Big Data In Action: How Retailer Target Predicts Purchase Decisions

[This blog post is first among my series of blog posts  on how enterprises across various business verticals are using big data to impact their bottomline. It would help you strategize & make the right decision on big data investments.  Submit your email id on the sidebar & stay updated about how your competitors are using big data]

In the year 2012, the store manager at a Target store outside Minneapolis was having a usual day at office. The usualness was disrupted in the store by an angry customer with coupons demanding to see him immediately.My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”The store manager was at a loss of words since the coupons where addressed to the man’s daughter which contained advertisements about maternal clothing, nursery furniture & pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized for the possible mistake and then called back a few days later to apologize again ( kudos to the customer service!!!)On the phone our angry customer appeared to be embarrassed as he said-“I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”

The geniuses who guessed it right belonged to the Guest Analytics department at Target headed by Andrew Pole. With master degrees in statistics and economics as well as a passion to connect human behaviour with data , joined Target  as a statistician in 2002.  Two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

Research studies have shown that consumer shopping behaviour is highly habit driven rather than decision making. It is an uphill task for retailers to break a customer routine of buying toys from a toys store , beer from the liquor store or gas station, magazines from the book store while all the same can be brought at a retailer like Target or Walmart.  Research suggests that there can be “moments” in our life like shifting to a new city, getting married or divorced can induce changes in shopping patterns. Marketers need to target these “unique moments” and provide cues for the consumer to create a shopping habit.

At Target every customer that walks into the store has a unique Guest ID number assigned to them internally. They manage to collect all purchase information through credit card transactions or coupons or surveys and demographic information like age, marital status, job, salary etc. Though the heaps of data might appear meaningless but combined with analytics they seem to be clues to the “holy grail”. Target’s Guest Customer Analytics team comes in to analyze data, patterns and predict shopping habits. Based on the shopping habits predictions the marketing team sends the promotions.

Pole and his team were able to identify about 25 products which when analyzed together assigned a “pregnancy prediction” score. The products were identified by crawling through available data for patterns like women on their second trimester of pregnancy tend to purchase large quantities of unscented lotion. As the product basket includes lots of scent-free soap and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to hand sanitizers and washcloths the delivery date seems near.

The result being Target was able to build habits among customers to buy cleaning related products along with baby related products. Later with changing time their product basket could include groceries, cloths and every time which Target sells.

The new marketing strategy brought in huge profits in Mom & Baby product category. Target’s revenue when Pole was hired in 2002 was $44 Bn and in 2012 was $70 Bn.

Based on the detailed business case above, here’s how you can implement Big Data in sales & marketing :

1. Try and understand what cues leads a consumer to buy from you.
2. Gather data from all possible touch points with your customer.
3. Try & find patterns in purchases.
4. Create a product basket which includes commonly purchased products in a certain demographic.
5. Provide offers based on the product basket and include cues to purchase other related products.

The Keywords Are Dead

Thanks to Google Panda updates Search Engine Optimization has today become a ” Mission Impossible” for webmasters and SEO Consultants. Gone are those days when maximum content writing, submission and  bookmarking on high PR websites lead to higher optimization of websites – happy customers and wads of cash.

We optimizers may have skipped the fact that over the years the users behavior  on search engines has evolved as :

• They know how to Google( A verb since 2006)
• Recognize the best search results to click
• Expect relevant  content or engagement after the click

The most important new behavior being users are not using only keywords but using a query phrase which contains relevant keywords. They expect the search results to contain the relevant content powered by maturing search algorithms which match consumer intent with keywords.

Consumer intent defines the behavior of the consumer while searching for relevant content online. Today, a consumer knows what he wants and he expects the results to be relevant to his expectations. Search engines come in with smarter algorithms ,heuristics and past data( which we criticize as “Google Panda Updates”).

Digital marketers should try to align the brand’s website and/or social engagements with the intent of the target market/consumer instead of traditional keywords based optimization. Based on my experience and inputs from thought leaders, I have created a roadmap which can be used to increase online conversions.

1. 1.      Why Do the Consumers Need You?

