Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know
Congratulations to all UK readers. The fact that you are following these words suggests it is highly likely that you are one of 76% of the population that uses a computer, and is conclusive proof that you are among the 99% who are literate. I discovered these figures in an entertaining book called Seeing The Bigger Picture, which presents all manner of fascinating data about human behaviour via the medium of infographics.
What the book tells us about technology and literacy is probably not so remarkable – we could have guessed as much by our daily experience – but other statistics in its pages do challenge preconceptions. For example, considering the cultural stereotype, who’d have thought that the French would sit third from bottom in a list of the most sexually confident nations? Sacré bleu.
Gathering data about human behaviour can not only help assemble insightful information on how people feel but also how they receive information, which can be very useful if you’re in the business of communicating a marketing message. I know, for example, from Seeing The Bigger Picture, that I will (regardless of translation issues) have limited success in addressing South Korean readers, because they apparently work the longest hours of any nation in the world and probably cannot afford the time-luxury of reading a blog, even one as good as this. Inhabitants of The Netherlands however, who work for roughly half as long as South Koreans, have no excuse for not hanging on to my every word, so I will throw in something especially for them later on.
Of course, tailoring messages to specific audiences using behavioural data can be achieved far more accurately than by using statistics from a book (which will most likely be out-of-date before it leaves the press). Increasingly, intelligent marketing tools provide extremely detailed, segmented, real-time feedback that reveals the true behaviour of customers. For marketers, it’s the potential of tools such as this that has encouraged even late adopters of technology to be more aware of their potential and existing audiences and gather data that enables them to understand and better communicate with customers. Our own tool, the LAW AMP (Automated Marketing Platform), collects data from every marketing communication sent, from standard measurements such as click-through rates, to more detailed data such as communication preferences and favoured types of content. It’s this valuable data that enables more effective targeting and segmentation for future communications. Automated marketing platforms tell marketers very useful things that they wouldn’t otherwise know about their customers. Using this constantly refreshed data, they can better target their communications and tell their customers useful things that perhaps they didn’t know, too.
Working with old data has always been a bit hit-and-miss, whether the goal is business or pleasure – you just have to hope that it’s still relevant. If it is, you might get lucky. For example, Seeing The Bigger Picture records that over 25% of relationships now begin online in many countries. Including The Netherlands.
