On 20 July, the Social Housing Regulation Act received Royal Assent to become law. This places the social housing sector under increased scrutiny and introduces wide-ranging implications for how housing associations operate. The Act will:
Hold social housing providers responsible for new consumer standards, empowering tenants to provide the regulator stronger powers to hold landlords accountable.
Offer powers to the regulator to issue unlimited fines to rogue social landlords, creating a new risk for housing associations to manage customer engagement.
Enforce a closer working relationship between the ombudsman and the regulator. The ombudsman has emphasised the need for improved knowledge and information management across the sector and can enforce its recommendations more effectively through significant fines.
What transformational changes will housing associations need to consider implementing?
Housing Associations have several operational touchpoints with customers, ranging from complaints, repairs, arrears teams and beyond. This means that data and information are siloed across housing associations, prohibiting organisations from effectively engaging with customers or meeting their needs andfalling foul to the new laws.
CACI can support on these key first steps for housing associations. Our work with housing associations has revealed that they are experiencing issues across the board with siloed data, gaps in customer data and complications with data foundations.
CACI can drive value for housing associations and help them become compliant with new regulations through various methods of support, including:
Assessing risks, reviewing and transformingdata management in line with Knowledge and Information Management:We provide the data foundations in line with new regulations and recommendations to reduce your data risks and conduct thorough data quality and architecture assessments to do so.
Recommending technology and data roadmaps: We offer insight into the best platforms, theprocesses needed to adapt to support data quality initiatives for your housing association to manage data and drive value across the organisation. This will help you achieve a single, unified view of residents in the community.
Understanding customers and assets: Our wealth of consumer and asset data supplies deeper insight into customers’ demographic, vulnerability and lifestyle variables, while asset and place-based data enhance your understanding of your homes and community.
Activatingactionable and accurate insights: Tailor your propositions and engagement by building a profile of customers according to key organisational issues such as complaints and arrears. Our trusted asset and consumer insights will help you offer the right services to the right people, reducing cost and resources while supporting your customers.
Driving value to improve customer satisfaction: An embedded data strategy that will improve outcomes for your customers by harnessing the power of analyses and spatial platforms.
What’s next?
CACI will be leading roundtables for housing associations to discuss approaches and best practices for data quality and insights. These sessions will offer a platform to share challenges and resources on meeting the new standards to ensure that housing associations deliver more value and improved outcomes for customers.
This is the first post from our new series on Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). From debunking common misconceptions to exploring the power of combining CDPs with other cutting-edge technologies, we’ll be diving deep into all things CDP – and showing you how to make the most of this game-changing technology. If you’d like to read all the blogs right away, you canregister here to access the complete series.
What is a customer experience architecture?
If you’re in the world of marketing, you’ve probably heard of CDPs. But what exactly are they, and how do they fit into a modern marketing architecture?
Marketers can find CDP vendor websites confusing due to their use of language that may make CDPs sound like other components in your architecture. For example, they may claim that CDPs bring together all your customer data in one place (like an SCV) or can deliver highly personalised customer experiences (similar to other marketing platforms). However, despite this confusion, CDPs play a critical role in modern technology stacks. In this blog post, we will provide a fresh perspective on the topic to help explain the role of the CDP and its place in modern marketing architecture.
Where do CDPs fit into modern marketing architecture?
At CACI, we view modern marketing architecture as a framework with five layers:
For many vendors, CDPs typically belong in the activation layer of this framework. It takes data from the foundation layer and then feeds marketing technology in the engagement layer with data in the format that marketers need to deliver highly personalised experiences.
Some CDPs may, however, offer more foundational layer capabilities whilst others can be more engagement focused. For simplicity, our framework defines the primary purpose of the CDP is to activate marketing data, which is why we put it at the heart of the activation layer.
How can a CDP enhance your customer experience architecture?
It’s important to note that a CDP should be thought of as marketing technology, rather than data technology. Its role is to empower marketers with data, removing their reliance on data engineering and allowing them to focus on strategy and campaign execution. A CDP brings a lot to the party, providing marketers with the tools they need to create effective campaigns and drive business results, such as:
A CDP can natively capture digital data, making it easier for marketers to activate audiences across a variety of MarTech and AdTech channels in real-time.
