How predictive publishing tells you what your customer wants to read and increases your turnover!

In the previous blogs you have read the importance of an interactive directory and how to combine it with progressive profiling, so you get more insights about the behavior of your (potential) costumers. The next step is to combine internal and external data to enrich the your costumer’s profiles even more. With these enriched profiles it’s possible to predict what a costumer wants to see: Predictive Publishing!This information makes your offers more relevant, because the only thing you show, is something the costumer might be interested in. It sounds futuristic, but it’s closer than you think. An often used quote at Publ.sh is “We predict what you need to publish next”. Interested how? You will find the answer in this blog!

How the online directory increases retailers turnover

A recent investigation from Mediabrands Marketing Sciences points out that the directory is still the most important source of income for a retailer. Remarkably, the combination of an offline and online directory results in an increased turnover of 27%. And this will be achieved only by ‘simply’ converting the offline directory in an online directory. If we add predictive publising to the online directory and make sure that only the requested products are seen, what will the turnover be? It’s time to work out the predictive publishing and make sure there will be a huge grow of turnover!

How to get your internal data and use it to enrich profiles

In my previous blog you could read about the best way to collect and match the right internal data, so you can get a clear view of your (potential) costumer. Some sources are loaded with interesting data. Salesforce, Magneto and other CRM systems are full of sales and costumer data, Google Analytics and WordPress tell you something about the behaviour on a website, while Optivo, Copernica and MailChimp tell you someting about reading behaviour and e­mailmarketing. When all this data is combined it’s possible to get an good view of customer behaviour in the past, which is very valuable for predictive publishing.

How external influences change the customers behaviour

To enrich the insights even more, it’s very important to measure the effect of external influences. These factors are often skipped in analysis but respresent a very high value. Examples of external influences are the weather, geography, online search behavior, television schedules, sports games and social media.

By combining external en internal data you can find interesting relations between, for an exemple, the weather and reading behaviour in a online directory. So companies can see what the influence is of a week of good weather on their sales, the number of views in the directory or the engagement in the directory.

Combining sources to get predictive insights

The combination of these external en internal data sources contributes to a complete image of the  (potential) customer. By using predictive algorithms and persuasion models (influences) you can

discover patterns. Using these patterns you can predict what the most relevant content is for your costumer. In that way you can not only offer personalized content, but also at the right time and through the right channel.For an example:send Sarah an email on Monday morning with an exclusive offer for some winter shoes (brand X), that are just arrived. Or send Bastiaan volume discount for some blue socks at Tuesday evening.

The result: a unique personalized sellingproces

I have shown you some examples of the biggest communication tool for retailers, the directory. But imagine how predictive publising can contribute to this process. Create personalized content based on analysis.

By capturing your costumer’s behaviour, you can use it to improve your selling proces. Think of someone who just bought a boxspring. In the next directory you can show him blankets of pillows instead of other boxsprings because he just bought one, so he won’t buy another one. The ultimate predictive publishing directory is the one that is personalized. The first step is to make a directory for different segments. For an example, make a garden directory just for people who have a balcony. Or make a brochure for people who are driving a company car, and people who buy their own car. Smart ways to increase your turnover.

When your company starts with data analysis and predictive publishing early, you will have a huge advantage compared to the competition. So don’t stay behind creating mass production directories and unpersonalized content. This is a major change to significantly increase turnover!

Want to know how? Publ.sh is present as a sponsor at the DoorDrop Media Congress, 24 September 2015, or take a look at publ.sh.

ProfileBastiaan Neurink, is Digital Content Marketeer bij Publ.sh

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