understanding our supporters from a geographical perspective is incredibly important to the RSPB particularly when it comes to developing closer relationships with our supporters. Acorn allows us to enhance that insight and ensure that our communications are relevant and timely.

– Anton Ivankiv, Head of Business Planning & Strategy, RSPB

Read the Full Case Study

Discover more on how The RSPB are leveraging Acorn in the full case study here.

Sophisticated data models help Scottish Water understand domestic water consumption

Posted on: 15 June 2021

Scottish Water has been working with CACI for over ten years to deliver accurate models that help predict and review household water consumption.

Martin Walton, Asset Planner at Scottish Water explains the challenge:

There are hardly any domestic water meters in Scotland. So we have had to find other ways to stratify our customer base. Using Acorn data, we have built and refined models over the years that give us a clear view of how water is being used. We need this information to help us reduce water consumption by monitoring and controlling leakage, testing and maintaining network assets and influencing consumer behaviour.

Sophisticated Models that Determine Expected Usage Across Scotland

Acorn data is often associated with marketing, product development and service planning and optimisation. But for Scottish Water, it’s the foundation of a sophisticated model that determines expected usage in locations across Scotland. The insight helps operations and engineering teams to prioritise their activities and pinpoint key areas for investigation.

Scott Young, Leakage Delivery Team Leader at Scottish Water, describes the approach: “In terms of water supply, Scotland is divided into over 3,000 areas, each with a district meter. We inform supply / demand analysis within these areas using our Acorn model. We compare district meter flows to those within the Acorn model to see whether actual water usage is similar to the projected household demand for that area. When there’s a difference, we can investigate whether this is because of unrecorded usage, network anomalies or leakage.”

Martin Walton adds, “The modelled per household consumption dataset has proved to be a very accurate predictor of consumption for the domestic properties we supply.”

Identifying Areas of Concern with a High Degree of Accuracy

Scott Young says,

With the Acorn data, we’ve been able to break down demand by area to understand the opportunity for leakage reduction. Using big data in the digital space is quite a radical change from the traditional mainstream approach to leakage detection. Now, we can identify areas of concern with a high degree of accuracy, even in areas with plastic pipes, where traditional soundings to find leakage are less effective.

“We look at the typical usage profile based on zone control groups that we measure and sample from; we build out models for every area using detailed data from Acorn. This combined approach produces a very accurate flow pattern and a strong benchmark comparator. We refine the model further by taking into account factors that influence peaks and troughs or that could be causing leakage.

“The data modelling also helps us to spot issues with valves at the district boundary. When anomalies appear in area flow measurements compared to the model, we can see where a district is breached and water is leaving.

We confirm this by checking data relating to adjacent districts, where that water may be going. These are priority issues to fix so it’s really valuable to identify them quickly.”

“When I send a team out on the ground to locate and fix a problem identified via the Acorn data model, we have a very high degree of confidence that we’ll find it where we predicted. That means we can detect and stop leaks more quickly and efficiently.”

Read the full case study

To find out more about how Scottish Water is leveraging Acorn, read the full case study here.

Developing a customer segmentation for QVC

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With large volumes of customers and increasingly complex combinations of products and channels QVC decided they needed to develop a customer segmentation to personalise how and when products are advertised in order to improve engagement and increase customer satisfaction.

The Challenge

QVC is one of the world’s largest direct to consumer retailers. In the UK alone it has 1 million active customers annually with 8.6 million viewers and 1.3 million unique visitors each month.

QVC thought they knew who their customers were but as the range of products sold, and the channels customers engaged with, evolved, they wanted to be sure.

QVC identified that when a new QVC customer purchases, they became very loyal. However, in order to grow their business QVC needed to understand their market potential and identify the best way of reaching them.

The Solution

CACI worked with QVC to develop a customer segmentation supported by research to bring the segments to life. CACI used QVC’s customer data combined with its own data sets Ocean and Fresco, along with some market research variables from TGI to understand the key factors which defined a QVC customer. This information was then used to group similar customers together to create 7 robust segments.

Market research was carried out to help develop very detailed descriptions of each segment which were represented via video pen portraits and flick books. QVC embarked on a company-wide launch of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ segments.

The segments were appended to the customer database and to the UK market to understand market penetration and opportunity. The segmentation has continued to be revised over time so it evolves to meet the needs of the business.

The Results

The segments are used across the business to improve engagement with new and potential customers by determining:

How and when products are presented on air and online
The tone and content of email communications
The right mix of brands and products
Differences in customer satisfaction by segment

“The customer segmentation is used extensively in all areas of the QVC UK business. It has given us a clear way to talk about and to our customers, ensuring that we are strategically aligned and able to deliver the best results for our customers.”

