Environics Analytics releases new PRIZM5 segmentation system
Environics Analytics (EA) today announced the upcoming launch of the third generation of its popular segmentation system, PRIZM5, reflecting the latest evolution in Canada’s lifestyles and values. The new system, to be released on March 30, classifies Canadians into 68 distinct lifestyle types with names like Boomerang City (upscale, multi-generational urban households), Asian New Wave (younger, well-educated Asian singles and families) and Jeunes d’Esprit (“Young at Heart”, home to older, lower-middle-income rural couples in Quebec).
Nearly a year in the making, PRIZM5 has been updated to include demographic estimates and projections from EA’s 2015 DemoStats database, just-released Social Values data from Environics Research and the latest figures from StatsCan’s 2011 Census. Integrating data from nearly a dozen demographic, marketing and media sources, PRIZM5 provides insights into a wide range of topics—from new and traditional media usage to retail, finance, technology and travel behaviours. Marketers, government agencies and not-for-profits use segmentation for everything from marketing campaigns and site location analysis to merchandising and media planning.
“In order to engage consumers, brands really have to get to know them. That’s not easy to do in this complicated world,” says Jan Kestle, founder and president of EA, from Toronto. “PRIZM5 helps today’s organizations better understand who their customers are and how they can build more meaningful relationships with them. The system identifies Canada’s dominant population segments, reveals their behaviour and mindset, and provides insights into how marketers can reach them.”
With the population increasingly fragmented, PRIZM5 captures important changes in Canadian demographics, lifestyles, behaviour and values. The 68 segments reflect the increasing variety in how Canadians live today. Among the emerging lifestyles are segments that highlight the movement of Canadians to urban centres (Urban Digerati, Striving Startups), an aging population (Second City Retirees, Aging in Suburbia) and increasing ethnic diversity (New World Symphony, Metro Multiculturals). The new edition of PRIZM features 16 predominantly francophone segments, another 14 with large numbers of immigrants and one—Enclave Multiethniques—with a significant presence of both.
In tandem with the PRIZM5 release, EA also announced the 2015 update of more than 25 of its authoritative databases, including HouseholdSpend and DemoStats, with current-year estimates and projections for three, five and ten years into the future. These databases are integral to the strategic planning and forecasting that many organizations undertake to understand their changing users, members, customers and markets. Updates to these databases are delivered separately or in ENVISION5, EA’s powerful yet easy-to-use web-based micromarketing tool.
Also included in the update are detailed 2015 profiles of media, lifestyle and consumer behaviour based on sources such as NADbank-PMB, Numeris, Equifax, Canadian Financial Monitor, IHS Automotive and AskingCanadians™. This comprehensive database offers users access to more than 16,000 variables across a wide range of topics, including media usage, marketplace behaviours, leisure activities and finances. EA’s annual data updates provide users with the most comprehensive and up-to-date set of marketing-related data and software available in Canada.
Lyris Extends Audience Messaging Solution for Publishers with Automated Content Personalization
At the Digiday Publishing Summit, Lyris today announced the release of Lyris Predictive Personalization, the first intelligent content engine for publishers to combine machine learning with digital messaging automation to deliver contextually personalized content to each individual subscriber. By effectively combining content with audience demographic and behavioral data, Lyris Predictive Personalization increases conversions and advertising revenue by empowering publishers to maximize engagement.
Today’s media landscape is constantly evolving. Subscribers have an abundance of choice and capturing their interest is increasingly difficult. Lyris Predictive Personalization goes beyond simple business rules and segmentation and applies real-time machine learning to automatically generate meaningful content recommendations based on behavior, trending topics, and semantic analysis.
Delivering meaningful content at scale across digital channels requires intelligent automation. Lyris Predictive Personalization takes advantage of everything we know about our audiences, augments it with real-time interactions, and automatically assembles and delivers the most appropriate messages to subscribers across their preferred digital channels. This drives engagement, which ultimately translates into more revenue.
