When it Comes to Building an Audience, It Pays to Get the Whole Story

We’ve all been there. You dig deep into your customer files. You develop insight into their purchase histories, their interests, their demographics, even their channel preferences. Maybe you even pay to have a look-alike model built.

You do everything right. And yet, when you review the numbers, you discover that the campaign underperformed — or maybe even lost money.

What gives?

How Well Do You Really Know the Guy in the Basement?

It’s a common conundrum. Marketers usually build audiences by focusing on the attributes that constitute positive behavior, like affinity and response. But understanding the behaviors that cost your company (or your client’s company) big money is the key to generating campaign profit.

Here’s how a really smart client of ours describes the power of “negative” data:

“Your friend sets you up on a blind date with someone she says is a catch. Handsome with a great personality. You meet — and she’s right! Only to find out she neglected to mention he lives in his mom’s basement and is swimming in debt.”

Cue: Tinder swipe left!

Building Audiences for Profit Means Understanding ‘Negative’ Behavior Too

Most data scientists swear by transactional data for developing strong acquisition models. And no doubt, purchase history is the gold standard for predicting response, product propensity, and price sensitivity. But what about identifying consumers likely to result in long-term, profitable customers?

By looking at the good, the bad, and the ‘iffy’ of consumer purchase behaviors you’ll be able to more accurately predict future profit performance.

Check out the consumer profiles below. Both portray the same woman — only the left highlights just her positive actions, where the right shows the whole story. Your perception of her as a prospect changes once you see the negative data too, right?

Modeling for Profit Makes Building Long-Term Customer Relationships a Whole Lot Easier

With a full slate of transactional attributes – and sophisticated techniques like Multi-Behavioral Modeling – you’ll be armed with the insight required to laser-target marketing efforts on consumers most likely to become profitable customers.

Modeling for profit is an advanced art at Alliant, and we have the case studies to prove it. Talk to us about strategies for tapping positive and negative transactional data with your next campaign — and find out how getting the whole picture can make you an ROI hero.