• Kath Straub, Persuasive Technologies
• Paul Hughes, Design Thinking / Experience Design
• Peter van der Putten, Next Best Action Marketing / Analytics
• Nicolas Mohr, Datamining / Analytics

Read all of there bios on the speaker-page.

To judge marketing efforts on the base of their results shouldn’t sound like a complete outlandish idea. Evidence Based Marketing is all about that idea. Evidence based is also another word for scientific, so we are talking about rigorous measuring here, under “controlled” conditions.

Predicting which effort will land the best result is part of that equation. Evidence based marketing is even more than that, but let’s take it from here. Not that I want to ruin your day, but I very much doubt that in your organization results are being measured scientifically. Don’t read any further if you think science is only one way of looking at your business.

Database Marketing revisited
Evidence Based Marketing is the next step in the field of database marketing, were now the key driver is not to deliver a bunch of (product oriented) campaigns according to some planned calendar. Evidence Based Marketing is about the ability to drive your customers experience with an optimal set of propositions, delivered in a consistent matter over all your interaction channels (in- and outbound).

Next Best Action marketing embraces the holistic customer view
The ever more demanding customer of our age is pushing our marketing efforts into far more then conversion, in its traditional marketing meaning, alone. We need to think of our customer in all her dimensions if we want to successfully create a loyal feeling towards our brand. This asks for a holistic customer view when we design our customer interaction strategies and we need to not only think about how and what to sell but also on when to focus on service, when to pamper if we meshed up. And of cause we need to cover our risks.

The next best action marketing paradigm is a tactical method to deliver a holistic customer interaction strategy that was first mentioned by people from Chordiant Software. The idea is to set up a lot of possible treatments or propositions that are prioritized depending on individual customer profiles. Calculated in realtime this gives the ability to personalize your message to the customer in a way not yet seen before.

Micro conversions drive NBA interaction strategy.
As next best action marketing is all about setting up a conversation with your customer, it is key to think about the field of Persuasive Technology and how this influences your interaction strategy and next best actions. Micro conversions play a vital role in the on- and off-line customer journey towards conversion.

How to deliver?

The Intelligence Factory enables your marketing department to deliver Customer Intelligence Insights into all of your in- and outbound channels in a factory like a production process. Ad hoc data mining is replaced by adaptive, self learning models that are embedded in the channels to pick up the latest sentiment for that specific channel, thus optimally biased toward the public using that channel. Real-time and centralized decision technology ensures cross channel and consistent delivery of your brands message, thus truly delivering your customer’s demands to a positive and pleasant experience.

Competing on Analytics: only trail & error will convince.
One key message of the book Competing on Analytics by Harris and Davenport in my mind is that within another decade the only way to distinguish you from your competitor is that you outsmart your competitor by more and better analytics so you can stay ahead in your distinctive capabilities.

The good thing of the online world is the relative ease with which we can experiment and test what our customers like. Champion – challenger strategies are easily implemented to continuously improve the best set of propositions to realize our conversion targets and the holistic customer view is there to balance our and our customer’s interests.

The emergence of survival marketing
Companies like Amazon and Google have constantly hundreds of versions of their website live, where each version is actually competing for survival with all other versions. Or, if we look at it one level higher, each (online) proposition is competing with all its neighbors. In this context I would like to point out the similarity of this “survival of fit propositions” to the concept of the meme by Richard Dawkins in the book “The Selfish Gene”.

Survival marketing is the idea that marketers in the near future will look after a set of propositions that evolve over time, these propositions will compete in a pool of next best actions. The way marketeers will control these propositions is by setting constraints on price, discounts and promotion bandwidth in communication channels.

Propositions will not be created manually by marketers but they will be crafted from a context that is defined in the same way ontologies of the semantic web are defined. Genetic programming will facilitate the process of proposition creation. So marketers in the future will more become farmers of propositions. The evolutionary pressure will ensure the exploitation of every possible creative option to deliver to the ever more demanding customer a great experience.

