Adobe Analytics 1.4: Predictive analytics for the masses

The release of Adobe Analytics version 1.4 marks a major shift in empowering marketers and marketing analysts with powerful advanced statistics and predictive analytics capabilities, helping move both marketers and analysts up in the Analytics Capability-Maturity Self-Assessment Tool. Now, more than ever, marketing organizations can harness the power of predictive analytics without a deep knowledge of statistics and data mining. Leveraging the new predictive analytics features in Adobe Analytics 1.4 will drastically increase the effectiveness of analysis and optimization, leading to increased success, decreased costs, and a better understanding of your business and customers.

Among other features (such as real-time reporting), Adobe Analytics 1.4 includes powerful capabilities that easily progress an analyst through the following steps in the predictive marketing workflow:

1. Anomaly Detection
2. Data Exploration
3. Audience Discovery
4. Customer Scoring
5. Optimization

Anomaly detection leverages advanced algorithms to automatically discover and surface statistically relevant insights, thus empowering marketing analysts with the ability to make smarter decisions, faster than was previously possible. For trended data, anomaly detection identifies statistical anomalies—that is to say, by separating “true” signals from “noise” as data changes over time. This helps analysts unearth anomalous behaviors or patterns that may have otherwise gone unnoticed. Anomaly detection transforms analysts into advanced statisticians by unearthing valuable opportunities ripe for optimization.
Availability: Adobe Analytics – Standard (Reports & Analytics, Analytics iOS mobile app, Report Builder)

Data exploration assists analysts with discovering hidden relationships across their data. Data exploration consists of statistical correlations, statistics/mathematical summaries, and trend lines. Correlations are useful for quantifying the relationship between two variables (measuring the degree to which two variable’s movements are associated). Statistical/mathematical summaries quantify the “typical” or “average” values as well as the dispersion in a data set. These summaries include the mean, maximum, minimum, count, variance, standard deviation, and interquartile range. Data exploration not only exposes unknown opportunities across data sets but also helps the analyst select important and/or relevant metrics for the next steps.
Availability: Adobe Analytics – Premium (Data Workbench)

Audience discovery moves beyond simple segmentation toward identifying groups (or clusters) of similar customers that differ significantly from other groups of similar customers. Although segmentation plays an important role in using “borders” (premeditated divisions) to separate customers, audience clustering finds the “borders” between groups of customers that produce sizeable, marketable, actionable, and valuable audiences for analysis and optimization.
Availability: Adobe Analytics – Premium (Data Workbench)

Customer scoring predicts which customers are most likely to respond (e.g., churn, purchase, click). As a result, the most relevant audience can be targeted. With the release of gains/lift charts in Adobe Analytics 1.4, analysts can predict the impact the scored model will have on their business. These charts empower analysts with the ability to make confident statements, such as “by targeting the top 20 percent of the most likely customers to purchase, I can expect a 3x lift in purchases, compared with targeting customers at random.” Now that the opportunity is quantified, the audience easily ports into execution channels for targeting through integrations with Adobe Target. This entire process, from anomaly detection to targeting, can be completed in as little as 10 minutes. Again, without a deep knowledge of statistics.
Availability: Adobe Analytics – Premium (Data Workbench)

Optimization is the ultimate goal of any analyst working in the field. Using the new advanced statistics and predictive analytics capabilities built into Adobe Analytics 1.4, analysts can “run lean” by leveraging time while allowing for a more accurate forecasts. Having an agile analytical process means having the ability to vet data faster and in ways that normally would take much longer. When combined with other solutions such as Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics 1.4 just makes sense.
Availability: Adobe Analytics – Premium (Data Workbench)