The other day as I was filing through my mail I realized that I had opened and accessed another individual’s retirement account information by mistake! The account number, balance and other numerous sensitive data items were staring me in the face. I quickly destroyed the documents and added a call to the company’s customer service line to my “to do” list. The recipient was an individual who had not lived at my address in over five years, maybe more.

When it comes to financial information, many measures have been put in place to ensure security of the account and individual, yet our mailboxes can potentially blow all these measures out the window with a simple missed step like processing a customer file through the National Change of Address (NCOA) database. In today’s booming electronic world, companies and financial institutions have made great gains in attempts to deter identity theft, hackers, phishers and spammers, but in the process, have they forgotten to protect the good old fashioned mailbox?

What practices does your company have in place for sensitive customer data mailings? Is your online customer database in sync with your customer mailing database? Do you know the details of your NCOA processing? Do you have a pre-mailer in place for customers who have had little to no recent activity?

A home mailbox is a federally protected piece of property, yet it is so vulnerable to any slight data integrity mishap. Unfortunately companies can’t password protect mail pieces, but they can take measures to protect their customers by taking the necessary data processing procedures a step further when it comes to sensitive data. I’m guilty of being locked out of my own electronic account because I couldn’t answer a security question like the “what was the name of my maternal grandmother’s first cat” correctly, but now I wonder, what information are the people I sold my house to receiving about me? I will never know, but I hope the companies I do business with are protecting my information.  Protect your customers and protect your company in the process.

I worked in the banking world for over 15 years, and many of those years in the marketing/analysis side.  We always wanted to know more about our customers, but we didn’t always have the cleanest data or the most complete data.  I learned not only how to clean the data but get more matches by matching at the level of the corresponding data elements.  Given the amount of information you have you can get more data than you think.  There are levels you can match at that will help this.

Overlay match levels:

Individual – First Name, Last Name, Address

Household – Last name, Address

Address – Address only

Some data elements need be done at the Individual level (age, gender, etc).  However, many variables can be overlaid at the household level (Household income, Number of Children, etc), or the address level (house square footage, lot size, summarized credit data, etc.).  So even when the retrieval/input limits the information you have, you can add data to your customer file that enhances the capabilities for analysis and selection for marketing.

There is a full range of things that can be done to make your customer file work for you.

• Hygiene such as NCOA and Delivery Point Verification (DPV) can prepare your file for mailing.  This not only benefits marketing but billing and collection as well.
• Data append as described above can enhance decision making with additional information outside what’s been given.
• Profiling is the next step to learning more about your customer.  A profile is different than an append in that you are now comparing your customers to their peers in the same geographic footprint.  See an example of our profile here : Customer Profile
• Modeling outcomes are much more robust with outside data.  The combination of your data and the third party data allows for the prediction of outcomes such as booking a loan, responding to an offer or leaving you as a customer.

To learn more contact Troy Blackman at tblackman@altairci.com or 615-468-6821

David Hunter: Mechanic, Philanthropist and All Around Great Guy.

He has been in a band and cut a record.  He is an avid cyclist and world class mechanic, as well as generous.  Last weekend he checked over 120 kids bikes at a bike rodeo and then made time to help a little boy learn to ride his bike.  He’s been back in the US for 4 months having recently, lived in Lodz Poland for almost 2 years.  And of course, he has a ton of analytics and modeling experience both on the client-side for BellSouth and as a manager with Equifax.

During today’s Lunch and Learn session, David used an example of a recent custom model to explain how to read a gains chart.  The model was developed to predict the likelihood of booking a refinance loan for a large mortgage lender.  The model has predicts book rates that are 2.6 to 4 times higher than the baseline.  A 400% lift!  So, why aren’t mortgage companies across the country knocking down our door asking about our mortgage models?  I don’t know, but they should.  We’ve built shelf models for Prime Refinance, FHA Refinance and Reverse Mortgage as well as twice that many custom in just the last 6 months.

Growth in Mobile, Social Media, E-Commerce and a down economy fuel the loyalty explosion. The industry has been further spurred by specific budgets for loyalty and the trend for companies to focus on customer satisfaction and retention over acquisition.  While many industry stalwarts are addressing the loyalty space with updated marketing efforts and product development; more are startups specific to loyalty.  Companies focused on Mobile, Loyalty Platforms and Gamification such as Badgeville (2010), Mobilozophy (2009) and 500Friends (2010). Just recently, two companies Belly and Sweet Tooth raised $10 and $2.5 million respectively.  Belly is a customer loyalty and rewards platform for local businesses and Sweet Tooth is an e-commerce loyalty company.