By enabling the delivery of highly personalised experiences across channels, a well-implemented CDP can help businesses improve customer engagement and increase conversions.
How can CACI help?
As subject matter experts at CACI, we can tell you that a well-implemented CDP can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes and we have hands on experience with many brands including ASOS, Kingfisher, L&G, PlayStation, Telegraph, EasyJet and DFS. If you’re interested in learning more about CDPs and how they can help your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our experts.
In our next post, we’ll explain why businesses should not choose between a CDP and a Single Customer View (SCV). If you can’t wait until then, you canregister here to download the whitepaper which contains the full blog series.
Interested in learning more about how CDP an support your customer strategy? Contact us to speak to one of our experts today.
This prominent global apparel and home goods retailer, with decades in operation and hundreds of stores in the UK, Europe and worldwide, was seeking new site locations to bolster their European planning strategy. They quickly realised that they would need to gain access to secure and reliable data in order to better understand their customer demographic profiles to inform their location planning strategy and optimise their store network.
Challenge:
The ability to leverage precise data would help the business combat several challenges, including:
Accurately predicting core and secondary catchments for new site locations
Building up a profile of customers in the business’ existing catchments
Identifying gaps in the market, even with a high amount of existing coverage
Exploring new markets and determining the suitability of new site locations
Solution:
With a necessity of acquiring robust data that would support an initial estate strategy for the UK, the retailer chose to licence Acorn and Retail Market data. Their reliability and comprehensive coverage of the UK, high levels of detail across population profiles that supply detailed insights into new site locations, the confidence of working with a provider that would provide accurate and up-to-date sociodemographic data and the ongoing support and consultancy that CACI would provide along the way made the licencing decision an easy one.
Acorn’s breakdown of each postcode sector highly supported catchment planning by supplying innate insight into the demographics of the population within the business’ predicted catchments. It allowed the business to generate catchments and choropleth maps showing the distribution of people in varying Acorn groups. This enhanced their understanding of the affluence and economic activity of larger areas and in detail at postcode sector level.
Retail Markets data also helped the business understand the shopping population rather than just the population of the town. This indicated how large the catchment areas should be and how far people would travel to visit certain shopping destinations. It also provided a ranking and index value to illustrate the popularity and competition amongst various shopping and retail parks across Europe.
Results:
Through CACI’s data and consultancy, the business successfully planned for their European store openings. The geodemographic data providing in-depth insight used for board report presentations to get sign-off on new stores.
The business’ access to Retail Markets data continues to support their growth and their ability to identify any gaps in the market.
Outcomes/Future:
The retailer is keen to continue partnering with CACI to ensure ongoing success with their European operation plans. They are confident that CACI will help them further explore new markets as they continue to grow, and that CACI will continue to review and support any necessary strategic adaptations as technology and the retail market evolve.
For more information, get in touch and one of our data experts will happily arrange a time to talk.
When allocating your marketing budget, how do you really know how much you should be spending on display? Your last-click attribution model suggests that it performs terribly, costing over £500 for every acquisition. However, it does appear to drive a lot of traffic to your website.
If this resonates with your business, you are not alone. This is a challenge faced by many brands – what is the true impact of each of your digital channels and how much do they contribute to someone becoming a customer?
Digital attribution models are used to measure the performance of digital marketing channels, but there is a wide variety of them out there, and they can be set up in many ways. Which is the right approach for your organisation?
Click on the image to view in full screen
While there are several attribution models to choose from, choosing the model that will best suit your objectives and goals can be determined based on your business’ unique needs and your available data.
Four steps CACI take to implement a multi-touch digital attribution model, to determine the true value and performance of marketing activity
Step 1: Understanding your business goals and objectives
Building an effective and valuable multi-touch attribution (MTA) model is grounded in having a full understanding of a few key points, including:
The wider business objectives – how does this project help to achieve these?
