Direct Marketing for the Performing Arts
The Challenge
The Client is a Grammy-winning chorus and period instrument orchestra based in Boston with over a 200-year history. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) looking for an independent entity capable of creating and managing a database of their customers and customer information shared by other regional arts organizations, as well as manage an analytics-driven subscription acquisition Direct Marketing (DM) program for them.
The Solution
When approached by this client, MSA already had extensive experience managing large consumer databases and had a fully operational DM program management solution in place.
For this client, the first thing MSA did was to integrate multiple data sources into a central database. These datasets included the client’s historical subscriber/ticket buyers and prospect lists provided by other arts organizations. MSA then utilized its proprietary merge-purge algorithm to identify any duplicate individuals or households.
The next step was to append granular demographic data to as many records as possible with the help of a third-party service to assist MSA with its analysis. MSA then conducted data mining and exploration on the integrated dataset to determine the most appropriate analytical methodology that would identify the prospects most likely to subscribe to the client’s upcoming season. MSA ultimately decided upon a final approach for the analysis after comparing model accuracy statistics and ease of interpretability across various techniques. Variables considered in the model encompassed demographic and behavioral factors, geography, and traits of the participating list trade organizations.
MSA produced four direct mail files for the client’s subscription acquisition campaign and provided them to the client’s mail house/printer over the course of 11 weeks. Before delivering each mail file, MSA standardized addresses, ran NCOA, and excluded records as needed, such as recent subscribers and those on a Do Not Contact list. A total of 89K brochures were mailed to 39K households across the four promotions.
The Result
After the new season began, MSA conducted an extensive ROI analysis of the subscription acquisition campaign. Total subscription revenue came in at 4% higher than the previous campaign, and there was higher average revenue per order. ROI per piece mailed came in at $2.74 when taking into account both subscription and single ticket sales revenue. The Client continues to utilize MSA’s DM program management solution to strategically attract and grow subscription and single ticket sales.
For more information on this MSA solution, please click here.
Mobile Couponing
The Challenge
An American consumer packaged goods company who had been a long-term client of MSA’s Direct Marketing Platform (DMP) solution asked MSA to add mobile couponing capabilities to their program so as to enhance coupon redemptions among consumers. Up until then, their program focused mainly on sending paper coupons via traditional mailers.
The Solution
MSA expanded and added several key elements to its DMP to allow for mobile couponing:
- Expanded its DMP IT infrastructure to include web hosting services to allow for mobile coupon websites, as well as various service and support APIs via Amazon Web Services®.
- Developed from scratch a geo-based mobile coupon app compatible with both iPhone® and Android® smartphones. Geocoding allows for the identification and exact location of nearby coupon-accepting retail stores.
- With both a mobile coupon website and a geo-based mobile coupon app, consumers had two ways to initiate coupon access and usage:
- Consumers were sent emails with a link to access the Client’s custom mobile coupon website. They then accessed the website anytime via their smartphone’s web browser, and logged-in with their email-ID and password.
- For the mobile coupon app, consumers downloaded the Client’s custom mobile coupon app to their smartphone. They then accessed the app anytime, and logged-in with their PIN number.
- With either mobile couponing usage option, consumers were able to redeem offers by displaying digital coupons containing barcodes from their smartphones at checkout.
- The final key element was an upgrade to MSA’s proprietary NaviGATE™ technology to handle all of the interactions between various APIs and DMP servers that enabled mobile couponing functions, such as displaying nearby stores, viewing and selecting digital coupon offers, displaying coupon barcodes and submission of redemptions.
The Result
Within the first 5 months of launching this new digital couponing program nationwide, over 13,000 consumers had redeemed 113,000 digital coupons offered by the Client, exceeding their expectations. This came out to every consumer redeeming about 9 digital coupons on average over the period, almost 2 digital coupons per month. Importantly, nearly half of these consumers (46%) had never redeemed one of the Client’s traditional paper coupons before. As for demographics, 65% of the mobile coupon redeemers were under age 50, while 25% were under age 35.
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Direct Marketing Program Management
The Challenge
The Client is an American consumer packaged goods company. They asked Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) to take over their opt-in consumer database and completely manage a Direct Marketing (DM) program for them.
Their database was already large and consisted of consumers who wanted to receive communications and promotional offers from the company. The Client wanted MSA to manage further growth of their database and have certain consumers regularly receive specific coupons, surveys, and info on sweepstakes and giveaways, via DM mailers and email (eDM).
The Solution
MSA created its DM Program Management solution initially for this client. MSA’s solution consists of six (6) major components and processes:
- An opt-in consumer database of users and competitive product users. In this case, MSA took over an existing database and managed its ongoing maintenance. Consumers were recruited via either company-sponsored websites, or a call center that received requests from consumers who wanted to be included in the program.