Patrick Osborne, Head of Strategic Insight & Reporting

Principality Building Society launch a new proposition to a new customer segment with Fresco

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Principality Building Society developed a new highly focused proposition using Fresco’s insight on consumer behaviour and needs, aimed at the Rising Metropolitans segment. The targeted campaign produced triple the expected uptake of its innovative First Home Steps app.

Defining and Understanding New Target Customer Segments

Over the last twelve months, Principality’s portfolio and propositions teams have been working together to define and understand new target customer segments and design services and products to meet their needs. With a loyal and long-standing customer base, the team wanted to find a way to engage with younger customers nearer the start of their savings journey.

The Society has a long-standing relationship with CACI, having worked together since 2011. It has always used data to support planning and risk assessment and to measure performance. Over the last two years, Principality has evolved and developed the use of demographic, lifestyle and market data from CACI, to further refine its customer and market insight. Using CACI’s Fresco segmentation was an obvious choice to support the project: it describes individuals in terms of their financial product holdings, attitudes, life stage, affluence and digital behaviour.

Fresco Data helps Principality understand the needs of first time buyers

Principality’s innovative First Home Steps campaign was conceived to support and inform first time buyers, helping them to navigate the various steps, financial decisions, and practical actions needed to get onto the housing ladder. It breaks down a potentially daunting decision into practical steps that can make their dream of home ownership into reality, including budgeting and saving towards a first home.

The App is accompanied by an innovative product that rewards prospective customers with increasing interest rates and a celebratory bonus as they move through the steps from saving through to purchasing their first home.

CACI presented data insight to a multi-functional Principality team, showing how it could help to refine different aspects of the proposition and supporting the communication campaign. The data was used from the start, informing every aspect of proposition development. Principality combined the Fresco insight with its own research into first time buyers, to produce a robust and differentiated evidence base that informed every First Home Steps decision.

The Fresco data helped build a picture of the target group and understand their needs, in context of how they live and work and the challenges they face in saving and planning. First Home Steps addresses the ‘Rising Metropolitan’ segment, aiming to appeal to those looking to the future and saving to buy their first property.

The key benefit and difference we have had from this project is that the CACI data has underpinned everything we have done on this proposition specifically. It has helped us define the customers we want to attract, build a proposition, determining the detailed product features, and it’s helped us to market to those customers in the right way, how they want to receive information. It’s been a real end-to-end process, with data underpinning every step.”

– Susan David, Propositions Manager, Principality Building Society

First Home Steps App delivers triple the expected results

Promoted and supported in-branch, First Home Steps offers ‘workouts’ to get homebuying hopefuls financially and practically fit to obtain a mortgage and buy their first home. Resources include a borrowing calculator, a budget planner, house prices guide and savings tips.

It’s all brought together in the First Home Steps app, a free pocket guide to the house-buying process. Principality hopes to motivate users to open a First Home Steps savings account, to save towards a mortgage deposit.

“We launched in branch and the campaign exceeded targets, especially for people downloading the app, with triple the numbers expected. From the first phase of the campaign, the insight basis has given us great confidence for the next stage.”

– Susan David, Propositions Manager, Principality Building Society

Read the full case study

To find out more about how Principality leveraged Fresco to develop its new proposition, read the full case study here.

Data science allows OneFamily to identify demand for new products

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OneFamily is an award-winning financial services company, providing products and services that help modern families thrive. The firm’s vision of “Inspiring Better Futures” means creating products to meet the needs of every generation of the modern family: from dual parents, divorced people and single parents to grandparents, junior savers and family friends.

OneFamily serves over two million UK customers, caring for over £7 billion of families’ money. With over 40 years’ experience, the OneFamily team offers a range of products including protection and lifetime mortgages, children’s and young people’s investments, including Junior ISAs and Child Trust Funds. The business has donated £3.5 million to support customers and communities since 2015 and is committed to responsible investment through climate-impact funds.

Deliver accurate, low-waste customer targeting

Julian D’Aguiar, Customer Data Manager, OneFamily explains: “We are a progressive, innovative financial services organisation and we’re dedicated to developing products that meet the needs of today’s generation.”

“That’s why we’re strong advocates of data science, using it to determine strategy and product development and to help us predict market trends. Evidence-based decision making is core to our contemporary, forward-looking approach. Targeting effectively minimises waste and maximises value and relevance to our customers: these principles are important in our ethical business model.”