By automating the assembly and delivery of individually tailored messages that can include any type and quantity of published material, Lyris Predictive Personalization streamlines campaign execution and reduces message creation and curation time. This results in value-based subscriber relationships that generate more ad revenue and conversions, and significantly reduced subscriber churn.
“Scaling personalization up seems to contradict the very definition of the word, and in truth, no one is going to write one million unique emails, not in this lifetime,” said Akin Arikan, senior director of product marketing at Lyris. “Lyris Predictive Personalization makes sending one million individually personalized emails as easy as sending one. Lyris now lets publishers send personalized messages based on real-time data, when each individual user is most likely to engage with it.”
Lyris Predictive Personalization is delivered on Lyris’ powerful Audience Messaging Platform, used by some of the world’s largest Publishing, Media, and Entertainment companies. The Lyris Audience Messaging Platform combines applications to automate customer engagement with an open platform that integrates digital messaging with publishers’ unique set of interactive content, data, applications, and workflows so that they can consistently and effectively connect with their audiences in a personalized way.
Vision Critical Launches Retail Intelligence Suite—Revolutionizing How Retailers Attract and Retain Today’s Empowered, Tech-Savvy Customers
The Retail Intelligence Suite solution transforms how retailers engage customers for meaningful feedback and insight
Now retailers can anticipate and resolve key business challenges related to customer loyalty, omnichannel, customer experience and product innovation
Leading retailers such as Chico’s, Nordstrom, Guitar Center and Canadian Tire turn to Vision Critical technology solutions to help them get actionable feedback from their customers
Vision Critical, the leading customer intelligence platform provider, today launched its Retail Intelligence Suite, a software solution created to revolutionize how retailers attract and retain today’s tech-savvy customers. The widespread adoption of mobile, social and cloud technologies has dramatically changed the retail landscape. Retailers are struggling to understand why their customers behave the way they do, and existing technology solutions provide an incomplete picture. The Retail Intelligence Suite solution allows retailers to tackle common business challenges by better understanding what their customers want and need. Retailers can now make smarter decisions based on conversations with their customers through a secure, opt-in online community of members who provide ongoing feedback and insight that builds over time into a rich body of knowledge. Leading retailers including Chico’s, Nordstrom, Guitar Center and Canadian Tire engage their customers for actionable feedback through Vision Critical Insight Communities.
Retail Intelligence Suite enables companies to make smarter business decisions by engaging their customers for actionable insight
Built on the Vision Critical customer intelligence platform, the Retail Intelligence Suite solution enables retailers to better understand customer behavior and preferences in order to grow customer loyalty, meet omnichannel expectations, improve customer experience and develop innovative products.
Retailers will experience the benefits of having a two-way dialogue with their customers through a secure, opt-in online community. The solution is programmed with tools and templates so that retailers can quickly engage community members for insight in order to solve key industry challenges.
With the Retail Intelligence Suite solution, retailers can:
- Build member profiles for customers as they change over time.
- Deploy regular customer engagement projects.
- Leverage a customer intelligence library pre-programmed with activities designed to address common retail challenges.
- Analyze member feedback quickly and efficiently.
- Share actionable insight with important stakeholders across the company, leading to smarter, more customer-centric decisions.
Retailers can now foresee and overcome common challenges related to customer loyalty, omnichannel, customer experience and product innovation
Retailers are struggling to understand their customers in the new retail landscape. Existing solutions used to learn about customer behaviors and preferences, such as survey tools, customer relationship management (CRM) systems and social media listening platforms, are ineffective or incomplete. According to a recent report from PWC, retailers need to develop “a new mind-set, new skills and a new organizational design.” The Retail Intelligence Suite solution provides retailers with the needed customer feedback so that they can predict and solve frequent business problems.
With Vision Critical’s Retail Intelligence Suite retailers can now:
- Accurately measure customer loyalty and develop strategies to maximize customer spend.
- Create a customer-centric shopping experience across all purchasing channels and rapidly adjust cross-channel promotion strategies.
