Better data can drive better marketing

Wireless carriers can market more effectively to their “cord-cutter” customers by knowing more about them, the CEO of a major data repository company said. TARGUSInfo Chief Executive Officer George Moore said the wireless industry can stretch marketing dollars during a down economy with more data-driven marketing.

Moore’s firm provides the data used by many companies – including MetroPCS in its Screen-It caller ID service – to profile or verify consumer identities for targeting new services or enabling transactions.

“It’s all about adding an attribute about who you are interacting with in real time – name, address, latitude/longitude, a score that tells the value of you, or verification,” Moore said. “We do it 32 billion times a year – everything happens in real time. We get queried, and we provide an answer back. When you call a customer service number, we will populate your name and address to the operator or to the IVR service bureau immediately. You could be buying something on eBay and want to sign up, and you say, ‘I’m [this person] at this address with this contact info.’ We have a verification system that says, ‘Is there [a person with that name] at that address, and is that the phone number?’”

With so many consumers moving to wireless-only phone service, it becomes more important to be able to target them with the right services, and that means using the kind of data and analytics that previously were applied in the wireline world, Moore said.

“Within our information repositories, we have information and analytical tools to determine who these people are—if you know who they are, you know how to market to them,” Moore said. “Certain demographic groups have a greater tendency to give up landlines. Wireless carriers can target those people – with advertising, marketing, general promotions – and get better bang for the buck. We are helping our customers compete for the cream of the crop of the cord-cutters.”

Among other things, data analytics can check to make sure name and address information being provided is consistent and not fraudulent, but it can also be used to identify the value of a customer for the purposes of selling that customer more advanced services or moving more valuable customers up in a service queue, Moore said.

“We can identify the universe of those folks who are cord-cutters and have the highest propensity to go for your type of service,” Moore said. “When they do call the call center, we can identify what offer you should make for each individual, based on analytics and scores we have built.”

Using its AdAdvisor capability, TARGUSInfo also can identify when a person fitting a potential cord-cutter is surfing the Web and, based on that person’s profile, serve up an ad with a specific offer targeted to that person’s needs. Within a geographic footprint, likely cord-cutters can be identified for targeted advertising or, if the universe is large enough, more general advertising, Moore said.