5 ways CMO50 marketers are doing data-led marketing

Data-driven marketing: It is the Holy Grail every one of us is aspiring to, but what does it really mean in practice?

Here, we look at how five leading CMO50 marketers from our 2020 core and Ones to Watch list - Movember Australia marketing director, Jason Olive, along with Tennis Australia chief marketing and insights officer, Josie Brown, Brownes Dairy director of sales and marketing, Natalie Sarich-Dayton, Nestlé Oceania
 director of eBusiness, strategy and marketing, Martin Brown and Amaysim CMO, Renee Garner - are executing smart data-led marketing.

How partnerships can bring new advocates

Movember has been deploying a range of first, second and third-party data to ensure it is making smart decisions with limited budgets, helping it select the highest value segments or understand which communities are most in need. This helps to define revenue or impact decisions.

One recent example where this has been successfully developed is the launch of its podcast, Dad In Progress, leveraging mass media to drive behaviour change. “We know that key life events are triggers for a change in someone’s mental health outcomes, but we didn’t have a considerable amount of local data on this,” Movember Australia marketing director, Jason Olive, said.

“Consequently, we ran a survey asking 18-75-year-old men about their experiences of fatherhood. It turned out that one in five Australian men had lost close mates after becoming a dad. Likewise, our research revealed that 26 per cent of new fathers felt socially isolated,” said Olive.

“We partnered with Betoota Advocate who helped us produce the podcast. We identified 800,000 dads with our media agency and narrowed this down to 200,000 new dads, who would most likely need this resource vs. all dads. We also leveraged our CRM to identify dads within our network. We needed to deliver impact and minimise wastage,” he said.

The research and efforts paid off, reaching 60,000 new dads via Facebook ads, PR and owned channels, resulting in relevant engagement and listens from thousands of dads, and charting in the top 20 health and fitness podcast charts (during COVID-19).

“It averaged a 4.5 star rating, and from our early qualitative impact research, it signals that those dads who listened are more likely to reach out for help, and even started implementing the strategies learnt in the podcast to great effect,” he said.

Data-aware decision making

Data-aware decision making has been identified as a key success factor in driving digital culture at Tennis Australia, but there were no data/insights staff in the organisation.

“Our partnership with Vic Uni helped embed the first team member, a PhD data scientist. His skill and patience enabled us to unlock facts through analysis – demonstrating the best locations to invest to facilitate online court booking systems or input to pricing strategy for AO to maximise yield. But I wanted our Insights team to have organisational impact, more than centralised reports,” Tennis Australia chief marketing and insights officer, Josie Brown, said.

“The objective in the job description I wrote for the head of insights role was “Create an insight engine for Tennis Australia. Harness tools and define a process to mine for insight and present the information in a way that unlocks action”. Our initial focus was improving data quality and data practices within the organisation,” Brown explained.  

“Rather than jumping to invest with vendors or embark on technology driven solutions, we took time to discover more about the existing stores of data, how data was collected,” she said. Early wins included setting up a new way to track tennis participants. Grassroots data is often collected by volunteers with inconsistent access to tools.

“We set KPIs and enabled data to be collected digitally by participants, leading to more robust data quality and tracking. Measuring the national campaign, we could show that we attracted over 20,000 new players in six weeks,” Brown said. 

"Through improved segmentation of customer data, we doubled AO sales conversion rates from 2018 to 2020 based on new data practices and upgraded creative. Now we’re investing in new technology."

According to Brown, the business case secured executive support in large part due to the credentials of the team to deliver growth. "We’re clear on the use-cases we’re pursuing and the ways to approach structuring our data," she said. 

Customer-oriented data utilisatin

For Brownes Dairy, its MILKO platform has been a game changer in allowing it to collect meaningful data on its consumers. The business purchases third-party scan data and conduct its own quantitative brand tracker, but none of these platforms give it direct access to the individual consumer.

"The MILKO platform has allowed us to see, for the first time, basket data for individual households,” said Brownes Dairy director of sales and marketing, Natalie Sarich-Dayton.

Unlike the Flybuys and Everyday Rewards program, the people who analyse the data at Brownes are also the people that deliver to the door of our consumers. “For me, this highlights the power of the data and insights we are collecting at Brownes,” Sarich-Dayton said.

The MILKO data has also allowed it to segment its customers and tailor communications that are meaningful to them. “We have switched on ‘back to school’ specials for families on our yoghurt pouches, and are constantly able to target lapsed users with offers,” she said.

“Recently, we partnered with European Foods (owner of the largest cheese cathedral in the Southern hemisphere) to host a VIP launch event for our new cheddar cheese range. We invited VIP MILKO customers to the event where free cheese and champagne were flowing - over 300 people attended the night.” 

Granular segmentation and targeting

The Nestlé coffee portfolio includes iconic brands including Nescafé, Starbucks and Nespresso. The development of the portfolio is to enable the company to unlock the potential of each brand in the new world of coffee that demands a high level of orchestration.

“With one of the most sophisticated coffee markets in the world, my team in Australia was chosen for the world-first launch of Nescafé Farmers Origins in September 2020,” said Nestlé Oceania director of eBusiness, strategy and marketing, Martin Brown.  

However, with three brands competing in the same format, the business needed to get granular with data to define clearly specific audience strategies to minimise waste, cannibalisation and ensure incrementality.

“The objective was for each brand to grow in share. Our media agency UM played a key role supporting the clear orchestration through a deep dive into our coffee portfolio data,” Brown said.

“We leveraged our significant first-party data base on Nespresso and Starbucks to define custom audiences for each brand. We leveraged this down to suburb specific geo-targeting to optimise targeting in outdoor, path to purchase and direct sampling activations. Nespresso and Starbucks campaigns are live with exceptional growth in both brands leading to our Nescafé Farmers origin launch in September.”

CDP as the data supply-chain

The core principle of Amaysim’s marketing plans is speedy adaption of best-in-class marketing technologies to drive highly personalised customer experiences. This year the telco has invested in a customer data platform (CDP) from Segment.

“Segment has enabled us to move faster with a modern technology stack with increased efficiency and productivity," said Amaysim CMO, Renee Garner. Using the technology, the mobile telco has constructed and enabled a real-time single customer view by combining and enriching all customer touchpoints across platforms and channels for personalised and tailored offers or incentives real-time.

"This democratises data and empower each team to make data-driven decisions and execute campaigns without the need for manual analysis or cross-team dependencies with full transparency and confidence,” said Garner.

In establishing its new ‘data-supply-chain’, Amaysim has used a cross-functional implementation squad pulling in finance, marketing, CRM, data and analytics, technology, billing and service teams.

“A new battleground, we have had wins and hit some challenges, importantly clocking many learnings relating to effective data structures and architecture, business operating model changes, and use case development,” Garner said.

Initial Amaysim use case results, such as automated early renewals, ad suppression, and energy funnel abandon cart, have shown it’s been a success.

“In addition, our targetable audience growth has increased by 19 per cent, exceeding all expectations. Next year will focus on unlocking more of the CDP. “Right connection, right time, right message, right channel, and going above and beyond to make things simpler, faster and satisfying for our customers and our people in service of them,” Garner said. 

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