- Improve customer experience in order to retain existing customers and acquire new ones.
- Generate new ideas based on customer feedback and save time and money by identifying and focusing on the best ideas.
Creative and IT Collaboration on the Rise
Research Reveals Common Cross-Departmental Communication Challenges
As marketing becomes increasingly dependent on technology, creative and information technology (IT) teams are crossing paths more often. Research from The Creative Group and Robert Half Technology underscores this trend: More than half (55 per cent) of advertising and marketing executives interviewed said they are collaborating more closely with technology leaders within their company compared to three years ago. One-third (33 per cent) of chief information officers (CIOs) reported the same of their marketing counterparts.
But barriers to effective partnering persist. When asked to name the number-one challenge for creative and IT teams when collaborating, the top response among advertising and marketing executives and CIOs was communication. Project logistics and IT-related challenges also are significant barriers, according to both sets of respondents.
Advertising and marketing executives were asked, “Compared to three years ago, how closely are you collaborating with technology leaders within your company?” Their responses:
| Much more closely | 30% |
| Somewhat more closely | 25% |
| The same amount | 39% |
| Somewhat less closely | 3% |
| Much less closely | 0% |
| Does not apply (no technology leaders) | 1% |
| Don’t know | 1% |
| 99%* |
CIOs were asked, “Compared to three years ago, how closely are you collaborating with creative/marketing leaders within your company?” Their responses:
| Much more closely | 12% |
| Somewhat more closely | 21% |
| The same amount | 37% |
| Somewhat less closely | 3% |
| Much less closely | 2% |
| Does not apply (no creative/marketing leaders) | 23% |
| Don’t know | 1% |
| 99%* |
*Responses do not total 100 per cent due to rounding.
View an infographic featuring the research results.
“Technology continues to play a more prominent role in business, prompting more collaboration between IT teams and other departments in an organization, including marketing,” said Deborah Bottineau, senior regional manager of Robert Half Technology and The Creative Group. “With much of marketing being directed to the end user, and IT affecting the user experience, without this collaboration organizations could be missing the opportunity to uncover innovative digital solutions.”
Bottineau added, “Each department has unique skills and to work effectively together requires open dialogue and teamwork, especially among key roles such as user experience designers, web designers, and mobile application developers.”
The Creative Group and Robert Half Technology offer five tips to help creative and IT teams overcome common collaboration barriers:
- Form cross-functional teams around a central goal. While resources may come from different departments, creating one work group to tackle a particular project, like a website redesign, can help improve collaboration and eliminate an “us versus them” mentality. Once established, make sure objectives are clearly defined and communicated at the onset.
- Make time to meet — and use that time effectively. Creative and IT leaders reported that scheduling in-person meetings is difficult given heavy workloads. However, carving out an hour or two to discuss projects can save valuable time and prevent miscommunication down the road.
- Check jargon at the door. Workplace and departmental lingo can help colleagues communicate ideas more quickly, but excessive use can cause people to lose interest and tune out if it’s unfamiliar to them. Throw in technical terminology and buzzwords like “IoT” and “growth hacking” and the dialogue will only go downhill. Explain concepts in terms the audience will understand and use concrete examples when doing so.
- Encourage constructive criticism. Creative and IT executives said providing feedback to their counterparts is challenging because it’s often not well-received. Empathy can help pave the path toward more productive conversations throughout the duration of a project and at post-mortem meetings. Teams must also clarify the time and resources that go into an initiative: A seemingly simple task may include behind-the-scenes complexity.
- Resolve conflicts quickly. When miscommunication leads to frustration, tempers can flare, especially when creative and IT personnel are under pressure. Addressing cross-team discord swiftly can go a long way toward maintaining momentum and building morale.
About the Research
The surveys were developed by The Creative Group and Robert Half Technology, and conducted by an independent research firm. They include responses from 400 U.S. advertising and marketing executives and more than 2,400 CIOs from U.S. companies with 100 or more employees in 24 metropolitan areas.
SOURCE Robert Half Technology
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