Bram van Essen - VEMIC

Bram van Essen – Marketing Intelligence Consultant at Van Essen Marketing Intelligence Consultancy – is specialized in developing multichannel contact strategies and customer value management. He has worked for five years for De Lotto where he set up the Marketresearch and Database Marketing unit. At Paul Postma Marketing Consultancy he specialized in marketing intelligence and predictive modeling. With over ten years experience, mainly in banking, telecom and gambling, he started his own marketing intelligence firm in 2008.

Bram has strong analytical capabilities, is resourceful and creative. Because of the diversity of markets he has worked is, he is able to quickly comprehend the customers business.

Eddy Blackwire

Eddy Blackwire started spinning vinyl in the mid nineties. Influenced by different styles, he now plays party-minded club & electro house music, which features groovy club beats untill uplifting trance music.

Among other venues Eddy Blackwire performed at the next clubs/events/locations: Nighttown, FFWD Heineken Dance Parade, Fresh FM, Radio 3 FM, Outland (previous Ministry of Dance), Hollywood Music Hall, The Level, Zanzibar (Belgium), Umania (previous Marathon, club EAU).

Last week I tossed a coin a hundred times. 49 heads. Then I changed into a red t-shirt and tossed the same coin another hundred times. 51 heads. From this, I conclude that wearing a red shirt gives a 4.1% increase in conversion in throwing heads.

A ridiculous experiment (yes, I really did it) with a ridiculous conclusion, yet I sometimes see similarly unreliable analysis in A/B testing.

Read the full post here.

Reinout Wolfert - SNS Bank

Reinout Wolfert works as a Web Analyst at SNS Bank. As a child of the 2.0 generation he shares his knowledge and experience in web analytics and conversion optimization with the world at Webanalisten dot NL, founded together with Ton Wesseling. Part of his time he spents at SNS Bank on webanalytics and (muti variation) testing. He also regularly runs projects aimed at the (re) development of new media. For example, the redesign of snsbank.nl, the redesign of the web forms, the implementation of the new web analytics software and the development of inbound marketing techniques within new media.

Peter van der Graaf - Search Specialist

Peter van der Graaf has been in online marketing for over ten years. Working for both big and small companies in various competitive industries, he can share many great stories and examples. From the field of search engine optimization he expanded his knowledge to related aspects of interaction, mobile, measurability, social media and many more.

Hopefully for you he gets to be your team captain, because he’s a fun guy to have around.

Pieter Stel - CapGemini

Pieter Stel is Principal Consultant and Competence Leader Marketing Intelligence for Capgemini Consulting. Pieter joined Capgemini Consulting since 1999 (starting at Ernst & Young Consulting, later on for business unit Paul Postma Marketing Consultancy). He worked before as a Research Manager for an innovative market research company. Pieter is since 2005 main teacher of the Masterclass Marketing Intelligence (for IDMK), a frequent speaker on marketing events and co-author of ‘Handbook Direct Marketing 2.0 (Paul Postma and others, 2007)’.

Pieter is above all an enthusiastic, energetic and inspiring marketing professional who has both strong  analytical, creative and soft skills, which –combined with his extensive business experience- makes him an almost ideal team captain for Design for Conversion (well alright, let’s admit that his mobile phone skills might be a little more sophisticated…).

Bart Clement - DIKW

Bart Clement – datamining – and decisioning consultant at DIKW Consulting-  is specialized in the development and implementation of segmentation strategies, lifetime value approaches and delivering sophisticated in – and outbound contact strategies based on predictive modeling. In his projects his focus is on the integration of online – and offline customer behavioural data in decision logics. Using webmining techniques Bart developed the customer journey model in which the online customer decision process is described in three phases. Using this model it is possible to integrate online behaviour successfully into the existing in – and outbound contact strategy.

His main working fields are in marketing and customer analyse environments at financial institutions and telecom operators.
Bart has years of experience in the Dutch banking sector, insurance companies and telecom in several roles in several business units. After 4 years he started working for DIKW consulting as a senior consultant where he is one of the founders of the advanced analytics business unit.

Check out what nice things Karl had to say about us:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Design for Conversion testimonial – Dr. Karl Blanks from webanalisten.