The exact point of conversion in a consumer’s journey, often where they cease being a lead, and are acquired as a customer
Any fundamental differences in marketing activity across different regions or markets
The definition of a successful MTA project for your organisation
Step 2: Evaluation of current capability
A comprehensive review of your brands data and technology used to support digital marketing must be carried out before modelling can begin. This includes:
Evaluating your digital analytics platforms to ensure:
All necessary tracking and tagging are implemented
Relevant metrics and goals have been set up in line with best practice
Channel/sub-channel and campaign data is recorded correctly
An understanding of the past and present media activity:
Organic, paid and app
A complete understanding of a customer’s path-to-conversion
Understanding the current measurement framework and any Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are reported back to the business
A complete review of the technology to be used to develop and implement attribution
Upon completing an assessment of the existing digital data and technology stack, CACI will make recommendations to ensure the MTA model runs optimally and follows best practice.
By establishing what is in place, what can be optimised, and what needs to be adapted, we can identify the most suitable solution to develop.
Step 3: Building a Multi-Touch Attribution model
Preparation is key, but finally, the fun can begin! Build and validation of an MTA model includes the following steps:
Identify & collate all data for the paths a customer can take on their way to making a purchase/converting
Evaluation of the most suitable modelling method to be used (e.g. Shapley Value vs. Markov Chain)
Build, test and validate the MTA model
Integration into your technology platform for a fully automated solution
Assess model performance and produce insights tailored to your KPIs (e.g. channel share, cost per acquisition, return on investment)
Your MTA model will now deliver the insights required for you make informed decisions. Results from MTA models feed into:
Media planning: giving you confidence in budgeting and channel allocation
Optimisation: determine the most effective channels and campaigns for you to invest in
Granular insights: derive insights on your marketing activity per segment
Step 4: Evolution to best-in-class
Results from your MTA model need to be consumed on a regular basis. There needs to be a continuous closed loop of feedback into strategic decision-making and campaign planning, to improve targeting, and ultimately ensure you’re reaching your customers at the right time. As well as ongoing optimisation, CACI can support you in further enhancing your marketing through data and insights, including:
Integration of new channels
Model refreshes at optimal times
Technology selection and integration
Econometric modelling
Insight strategy
What are the major barriers affecting digital attribution modelling?
Non-digital media & in-store visits
Online results are easy to generate when businesses have a website and application analytics account. However, tracking and customising the customer journey for non-digital media and customers’ visits to physical stores becomes rather complicated. Customer engagement that can otherwise be tracked online is met with a challenge, and if any campaign efforts have been in place, a different approach such as econometrics would be required.
Third-Party Cookies
Cookies allow attribution models to function by identifying and tracking a user across their website-visiting journey. A lack of cookies translates to a lack of standards for advertisers, causing brands and businesses to question whether media planning and optimisation efforts can or will be successful.
Cookies underpin much of how digital marketers track and target individuals – small snippets of data which can demonstrate a user’s online activity over time. The third-party cookie specifically has been on its way out for some time, with Safari and Firefox already having phased these cookies out. Google initially announced to follow suit with their browser, Chrome, in 2022, but has since delayed this to 2024. This means that the functionality that has long been taken for granted in attribution and other digital analytics will change.
Marketers and analysts may have to adapt how tracking users across digital properties and devices takes place, which may make getting a cohesive picture of the user journey more difficult to deduce in attribution. Google has stated their intention to replace this with a first-party counterpart, forcing marketers to leverage walled-garden ecosystems like Google even more. The way other sectors will react to first party cookies in the future remains unclear.
Why your business would benefit from digital attribution modelling
CACI supports businesses in their delivery of optimised marketing efficiency by:
Determining the value and performance of activity through evolved multi-touch & econometric modelling
Producing results to sustain & increase growth through targeted investment & improved marketing performance
Delivering improved accuracy, consistency and availability of marketing performance insights
Enhancing capability by evolving Data, Technology & Process
Supporting the provision of ongoing Strategic & Delivery resource
Find out more about the impact that digital attribution modelling can have on your business in our whitepaper here.
How do you decide when to create a loyalty programme?
