Improving campaign close rates is just one of many benefits quoted by Verizon in this quarter’s sascom magazine.

But a 250 percent improvement is pretty significant.

• How did they do it?

• What were the other benefits?

• How will they continue to deliver improvement over time?

The short answer is a 360 degree view of customers coupled with micro segmentation.

The how

Few organizations can afford to have one to one coverage when it comes to servicing customers. The more customers you have, the harder it becomes to understand their wants and needs on a timely basis. For that reason, marketers segment customers based on demographics, usage and or behavioral patterns. The tighter the segmentation, the higher the probability you will be able to predict their wants and needs then present them with a relevant offer, through the most appropriate channel at the right time.

It starts by collecting more specific variables that describe your customer – a 360 degree view. For Verizon’s medium sized business customers, that meant amongst other things: information on where they were located; their corporate structure; which services they used and by how much.

Their use of business analytics provided sales reps and managers with real-time access to data and freed up resources to do more high end predictive modeling. Modeling that could identify customers at risk of churn or help develop more appropriate interventions and up-sell opportunities.

What else?

How about a 25 percent lift in revenue compared to non targeted campaigns.

Or a reduction in time to identify a targeted list by two thirds – from three weeks to one week.

Not to mention faster campaign execution – from a month to a single day.

What next?

I’d call it fact driven innovation based on what was said in the article. Diane Brown, Director of Medium Business Marketing and Channel Strategy at Verizon says “We can constantly tweak our portfolio and channel coverage to grow with our customers as they expand”. The more they know, the more they learn, the easier to adapt.

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