- MSA’s proprietary NaviGATE™ technology. MSA created a custom, NaviGATE user interface for the Client to access the database and be able to setup consumer target criteria for DM and eDM campaigns.
- Database generated mailing lists for DM mailers and email lists for eDM. MSA took these lists and coordinated with a third party vendor to have 10 DM mailers and 5 eDM campaigns sent out every month.
- Periodic data extracts and reports generated from the database. These outputs were given to key Client stakeholders and to some third party vendors.
- Advance DM analytics. MSA used some of the data extracts to develop custom Response Models, Loyalty Models and Vulnerability Models, so as to continually improve and optimize the DM program’s campaigns.
- Mobile Coupon app for CPG. Consumers can be served coupons once they enter certain retail locations. They are able to redeem offers by displaying coupons from their smartphone at checkout.
The Result
Within a couple of years, the Client’s opt-in database grew to over 12 million consumers. As far as coupons delivered via the DM and eDM campaigns, redemption rates were much higher (6-16%) than for those delivered via traditional FSIs (<1%). The Client saw sales lifts of 0.6 to 1.9 units per week across all markets depending on how generous the offer.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Market Architecture
The Challenge
The Client is a worldwide apparel company with a stable of over 30 brands. After divesting of one of its old legacy brands, the company wanted to implement a new growth strategy via acquisition. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) seeking a robust solution for identifying what types of brands and businesses would have the greatest future growth potential for the apparel industry.
The Solution
MSA’s Market Architecture™ solution was the perfect approach to clarify the current state of the apparel industry, as well as provide a glimpse as to where the best growth opportunities are within the category moving forward.
Instead of looking at repeat purchases as a way to compute brand loyalty, Market Architecture looks at brand purchases along key consumer dimensions to estimate what this solution calls ‘choice elasticity’.
- Market Structure – How do consumers choose products within a category?
- Brand Choice Drivers – What factors influence consumers to buy certain brands?
- Brand-to-Brand Competition – What is the nature of competition between brands? Why do consumers buy competitors?
- Profitability – How to leverage brand strengths to grow sales and profits?
While consumer survey data is usually the main data input for Market Architecture, in this case, MSA worked with ‘purchase occasion’ data from a syndicated consumer panel for the apparel industry to which the Client subscribes.
The study looked at all of the Client’s current retail customers, as well as other broader retailer classifications and channels. The study also covered almost all major retail apparel lines.
The Result
The output from the study provided the Client with a clear and consistent ‘three-tier choice hierarchy’ for women and men, with just a few exceptions. In addition, MSA was able to illustrate a ‘strength of appeal’ table for the Client showing which retailers, apparel categories and brand types had the greatest appeal to the least appeal. This table was crucial to the client for assessing the profit potential of target acquisitions.
As a direct result of the study, the Client soon afterwards made two major brand acquisitions, investing nearly $1 billion.
Advertising Integration Analysis (AIA)
The Challenge
The Client is an American beer brewing company. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) seeking to better understand how advertising leads to increased brand loyalty and sales by linking various measures of advertising quality and effectiveness to key sales indicators for their flagship light beer.
This data heavy project involved integrating multiple data sources; ad tracking, behavioral tracking, copy tests, GRPs, PR and marketing mix coefficients, across brands, ethnic groups, age groups, gender and geographic regions.
The Solution
- Create a large dataset by integrating ad tracking and behavioral tracking data based on age groups, gender, regions and ethnicity. Then tabulate and graph all of the variables to get an overall understanding of data trends.
- Create 2-dimensional maps to visualize which ad tracking and behavioral tracking variables are key drivers of ‘brand attachment’ vs. ‘behavioral motivations’ and how they relate to each other. Create 2-dimensional maps for the category, key brands, and for ethnic groups, age groups, gender and geographic regions for the subject brand.
- Use Factor Analysis to consolidate the data and help manage the correlation between similar variables.
- Use Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to quantify the relationships between measures, such as awareness and loyalty, and to see how they vary across demographic groups and brands.
- Create a second dataset integrating the ad tracking data with GRPs, copy tests, marketing mix coefficients and PR data. Use this secondary data set to model the impact of TV advertising on awareness via Regression Analysis.
The Result
The study identified nine key measures for the Client’s brand that are influenced by a combination of both advertising and product experience. MSA calls these “bridge measures”. More importantly, MSA was able to provide the Client with absolute clarity on the intricate web of interrelationships between these nine affinity (brand image) and involvement (repeat purchase) bridge measures that comprises the brand’s purchase funnel.
