So why was the recall in the research so low and the actual response so high? I can think of three explanations:

First, we were targeting a large group of the population. It was possible that even though the hard data results were good, we were drawing our DM response from portions of the population that simply hadn’t been included in the sample.   If we had a 25% response then that was a record-breaker from a DM planning point of view, but it still meant that the vast majority of the target – 75% – hadn’t responded. Those that had engaged with the mailing were far more likely to recall it than those who had not. So if our sample happened to comprise of 85% or 90% of those who did not respond, then the recall results would be much lower than the response actually experienced.

The second explanation is more intriguing. Could it be that even though 1 in 4 of the target had responded, those that did respond had failed to make the connection between the what they’d actually done and what the research was asking them? In this scenario the sample is accurate and reaching our 1 in 4 respondents, but those who had responded forgot that they had done so when asked in research. Had they failed to connect the research question to the campaign and to their response behaviour?

The third explanation is that some of the respondents deliberately disconnected their actual behaviour from the answers they gave in the research. In other words, they did respond, but they didn’t want to say so.  They were using the research as a communication channel to share a point of view along the lines of ‘I’m not going to tell you exactly what I did. What I am going to tell you is that I didn’t like being perceived to be in your target audience, or perceived to be the sort of person who would buy the sort of product you were offering’.

Whatever the explanation, this taught me an important lesson; market research and behavioural data can say very different things. Asking people what they did, or think they did, can be very different to what they actually did. If market research tells you something, take it as an indicator not a fact. If it’s something big, do more digging around the research before you act on it.  But if hard data tells you something, whether it’s good or bad, whether you like it or not, you can be sure that it reflects changes in actual behaviour, the ultimate measure of marketing success or failure.

The post Data planning and market research – mind the gap first appeared on Marketing IQ.

• Exactly who buys a given product or service
• Detailed information about the characteristics of those buyers
• Which other products and services they buy
• Which product and service offers they find most attractive
• Which buyers buy more of certain types of products
• How you can find more buyers with the same characteristics

These data analysis techniques can be applied to all types of customer data – whether it’s for a retail business, an online business or a call centre based business. Insight from data analysis can be applied across a wide spectrum; from adding inspiration to a creative brief through to changing a company’s entire business strategy.

You may think the claim that data analysis can change the destiny of a business is rather grandiose. But I can can think of two examples of breakthrough data insight from the same category that ended up contributing millions in additional brand revenues.

Sainsbury’s  – Sainsbury’s agency AMV were tasked with increasing the then ailing retailer’s sales by £2.5bn over a three year period. A seemingly impossible challenge until viewed as a data question. The AMV team calculated that £2.5bn equated to £833m per year which in turn equated to £16m per week.  It still looked like a big number until the AMV team considered that Sainsbury’s handled 14m customer transactions per week.  Then the target equated to just £1.14 per transaction. The brief to increase sales by £833m per week could be redefined as increasing each existing transaction by just £1.14. Now the target not only looked attainable, but this data insight led to the idea that lots of small changes could make a big difference.  From this insight came the campaign idea that consumers should “Try something new today”. By asking customers to ‘try something new’ they were able to persuade customers to spend at extra £1.14 every time they shopped.

Tesco – The Tesco Clubcard is now legendary as both a customer loyalty card and a source of information about customers.  Up until the introduction of the loyalty card, many retailers didn’t know who their customers were. And if they didn’t know who they were it was difficult for them to gather the data that allowed them to understand individual customers better. With the Club Card this all changed. Tesco were able to develop individual data driven relationships with their customers.  They were able to understand customer needs better and in doing so they gained competitive advantage over their rivals.

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