The Sauce of the Pasta.

Data.

I’ve been reading a lot about data recently, the insights and subsequent opportunities are, as we know, endless. In Richard Shotton’s great book “The Choice Factory” he highlights the importance of data, habits and timing with examples as simple as the importance of having a 9 in your age. If you have a 9 in your age then you are 48% more likely to enter a marathon for the first time and, if you are a man, 18% more likely to have an affair. As you ponder the sand falling through your hourglass and await the tipping into a new milestone you are, in essence, a marketeers dream. You are ready to change your habits and do something different – hence the stereotype of men buying a Porsche or a motorbike when they hit a milestone, which to them, represents a tip away from their youth.

He also talks about our habits within our lives and as consumers, for instance, how weird it is when you walk down an escalator that’s not moving, you aren’t expecting it, it takes a minute to adjust your expectations, you think you are going to fall forwards, something that’s really simple but with a minor change makes you feel so weird and, also, how, on average, people buy the same 150 items from the supermarket, when there are actually 30,000 items on offer, why don’t we deviate?

If you consider all the people working from home, all those in front of a smartphone, all those eyes and those fingers moving items into baskets - how do you find the right customers, how do you upsell, cross sell and convert new and existing customers? As the pasta is only ever as good as the sauce (doesn’t matter how great the pasta is, the sauce makes it), targeted communications, without data, are lost and indeed aren’t properly targeted.

Data is the queen of the content’s King (or vice versa, say it quickly, it’s almost poetic).

Look around, how many emails have you got, what’s coming through the door? It’s nosier than ever, data drives conversion, be it online or offline as it can find the right customers at the right time. Marketing is going to ramp up and move into inboxes and across social more than ever, how brands position themselves through targeted communications is going to be more important, and as ever, print can be an important part of a combined campaign.

 Data, habits and the right time...........