Four Brands Championing the Evolution of Analytics

30 years ago, when Tim Bern­ers-Lee bold­ly pre­dict­ed the future of tech­nol­o­gy would be built on a uni­fied net­work, few believed him. Then the World Wide Web was born – a defin­ing moment that shaped the world we now live in.

Sim­i­lar­ly, there were a few raised eye­brows 10 years ago when Adobe acquired lead­ing ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny, Omni­ture, with a WSJ head­line stat­ing: ‘Adobe Buys Omni­ture: What Were They Think­ing?’ Why would a cre­ative com­pa­ny be inter­est­ed in data and ana­lyt­ics? Fast for­ward to 2019, and you can eas­i­ly flip that ques­tion on its head – how could Adobe _no_t be interested?

As tech­nol­o­gy has evolved, so has come the mete­oric rise of ana­lyt­ics. Tak­ing raw data and turn­ing it into com­pelling busi­ness intel­li­gence that, when analysed through the right tech­nol­o­gy and com­bined with cre­ativ­i­ty, has the abil­i­ty to deliv­er cus­tomer expe­ri­ences that can trans­form the for­tunes of a business.

In a mod­ern set­ting – and with Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence Man­age­ment now rep­re­sent­ing a brand’s most crit­i­cal com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­en­tia­tor – ana­lyt­ics has become a busi­ness imper­a­tive, more than earn­ing its seat at the board­room table. The rise of AI has also intro­duced greater lev­els of sophis­ti­ca­tion, with automa­tion unlock­ing access to faster, smarter and more impact­ful insights.

With our world enveloped by such a rapid pace of tech­no­log­i­cal change, guess work is no longer enough, mean­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty is there for the most for­ward-think­ing brands to seize the advan­tages of tak­ing a data-dri­ven approach. To cel­e­brate the sen­sa­tion­al rise and evo­lu­tion of ana­lyt­ics, here are four brands who have embraced the pow­er of ana­lyt­ics to cre­ate incred­i­ble cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and inspire the art of the possible.

1. RS Components – Combining the ‘what’ with the ‘why’

As a lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­u­tor for engi­neers, RS Com­po­nents is using the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of cre­ative think­ing and rich, deep cus­tomer data, to ensure its cus­tomers’ expe­ri­ences are infi­nite­ly more acces­si­ble and impactful.

By inte­grat­ing Adobe Ana­lyt­ics with Verint Fore­See tools, RS Com­po­nents expert­ly blends behav­iour­al data (the ‘what’) with atti­tu­di­nal data (the ‘why’) to obtain an unpar­al­leled under­stand­ing of its cus­tomer. For exam­ple, some­thing as sim­ple as exam­in­ing a land­ing page and alter­ing the colour, copy, and place­ment of a but­ton locat­ed next to the Order Bas­ket, has helped the com­pa­ny increase click-through rates by 75%, as well as aver­age order val­ue by 2%.

RS Com­po­nents appeals to two very dis­tinct audi­ences, each with its own unique behav­iours. One audi­ence – the engi­neer – is typ­i­cal­ly on the hunt for infor­ma­tion and insight, while anoth­er – the buy­er – is brows­ing prod­ucts with a view to mak­ing a purchase.

When com­bined with Adobe Ana­lyt­ics seg­men­ta­tion data, atti­tu­di­nal intel­li­gence revealed that with over half a mil­lion prod­ucts to choose from, a spe­cif­ic sub-audi­ence of buy­ers was find­ing the brows­ing expe­ri­ence a chal­lenge. RS Com­po­nents used this insight to sim­pli­fy and refine its website’s search func­tion, great­ly reduc­ing dropout rates – a glow­ing exam­ple of using feed­back and ana­lyt­ics to guide improve­ments to cus­tomer journeys.

RS Com­po­nents has also achieved:

• 4X return on remar­ket­ing ad spend and 2x con­ver­sion by tar­get­ing based on cus­tomer satisfaction.
• 12% uplift in rev­enue from prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions by using cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion data to per­son­alise content.

These results demon­strate the lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ty that lies in bridg­ing silos that often exist between dig­i­tal ana­lyt­ics and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, and the impor­tance ana­lyt­ics plays in enabling intel­li­gent deci­sion-mak­ing. RS Com­po­nents tru­ly _lis­tens _to its cus­tomers’ needs and wants, and is using data to do some incred­i­ble things. Read more about their sto­ry here.

