Customer Pull: Event-Driven Marketing Is a Reality

Gwynne Young
Managing Editor, CustomerThink
Member

Posted 03-May-2005 10:11 AM
Eventricity Ltd is announcing the release of Timeframe and Coffee application software for Event Driven Marketing, which the company says is the first of its kind.

Compared to current CRM tools, which use segmentation, modelling and scoring to determine the customers to whom they will offer products and services. The average response rates for campaigns using such an approach are between 2% and 5%.

An event-driven marketing approach analyzes the needs and actions of customers individually to determine when something significant has happened to them and that they require contact. The average response rates for such customer "pull," as opposed to "customer push," typically range from 20%-50%, according to eventricity.

"Whilst there was a lot of hype going around about EDM there isn't actually any software," an eventricity spokesman says.

What do you think of the technology?

Ed Sander
Member

Posted 05-May-2005 09:05 AM
I've always been quite surprised that software suppliers have us believe that you need some kind of expensive package to be able to do Event Driven Marketing.

I've been responsible for various EDM programs in the past and have been the co-writer and editor of a book on EDM (see www.eventdrivenmarketing.nl). As far as I can judge, any flexible database which enables you to store event related data and run periodic queries on the full data base to determine what triggers have occurred and what actions need to be taken can do the trick.

Let's not forget that all good CRM/database marketing programs start with well thought-out strategies and tactics, not with a software package. Start simple, and you'll find that there's a lot you can do with a standard database.

Ed

Ed Sander

Business Development Manager
Viking Direct/Office Depot

Database Marketing Specialist
Failsafe Database Marketing

Mark Holtom
Member

Posted 05-May-2005 02:25 PM
I am the director of eventricity ltd responsible for the Timeframe and Coffee Event Driven Marketing software mentioned above. I am also an EDM consultant with over 6 years experience and I have been directly involved in EDM projects with several of the 4-5 banks made famous by their results in this area.

As an EDM consultant yourself, you seem to be saying that Event Driven Marketing is not that hard. I totally agree—if you have the correct knowledge and experience.

It is a bit like Dentistry. The results can be good or painful depending upon your choice. I would prefer paying someone who has experience rather than use someone who thinks he knows what to do.

Up until now, if a Bank was deciding to implement EDM, there were two possible approaches;

• developing it themselves (as many choose to do) or
• hiring an EDM consultant such as you or me and getting guidance on the strategy, direction and development.

I have seen the first approach fail many times. The successful ones publish AVERAGE response rates of 30%, 40% or even 50%. The others can't seem to understand why they only get 3%, 4% or 5%. This is the main reason that there are still only a handful of Banks in the world presenting at conferences on their successes, compared to the scores who have tried (and who don't want to publicise their less than stellar results).

With someone of your knowledge I am sure the second approach would be more successful. From your own post you state that all you need is "a flexible database ...data....and...queries". What data, which queries, which are the best, how often, for what purpose? It is your experience that will help answer this. Thus your knowledge is a differential factor between success and failure.

Do a web search on Event Driven Marketing and see what you come up with. The problem is that true knowledge and experience is thin on the ground.

In any case, both of these approaches depend upon custom development from scratch.

The majority of the ‘successful' banks were all implemented by the same vendor, doing the same thing and using the same technology. Yet, not one of them uses a single line of code that is common to them all. Look at the facts as given by these banks. To date, for a realistic implementation, this work has taken between 12-18 months and has cost well in excess of $1m not including hardware. Even for the biggest banks, this is not insignificant.

There has to be a better way.

There is. It is by a developing software framework which incorporates the knowledge and experience gained above and making it reusable. This makes projects replicable rather then bespoke. The benefits of using such software, if it exists, are lower costs, lower risk and faster implementation.

To use an analogy, if you need some clothes you can buy some cloth and try to make yourself a suit. You can go to a tailor and get a custom-tailored, hand made suit which will take several fittings and take months to make, or you can choose a 105cm regular fit, off the shelf. At eventricity we produce the latter. It is much cheaper to buy, only needs minor alterations and is ready to use—today.

So in response to your comment "software suppliers have us believe that you need some kind of expensive package to be able to do Event Driven Marketing". I disagree. To successfully implement EDM you need knowledge and experience.

You can hire it in, acquire it yourself by trial and error or use a software package. This is your choice.

At the moment of writing, I believe that Timeframe and Coffee are the only software products in this specific area.

Ed Sander
Member

Posted 06-May-2005 12:46 AM
Hi Mark,

I completely agree with you that the necessary experience and knowledge should be available before starting with EDM. EDM requiers a completely different way of thinking than that which product/brand marketeers are used to. For example, when I proposed an EDM program to one of my former marketing colleagues she was very enthusiastic. However, I was shocked when it came to the implementation and she said: "Okay, let's do the product introduction in Q1, the EDM campaign in Q2, the branding campaign in Q3, etc". (:-/

So indeed, the mechanics of the program should be set-up by an experienced person or team.

Still, every EDM program will have its own mechanics, its own relevant data, its own triggers and its own communication packages.
Some programs might be based on straightforward data like a birthday, or x days after the last purchase. Others might be more complicated, depending e.g. on the number of times a person failed to withdraw money from a bank account.

I have a very hard time believing that an "EDM software package" has the ability to succesfully coordinate all of these processes and link into all of the relevant operational databases.

Cheers,
Ed

Ed Sander

Business Development Manager
Viking Direct/Office Depot

Database Marketing Specialist
Failsafe Database Marketing

Mark Holtom
Member

Posted 09-May-2005 05:55 AM
Dear Ed,

you have hit the nail on the head. EDM is such a flexible need that it is impossible to produce a 'tool/product' to address it all. This is what NCR, epiphany and several other companies have been trying to do for some time. So far they have only managed to come up with pseudo SQL generators.

My company's approach is to provide a predefined, working framework specific to a particular business. In this case, Retail Banks. The framework is fixed enough to be able to define reusable functionality but flexible enough to be able to add to it for individual needs as required.

We don't (currently) address Telcos, Retailers, or other areas of business. To do so would require so much flexibility it would defeat the original idea of providing a solution which is clean, simple, fast, cheap and low risk.

Thus we have a product, Timeframe, which contains a data model, a development and management framework and a library of events specifically for use in Banking. This can get a Bank started in delivering real benefits in a few weeks. Once done the user can amend and even add their own events to the system.

You can find out a little more about this by visiting our website (www.eventricity.biz) or I would be happy to provide further details by emailing me on info@eventricity.biz.

Cheers,

Mark.