All businesses will eventually face the existential question of whether they should implement a loyalty programme or not. Understanding the value in doing so is paramount— customer loyalty is a big question for a lot of brands, and few know where to begin to devise a promising loyalty scheme, with many brands lacking an understanding of the potential return on investment. It is also integral for brands to have a business case prepared prior to formulating the loyalty programme’s design, as this knowledge will sway the development entirely.
Why brands might be thinking of this now
There are several factors that may prompt the creation of a loyalty programme– increasing share of wallet, encouraging customers to buy directly from a brand versus through a third-party retailer, or enhancing direct customer relationships to drive repeat purchase behaviours. No matter what the driving forces, businesses have become increasingly aware of the impact that customer insight has on informing an effective loyalty programme and the potential cost and risk of not introducing one into your own business.
What risks are associated with creating a loyalty programme?
Improperly planned and executed loyalty programmes can result in hefty costs for businesses, plummeting bottom line profit figures and an inability for revenues to bounce back.
Additional elements you must consider when implementing a loyalty programme include:
Getting the value exchange right
If customers do not understand the point or see the value behind your business’ programme, it will not be successful. Getting the value exchange wrong can erode your brand’s impression on customers. If the programme appears worthless as opposed to rewarding, it will fail to increase customers’ sentiment or engagement with your brand.
Getting the level of innovation right
Loyalty programmes must be innovative and uniquely tailored to a diverse customer base. Your business must meet customers’ expectations in one cohesive programme versus through multiple solutions, which demonstrates the importance of value exchange– meeting the wants of customers without sacrificing your business’ value.
Getting the loyalty mechanic right
You must be mindful of what customers are looking for from a loyalty programme, but this understanding must be backed by a data-driven approach that allows you to understand the unique selling point for your customers. There are a few approaches you can take:
Tiered loyalty programme: This splits benefits into tiers or levels that customers spending certain amounts of money can achieve. The higher the tier a customer reaches, the greater the benefits will be.
Points-based loyalty programme: Customers are given points with every purchase they make, and when they reach a certain number of points, the points can be used towards a discount or reward.
Subscription-based loyalty programme: Customers that sign up for subscription-based loyalty programmes will pay for their subscription upfront or in monthly or yearly instalments to receive exclusive discounts or rewards.
A lack of access to customer-centric data and an understanding of your customers’ wishes, however, will hinder a loyalty programme’s capabilities.
What should you consider before creating a loyalty programme?
Is your business bought in, engaged and set up to support a loyalty programme? Do you have the right technology and CRM in place, an existing loyal customer base and the ability to continue to sign up new customers?
Is a loyalty programme worthwhile for your customers and for you? Have you listened to your customers’ value mindset in terms of the product or offering to conclude the best potential ROI from your loyalty programme?
Is your business clear on how to enter the market in a way that will demonstrate ROI? Does it have the necessary mechanics or programme in place to pilot in the market to provide a successful ROI?Are you aware of the potential opportunity it can bring?
If you can answer these three questions, you can conclude whether now is the time to create a loyalty programme.
What steps should your business take to implement a successful loyalty programme?
Ensure your business is equipped with the necessary data to determine a loyalty programme’s value and discern what a good outcome for your business would be. This can be done through data analysis, best practices and benchmarking that will help you effectively align internally to understand existing capabilities and how best to proceed.
Confirm that your customers want a loyalty programme. If they do, what does a valuable loyalty programme look like for them, and what is the opportunity for your business? Identifying the value to the customer as well as to your business through data enrichment and data science will be a key next step.
Determine the ROI that your loyalty programme can deliver and understand what type of mechanic should be used in the pilot market to achieve this. An assessment of the scenarios of mechanics should be carried out to determine this. Once the opportunity from a viable mechanic is understood, determining how to effectively enter that market in a way that will deliver ROI will be crucial.
How can CACI support you with implementing a loyalty programme?
CACI’s data science capabilities and Customer Engagement consulting team can determine the actual costs that your business will face in running a successful loyalty programme and support your business through an innate understanding of loyalty across enterprises.
We do this by using our own proprietary data, data science, and expertise to understand the headroom in the market and help determine KPIs, understand which of your customers want a loyalty programme and how they want it to look to inform what potential opportunity exists. Areas that we assess to inform this include demographic richness, compliance for use, permissions, and our own products to fill any gaps around customer segmentation to determine who customers are and ask the right questions.