Fresco and Acorn datasets and predictive data modelling expertise

Julian was impressed by the Fresco and Acorn datasets.

They compare well with other segmentation models I’ve used in my career: we believe they’re best of breed products in our sector. They allow OneFamily to segment our family-oriented customer base and see how it’s represented across the UK population. We can zoom in to understand the preferences and needs of customers in granular detail, then locate other similar target groups.

OneFamily uses Acorn and Fresco data for insight into existing customers, including its large Child Trust Fund (CTF) customer base.

Julian adds, “Fresco is aimed at the financial services market so it’s a good match with the information we find most useful as we review and refine our products and portfolios. We can see where we index well across the UK and we can spot new opportunities to meet customer needs.”

Focused and effective product planning, marketing and retention

Data science has helped Julian and his team to identify demand for new products such as Junior ISAs, lifetime mortgages and over 50s family saving products. Fresco and Acorn data also help OneFamily prioritise recipients for cross-selling or upselling campaigns, connecting them with products that meet their current needs.

Julian D’Aguiar’s insight analysts now run logistical regression models and retention models to predict customer behaviour and preferences. Julian says, “We categorise our customers and apply CACI’s variables to identify high, medium and low propensity groups for a given product or campaign.”

“We have in-house data science skills, but we don’t have the resources to make the most of our ‘R’ analytics software. CACI’s experts bridge the gap, providing specialist knowledge and so we can exploit the datasets to the max. CACI’s Head of Analytics is exceptionally knowledgeable and has steered our retention project so we can use propensity modelling on top of the lookalike datasets. That means we can focus with confidence on incentivising the top three deciles rather than expensively blanket-marketing to the entire base.”

I have an excellent working relationship with CACI. The team continually shares the latest innovative practice and highlights possibilities that can enhance our business. We’ve established a strong, sustainable partnership for data insight that continually supports our relevance and appeal to customers in a competitive financial services market.

– Julian D’Aguiar, Customer Data Manager, OneFamily

Read the full case study

Discover more about how we’re supporting OneFamily now and with future plans in the full case study here.

Transforming NEC Group’s marketing infrastructure

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The Problem

After reviewing current marketing data capability against its business strategy and growth plans, NEC Group’s current system was deemed to be out of date and in need of modernising.

The Solution

At the core of CACI’s solution was a complete replacement of existing infrastructure and software. In collaboration with a number of different departments, CACI re-built the marketing database into a new single customer view that now supports the needs of the business moving forwards.

Post bedding-in of the new marketing solution and platform, NEC Group subsequently asked CACI to articulate how it should best to speak to different customers and how to treat them. CACI’s analytical team developed data driven segments across the NEC Group base of consumers that would be robust, usable and actionable, and crucially, integrated within the new platform.

‘We looked to the market for a partner to migrate our existing CRM platform to a new hosted solution, whilst also integrating with our established systems and processes. After a competitive tender, we chose CACI because of their expertise in both data and technology and how the two can be used effectively to provide a tailored experience for our customers. Since then, I am very pleased with the level and quality of support we have received from CACI through the entire project lifecycle of implementation, testing and now as a managed service. With CACI as one of our strategic CRM partners, my team feels well placed and supported to deliver the incremental growth demanded by our investors.’

– Nicola Young, Group Marketing Director, NEC Group

How Nationwide developed an understanding of individual members

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The Challenge

After the banking crisis, Nationwide Building Society wanted to engage with customers and underline its status as a mutual building society. Unlike the big banks, Nationwide is owned by its members and the business model is built on trust and a deep understanding of its customers. This makes it all the more important to respond to their changing needs.

In an increasingly complex financial services environment, developing a common understanding of their customers across the entire online and offline business has been recognised as key.

The Solution

The Society approached CACI to undertake a major segmentation exercise across their entire consumer database. This exercise focussed on developing pen portraits of key customers segments, focussing not only on life-stage but also incorporating other dimensions that were relevant to the business, such as affluence, channel behaviour and attitudes.

CACI conducted workshops with key stakeholders across marketing, products and channel management. Models were developed which brought together both Nationwide and CACI’s own datasets (Ocean and Fresco), so that customers could be coded with both an overall life-stage score and a range of dimension scores. The data was pulled together to create a set of pen portraits covering the entire financial services marketplace and Nationwide’s customers within that.

The Results

Nationwide Building Society is now able to understand their individual members at a glance, and offer them the right products, services and advice to help them with their banking needs. This new toolset helps Nationwide to understand its customers’ needs, and develop compelling, targeted products, services and marketing messages and has won Nationwide significant new business among younger members.