As a direct result of the study, the Client was able to refocus brand monitoring on just these nine bridge measures. Whenever they saw any significant shifts in these key measures, they knew they had to look into making changes to their communications and/or other marketing levers. Not only did this immensely simplify their brand monitoring activities, it also provided the Client with a tactical marketing early indicator mechanism for their most important brand.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Baseline Sales Analysis
The Challenge
The Client is a leading manufacturer of cosmetics, skincare and haircare products. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) wanting us to analyze the performance of their trade promotions. One of their reasons for coming to MSA was that they were specifically not satisfied with the base vs. incremental sales volume estimates they were receiving from their syndicated sales data provider. These baseline sales estimates were often higher than total sales volume, resulting in unrealistic, negative incremental sales estimates.
Members of their Trade Promotions Team felt they were wasting a lot of time on trying to come up with alternative calculations for better estimates of base sales volume. They knew more accurate baseline vs. incremental sales volume estimates would result in better ROI calculations of their trade promotion investments.
The Solution
MSA’s goal was to provide the Client with a consistent, accurate approach for measuring sales volume driven by trade promotions (i.e., incremental), while excluding brand marketing and temporal factors (i.e., base).
MSA tested and compared the results of several modeling methodologies to determine which approach would be best for the three years’ worth of weekly data available for the Client.
In the end, MSA used a model-based approach that decomposed sales into short-term incremental volume vs. base volume driven by loyalty/momentum, seasonality and marketing factors. For the modeled baseline estimates, MSA also considered trend and cyclical patterns, as well as factors related to distribution and competition. The models produced estimates by sub-brand and account.
The Result
MSA shared the modeled results with the client who then compared them to a syndicated sales data provider’s estimates. The client concluded that MSA’s baseline estimates were more consistent over time and more intuitive.
The modeling solution MSA designed is very flexible. The definitions of ‘baseline’ and ‘incremental’ are adjustable based on a Client’s industry and product category. For instance, FSIs can be included in incremental volume along with trade promotions.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Demand Forecasting
The Challenge
The Client is a U.S. government Cabinet department. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) seeking a comprehensive examination of the long-term demand for steel within the U.S. The study needed to consider the expected demand for steel-using products and services, the impact of imports of steel-containing products, and the substitution of alternative materials by steel-using industries.
The Solution
MSA’s comprehensive demand forecasting approach was the perfect solution to tackle this challenge. For demand forecasting, we look at deploying both Causal and Non-causal approaches:
a) Causal – Statistical models are used to isolate and determine the impact of key variables on demand to come up with forecasts.
b) Non-causal – Straightforward, time-series statistical techniques are used to forecast demand.
Our initial analysis showed that, historically, growth in GDP correlated very well with growth in steel demand. However, we also saw that more recently this correlation had broken down, indicating that GDP is not the only predictor of steel demand. Therefore, we concluded we could not apply a straightforward Non-causal approach in this case.
As such, we focused on a Causal approach. For this study, U.S. demand for steel was defined by the simple equation of shipments of steel products from mills, plus imports of steel, minus steel exports. Through extensive analysis, we determined that the primary drivers of steel demand that needed to be incorporated into our forecasting models were GDP, exchange rates, market sector-based demand for steel, the steel required in manufactured goods, and imports of high steel content goods.
We then conducted a series of quantitative analyses to estimate yearly demand for steel over a 10-year period. The estimates assumed both a cyclical outlook for the overall economy, one that assumed two recessions over the 10-year period, as well as a non-cyclical outlook that assumed no recessions.
The Result
The study determined that the most likely scenarios indicated that domestic steel demand was expected to grow at an annual rate of between 1.2% and 1.7% over the 10-year period.
We also determined that while growth in steel demand would be driven by consumer demand for steel-containing goods, growth would be offset by continued growth in imports of high steel content goods, the continued growth in plastics as a replacement to steel, and increased usage of alternative, lighter weight high-strength steel in the auto industry.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Ticket Sales Forecasting
The Challenge
The Client is an internationally acclaimed symphony orchestra with over a 100-year history. They approached Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) seeking a reliable solution for estimating future ticket sales, especially subscription-based sales, to help better manage their internal budgeting process and program management. They had many years’ worth of historical data of concerts performed with which they wanted to see if MSA could leverage to compute relatively accurate ticket sales forecasts.
The Solution
MSA took much of the available historical data and developed a series of custom, algorithmic and regression-based models to calculate ticket sales forecasts for each upcoming performance, both subscriber-based and single ticket sales.
