Get to know your customer even better

New Data Available

With the release of the 2011 Census and the anticipated changes that this ‘survey’ highlighted, along with recent investments in our consumer databases, we have now redeveloped our model. There have been many changes in the profile of the Irish population since the last Census in 2006, and our new model reflects these current societal characteristics.

• The population has increased by over 8% from 4.2m to almost 4.6m. The most significant growth areas have been the commuter belt counties to the north and west of Dublin - Laois increased by 20%, followed by Cavan and Fingal at over 14% each.
• People are living much longer. The over 65’s increased by more than 14% while those aged over 85 increased by 22%.
• There are more children. The number of children in families increased by over 9%.
• Housing stock grows and apartments boom. The number of housing units increased by 13% since 2006 and flats/apartments increased by 27%. In Laois alone there was a 116% increase in the number of flats/apartments since 2006.
• More people renting. The proportion of rented accommodation increased by almost 50% between 2006 and 2011. The commuter belt counties again stand out with Laois up 84% and Fingal up 78%.

A new OGHAM™ model

The redeveloped OGHAM™ segmentation model has been built using a range of data sources. These include Census, Lifestyle Survey Responders and Data Ireland’s Irish Consumer Marketing Database. The Lifestyle Survey Responders alone provided over 500,000 records for the redevelopment process.

This is a very significant dataset providing a depth of demographic and lifestyle information on the Irish population not available from any other source. It means we can provide more depth to our segment profiles. We can highlight more distinct customer types, and we can provide much more granularity to our segmentation, down to a household level.

Leveraging Data Ireland’s rich data source

OGHAM™ can be used to achieve a number of strategic business objectives:

• Better understand consumer markets
• Improve analysis of existing customer segments
• Help drive focused targeted customer acquisition activity
• Provide insight into profitable cross-selling opportunities
• Add value to customer retention strategies

Questions about the composition of a group of customers are common. Being able to answer them and uncover new traits is key to businesses success. What do my customers look like? Which segments have the highest value? What is different about profitable and loss-making customers? What do my market segments look like and how do they differ?

The simplest way to answer these questions is with OGHAM™ Profiles. OGHAM™ profiling paints a picture of your customers and customer segments. It gives you a unique level of insight into who purchases your products or services, and it provides immediate access to a pool of partially qualified prospects from our consumer database of over 1 million people.

It is the simplest way to define your best prospects based on your existing customers and to find more people with a similar profile. Other examples of the applications our clients currently put OGHAM™ to include:

• Profiling geographic areas to understand the consumer makeup of catchment areas.
• Informing Sales Area Planning.
• Enhancing segmentation models built on internal behavioural and value data.
• Enhancing MIS reporting

Applications of OGHAM™

Geodemographic classification models are used for a range of applications in both the commercial and public sectors. Generally these applications aim to identify those groups of people within a target population most likely to exhibit particular behaviours. For the commercial sector these behaviours could include:

• Identify people with a high probability of buying a particular type of car.
• Identify people with a high application rate for a particular type of loan.
• Identify people with a high propensity to donate to 3rd World development organisations.
• Identify areas to optimise branch location research.

For the public sector these behaviours could include:

• Identifying inequity of provision of certain healthcare services.
• Determination of road injury risk.
• Identify people with a high risk of developing alcoholic liver disease.
• Identify households with a high dependency on after-school childcare.

Combining OGHAM™ with your own rich data source

There is no doubt that mining your customer database helps you develop cross-sell, up-sell and retention strategies to grow your business. The real value of OGHAM™ is when it is used in conjunction with the behavioural and value data you hold on customers. Applying OGHAM™ to your data adds depth to your customer understanding. And it opens up your segmentation to the wider marketplace by providing access to partially qualified prospects. It removes any inherent bias there may be in purely customer data and helps reveal real business growth opportunities.

Profitable segments of customers within your database can be overlaid with OGHAM™ . This will allow you to identify which OGHAM™ segments have the strongest correlation with profitable customers. Armed with this knowledge the OGHAM™ groups identified can be used to identify highly targeted prospects from our database of prospects as part of your customer acquisition strategy.

OGHAM™ is Ireland’s most accurate up-to-date and predictive geodemographic segmentation model. Whether used as a simple profiling tool or integrated into more complex solutions such as value segmentation it provides significant customer discrimination and should be an integral part of the marketing mix. After all knowing your customer is half the battle.