Our teams of data scientists and consultants will scenario plan with your business to comprehend the mechanics and experiences that must served and managed to your customer groups to build the pilot. Once this business case is understood, and a feasible pilot market has been identified, we can design a sophisticated end-to-end offering to help you deploy a successful loyalty programme.
Could your business benefit from a loyalty programme? To learn more about how CACI can help you, contact us here.
We’ve all heard the well-worn clichés about the difficulty of measuring marketing effectiveness. As tired as they are, there are valid reasons for their persistence – determining what works, why, and who for can be complex. But does it have to be?
We still find that most organisations are relying on a ‘last click’ attribution approach to Digital & CRM measurement, and with good reason – most ‘off the shelf’ software platforms default to it, it is relatively easy to establish, and it can provide results, where previously there weren’t any! That said, it’s widely accepted that this lacks sophistication and accuracy, resulting in ‘best guess’ outputs that will over or understate the true impact of channel contribution.
So, how can you more accurately track the performance of your marketing, leaving you with actionable insights that can drive improved ROI?
Our tips for enhancing your marketing measurement
Moving to multi-touch attribution, considering all digital and direct channels, is typically the first step we recommend and is an area where we have had significant impact with clients. Having evaluated multiple approaches, we currently favour Markov Chain modelling, which calculates probabilities between successive channel interactions. This attributes impact to each channel, whilst also accounting for the sequencing of contacts between different channels.
Another approach we often recommend is to use Shapley Values to work out the ‘co-operation’ that can take place between channels. This can help us to calculate transition probabilities (to determine the paths taken between channels) and the impact of channels in combinations.
Once this level of capability and insight is established, we recommend that Channel Incrementality is established to further evidence the isolated contribution of each channel. This is achieved through a controlled testing approach, with channels stopped completely for short periods. We can advise on lean approaches here to minimise the time that channels are out of action.
In addition to the Attribution approach, we also find great value in also considering the impact of ATL channels and wider econometric factors. We have seen influences such as competitor activity, economic factors (such as cost of living & employment data), weather and global events (Covid & Brexit) all have a significant and measurable impact on sales. The key is to identify data that has significant variability (e.g., things that change regularly over time as anything too static can be all but impossible to infer impact from). Our recommended approach is to combine the Media Mix Modelling with Multi Touch Attribution to provide a true 360-degree view of performance.
This MMM approach is used to infer not only the size of the effect of each channel on sales, but also, where data permits, to determine the time decay of each channel – this defines the delay between any marketing channel activity, and its knock-on effect on sales. This may often differ significantly between channels. For these we typically apply bespoke Bayesian models which incorporate business knowledge to inform probabilities for any unknown parameters.
An additional approach we have seen add significant value is to consider ‘Segmented Attribution’ – moving from a channel or ‘overall marketing’ level focus, to a view of performance at the consumer segment level. This allows us to determine not only how effective a channel is, but also who it is effective for. This enables organisations to target the channel activity at the segments that will return the optimum engagement.
Finally, once all of this capability is established, we recommend that you not only use this to explain what has happened in the past, but also to create performance forecasts for future activity. Ongoing tracking and optimisation can keep this accurate as the business evolves, so that attribution becomes a key asset informing ongoing marketing decision-making and investment planning.
Fair4All Finance is a not-for-profit organisation driving change in financial services to help millions of people in vulnerable circumstances. It works with organisations to increase access to fair and affordable financial products and services across the UK.
Highlights
Developed a bespoke segmentation to better understand and help the millions of people in financially vulnerable circumstances in the UK
New segmentation helped to collaborate and deliver more applicable financial products and services to those usually excluded
Consolidation and blending of data from multiple sources to provide a detailed view on financial situation across the UK
The Challenge: understanding of the financially vulnerable population and their financial needs
Depending on the definition across the industry, up to 21 million people in the UK are thought to be in vulnerable financial circumstances. To fulfil their remit, Fair4All Finance aims to better understand this broad group of people and their different needs.