Sounds silly , but you need to understand why does your business exists in the market or who will miss you , when you go out of business. A brainstorm with your team will lead to the various reasons why consumers visit your website and what are the keywords they use to reach your website.

1. 2.      Quantify Your Queries

Your list now contains everything your company does and potentially wants to be found for. But as a business owner you might not be willing to be listed for certain keywords. Add a priority or quantify them with a number ( Eg.: 1 being highest or lowest). This will enable to understand which efforts to prioritize and allocate maximum resources.

3.      Smart Segmentation

A query is a mirror image of consumer intent. The queries can be segmented based on the various types of intent, listed as follows:

i.            Navigational

ii.            Informational

iii.            Transactional

Navigational Queries: The purpose of such queries is to reach a particular website that user has in mind either they have visited in the past or they assume that such a website exists. Example of such queries are : “makemytrip” ( To reach makemytrip.com) , “socanu” ( To reach sokanu.com)

This type of queries can also related to search queries for certain products and services. For example “transcend  160 hardrive” is searched with the intent to purchase the product or find reliable resources with more information about the product.

Informational Queries: The purpose of consumer when searching with such queries is to find out more information about the product. Very common examples of  informational queries are : “Dabaang 2 Movie Review” ( To get information about reviews for Dabaang 2 Movie) Samsung s3 price ( To get information about prices for Samsung S3).

Transactional Queries :The consumer performs such queries with a vision to act on  any particular product or service. Action here refers to web related consumer behaviors like download, purchase, create profile etc. Such queries create opportunities for the digital marketer to reach closer to the target consumer.

4.      Create Satisfying Content :

Ask any digital marketer about the success factors of digital marketing, and s/he’s definitely going to speak about “engaging content”. But before engaging it should be taken care that the content for which the user has visited the website from search engines has the relevant content to satisfying his needs. After satisfaction, various methods can be implemented to engage with the visitor and convert him into a consumer, later royal consumer.

Utilizing the way we have segmented the queries, the content should be generated accordingly as follows:

• Navigational Queries:

Creating a brand takes time, so these kind of queries would be very low if you have not taken any marketing initiatives previously. For such queries the relevant content would be information about the brand and the products/services provided by the brand.

• Informational Queries:

These type of queries provide opportunity for business to form as a digital brand. When queries from Google lead to your website regularly, it is possible that the user might visit your website directly to get more information. Leads can be generated by providing information in terms of research report, industry report, best practices, presentations and infographic to the user in exchange for contact information. The user can later be contacted to be converted into a loyal user. Marketers should make sure that the content emphasizes on providing content rather than convincing the consumer to use the product/service.

• Transactional Queries:

Websites should be ready with avenues to interact with the consumer. On-site engagements, uncomplicated next steps and easy to register processes are some of the ways to enhance the customer’s digital experience. This increases the likelihood for a consumer to join or use or purchase products or services. A good customer interaction and experience leads to creating a sustainable digital brand.

With changing times the dynamics of the market would change and according to the law of nature, we have to change accordingly.

Best Wishes on Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

Regards

Sagar Mandal

PS: I am looking for job opportunities to contribute my passion and skills in digital marketing and technology. Please help me by referring me to or communicating to me about job opportunities in your enterprise. You can download my updated resume here: http://bit.ly/VrM9hr check out my visual resume here: http://slidesha.re/UhLvIr and get in touch with me on sagarsea@gmail.com

Five Essential Digital Trends To Watch in 2013

2012 was a year of technical innovations that have impacted our life as we moved towards highly echoed – end of the Earth according to the Mayan Calendar. But technical glitches happen and that must have postponed the “end of Earth” event by a zillion years.

Lets have a look at some of the digital trends to experienced the world over.

1. The Third Screen

The smartphone is regarded as the “Second Screen” as it tries to move every rock to make our life simpler and not having one is almost regarded as “social stigma”. The smartphone would evolve into devices which I categorize as the”Third Screen”. These devices would light,mobile and sit closer to our eyes, adding information to the world as we see it. A very good example would be device like Google Glass(check out the video) , is a hands free display technology which Sergey Brin describes it as ” wearable smartphone”. There are also reports about a group of scientists who have devised a lens which would display images from a smartphone.

