Capability: Consumer and Demographic Data

How Monkey Puzzle enriched their customer insight with accurate demographic data

Posted on: 25 June 2021
How Monkey Puzzle enriched their customer insight with accurate demographic data

Company Background

Monkey Puzzle is the UK’s largest day nursery franchise network, with over 60 nurseries nationwide. For over thirty years, the Monkey Puzzle team has worked closely with parents, staff and Ofsted to deliver childcare of the highest quality, providing children aged three months to five years with unlimited opportunities to learn, develop and grow within a safe, secure and caring environment.

An award-winner in the 2020 Day Nurseries Top 20, Monkey Puzzle is growing strongly. It is always looking for new franchise sites and opportunities, led by a dedicated head office team. Monkey Puzzle also operates a handful of day nurseries directly, providing a benchmark of best practice for franchisees.

The Challenge

Understand the opportunities in franchise locations with enriched local customer insight.

Sophie Hailey is Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate, explains:

Before we engaged with CACI, when we were looking at a new site, the only demographic research we would do was competitor analysis. We would type the site postcode into the OFSTED website and look at comparable sites in a five mile radius. We would mystery shop them to find out about what they offered, the fees and waiting lists, to help us establish a suitable proposition and pricing for our potential new nursery.

When you visit a site, you can get a good feel for a location. This is really important, as is the competitor research, but we needed more information and evidence to back up our decisions, as our network expands. We wanted to give our franchisees confidence as well as committing to the right sites for our model. The more relevant insight we have, the better our decisions can be.

The Approach

Sophie Hailey, Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate talked to CACI about Monkey Puzzle’s franchising and the kind of information that was important in her decision-making process. Acorn  and InSite reporting would give Sophie and the team access to valuable customer demographic and local market information to enrich their understanding of new and existing sites and opportunities in the local area. Sophie explains:

The site reports we generate help us to narrow down potential sites quickly – we look at a number of factors about the catchment that tell us whether it’s worth investigating a proposed site further. We can see how close it is to existing sites, so we can avoid cannibalisation, as well as how strong the customer demand might be in the local community and workforce.

The Results

With InSite reporting and Acorn  data, Sophie and her colleagues have a clear, shared knowledge base that informs the franchise development process with consistent and up-to-date customer and location information.

Our nurseries are currently gathering postcode information from existing customers, so we can map exactly where they come from in each catchment. This will help us understand our existing customer base better and recommend how to customise the proposition and marketing for different types of location.

Sophie Hailey, Monkey Puzzle’s Franchising and Property Acquisitions Associate

Read the case study

Please take a look to the full customer story here. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us.

How Business Isle of Man developed a trusted demographic model and profile with CACI’s data

Posted on: 24 June 2021
How Business Isle of Man developed a trusted demographic model and profile with CACI’s data

Company background

Business Isle of Man is an Executive Agency of the Isle of Man Government’s Department for Enterprise, acting as a key decision making and advisory body supporting the Government’s ambition for long term economic prosperity. Its purpose is to help create an environment for key sectors to achieve sustainable growth whilst establishing the Island as an internationally well-regarded home for export business.

The Department has a key role to play in the achievement of the Programme for Government’s stated intention to be an Island of Enterprise and Opportunity. Supporting economic development is of strategic importance for the Island’s future growth and prosperity.

Why they chose us

  • Business Isle of Man was approached by a property developer keen to attract larger UK multiples. These businesses were asking for a demographic report, so they could assess the commercial viability case for their brands. None of them understood the Isle of Man’s demographic.
  • Jonathan Platten, Economist for the Department for Enterprise takes up the story:

We commissioned CACI to develop a trusted demographic database and map that showed detailed profiles of our population across the Island. CACI impressed us with their expertise and reputation in the field of socio-demographics.

What they use it for

  • Business Development Manager, Rachel Hopkinson expresses the benefits clearly: 

We have never before seen such a detailed analysis of our population across the island, including Douglas (the Island capital). Although our Island population is under 100,000, there is a big opportunity for retail and leisure businesses. Isle of Man retailers perform exceptionally well compared to the UK because we have a wealthy population and a captive audience. Now, we have the demographic data to show why this is the case.

  • As well as commissioning CACI to produce the dataset and report, Business Isle of Man has entered into a collaborative ongoing relationship with CACI to help provide further, specific analysis for Island businesses and investors.

Benefits

  1. Now, the Isle of Man can be considered alongside the UK as part of CACI’s trusted dataset and modelling, with the same granular, visual demographic detail. For the first time, investors, retailers and businesses can build reliable modelling into their business cases at postcode level.
  2. Rachel Hopkinson adds:

The report and dataset also ties in strongly with our ‘Locate Isle of Man’ strategy– which is about presenting the Island as an attractive destination where people choose to live and work and where businesses and entrepreneurs choose to locate and invest. We have so much to offer in quality of life for professionals and families.

Read the case study

Please view the full customer story here. If you want to learn more or have any questions please get in touch with us.

