1. Get a Free List of Your Competitors’
Best Customers, Today!
June | 2009

2. Get a Free List of Your Competitors’ Best Customers, Today!
Many companies already own the right data for targeted acquisition from their
competitors, yet most aren’t aware of it. Is your company one of them? What
you think you don’t know but actually likely do regarding your competitors’
customers represents a huge untapped potential that could create substantial
impact to your company’s bottom-line.
What?
A number of industries, especially telecommunications and finance, are
facilitators of interactions between people – be it, for example, a phone
conversation, or, a financial transfer.. These types of interactions allow such
industries to have a unique ability in terms of marketing: direct access to
competitors’ customers. When a telecom operator’s customer makes an off-net
call, or when a bank’s customer makes a money transfer to another bank, they
provide precious bits of information for the company – the phone or account
number of a potential customer as well as behavioral information about that
potential customer. Using a blend of traditional and unconventional tools of data
mining and direct marketing, it’s possible to reach out to these potential
customers and make very specific and targeted offers to them.
But, Why?
The utilization of analytics in designing and conducting marketing activities has
become a de-facto standard among the best of the best, providing significant
benefits to those organizations wise enough to realize its potential. Mainly until
now though, most of the analytics-driven marketing activities have focused on
the existing customer base – for retention, for internal growth, and sometimes,
for win-back. Many of the companies in the aforementioned industries have thus
far wasted the opportunity of using analytics for acquisition. If data mining
techniques have been useful for identifying untapped potential in one’s own
customer base, why not use them to get a better understanding and targeting of
the competitors’ customers interacting with one’s own?
Using already accessible internal data to cherry-pick the competitors’ customers
provides a highly cost-effective means for acquisition. It also allows companies to
select targets for acquisition that are most related to its own customer base,
hence increasing the loyalty of its existing customers through the building of a
closer-knit community.
So, How?
Similar to most customer analytics initiatives, competitor customer acquisition
starts with preparing the data required for analysis and targeting. A competitor
customer data mart – a data set including one potential customer on each row as
well as summary of his/her interactions with your customers – is best-suited for
this job. In this competitor customer data mart, you would have:

3. Telecommunications (from CDR data)
 A unique identifier: Phone Number of the Competitor Customer
 History: A field regarding the length of time in years the phone number has
been appearing on your network as a called individual.
 Value determinants: Fields regarding count, duration and value of
interactions with this customer from your network (e.g. different number of your
customers calling the number / total MoU for calls to the number)
 Behavior determinants: Fields regarding time and type of interactions with
this customer from your network (e.g. SMS interactions mostly / weekend-heavy
users)
Finance (from Transactions data)
 A unique identifier: Account Number of the Competitor Customer
 History: A field regarding the length of time in years the account number has
been involved in financial transactions with your customers.
 Value determinants: Fields regarding count and monetary value of
interactions with this customer from your customer base (e.g. different number
of your customers transferring / total $ of transactions with this account)
 Behavior determinants: Fields regarding nature and type of interactions with
this customer from your customer base (e.g. small and frequent quantities /
currency used in interactions)
Once such a data mart is ready, the next step involves the use of traditional
analysis and data mining techniques – such as value and behavior based
segmentation – to identify the best targets for acquisition (in addition to
business case modeling to understand the potential revenues and impact on cost
of acquiring a given customer)Usually, the competitors’ customers with the
highest amount of interactions with your customer base would turn out to be
the most valuable customers of your competitors, hence the best targets for
your acquisition purposes. Other factors of course need to be examined (i.e. the
benefits of not paying an interconnection fee in telco, for example). Based on the
behavior segments in your target base, you can approach them with value
offerings that are most relevant for their needs (e.g. offering weekend discounts
to potential customers who interact with your base most frequently during
weekends).
Of course, the natural question at this stage would be: “Now that we know
whom to target and what to offer, how can we communicate with them?” Two
alternative answers exist for this question:
1. In countries where rules and regulations allow such actions and the local
culture is such that the potential customers would not be irritated, the most
effective approach would be to reach out directly. In telecommunications, this
means calling them or sending an SMS to their phone numbers – which is already
known in CDR data. In finance, this would mean either making use of contact
details provided by your own customers when performing their transactions, or
making dummy transfers towards your potential customers – such as a $0.0001
money transfer to their account with a personalized message and offer as the
description of the transaction.

4. 2. When existing regulations or local culture does not allow for direct
communications with your potential customers, the next best alternative is using
your own customer base for contact, through the leveraging of referral
programs. Once you know which potential customers you desire, it’s easy to
identify which of your own customers interact with them the most. Using highly
targeted referral offers – such as ‘get the last customer you’ve called on to our
network and you both get 200 free minutes’ – your customers would literally
work as your intelligent acquisition channel, grabbing the most valuable
customers from your competitors.
What Next?
Using internal data for competitor customer acquisition may seem to be an
unorthodox method for most traditional marketers. Yet, as long as regulations
allow for it and you avoid invading the privacy of customers, it can generate
quick profits and build an avalanche impact, as the more customers you get, the
more visibility you will have over your competitors’ base through their
interactions. If you are up for it, we recommend that you start with some quick-
wins and test the concept in your market.

5. About Forte Consultancy Group
Forte Consultancy Group delivers fact-based solutions, balancing short and long term
impact as well as benefits for stakeholders. Forte Consultancy Group provides a variety
of service offerings for numerous sectors, approached in three general phases -
intelligence, design, and implementation.
For more information, please contact
info@forteconsultancy.com
Forte Consultancy Group | Istanbul Office
www.forteconsultancy.com