2. “Talkative” Devices

Every morning I enjoy my cup of coffee while reading The Times of India on my tablet, cruise to my campus enjoying music on my smartphone and later, I continue checking out various news updates on my laptop. One Life Many Devices. But what if the devices could talk to each other my automatically transfer my sessions on each device so that I can continue working. For example, I select a restaurant for my date on my laptop in my campus, but I would need a smartphone to guide me to the restaurant. This would involve searching the restaurant again and if its a chain, you need to remember the location. Software apps like Microsoft’s SmartGlass would enable devices to share information about the usage sessions without the hassle of lengthy syncs. Devices like Asus Padfone which is actually a combination of a netbook, tablet and smartphone could also hold the solution to the problem. I am sure that tech companies have these ideas in mind and we would have more innovations on this side of the world.

3. Behavior is the new Demographic in Advertising Campaigns

Today behavior defines a person and not demographic factors like age,gender, income etc. Advertising campaigns on digital media would be guided by the online behavior of consumers which is an outcome of  psychographics, lifestyle behaviors, and passions of like-minded customers. With opportunities like Real-Time-Bidding or RTB it would revolutionize the way advertisers manage and create their campaigns.

4. Smart Data instead of Big Data

2012 was the year when businesses realized the potential of Big Data and had deployed resources with a hope that they would provide high returns in terms of specific targeting , forecasting ,online consumer behavior etc. But enterprises have been grabing data from various sources creating a surplus of data overload instead of data insight. This year with addition of significant number of manpower, enterprises would identify data which can provide value insights replacing big data with “smart data”.

5. Marketing and IT departments to be merged

Thanks to low cost of digital devices and internet connectivity, consumers can now be reached globally,locally and easily. marketing departments have increasingly invested in technology with the IT teams supporting their cause. 2013 may find enterprises merging their marketing and IT teams internally to create synergy which would lead to marketing campaigns which reach ,engage and convert consumers, globally.

Have a great year ahead.

Sagar Mandal

PS: I am looking for job opportunities to contribute my passion and skills in digital marketing and technology. Please help me by referring me to or communicating to me about job opportunities in your enterprise. You can download my updated resume here: http://bit.ly/VrM9hr check out my visual resume here: http://slidesha.re/UhLvIr and get in touch with me on sagarsea@gmail.com

Gartner’s Top 10 IT Trends: A Glimpse at Impacting Technologies

Gartner analyst David Cearley leads the annual Gartner Symposium to name 10 strategic technologies that will impact organizations all over the world. The name list consists of technologies  already doing the rounds at various  thought leaders, but there are significant number of new entrants like – “personal cloud”, “integrated ecosystems”.

With a view at the global technological world, I agree with almost all of the listed technologies. Here’s the list, with a pinch of my analysis.

1. The Battle of the Mobiles : The battle is referred to the technology and computing giants like Apple,Google,Samsung,Asus and many others creating a whole gamut of mobile devices. Most important part of the battle , as I see it is that as customers choose their device, they rely on IT to support it through BYOD(Bring Your own Device Movement) Movement. With the evolution of corporate mobile management, enterprise want to go mobile compliant  faster,cheaper and secure.

2.Mobile Applications and HTML 5 : Social and enterprise mobile applications rule the app marketplaces today, make a radical impact on the economy.Is it odd that a revision of the markup language (still not approved and turned into what some call a living standard) is high up on the top tech list? Probably not, but the disruption inherent in HTML5 has been ongoing for a number of years. The “should we develop apps or Web?” argument continues in many companies.

3.PC=Personal Cloud :  In the clouds there is a fight between personal and professional data, starting with the smartphone device. It is a new entry in this list  and definitely it needs some constructive thoughts in this field. Its time enterprises should create a platform where employees can create their own clouds to differentiate corporate and personal data.

4.Internet of Things : The term  “Internet of Things” refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in an Internet-like structure. Analysts at Gartner believe that with  the decrease in cost of technology we would soon have a world filled with sensors and monitors.But its very skeptical whether networking experts are ready with systems that can manage the flow of data throughout the Internet.