How CACI support British Red Cross identify those in need of support

Posted on:
How CACI support British Red Cross identify those in need of support

Company background

The British Red Cross was founded in 1870. The charity’s most important value is kindness. It helps anyone, anywhere in the UK and around the world, to get the support they need if crisis strikes.

The British Red Cross has seen very high demand for its services in the UK during the coronavirus outbreak. Since the pandemic started, the Red Cross has undertaken a huge response to help the most vulnerable individuals and communities in the UK, reaching over 1.5 million people with food, medicine, cash, emotional support and other help and advice. Thousands of extra volunteers have joined the charity, helping it to support those who are suffering all kinds of hardship and distress because of the situation.

Why they chose us

  • The British Red Cross needed to concentrate its resources on different people and make sure that its services were directed to meet the greatest needs.
  • CACI’s Vulnerability Indicators had the potential to help the charity identify specific local areas where there was likely to be a need for charity help and support in the pandemic.

What they use it for

  • CACI offered The British Red Cross a three-month trial of its Vulnerability Indicators. After validating the potential of the data during the trial period, the charity took out a subscription.
  • The British Red Cross used CACI’s Vulnerability Indicators to index UK households in every neighbourhood (or MSOA – Middle Layer Super Output Area). Their modelling revealed locations where people were most likely to be in need of support, based on either their clinical, financial, socioeconomic and digital vulnerability as well as wider health and wellbeing.
  • Information that showed the prevalence of single-person households in an area combined with the Vulnerability Indicators was used to augment food vulnerability mapping. The British Red Cross identified households with limited access to third party and community support, creating a priority need for volunteer engagement.

Benefits

  1. Vulnerability modelling now enables the British Red Cross to deploy volunteers in the right places, meet emerging needs and advocate for targeted financial and practical support for the most vulnerable people at this time.
  2. By defining areas where financial vulnerability is greatest, The British Red Cross can apply local knowledge about available support or facilities. Volunteers can help individuals and families access these. If they’re insufficient, vulnerability model insight can help community organisations and charities make a strong case for grant or lottery funding to help improve, using granular data evidence that relates to a specific area.
  3. Where digital vulnerability is a key issue, such as for people living alone without technology skills or facilities, the British Red Cross can reach out to householders using leaflet drops or doorstep visits to offer assistance and information.
  4. The British Red Cross has also made its vulnerability and resilience modelling and analysis freely available via public web portals.

The impact is going to continue for a long time. There will be people in financial hardship for the first time next year, because they have lost their jobs or their savings have run out. There are three million people who are not entitled to any of the current government support packages. Some of them will certainly be in desperate need of advice and both financial and emotional support. We will be doing more qualitative scenario planning and focusing on anticipatory work, to meet emerging future needs.

Dr Matt Thomas, Head of Strategic Insight and Foresight,
The British Red Cross

READ THE CASE STUDY

Please view the full cutomer story here. Contact us today if you want to learn more.

Driving business decisions with real-time data

Posted on: 30 November 2020
Driving business decisions with real-time data

APIs are not new news; they’ve been around for 20 years and have grown exponentially.

From powering ecommerce, social platforms and Cloud applications they have become ubiquitous since the explosion of smart phones. They improve integration and automation, leading to better services and innovation, saving time and money – linking both internal and external systems.

With 83% of respondents to The State of API Integration Report 2020 believing API integration is now a critical part of their strategy and 43% seeing a direct increase in revenue it is clear that this is the direction of travel for most organisations.

Added to this, the desire for most brands to provide a more personalised and seamless experience to their customers with 66% of consumers stating that content, that is not personalised, would stop them from making a purchase, real-time information is more important than ever.

To facilitate these real time business requirements, we have made our suite of demographic products available via our API, enabling organisations to access real-time insight about their customers directly into their marketing tech, consumer databases or websites.

The API enables you to code up new customer records instantaneously for immediate onboarding as well as providing insight across digital applications for content personalisation and messaging. With our API you will have the ability to improve business decision-making and user experience whilst achieving personalisation at scale.

THE BENEFITS OF A REAL-TIME API

CACI have taken the Acorn, Ocean and Fresco data products and made them available via our real time API. This allows for the coding of an individual instantaneously, and can change the use cases and application of the products. Here are just some of the benefits our clients are experiencing with CACI’s Demographic Data API.

– Immediate onboarding

Many organisations use CACI’s data products such as Ocean, Acorn and Fresco to plan the customer journey a new customer will follow as they onboard them. Understanding your audience’s affluence, lifestage, and lifestyle can make a big difference when creating tailored messaging and customer engagement strategies, by providing a view of the products your customer may be interested in, in the future. It is particularly important to get this right during the onboarding process as getting it wrong can affect the way a new customer perceives your organisation.

Knowing this additional insight at the start of the relationship can be immensely helpful, from knowing whether they are a Rising Metropolitan who may be interested in getting on the property ladder to an Asset Rich Grey who is planning for life enhancing expenditure or saving for their grandchildren, messaging can be adapted accordingly.

Similarly, if you are a leisure organisation, you might want to understand which shows your customers might be interested in attending in the future; adding CACI’s data can provide the insight you need to predict this while you build up a picture of their transaction habits.

