DataLab USA

BACKGROUND

Can you describe your company in brief detail?

We are a direct marketing agency, we offer full service direct marketing offline through direct mail. We do anything that can be sent through the postal service to someone’s personal mailbox or work mail. We are an advertising agency but we focus simply on direct mail.  

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the Founder and General Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

Please describe the scope of Datalab USA’s work?

It’s ongoing work, it’s not the type of thing you do once and then stop and then never do it again. You tend to create models and analyze and they go back and do it again over time, constantly improving the work.

What business challenge were you trying to address?

The challenge we’re trying to address is creating an efficient program from a Return-On-Investment standpoint for our clients to acquire new customers.

We have a regional banking client that has close to a hundred branches throughout the western United States and has asked us to figure out the best way to drive new account openings for them at the branch level.

Prior to working with DataLabs, we did some large-scale test programs to test some of the ideas and then learned what we needed to know to instruct Datalabs on how to take it to the next level from a targeting standpoint. 

DataLabs reviewed the initial inputs, data and analyses and then took that learning and applied it to a much larger-scale database of all consumers within the United States. They built a few different models for us, addressing different things like return on investment or response rates and then helped us to determine within that how to create an actual prospect score for the consumers and determine which consumers to reach out to .

They are also working with the client at the end of the project to validate the model. If the model is validated, and it was in this nationwide project, they go the next step. They will continue to run the model and look for better savings and efficiencies.

SOLUTION

How did you select DataLabs to work with?

Initially, it was a referral and then interview process.

Do you have any stats or metrics to track improvement?

The ROI was highly positive but I can’t give the exact rate. I will say without question that we hit our target and in some cases surpassed our target and the client’s expectations have been exceeded. The model is working almost exactly the way it was described it would work by DataLabs USA. 

How long has that system been running?

That system has been in use for nearly two years.

Can you give a sense of the size of that initiative in dollar terms?

The work costs about $100,000 per year for six years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How has Datalab USA performed overall?

They’ve been great and exceeded expectations.

Is there anything that stands out as very unique or special about them compared to some other vendors you have worked with?

They display a level of flexibility that can’t be taken for granted. They’ve been able to meet really challenging goals and deadlines by putting more effort in on the front-end than would be expected. They have surpassed performance expectations. They’ve also greatly surpassed work level expectations.

Is there anything that you think they can improve upon or maybe you would do differently?

BACKGROUND

Can you give a brief description of your company?

I’ve been in business since 2002.  Before that, I was at Dell Computer.  I was in the database marketing team and led the team that did the second-generation marketing database for Dell Computer Americas which had about 100 million order headers.  That experience provided me with the ability to go to the private sector and do some database consulting and database marketing consulting.  About half of our clients are non-profits, about half of our clients are for-profit companies.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am a consultant. I don’t do any programming.

I’ve always specialized in trying to translate what’s feasible and realistic in terms of marketing goals for using data and data analytics for either non-profit or for-profit companies. I found that sometimes clients overestimate what’s possible and sometimes they grossly underestimate what’s possible. My job is to achieve alignments and then execute the programs.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address when working with Datalab USA?

We need to improve targeting and try to get more efficient with external communications and more cost-effective. The main challenge is to improve the conversion of donors or sales. My clients demand positive ROI from these projects and it can be easily measured.

SOLUTION

Can you describe the scope of the project in terms of Datalab’s role?

The largest project they did was to create a national prospect database for an enterprise client. We scored the entire nation’s consumer database according to the likelihood of those households or consumers buying the product. 

I’ve got one Texas-wide similar project that I’m commencing next week with them and I frequently do city-wide projects including one for Dallas. We’re going to do the same thing for the Texas statewide voter file in the next couple of weeks.

What was your process for selecting Datalab USA to work with?

I found them at a MCDM conference in 2005. I met Hans Aigner[Owner of Datalab]. I was looking to offer my clients the kind of solutions that Dell had as a big Fortune 50 company. I wanted to try and bring that same level of expertise and the same level of compiled database and compiled modeling, prospecting, scoring and behavioral analysis to a different set of customers. DataLab was a good fit.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms?

The project was somewhere around $2 million with DataLab.

What was the most recent project completed?

I am actually wrapping it up today.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of that project?

I think this goes to DataLab’s strengths, I think analytics is one of them. I got an extremely clean file from the client and 100 percent of the consumers and universe were scored in terms of their likelihood becoming persuadable or persuaded.

Datalab USA put together an order cascaded in terms of their likelihood of becoming supporters. I just got a pivot table from them and they’re going to put the entire file starting today in a CRM solution in Texas. It worked well.

Does anything stand out as unique about them compared to other vendors?

I think the good news is that DataLab is without any guile. They’re very competent and very technical and very prideful of their technical output and have high standards in terms of what their performance is and what their predictability is and what the cleanliness of their files are. 

Is there any area that you think Datalab USA can improve or you would do differently?

The flipside of their technical skill is that when they get in a customer environment, as I’ve had them in many occasions, their communication can struggle. They are strong technical minds but it’s hard to communicate everything with the customer correctly.

This doesn’t overwhelm their positive points, but there is a challenge sometimes to have them properly communicate the benefits and the positive actions that some of their customers can take after they have engaged DataLab. It’s important that the end user have these things communicated to them properly.

I just hope DataLab continues to grow.  I think they will.  I want them to grow in different directions or manage their teams in a different way and that the net reaction of it, is they can respond a little quicker to some of the opportunities that come up for their clients.