Marketers have more data than ever, slimmer wallets, more channel choices, more competition and customers with shorter attention spans.  THIS is a FULL PLATE.

How do you wade through this and decide what is best for your company, your customers and your sanity?  I’d love to hear what you think.

The problem is that “Big Data” is not the answer.  Quality Data is the answer.

Quality does not seem to be a focus in any of the articles I’ve read recently.  “Small Data” can be even more powerful than “Big Data” depending on the quality of the data being captured.  While it is true that more data can lead to more precision in analysis, the data elements must be clearly defined and validated.  By clearly defining what is important in terms of data capture and developing mechanisms to validate the data, you will ensure that quality data flows through the process, no matter the size of the data.

Altair has 70+ years of combined processing and analytics experience and a scalable network infrastructure so we can help your company navigate any data considerations.  The average company processes 63 Terabytes of data annually.  As a data-centric company, Altair processes nearly as much data on a monthly basis.  Please contact me at tblackman@altairci.com to learn how Altair can help.

• Perfect, 12-Month Payment History Required
• 210-Day “Waiting Period” Between Refinances
• Employment And Income Are Not Verified
• Credit Scores Are Not Verified
• The Refinance Must Have “Purpose”
• Loan Balances May Not Increase To Cover Loan Costs
• Appraisals Not Required

The key right now is if the loan was endorsed prior to June 1, 2009 the upfront MIP is 0.01% or 1 basis point compared to the standard 1.75% or 175 basis points.  On a $100,000 loan the upfront MIP is $1 vs the standard $1,750.

For loans endorsed after June 1, 2009 and but not within the last 210 days the upfront MIP will be 1.75%.  While the rate is higher certain homeowners will be eligible for a credit for upfront MIP previously paid.

Nationwide Altair has over 1.6MM FHA loans prior to June 2009 and 1.8MM FHA loans post June 2009.  To see a full breakdown by state and LTV contact me tblackman@altairci.com.

Those of you presently working in this beloved industry can appreciate the critical nature and time required to develop an effective marketing and advertising strategy that will yield results; whether it’s increasing product awareness, driving sales or stealing market share.  Often times I think back to those sleepless nights spent with colleagues racking our brains on how to assemble what we felt would be the next great marketing campaign, a campaign that would exceed our client’s expectations and earn us a famed Addy.

However, the truth is that it rarely worked out this way, with the exception of the sleepless nights.  The reason being is that the ‘next great marketing campaign’ was typically assembled with little or no reliable data to support the strategy.  I know what you’re thinking, ‘we did lots of research to support our marketing strategy!’  Ok… you probably did.  I’m sure you spent an insurmountable amount of time on Google seeking out anything you could scrape together about the competition and finding industry research that’s probably 3-years too old.  And just to impress your client, you may have even performed some in-person interviews with customers and employees in hopes of providing your client with the primary research needed to justify your expensive ideas.  Then, you took all that information, mixed in a lot of complex marketing terminology to make it sound important, incorporated lots of fancy graphs highlighting your outdated research, threw in some creative rationale with symbolic references Picasso himself would have a difficult time deciphering, and voilà… you hashed out an impressive comprehensive strategy that will certainly WOW your client!

I can say all this because I’m also guilty of doing it, and there’s a popular adolescent term today that I now use to describe such an approach… EPIC FAIL!  Not only does it do the strategic process an injustice, it also means it likely won’t be long before the harsh reality officially sets in… the campaign doesn’t perform as promised.  This is an agency’s worst nightmare because they are immediately faced with the dreaded question from their client: ‘WHY?’ This single word is capable of sending an entire agency into panic mode, forcing them to quickly scramble to find reasons that prove the shortcomings were beyond the agency’s control and would have worked if (insert excuse here) wouldn’t have happened, then incorporating those excuses into a formal response using more complex marketing lingo that makes you sound like an expert, knowing exactly what adjustments to make next time.  The hope here is the agency finds the right balance of craft and confusion in their response to leave the client scratching their head to the point of believing you.  If that doesn’t work, you will likely find the president of the agency on their knees agreeing to the sale price of his/her first born in order to keep the business with assurances the next campaign will be better. This approach is risky, as you may not be afforded a ‘next time’.