– Siloed data

Another benefit of using the API is that it can assist organisations with myriads of siloed legacy systems containing customer information. It can be complex and expensive to pull data that is sitting on a marketing database, using the API can be a quick and efficient way to provide marketeers access to key pieces of information that drive their marketing communications programmes.

– Website and Email Personalisation

Identifying customers when they appear on your website enables you to serve tailored page content immediately, based on customer characteristics. Adding insight to a customer or prospect in a logged in environment or when they enter their postcode on a web form, enables instant journey planning and content personalisation.

For example, on a grocer’s website, a Successful Surbubs family will be looking for different products than someone who falls into the Student Life Group. Adding this colour to individuals, means that you can personalise content and create appropriate digital journeys which are dynamically adapted as they browse.

– Geo location

Additionally, at the point of placing a home delivery order, appending the geo location of the property can immediately assist in planning the delivery logistics, as well as helping drivers identify properties when on route, especially when it is dark or they are delivering in rural locations.

– Quote journey analytics

A number of our clients are interested in understanding the types of customers who drop out of the funnel during the quote process, compared to those that go on to convert. By adding key demographic, lifestyle or your own segment information to a record as it goes through the quote process, enables you to improve the effectiveness of your digital journey planning. Understanding whether a prospect might need additional reassurance or if they are more likely to be driven by price could affect the conversion path each customer follows.

– Providing insight to sales, customer service or chatbots

We also support our clients with bespoke APIs. For example, one organisation has a bespoke API system built by CACI, which provides real time insight to their inbound call handling teams for both sales and customer service applications, This allows for tailored scripts to be followed dependent on the customer segment.

With studies showing that it is likely 85% of customer interactions will be handled without a human in the future, providing demographic information in real time can provide different routes for chatbots to follow.

BEGIN YOUR REAL-TIME DATA JOURNEY

With the world moving to more automated ways of dealing with data and consumers expecting things to happen in real time, being able to understand your customers or prospects immediately can make a huge difference to the customer journey, maximising the revenue opportunities available to you.

You can discover more about CACI’s suite of consumer data products here, or to speak to one of our data experts and gain a better understanding of how you can integrate these products in real-time with your CRM system, websites and call centres, please get in touch.

A Cookie-less world

Posted on: 23 March 2020
A Cookie-less world

Third-party cookies have been a fundamental part of the online marketing mix; an essential tool that allows brands to capture data on their audience, deliver targeted advertising and build customer profiles. In particular, cookies are at the core of programmatic advertising, which accounts for 90% of the total UK digital display ad spend of £5.81bn in 2019.

But, the cookie in its current form is not long for this world.

With the ongoing focus on customer data privacy, following the implementation of GDPR, there are growing concerns around third-party cookies and how they are collected, leading to three of the biggest web browsers on the Internet taking steps to block or phase out tracking cookies; Safari and Firefox blocked third-party cookies by default in 2019, whilst Google is planning to phase out the third-party cookie on Chrome, the most popular browser with a market share of over 60%, by 2022.

When combined with the fact that the ICO guidance explicitly states that the way many websites go about obtaining consent for third-party cookies is not compliant, it’s clear that things are going to have to change!

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES TO TRADITIONAL COOKIES FOR PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING?

Without the third-party cookie, the digital marketing landscape is going to need to evolve. Various methods to allow for tracking of customers and customer behaviour are already being discussed and developed as alternatives in this possible new cookie-less world.

For example, the IAB has grand plans for a standardised unique ID across the internet that would be an “improved mechanism for audience recognition and personalisation”. However, it sounds as if it will still be based on cookies and will need a lot of collaboration requiring a complex accountability system. If this proposed solution does happen, it will not be quick.

Numerous ad tech and analytics vendors are developing solutions for tracking that don’t rely on third-party cookies. Cookies have never been effective for mobiles, hence the mobile ad/device ID such as Apple’s IDFA or Google’s GAID. Whilst these systems still present privacy issues, companies like Apple and Google may be willing to work with advertisers to find a compliant method.

In addition, being able to effectively capture customer or prospect data to accurately identify, target and activate across multiple devices requires good technology. Managing campaigns across multiple marketing channels needs marketing automation, hence the rise of tools such as Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

Digital fingerprinting – that is, using seemingly insignificant information like device used and browser plug-ins, in order to identify an individual – had emerged within the advertising industry in part to tackle cross device tracking issues which are inherent with ad IDs. However, Google, Apple and Firefox have already taken steps to implement anti-fingerprinting measures in order to deter advertisers from moving to this method in place of the cookie, making it unlikely to be a viable alternative.

WHAT’S THE RIGHT SOLUTION?

The truth is, there is no obvious alternative to the cookie just now.

It is likely the death of the cookie will benefit the large players, particularly Google and Facebook, as advertisers will be forced to use their first party data in walled gardens, meaning we could be moving to a blunter approach, returning to last click attribution.

To find out more about the impact of the loss of the third-party cookie on digital marketing and for further insights on what advertisers can do in the interim, download our guide – The End of the Third-party Cookie?