Visual Management of Marketing Programs: Discovering the Hidden Value in Your Customer Data

Marketers have long described their customers in “segments”, generalized categories based on perceptions of customer demographics and buying behaviors. Now that most companies have detailed customer demographic and transaction databases, marketers have the ability to assign individual customers to segments created using data analysis. This capability can radically alter a company’s marketing program, uncovering invaluable information regarding key customer segments and how they respond to various marketing campaigns. Additionally, these databases can be used to develop models to estimate Lifetime Value (LTV) for individual customers.

LTV can be a powerful tool, increasing the success of marketing programs by determining ideal investment of marketing dollars in the near and long-term. The insights gained from customer segmentation and LTV analysis can be utilized by marketers to dramatically improve marketing program decisions including campaign messaging, spending levels and timing issues.

In this case study, we used customer demographic and sales databases from a boutique winery in combination with Tableau Software to uncover information vital to designing a dynamic, cutting-edge marketing program.

Visual management was used to determine:

• Segmentation scheme
• Quantitified estimated future spend of each customer
• Integrated customer segmentation and LTV to maximize ROI on marketing programs

The result is a compelling, yet easy-to-understand series of three strategic dashboards that displays crucial results obtained from customer segmentation and LTV estimates. The strategic dashboards provide key customer insights enabling data-driven strategic marketing plans.