Using Lifestyle data in today's and tomorrow's world.

1. USING LIFESTYLE DATA IN TODAY’S
AND TOMORROW’S WORLD

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Background
One of the most noticeable changes in business over the last 5 years has been the shift in power from businesses
to consumers. The catalyst for this shift is unquestionably the amount of technology available and means of social
amplification available to consumers. This has led to the domination of customer centric companies.
These companies are putting data and insight at the heart of everything they do. However, with the explosion in
available data, both structured and unstructured, there are two key challenges:
1. Obtaining relevant customer data
2. Making sense of it…
CACI - the company I work for- has built itself on helping companies do just this.
We all know that the way in which consumers interact with brands is changing at a higher pace than businesses
have ever seen before. Customers demand information from businesses at the touch of a button, expect an
immediate response to their needs and want their favourite brands to recognise them and engage them on an
ever more personal level.
The marketing fundamentals behind what a business should want to deliver to a consumer have not changed
though; the right message at the right time, through the right channel. What has changed is the way in which this
message is consumed, the channel of delivery and the speed a business is able to react to a consumer’s action and
trigger such a message.
Arguably, technology has been the biggest game changer in this area and the capability it enables. Many of
the businesses that we, in CACI, work with have been keen to understand how this technology can work for
them. Over the past 15 years we have helped a great number of our clients explore this, implementing new
technologies and changing the way their marketing is delivered.
We have been fortunate enough to have been part of great success stories. Recently we took the time to reflect
internally and with clients on some of the common themes associated with these successes. The one consistent
theme throughout was recognising the importance and use of data. The importance of data in any successful
marketing operations is well documented. CACI has built its business in the UK on the foundations of being
experts in consumer and location data. It is incredibly pleasing to see that one of the commonalties of success is
so closely linked to our heritage and core competency.
As we have helped our clients adapt to today’s (and tomorrow’s) world, some of the questions we help our
clients with are how they use data, and increasingly what place does traditional lifestyle and segmentation data
hold.
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk

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About the Author
Holly Puzylo – Senior Account Manager
Holly has been working in CACI’s key client account team for over 4 years, helping
clients such as Legal & General, RSPB and Post Office LTD drive value from CACI
data and solutions. With a background as an analyst, Holly truly understands data
and the importance of its application within a business today.
Traditional uses of lifestyle data vs todays
(and tomorrow’s).
Traditionally lifestyle data has been used in marketing to support customer segmentation and profiling to help
businesses effectively target and communicate with customers and prospects.
So how are businesses using lifestyle data in today’s world? On the face of it you may think that the quick answer
is that broadly these uses are the same:
• Profiling to understand their customers and prospects
• Clear customer and prospect segmentation to develop tailored marketing strategy
• Behaviour modelling and prediction to identify the customers and prospects most likely to exhibit
desired behaviour
• Communicating to the rest of the business simply and clearly the personas of key customer segments
• Target prospects who fit the profile of key customer segments and use consumer data to contact and acquire
new customers and prospects
• Enhance the information they hold on customers in order to support their marketing activities.
However we have seen recently that the projects we work with clients on using lifestyle data are often notably
different from that of years past. Read on to discover some of the ways CACI has been using lifestyle data in
today’s technology driven world.
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk

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Profiling – Keeping the variables current
The biggest change we have seen here is the information companies want on their customers and prospects
to help improve their understanding. If, 5 years ago, a client had asked me if we had data on how many of their
customers owned a smartphone, unless they were telecommunications/electronics provider, I would have thought
the question a bit obscure. What use will that be other than an indicator or tech adoption perhaps? However,
recently I’ve been helping a client understand which of their customers own smartphones, who are regular users
of these and which specifically use their smartphones to read their emails. This information is going to be a key
input in profiling their customers and subsequent input into their mobile strategy.
For specialist agencies, such as CACI, a key task is to constantly evaluate sources of data in order to recognise,
search for and collect data points and variables that accurately reflect today’s consumer. And the pace to which
the data will evolve had dramatically increased in the last few years. Similarly agencies also need to recognise
where variables become obsolete and take up valuable space in a client’s database or profiling tool, and remove
these – do you or your team really want to know which of your customer’s regularly buy VHS tapes or shop at
Somerfield?
Segmentation – Evolving consumer behaviours
A cornerstone of a marketing team’s toolkit has long been customer segmentation. Grouping similar customers
and prospects together in order to develop marketing strategies around these segments and then executing
marketing activities tailored to each is marketing 101. Whilst the principles have remained the same over the
years, segmentation has come a long way as many factors now help to shape and influence these changes.
• We have seen increased data availability in the market covering a wider range of aspects of the consumer
• Business know more about their customers than ever before covering their transactions and interactions
across an increased number of touch points
• The dimensions driving consumer behaviours and choices are evolving and are often more complex
• The market places in which our clients operate are more competitive than ever before
• In some cases legislative changes have forced businesses to work differently e.g. RDR in the Financial Services
sector
Increasingly lifestyle data has been seamlessly linked to both existing client data and other, more attitudinally
focused research data. This means that the segmentations now delivered for clients are far more multi-dimensional
than ever and agencies – such as CACI – are now able to incorporate all dimensions required with
no compromise.
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk

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Enhancement – Knowing who your customers are
As the number of touch points that consumers interact with businesses increase, lifestyle data has become more
important in maximising the channels that brands can use to contact their customers. We’ve seen in recent years
many clients taking the insight gained from lifestyle data. Using this to identify who their customers are and then
appending contact details to their customer base.
By using lifestyle data, companies can also find out more about who their customers are; even if they only have
limited information available, such as an email address. An awful lot of information can be provided through
reverse appending an email address to lifestyle data.
Take an electronics company for example whose products are largely sold through a network of 3rd parties.
Their contact with their end customers is very infrequent and the data they hold very sparse. However we have
been able to take the limited information that they do have- primarily an email address- and reverse append this
to our own lifestyle data file to tell the company who their customers are.
We, at CACI, are now investing in going beyond this to enable clients to take this into the online world too.
These recent partnerships enable our clients to join up their offline and online activity like never before. Keep an
eye out over the following months for more information on CACI’s DMP capabilities and what it will mean for
your company.
Personas - Socialisation of data in business
Customer centricity is pushing each and every department of a business (whether customer facing or not) to
understand their customers and key segments. Whilst perceptions and personal anecdotes may have in the past
informed many employees about whom their customers were. The actual data available within a business on
customers is now invaluable in proving (or disproving) these hypotheses; whether that is in terms of their internal
metrics - such as transactions, engagement, value, cross product holding - or external demographic and attitudinal
differentiators - such as age, income, online behaviour and lifestyle attitudes.
In term of disseminating this information to the business and educating employees, not everyone is analytical so
a profiler or spreadsheet just does not cut it. The socialisation of personas or pen portraits across the wider
business means that more than ever these need to be succinct, clear and easily digestible. Ideally these should
be no more than a page; combining infographics plus creative to build an emotive picture based on the key facts
shown in the data. Everyone from the CEO to the shop floor should be able to understand these quickly and
remember the key takeaways from this.
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk

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We have seen the greatest changes in these recently in terms of the creativity applied to the presentation of
the data. More and more the creative team at CACI are sat with our traditional techies pulling out the key
insights from client’s internal behavioural data, lifestyle data and further research data. Allowing us to distil the key
differentiators on each customer segment on to a beautifully presented page!
CACI’s Lifestyle data itself often provides a great starting point as the new profiling tools pull out these
differentiators to give a starting point in showing clients what is significant about their customers for them. Our
system is easy to use so anyone can run a quick profiling exercise and within a week start to put together a
customer persona either themselves or with our help to educate the wider business on exactly who their key
customers are!
Acquisition – Reducing the cost of gaining leads
One of the core applications of lifestyle data is using the insight gained to shape targeted acquisition campaigns.
The key customer segments and target prospects identified through profiling and segmentation can be used
to build targeted acquisition campaigns and combined with CACI’s contact data universe they can be reached
through direct mail, email, landline and mobile. Often when a client begins working with CACI on lifestyle
data to accompany their acquisition efforts, they will focus on one channel. This may be led by organisational
structures where different marketing teams will own different channels; or previous success in a channel. But, very
often it’s ultimately due to budgets.
We have seen in recent years, as our clients adopt a much more customer centric approach, that cross-channel
marketing has been an area which can be implemented with relative pace and ease. Where clients have
been using lifestyle data with single channel campaigns for a number of years with success, experience shows
that it does not necessarily mean that the wealth of insight and knowledge gained from campaign results will
apply directly to another channel. However with relevant and up to date lifestyle data you can ensure that any
acquisition efforts suit the way that consumers wish to be communicated with in today’s world. Businesses
should also not expect to get this right overnight (which may be the expectation from a budget holder!).
However it should be said that with the right planning and testing we have seen some real success stories, with
examples including clients reducing their cost per lead by up to 200% from getting the targeting and the mix of
channels right. The huge amount of contact data available in CACI’s data universe combined with the insight
gained from correct use of lifestyle data give anyone the flexibility to trial and test a mix of channels in their
contact strategy. This has really worked where it was applied with rigour in the campaign structure and careful
testing activity campaigns are evolving over time to find the optimum mix for each specific client and customer
base.
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk

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Discover OCEAN – CACI’s Lifestyle Data
Ocean was the first lifestyle data product introduced to the UK back in 2000. CACI pull together information
from over 20 independent partners to create a single and complete view of the 48m UK adult consumers.
Across every adult are over 650 data variables covering:
• Demographics – age, income, no. of children
• Home & Motor – house type, no. of cars
• Digital – internet usage, social networking
• Finance – Savings, investments and product holdings
• Lifestyle – interests and hobbies
• Shopping – weekly spend, supermarket brands
For decades CACI have been working with clients to evolve and improve Ocean and its lifestyle data
capabilities, to meet the ever changing needs of clients in today’s marketplace.
The way in which Ocean is used today has varied greatly from its traditional roots, and its ability to be woven
into a business’s insight, marketing, digital and communications departments is increasing in line with the
evolving needs of these teams. Ocean’s core functions have not changed but its use across an ever greater
number of client challenges often with more complexity is growing and evolving. CACI have been at the
forefront of developments in consumer data in the UK for over 35 years and recognise that for our clients its
importance in business and marketing is only going to increase, which is why we continue to put data at the
heart of what we do.
If you would like to discuss how you can benefit from some of the new ways we are using lifestyle data,
why not chat directly with Holly - hpuzylo@caci.co.uk
© CACI 2014 www.caci.co.uk