Yannic Pluymackers, CMO, Lastminute.com: On management and creating moments for users

You don’t have to be a data scientist to be a CMO these days, but it helps.

That might be stretching the idiom a bit – but a data-centric background certainly hasn’t hindered Yannic Pluymackers. The chief marketing officer of Lastminute.com for more than two years – while admitting he is no data scientist himself – studied economics and statistics at university, and feels being conversant in these disciplines is key.

“There is some truth...

6 December 2018 | Advertising Technology

A marketer’s dilemma: Overcoming the challenges of the data disconnect

Few businesses can thrive without using their data effectively these days — and in marketing, data is particularly foundational. Despite its importance, that doesn’t mean the process of gathering and using this information is easy or simple (few things ever are) and it’s certainly not fail-proof. There’s always room for human error.

When collected and analysed effectively, data delivers insights that can help increase marketing ROI and grow brand loyalty....

26 November 2018 | Customer Experience

The five tenets of clean data: Preparing chatbot data for marketing personalisation

Organisations are already using live web chat – and increasingly chatbots – as a critical sales and customer support channel. Gartner says over 80% of companies offer some form of live chat on their website or mobile applications in order to interact with customers, and the chatbot market is likely to grow to $994 million by 2024 according to other market research. Since web chat is both 17-30% cheaper to address questions than a phone call and has the ability to increase...

14 November 2018 | Automation

Could machine learning provide the key to measuring a customer journey?

Customer journeys help to increase positive results in all customer related KPIs, but in large enterprises and public organisations, the rule is if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.  How do we measure commitment to a brand and products – and how do we score KPIs that need to be improved upon?

A recent report by McKinsey indicates that customer journeys are 30% more predictive of customer satisfaction than measuring individual interactions, and that using...

8 November 2018 | Commerce

Consumer data responsibility lies with head of IT, say third of marketers

With consumer data now considered the fundamental bedrock of digital advertising and minds sharpened by the recent introduction of GDPR, you’d think marketers would have a firm grasp on where responsibility for it sits within their organisations. Wouldn’t you?

In fact, while the majority of marketers consider data use a “very important” aspect of business growth, there seems to be an ongoing conflict when it comes to who should be in charge of it.

A...

18 July 2018 | Best Practice

Salesforce snaps up Israeli cloud-based AI group Datorama for $800m

Salesforce has announced the acquisition of Israel-based Datorama, a cloud-based AI (artificial intelligence) company.

While terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, reports suggest the deal could be worth approximately $800m (£602m), as the US sales and marketing cloud tech giant looks to keep pace with rivals such as Adobe and Oracle.

Datorama enables more than 3,000 leading global agencies and brands - including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard...

17 July 2018 | Advertising

How to be smarter with customer data audits

Each year, the data that marketing teams hold on their customers will degrade by around 10 – 20%. This is simply because approximately 1% of the population will die, 10% will move house, and email addresses and phone numbers will inevitably change.

Not all data will take the same amount of time to degrade. For example, details on customer segments, products or customer type will all deteriorate at different rates. The age of the data plays a part too. If it is over 3 years old...

7 February 2018 | Data Science

Right here, right now: The power of location data

‘Location, location, location’; a phrase coined in the 20th Century in the real-estate sector, but one that’s never been more relevant to advertising. Nearly three quarters of people (73%) now allow apps to access their location, providing exact insight into consumer behaviour on mobile, and a competitive advantage for brands if used intelligently.

Location data is already being used successfully in some industries by established players, trying to fight off...

26 January 2018 | Data Science

Spotting patterns in A/B testing: The difference between making and losing money

Wrongly interpreting the patterns in your A/B test results can not only lose you money, it can lead you to make changes to your site that actually harm your conversion rate.

Correctly interpreting patterns in results will mean you learn more from each test you run, give you confidence that you are only making positive changes, and help you turn any losing tests into future winners.

The results of A/B tests will generally fall into one of five distinct patterns. Learn to spot...

11 October 2017 | Data Science

New technology uses subliminal facial expressions to decipher human emotion and personality traits

New software from ‘artificial emotional intelligence’ (AEI) company Human has the ability to recognise and track human emotions and characteristics in real time.

The technology looks at an individual’s subliminal facial expressions, those little ticks, twitches and micro-gestures that a person is not aware that they are making, but paint a detailed picture of their mental state.

The software is the first of its kind, and looks to take a brave new step from...

10 October 2017 | Data Science