Predictive Analytics: The Key to Successful Marketing Campaigns

The anatomy of a successful marketing campaign isn’t easy to pin to one factor. Yet, there are times when an industry shift is happening that marketers can make use of new technology to change the way they communicate with customers and position their brand, creating a magical mix that sets new benchmarks in engagement and eventually drives conversions. Predictive analytics is a technology marketers can use to create disruption using the big data and artificial intelligence wave.

Predictive Analytics: The Returns

Human beings have never stored as much data as we do today. Apparently, the figure is close to 2.5 Quintillion bytes a day. I’m not even going to bother with the ones and zeroes. So as the amount of data we produce gets higher and higher, how do we derive meaning from it to make our lives better?

As marketers, how do we create successful marketing campaigns that use this data to create a better experience for customers? Predictive Analytics offers a glimpse into how to build campaigns that drive results. According to Forbes, 89% of B2B Marketers Have Predictive Analytics On Their Roadmaps For 2016. The results? Predictive marketers are now 1.8x more likely to consistently exceed shared organizational goals. Pretty cool, right?

What is Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics uses many techniques from fields such as data mining, statistics, modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze current data and make predictions for the future. It is also the reason ‘data scientist’ is one of the sexiest jobs of the 21st century, according to Harvard Business Review.

Using customer data wisely can also build trust in your brand and encourage interactions. As a marketer you can use Predictive Analysis successful marketing campaigns and get a better idea of how to change your conversion funnel using Predictive Analytics a bunch of ways.

Segment your Customers right

Customer segmentation is the key to growing your engaged user base. Predictive analytics can tell you which of your customer base is engaged and most likely to like a particular campaign, so you can craft your campaigns for the right audience. It sounds simple, but analyzing incredible amounts of customer engagement data, verifying and organising it isn’t easy.

Image: Agent Analytics

Framing rules and compiling data so only the most engaged, distant or newest customer is sent a particular piece of relevant information and content is at the core of a well thought out, successful marketing campaign.

Likelihood of a customer to unsubscribe

When marketers are gauged primarily on the subscription and engagement rates that drive conversions, a customer unsubscribing is an inevitable, yet personal blow.

Predictive analytics can take the guessing out of the unsubscribe game and tell you which customers are most likely to unsubscribe or slip away so you can take preemptive measures to ensure they are still getting value from your product or service.

Which Content works best

Today, marketers are also publishers of content, and like publishers, they need to know what content is performing best and how that can be optimized. Editorial decisions are done internally but there is always room to optimize even outside of the desk. The New York Times now uses predictive analytics to create successful marketing campaigns. The model sees how people become subscribers, and how to influence more to do so. Natural language processing shows what content topics generate the most reader engagement, so marketing teams can know what types of articles to promote.

Tone of Voice Predictions

Tone of voice predictions use a brand’s communication and audience to predict what kind of tone the brand should use to get their messaging across effectively. Entrepreneur’s article on why Denny’s sounds like a teenager on Twitter talks about how important it is for a brand to reach their audience with the right tone to drive engagement.

Image: Denny’s Diner / The Entrepreneur

If you’ve ever been on the phone with voice support and heard the message “this call may be recorded for quality and training purposes” chances are, the brand or business has a tone-of-voice analytics tool that can gauge how customers are reacting on calls and get predictive analytics on customer experience statistics this way. These analytics are essential to drive successful marketing campaigns or to follow up right with customers.

Lifetime Value Prediction

At the end of the day, engaging customers drives conversions and increases the growth of your brand. It’s important to take care of high value customers, especially in the ecommerce industry and have an analytics system that can tell you how much value a particular customer brings to your brand.

Image: Pearl Analytics

According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, organizations using predictive analytics are nearly twice as likely to be able to identify high-value customers and make the right offers to them.

Is it too early to adopt Predictive Analytics for my brand?

No it isn’t. At the least, predictive analytics can improve your basic marketing metrics like click through rates. Even if these aren’t part of your direct goals, it is worth looking for financial implications that result from this traction. Companies like Boomtrain can help you set up predictive analytics for your customers to deliver successful marketing campaigns in ways that improve the metrics you want to focus on.