2. STV – Tuning into viewing habits to stop customers from switching off

As Scotland’s only com­mer­cial TV net­work exclu­sive­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the Scot­tish peo­ple, STV pos­sess­es a fierce­ly loy­al and stead­fast audi­ence, wel­com­ing over 3.5 mil­lion view­ers per month. But as it goes toe to toe with rival net­works like the BBC, STV is con­stant­ly seek­ing ways to attract even more view­ers and bring unique val­ue to Scot­tish audiences.

And what’s the best way to attract and retain cus­tomers, regard­less of indus­try? Under­stand­ing what they want. Cou­pled with the fact the media land­scape can be a high­ly-dis­tract­ing and sat­u­rat­ed indus­try, STV had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself as a true leader in TV cus­tomer experience.

STV has expand­ed well beyond the realm of basic ana­lyt­ics – it has engrained data into the heart of its busi­ness, using ana­lyt­ics to refine its con­tent, improve pro­mo­tions, and deliv­er hyper-per­son­al­is­tion at scale. In fact, the per­cent­age of STV cus­tomers binge watch­ing every episode in a series has now increased from 15% to 40%, while con­ver­sion rates have surged from 3% to 26%.

3. Grundfos – Streamlined customer journeys ensure smooth flow across all touchpoints

Grund­fos moves water in incred­i­ble ways. Spread across more than 60 coun­tries and with 18,000 employ­ees around the globe, the Dan­ish engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny is a brand that has read­i­ly embraced the pow­er of dig­i­tal inno­va­tion to deliv­er rel­e­vant expe­ri­ences to cus­tomers and employ­ees alike.

With such a diverse range of glob­al mar­kets to appeal to, stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of cus­tomer jour­neys has become a bea­con for Grund­fos to bench­mark its dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing against. With Adobe Cam­paign, Grund­fos can design and exe­cute dig­i­tal cam­paigns through a cen­tre of com­mu­ni­ca­tions excel­lence in a com­mon lan­guage, which speaks direct­ly to its both its glob­al employ­ee and cus­tomer base.

And when com­bined with Adobe Ana­lyt­ics, the brand has access to a sin­gle view of its cus­tomer, no mat­ter where they are in the world. We all know that B2B cus­tomer jour­neys can often be intri­cate and unpre­dictable. Yet, by stream­lin­ing its dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences to flow seam­less­ly across all cus­tomer touch­points, Grund­fos has evolved into a tru­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric busi­ness that can tar­get the right peo­ple, with rel­e­vant con­tent, at the right time. We recent­ly sat down with Grund­fos vision­ar­ies Jes­per Lan­ther and Jens Nielsen to explore their inspir­ing jour­ney – watch their sto­ry here.

4. James Villa – Exploring the wanderlust for connected and personalised experiences

With 2,900 vil­las spread across 50 des­ti­na­tions, James Vil­la has a diverse tar­get audi­ence to con­nect with. Cou­pled with the rise of dis­rup­tor brands like Airbnb, and the UK’s lead­ing vil­la hol­i­day spe­cial­ist need­ed ways to stand out in a crowd­ed industry.

By inte­grat­ing Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud with Adobe Ana­lyt­ics and Adobe Tar­get, James Vil­la has been able to uni­fy siloed cus­tomer data and devel­op tar­get­ed con­tent for its diverse glob­al audience.

Con­nect­ed and per­son­alised expe­ri­ences are hall­marks of any suc­cess­ful brand, and with increased vis­i­bil­i­ty across var­i­ous touch­points, James Vil­la is deliv­er­ing those expe­ri­ences in an authen­tic man­ner that res­onates deeply with cus­tomers, leav­ing them feel­ing val­ued and appreciated.

What’s more, with Adobe Sen­sei help­ing auto­mate time-con­sum­ing and resource-heavy tasks – such as the man­age­ment of over half a mil­lion key­words – the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of James Villa’s mar­ket­ing team has sky­rock­et­ed, allow­ing it to unearth a trea­sure trove of deep­er and more com­plex insights. Cre­at­ing the per­fect trav­el expe­ri­ence is no mean feat, watch Mar­tyn Ansell explain how James Vil­la is doing it.

Data shaping the world we live in

A lot has changed since Bern­ers-Lee brave­ly ignored the naysay­ers to deliv­er one of the most impor­tant tech­no­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al mile­stones of recent times. Data now shapes the world we live in, pow­er­ing the plat­forms and chan­nels that play such an inte­gral role in our lives, and for­ev­er chang­ing how we inter­act with each other.

The brands lead­ing from the front have suc­ceed­ed in real­is­ing the enor­mous val­ue that lies with­in their organ­i­sa­tion. They have embraced the pow­er that data and ana­lyt­ics pos­sess to change the world – a vision that any brand can realise should they choose to look through the lens of data-dri­ven insight.