Now does it always happen this way?  Of course not!  There are plenty of agencies out there with the resources and capabilities to provide their clients the necessary analytics to support the recommended strategies, often resulting in a more efficient use of marketing dollars and greater ROI.  Unfortunately, most agencies are too small to justify the expense of hiring analysts and purchasing the proper equipment, data licenses, and software needed to give them the competitive edge they need.  They are forced to rely on sleek creative instead of sound analytics, market assumptions using complex marketing terminology versus predictive modeling with proven success.  The truth is that with an economy that is still unstable, companies are much more frugal with their advertising dollars and are likely to place greater emphasis on strategies supported by data and analytics that will maximize their marketing dollars and result in greater ROI.  The agency able to provide these analytics to support their strategy, creative rationale and tactical execution will likely be the one marveling in healthier bottom lines.

Don’t despair small agencies, there is a logical solution for you.  Elect to partner with an expert that can offer you a wide variety of data solutions to help grow your clients business and offer the sound analytical edge you need; whether it’s solidifying current client relationships or winning that new piece of business.  Work smarter, not harder!  By doing so, when the time comes around to review campaign effectiveness, perhaps you’ll be discussing an increase in client spending to build on proven and trackable successes instead of once again facing that dreaded question of ‘WHY?’

However, when it comes to the web experience—not so much.   So, I thought I would share my top 3 mistakes of Mobile Websites:

1.  Where’s the button for that?

Most websites offer a mobile version now, but too often it’s difficult, if not impossible, to find certain tasks.  For instance, ever tried finding Fantasy Baseball on the Yahoo Mobile App?  Forget about it!  Or finding scores on a particular game through ESPN GameCenter.  Not fun.

While I completely understand the reasoning behind having a scaled-down mobile platform optimized for a smaller screen, there are two key takeaways:

1.  Provide a customized user experience based on unique customer segments

2.  Offer an easy-to-find option for accessing the complete website

2.  I didn’t mean to click on that!

Many of the ads are placed adjacent to action or navigation buttons.  For those with fat fingers, like me, you’ll frequently open an ad for Dollywood instead of slicing the Fruit Ninja Watermelon.  This probably seems clever to some (Wow, look at how many clicks we got for you), but all this does is frustrate the user (bad experience) and the advertiser (no sales).

Make sure there is a clear border around your ads and try not to have navigation buttons close to your ads.

3.  Why did I get an ad for that?

Speaking of ads, too many mobile apps are serving ads that are not tied to the user’s interest.  If you aren’t capturing basic contact information, you should and if you aren’t using that information to target relevant ads, you should.

Relevant ads targeted to an active audience are a necessity to getting the ROI most marketers require.  Rather than serving an auto ad to every ESPN user, how about serving one to the top 10% of ESPN users likely to purchase a car in the next 90 days.  You can do that?  You betcha!

What are your suggestions for mobile websites?

Let’s look at the numbers:

I ran a count on the Altair Online System, and in Williamson County, TN alone we have 67,718 households.  As a conservative estimate, I am going to say that 2% of those are duplicate mailing addresses or incorrect name/address.  That gives us a remaining 1,354 for incorrect “junk.”

Average printing and mailing costs per piece may be anywhere from $1.00-2.00 per piece based on a large direct mailer I checked out online.  This doesn’t sound too bad on a per piece basis, but when you consider the 3,386 times $1.50, you’re looking at $2,031 in wasted marketing dollars.  And that’s in ONE county, with ONE mail piece.  It also doesn’t take into account that I now have more than one $5 coupon.  Now, consider that there are 110,483,968 households in the country.  I’ll let you do the math.

Point is, marketing dollars can be easily wasted if you don’t have the correct data and/or a streamlined system between your different channels.  As mentioned in our Loyalty study results, one of the largest struggles for companies is data integration.  This new “Big Data” nightmare can really add up on the cost side of marketing, but we can help!

Whether you have a website, coupons and direct mail, a digital & social media presence, a newsletter, or all of it!  We can segment your customer base data across all these different platforms.   For example, who is using your coupons and is also visiting the website frequently?  Who is receiving your newsletters but does not yet buy your products?  We can take the data and consumer information from all these platforms, including your POS, Accounting, Web, etc. and clean it up for you, then link it all into a single standardized database.  Voila!  Increased ROI and less waste in marketing.

Altair understands the daunting task of Data Integration. With more avenues than ever, the ease of data capture, and the inexpensive storage companies collect more information than ever, “Big Data” as it is being called. Altair has been handling Big Data since 2001, we assimilate well over a billion rows of data each month into 5 major indexed files ranging in size from 21 million businesses to 200 million consumers. This data doesn’t come to us ready to merge. We’ve taken years to perfect our cleanse and merge technology. Take advantage of our experience and have Altair handle your integration.

Once integrated Altair has the tools and experience to perform Customer Analysis, build Predictive Models, develop and execute Performance Measurement and grant access to robust Reports.