Most off-the shelf segmentations pull apart the population based on age and affluence. By segmenting this group along more behavioural lines, Fair4All Finance aims to develop strategies and work with the industry to make financial services more applicable and accessible to the financially vulnerable population.
Huge parts of the financial system don’t work for large portions of society. Products and services are designed around people with predictable lives and predictable incomes. There’s a huge chunk of the population that doesn’t work for
– Lauren Peel, Head of Markets, Consumer Insights and Product Design, Fair4All Finance
The Solution: a distinct segmentation that defines consumer groups and their needs
Fair4All Finance partnered with CACI and Trajectory, a research agency, to develop a segmentation solution tailored specifically to Fair4All Finance’s objectives, through consolidating and blending data from multiple sources. The solution made use of Fresco and Ocean to build a segmentation at a UK-wide level.
In order to identify key segments within the financially vulnerable population, a number of statistical methods, including correlation and principal component analyses, were applied to identify core features of importance. These driving variables showed discrimination and relevance across the financially vulnerable population.
The results: creating assets and personas based on the data
Six new segments of financial vulnerability were created using the data and then sized across the UK population to understand the spread of segments across geographies. The iterative process taken to develop the segments, ensured the final solution could be constantly adapted to make sure it was meeting Fair4All Finance’s end goals and aligning with its objectives.
A knowledge sheet was also created, which profiled each segment across more than 900 demographic, lifestyle and attitudinal variables from CACI data and specific behavioural characteristics from the research data, giving detailed insights into the key characteristics of each segment compared to the financially vulnerable population as a whole.
This allows the segmentation to be truly actionable as any organisation using it can delve into the detail and understandings that will help inform business decisions or product development
– Lauren Peel, Head of Markets, Consumer Insights and Product Design, Fair4All Finance
The Benefits: enabling internal and external insights
The findings will enable Fair4All Finance to share insights in three different ways, with credit unions and community finance providers, mainstreams banks and internally.
It will help us be more effective in the work that we do. With a better understanding of who the customers are and what the customers’ needs are, we’ll be able to better tailor and prioritise activity that needs to happen
– Lauren Peel, Head of Markets, Consumer Insights and Product Design, Fair4All Finance
It’s no surprise that customer experience has long been a priority for brands. There’s an overwhelming supply of research out there which demonstrates the importance and value of investing in CX; IBM found that businesses that prioritise CX see a 3x increase in their revenue.
However, one of the interesting differentiators between those who are really ‘winning’ in this space and those who are playing catch-up is the perception of the role of CX within brand development and communications. Whilst brand touchpoints are usually considered across ATL, TTL, BTL and POS, the reality is that brands are not just experienced within comms – they are engaged with across every touchpoint, platform or environment that a prospect or customer may find themselves in. A person should feel a seamless relationship with your brand, and with each interaction comes a wealth of information to harness and share within the business.
Where brands are losing out
Many businesses operate with marketing and customer experience departments that work independently of each other – the former focused on impressions and engagement metrics and the latter responsible for conversion optimisation and customer satisfaction. The gulf exists because these objectives are isolated, but both departments can offer invaluable information which supports the development of a cohesive customer and brand experience.
Demonstrating and measuring your values
Looking beyond customer experience ‘hygiene factors’ and conversion metrics allows you to build the right environment for your brand to flourish by having a bespoke approach to demonstrating your values. For an insurance brand, this could be the recognition and delivery of empathy and integrity when dealing with claims.
For an automotive brand this could be the sentiment of luxury and special attention that comes from purchasing an expensive new car. The whole brand falls down when these moments don’t live up to expectations, so these values should be present in all interactions, not just in communications.
Learning from the front line
Passing information back upstream is key to ensuring your brand is living up to the promise it sells. Customer reviews, call-centre recordings, satisfaction surveys, wait times and issue resolution rates are examples of information sources that would typically paint a picture of whether your brand is being perceived through the positive lens that is promised in communications.
Audiences will see straight through promises which are made but not kept to. Differentiating yourself in communications is only worthwhile if those differences are experienced when new customers (and existing ones) interact with you. If these are not present, audiences won’t stick around – they decided to give you a chance, so they can do the same for others just as quickly.