5.The Hybrid IT and Cloud Structure : It refers to the creation of cloud  infrastructure that can mix both internal and external resources. With all the buzz around private secured cloud, I believe that enterprises should concentrate more on hybrid cloud infrastructure to take advantage of both.

6. NexGen Analytics : 2012 can be declared as the -“Year of Analytics” since so many organizations have invested and bore the fruit of analytics on both top line-bottom line of their enterprise. Analysts takes the call for analytics to be more – predictive,collaborative and pervasive. In the near future, analytics will not only predict what a consumer will buy, but create a collaborative decision making model.

7. Big Data: The increase adoption of internet has organizations trying to take advantage of the enormous amount of data that has been generated.Triggering on the big data alarm  in your company won’t make much sense unless there is a  plan about, how to gather the data, analyze the data, and create actions on the data. Making the wrong decisions faster is not a plan for big data success.

8. Dynamic In-Memory Computing : Technologists are today looking at Flash Drives( the one that you have memory stored in your pen drive) to be used in servers to enable reduce space,electricity consumption and heat emission. At its simplest, in-memory computing can be considered a solid-state replacement for spinning disks.Relentless price drop, technology maturation and integration are driving mainstream adoption despite notable technical challenges.

9.Low Energy Servers : Analysts at Gartner believe that with the threat of reduced resources and the sting of costs cutting, enterprises are using low energy servers which are both economical and ecological.

10. Enterprise Apps Stores :This is highly  interesting. The app store model that has proved to be so successful in the consumer market is held up as the way corporate users should go about selecting and provisioning their corporate apps. While the concept has been around for a couple years, I’ve seen very few examples of the corporate app store emerging from a prototype to full-blown deployment. I think it might have something to do with the difference between app store consumer developers out trying to make money and traditional in-house app development. The enterprise app store may be one of those emerging technologies that is always emerging.

Hope you are enlightened.

Cheers!!!

Sagar Mandal

PS: I am looking for job opportunities to contribute my passion and skills in digital marketing and technology. Please help me by referring me to or communicating to me about job opportunities in your enterprise. You can download my updated resume here: http://bit.ly/VrM9hr check out my visual resume here: http://slidesha.re/UhLvIr and get in touch with me on sagarsea@gmail.com

The Boom of 2012:Business of Social Apps

The past month had all eyes glued to Facebook: the billion dollar IPO , Mark Zuckerberg surprise wedlock and Nasdaq pushing the IPO to nosedive at 28% of the market valuation. Strangely some of the successful stories in social media did not appear on the radar.

Virtue– a cloud based social marketing and engagement platform was acquired by Oracle at an undisclosed amount.Analysts and experts say that it was a response to SAP acquiring Ariba – another business related to the vast world of social media. Before the news would die out , customer relationship management giant Salesforce picked up BuddyMedia  in its cart for an awesome $745 million. Virtue,Ariba and BuddyMedia are all social media marketing platforms which help brands explore the infinite opportunities on social media.

A little research brings in still more interesting stories. In 2011, Adobe picked up Efficient Frontier (used for ad buying on Facebook) for a rumored $400 million, while Salesforce added Radian6 (a listening tool for tracking mentions in social media) for $326 million.

With the big boys of software and technology services on a social media shopping spree, many more acquisitions might be in the pipeline.From the humble origin of college campus social media has made its way to the elegant board rooms . Maximum utilization of  social media seems to be the next Mission Impossible 5  for all brands- big and small.

There are many more news reports to support this fact.  79 percent of 2,100 companies surveyed by Harvard Business Review reported that they use or plan to use social media. The average social media budget at enterprise-level businesses with more than 1,000 employees is $833,000, according to an already dated 2011 report from researcher Altimeter.  5 years later , marketers anticipate spending 19.5% of their budgets on social media, nearly three times the current level. Adding to the scenario,use of internal social networks in companies is up 50 percent from 2008, according to McKinsey and Co. After a slow start, social has become a daily dose for big businesses.