We then embedded all of the models into Excel® and developed an interactive, user-friendly, scenario-building tool with which the Client was then able to input various upcoming concert details. The tool visualizes sales forecast results as table summaries as well as in interactive charts. The tool also tracks model performance over time to determine if any model adjustments are necessary.
The Result
This symphony orchestra has used MSA’s ticket sales forecasting solution successfully for over five years now. Predictions for annual sales have been within a +/- 2-4% range of historical actual sales. These scenario-based forecasts have been providing this Client with previously unseen clarity to their programming and have allowed for significant budget savings over the years.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Media Viewer Segmentation
The Challenge
The Client is an American global mass media and entertainment company. They asked Management Science Associates, Inc. (MSA) to conduct a custom segmentation analysis of their TV viewing audiences. They wanted unique and specific descriptors of key segments, as well as robust insights on those segments, to support advertising sales initiatives.
The goal was to create a segmentation framework based uniquely on just TV viewing behavior derived from respondent-level TV program viewing data. The segments needed to show rich behavioral and attitudinal insights, beyond just simple demographics.
The Solution
- Narrow the thousands of panelists into just 250 “nodes” based on program viewing behavior using a set of custom developed, multi-stage, machine-learning algorithms.
- Take the nodes and classify them into 67 unique clusters, again based on program viewing, but using a separate set of custom developed metrics.
- Test the clusters using both the art and science of segmentation and ultimately classify all of the panelists into just 20 distinct viewer segments.
- Observe how the final viewer segments fall into four sub-groups that are predominately oriented to either Females, Males, All Kids or All Adults.
The Result
The study captured meaningful insights into consumers’ identities based solely on the TV programs they watch. It was determined that when they make their viewing choices they provide clues into their interests, life stage, household composition and socio-economic status.
The final viewer segments and their descriptive profiles were updated regularly, and the names given to the segments became internal language for the client and used when talking about TV viewers.
As a direct result of the study, not only did the Client use the insights provided at the segment level for upfront and other types of ad sales meetings, they were also used for internal and external channel/program promotional marketing and communications initiatives.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.
Twitter Segmentation
The Challenge
If you’re a direct-selling cosmetics company, you understand, at first blush, the importance of social networking. And if you’re one of the world’s largest direct-selling cosmetics companies, you make social media a top priority for engaging your customers and incentivizing sales reps.
This particular beauty company wanted to understand how their reps and customers use social media. They wanted to communicate more effectively with them. And they were specifically interested in analyzing Twitter.
Twitter is one of the largest and most popular social media sites in the world, and the beauty company had already built a strong following. They engaged 50,000 followers with contests, special offers, and beauty tips.
But they wanted to do more. They felt they could enhance the effectiveness of their Twitter feeds through a better understanding of their followers. They wanted to know more about their lifestyles. Their interests. Who else they were following.
They came to MSA for answers.
The Solution
Using a relatively new and sophisticated product called Twitter Follower Segmentation, our Business Analysis (BA) division got to work, extracting data on all of the client’s Twitter followers. A key advantage of this technique is that Twitter provides data for free.
We looked for what ‘friends’ the followers followed, how many people followed the followers, and how often the followers Tweeted. Turns out you can learn a lot about a person’s interests and lifestyle by studying their Twitter habits.
- Beauty & Social Media Tools – These followers don’t Tweet a lot or have a lot of followers, but they over-index on the beauty company’s other Twitter accounts and for social media management tools.
- Fashion News & Comedy – These followers have average Twitter activity. Their primary interests are fashion industry news and an eclectic mix of adult humor and politics. This also suggests a more professional demographic.
- Cutting Edge Beauty – Followers in this segment are more active on Twitter, and are very focused on the newest fashion trends. They have a strong interest in trying new products and follow beauty sites with edgy, dramatic looks as well as sites focusing on samples of the latest products.
- Music & TV – These followers are big on Tweeting, and are distinguished by their interest in entertainment. They follow personalities from reality TV shows and pop music stars.
Our BA team provided the beauty company with an overview of the unique aspects of each segment. We also provided suggestions for targeting each segment.
The Result
From a strategic standpoint, our in-depth segmentation study allowed this major cosmetics company to extend the word-of-mouth element that has always been integral to their direct-sell across the vastly larger, farther-reaching world of social media.
Tactically, we were able to identify top candidates for “Get This Look” videos; reveal a surprising strong interest in dramatic, theatrical fashion looks; and suggest a need for bundled sample packs versus individual samples.
Overall, MSA enhanced the effectiveness of our client’s Twitter account by identifying key interests of the account’s followers and suggesting content tailored to those interests.
For more information on this MSA solution, please contact Kevin Mason (kmason@msa.com), Vice President.