Operationally, your teams should be setup to interface and share regularly. Objectives and KPIs should straddle multiple teams and include metrics which govern your values, not just your bottom line.
Start bridging the gap
At CACI, we’re experienced in helping leading brands deliver a seamless customer experience. If you’re ready to start bridging the gap between your customer experience and brand but don’t know where to begin, our team of consultants can help you create a customer strategy and customer marketing solutions that deliver.
TSB is pioneering a new kind of banking for Britain – one that’s simple, straightforward and cares about people. The bank offers friendly, honest and convenient banking that’s designed to meet customers’ needs and equip them with money confidence.
The Challenge: a segmentation to drive business growth
TSB had a creative-led segmentation developed by its brand agency to help understand its target audience, but it wasn’t fully effective. Justin Bell, TSB’s Head of Insights, Strategy & Planning explains:
“We couldn’t use it for media planning and it couldn’t be overlaid on our customer base.
We knew we needed something more practical in terms of consumer insights and choices of media. At pitch, our new media agency the7stars, came up with a more effective segmentation that we could use for media selection. We wanted to take this forward another step and overlay it onto our own base. We had for some time been working with CACI, mapping their Fresco financial lifestyle segments onto our customer base. We therefore initiated a joint project, working with CACI and the7stars to develop the segmentation further.”
The Solution: accurate, current segmentation that reflects consumer behaviour
Working in collaboration with TSB’s Research and Strategic Insights Team, CACI created an evolved segmentation that clearly distinguishes different customer types and provides clear segment profiles and personas.
CACI used Fresco and other external consumer demographic datasets to give TSB bespoke behavioural and lifestyle insights into its target customer base.
Justin explains, “We started with a market-wide segmentation, based on all UK adults. We’ve subsequently created a version of that for our customer base.
CACI provided a proven methodology and approach drawn from their data expertise and experience. Once we had clear segment parameters, our data team mapped them to our base.”
The Results: tailored propositions, content and media selection
TSB is actively using the segment insights to develop its media strategies and in campaign briefs, creating content tailored to target consumers’ profiles.
Justin continues:
“Part of the output of the segmentation was to rank the segments in order of money confidence. Working with CACI, we agreed on a weighted mix of key questions in the TGI consumer survey, to derive a money confidence score. We support people with content, products and services to help raise their money confidence and we need to be relevant to those that need that support most.
At the heart of it is a money confidence score: we’ll measure our progress against our purpose: Money confidence for everyone everyday. We hope to see a gap opening up between the money confidence levels of our customers and that of non-customers, with a continual improvement against today’s baseline.
We believe this segmentation will continue to pay dividends as we develop our channel and campaign marketing – we’re looking forward to tailoring products and services even more to meet customer needs.”
Consumer demographics insight helps brands to thrive by understanding how embedding sustainability in their policies, practices and products will influence consumer attitudes and behaviours.
In a world with an awakening environmental conscience, consumers want to know more about provenance. Company reputations will increasingly rest on ethical practices – from sourcing raw materials, reducing carbon footprint and embracing climate change agendas to employment rights and diversity and inclusion (D&I) practices. This is about the end-to-end story of how products and services are produced and brought to market. It goes beyond what goods are made of or packaged in, or how far they’ve travelled.
Sustainability is a revenue issue
Customers vote with their feet when they see organisations acting callously or making too little effort in sustainability. In most markets, they have other options if they don’t like one brand or retailer’s approach. That makes sustainability an issue for competitiveness and commercial performance as well as a matter of corporate conscience.
82% of UK consumers feel strongly about buying products that are ethically and sustainably sourced – it has started to matter to 24% only in the last year
53% of UK consumers would never buy from a brand again if it was accused of working with unethical suppliers
41% of UK consumers make a conscious effort to buy locally sourced or produced items online
We often pin the sustainability ‘trend’ on the younger generation of consumers, spearheaded by Greta Thunberg and other prominent activists and celebs. But Gen Z is just one group in a cross-generational population that’s increasingly mindful of sustainability. It’s a mainstream issue on global political agendas and in traditional and online media, both reflecting and increasing levels of concern throughout society.