Importantly, companies are using social media to do things that go way beyond just engaging customers on Facebook. Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools. Advertising departments get the word out on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And internal networks like Yammer let managers and employees engage in Facebook-like dialogue and collaboration behind the firewall.

Social media, is the new Enterprise Information System , used company-wide. It’s used not just to engage with customers but to connect employees, coordinate suppliers and streamline nearly every aspect of contemporary enterprise, writes USA Today‘s Tim Mullaney. Not using social media in the workplace, in fact, is starting to make about as much sense as not using the phone or email.Enterprises are clamoring for one-stop, social solutions, explains Forbes‘ Melissa Parrish: omnibus tools for pushing out content across multiple networks, listening, advertising, analyzing, managing customer relations and fostering internal dialogue.

The growing role of enterprise social media, plus the growing budgets and authority of CMOs entrusted with responsibility to   harness social potential for large companies powered by new technology. While Facebook and consumer social media make the headlines, social apps for businesses have investors and some of the planet’s biggest companies quietly doubling down. The first billion-dollar acquisition may be just around the corner and  the suspense remains…..

Get Free Cloud Storage- Online

The Cloud Computing market seems to get overcrowded everyday, with news about a new players and new products everyday. Each of these brands have a paid service and free service. Though the technology is a boon but many a times, using paid services can make a hole in your wallet. the situation gets even worse with the weakening of the Rupee against Dollar.
Let’s take a look at the free storage some of these services are offering, and how you can get free storage without paying a dime today.
First, let’s remove the services  that aren’t currently offering any free upgrades. SkyDrive, Google Drive, Cubby, and iCloud all start with a free plan, then as your organization and need expands, you will have to shell out more.
SkyDrive recently lowered the starting amount of space awarded to users from 25GB to 7GB, but if you’re an existing user, you can still log in and claim your free 25GB of space.
That leaves us with Dropbox and Box
Box
Box is offering a free 50GB plan if you log into your Box from one of the following devices:

• Any LG Android phone or tablet
• A Sony Tablet S and Tablet P
• HP TouchPad
• RIM PlayBook
• Sony Xperia phones

The offer is valid, according to a FAQ document on the Box support site, until December 31, 2012. If you don’t own any of the devices listed above, but happen to have a friend or family who does, download and install the Box app on their device and simply log in. Once you have logged in to your Box account from a qualifying device, your account is automatically upgraded. You can then log out and delete the app, or allow the device owner to log back into their Box account.
You will then, for the life of your account, have a free 50GB plan.

Dropbox
Dropbox provides a many ways to earn free storage service.

For starters, you can earn 250MB for free just by completing the Getting Started guide. You can then earn another 640MB of storage by connecting your Twitter and Facebook account to Dropbox.

Expand your cloud storage  up to 16GB of free space just by inviting your friends to sign up for Dropbox. For each person who uses your personal link and completes the sign up process, you are awarded 500MB of storage (maxing out at 16GB).
Still want some more space? Help Dropbox test out its new Camera Upload feature. Install the latest version of the Android app, or download and install the latest beta of either the Mac or Windows app and enable automatic camera upload. Upon the initial upload you will receive 500MB for free. For each 500MB of photos and videos you upload after that, you will receive another 500MB of storage, for free. All in all you can get a maximum of 3.5GB of free space to store all those creatives for online marketing.
I’m sure you can do the math and see the potential amount of free storage Dropbox is dangling out in front of you.

Update May 2, at 2 p.m.: Amazon just released a Windows and Mac app for its Cloud Drive service.  Amazon’s Cloud Drive provides users with 5GB of free cloud storage. The space can be used to store music, photos, documents and well, anything else you would want to store in a cloud service.

Unfortunately, the only way to get more space for free is to purchase all of your music through Amazon. Any music/MP3 purchased from Amazon and stored in your Cloud Drive won’t count toward your 5GB limit. Or, if you are OK with paying $20 for 20GB of storage for a year, you can store as much music as you would like in the Cloud Drive, no matter where you purchased the music.

If I missed a service or hidden unlock feature for free storage with one of the providers mentioned (or not mentioned), let me know and I promise to share as much as I can.