Consumer action on sustainability matters in B2B just as much as in consumer purchasing, because the present and upcoming decisionmakers and stakeholders in corporates are people too. They bring their own ethics and value judgements to work with them, reflecting the concerns of their peer groups and of a wider world.
Many local and independent businesses have lately experienced an upswing, despite the constraints of the Covid pandemic. Our consumer data provides clear evidence that the many UK consumers constrained to an existence closer to home are now choosing local suppliers for goods that they might once have purchased in cities or during their work commute. There’s a feel-good factor in shopping local, on top of the sustainability benefit from both goods and customers travelling fewer miles and the positive impact of helping local employers thrive and provide fairly-paid employment in their communities.
Will consumers put their money where their mouth is?
Of course, there’s a financial tipping point in sustainable choices for many people. Customers say they want to purchase greener products and services – but how much are they prepared to pay? More sustainable sourcing, production and employment are often more expensive. And commercial organisations need to remain viable and profitable if they’re to thrive, grow and embed sustainable approaches to lead the market.
To make decisions about meaningful changes in policy and practice, businesses need more granular information about what consumers want and at what cost. It’s the only way they can be sure that doing the right thing is affordable and viable in the longer term.
Local micro-business owners tend to interact with their customers directly. It’s easy for loyal shoppers to give community businesses feedback face-to-face about what they’re doing well or badly, and how important sustainability is to them. For larger organisations with many customers and many channels of engagement, including branches or outlets and online stores, it can be harder to gauge what’s driving success… or driving customers away. Most consumers simply take their custom elsewhere if they’re unsatisfied with a brand’s approach or prices – very few raise their concerns first.
34% of consumers actively choose brands that have environmentally sustainable practices/values
28% of consumers have stopped purchasing certain brands because they had ethical or sustainability related concerns about them
7% of consumers have contacted a brand to raise an issue on their sustainability or ethical practices and values
Consumer insight allows confident decision-making for sustainability
Consumer data is vital to help organisations understand changing patterns of consumption and to plan outlets and distribution accordingly. It can help them understand how to prioritise and communicate their sustainability policies and actions with impact and integrity. It can inform product development and marketing campaigns, helping to reduce waste in both production and budgets. Crucially, it provides evidence to support investment in sustainability-driven initiatives, helping to predict potential revenues in evolving markets.
Organisations need to review this consumer data and trends regularly, particularly within their existing catchments and among target customer segments. Carrying out customer surveys and providing easy routes to give feedback can provide valuable information about existing customer priorities. But what about prevalent and emerging attitudes among prospective customers or in potential new segments and markets? Is there a difference? Are competitor approaches finding greater favour?
Customers, employees and investors are scrutinising your sustainability
There’s no question that businesses of every size need to take heed of customers’ growing attention to sustainability, in the UK and beyond. It’s already becoming a key success factor in customer recruitment and retention, for brand reputation, in attracting investment and for employee recruitment and retention.
The gold standard is granular data that connects attitudes to sustainability with the behaviour and choices of real consumers across channels and geographic areas.
To support this agenda CACI have developed an ESG score to drill into each aspect of how important environmental, social and governance issues are to individuals, enabling companies to assess both their current and potential customer base and act accordingly.
This takes the form of a series of individual level propensity models based on market research questions about consumers attitudes towards the following:
Environmental factors such as climate change and pollution
Social matters around community and social concerns and human capital
Governance issues around workplace practices such as executive pay and ethics
The product contains three propensities, one for each of the individual aspects of ESG and one unified score to summarise an individual’s affiliation to all the values encompassed by ESG. These probabilities relate to how important each of these aspects are and can be provided at individual level coded or aggregated up to postcode level.
Based on this data, leading businesses can produce consistent and reliable customer insight, using the latest analytics and modelling, to help them prioritise and accelerate their sustainability programmes.
If you’d like access to market-leading insight and evidence about consumer attitudes and responses to sustainability issues, talk to the consumer data experts at CACI.
