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Looking Forward – Q and A with Stefan Willimann

SIGMA Account Manager, Teddy Malone, sat down with Stefan Willimann to hear his reflections on 2018 and hopes for 2019.

Let’s talk about 2018. Where did we come from? Where are we going?

2018 was a strategic year, one in which we really started to integrate an important value into our culture — empowerment. Empowerment begets risk and risk begets leadership, and surrounding myself with leaders whom I can serve is rewarding to me personally and makes SIGMA a better company.

Last year we put a “bottom up” structure into action, and as our COO Gregg Sullivan expressed recently, “What comes with empowerment is accountability, and therefore if our team feels empowered they hold themselves responsible.”

How has your role at SIGMA changed in the past year? 

I made a concerted effort in 2018 to move from working IN the business to working ON the business. Practicing my own empowerment has allowed me to start to think of the business in more strategic terms. I’m more focused on the vision of the business and taking this new approach has helped me climb out of the trenches and be less myopic. Right now, I am more focused on the evolution of SIGMA than ever before.

As we look toward 2019, SIGMA is poised for growth. Tell us about “Digital at SIGMA.” How do you feel about SIGMA utilizing its data expertise to inform a digital capability for other companies?

Digital is a part of everything we do, and SIGMA is poised to turn up our resources in this area. Regarding growth, I think that the digital application and what we can expect this year into next is leveraging expertise in certain verticals. We do a lot of business in the membership organization sector, museums and the like. Agriculture and financial services as well.  We are prepared to leverage our knowledge in digital and take it more into vertical practices. I see a move to expertise in verticals, and anticipate that we will have vertical practice leaders rather than account managers as we continue to evolve.

SIGMA’s new Boston office is set in the heart of the city, accessible to the surrounding area

Speaking of the future, let’s talk about SIGMA’s expansion into Boston. How that will influence our business?

Boston is a much larger market than Rochester, ranking #24 in the country based on population. There is a tremendous amount of thought leadership coming from Boston, which is how we started 30 years ago in the database marketing industry, so it is exciting to be in such an innovative and investigative city as we evolve again.

Additionally, from Boston, SIGMA now has easier access to NYC, Philadelphia and other potential clients. We want to meet people face to face and demonstrate that we are committed to being a part of their team and understanding their needs.

Finally, we are going to be able to find more talent in this highly educated market. We’re grateful that Rochester has a pool of talent from RIT and University of Rochester; Boston is simply a bigger city and bigger cities have more talent to draw from and we’re excited about that potential as we grow here too.

Finally, back to SIGMA’s data business, why do you think companies are rapidly moving towards the customized visualization SIGMA provides rather than generic build-outs from other software?

Honestly? Generic dashboards are becoming obsolete. Everything now should be tailored to the specific needs of the client and their business so they can put in the KPI’s and content they want to see. Generic dashboards don’t compute or tell a coherent story.

Custom dashboard reflecting a campaign summary

Our customized dashboards are tailored from a tool, with experienced data scientists to back them up, and they can tell a story that is highly applicable to the client’s business.

Jump Start Your Bank’s Data-Driven Marketing Program

Data has been the buzzword de jour over the last five years. Still, most banks haven’t moved beyond data being “nice to have.”

On September 24th, SIGMA Data Scientist, Adam Smith, will be speaking at the ABA Bank Marketing Conference in Baltimore and giving a presentation about Data and Machine Learning Worth Your Time and Money. Data is big and messy, but this session will help you understand a few key areas of focus and how you can become a more data-driven marketing leader within your organization. In his presentation, Adam will discuss five strategies to jump start your data-driven marketing program, as they are outlined below:

  1. Profiling and Base-lining – Append demographic data of existing customers to better understand those you are doing well with and those you are not.  Also look at key metrics to identify baselines and trends.
  2. Customer Segmentation – Did you know you can use generic segments from Experian, Nielsen, etc. or create your own? Either way the segments can help better target marketing.
  3. Smarter, Deeper Analysis – By applying the results of steps one and two, banks can more easily identify better cross-sell targets.
  4. Dashboards and Reporting – Once you start to become more data-driven you’ll notice the request for reports will increase.  Creating dashboards that are connected to live data has several benefits including creating a single source of truth and allowing end users to identify more insights than static reports.
  5. Modeling and Prediction – Once you understand your customers, have made some wins with targeted cross-sell, and have your dashboards set up, it’s time to move on to predictive modeling.  Predictive models combine many variables related to demographics and behavior into one simple score that can be used to guide your marketing efforts.  They use advanced statistical techniques to identify those who are most likely to become a customer, buy a particular product, or close an account.  Once you have this information in hand, you can act on it to improve acquisition and retention, while deepening customer relationships.

Come join us in Baltimore to learn how to get started, hear specific success stories, and have the opportunity to ask questions applicable to your organization.  After the session is over come up and say hello—We look forward to meeting you!

B2B Data 101: Our Approach to Data

Often we are asked: what makes SIGMA’s data solutions different than others’ services and platforms? Simply put, we provide the best way to display and visualize unique metrics that inform important decisions at your company. Our approach to data sets the stage for everything we do!

The way people currently talk about data can make it seem like a difficult topic to grasp. From clean data and dirty data, to smart data, big data and partner data, as well as geographic, demographic, or firmographic data. What do all these data phrases have in common? They’re not too difficult to understand, if you have the right data partner.

Our Data Process

Your company continues to collect data from your clients and prospects, yet this data is most likely “dirty” — incomplete or overloaded with duplicates and inconsistencies. At SIGMA, we use multiple methods to  “clean” your data, including ensuring each record is complete and not re-entered somewhere else. Once your data has been through the cleaning process, we enrich it further by adding third-party data sources like geographic data or partner data and statistical model scores for prioritizations that boost your data to “smart” status.

Before sharing the data with you, our top data scientists run a variety of analyses to present insights that inform and transform. These insights are more actionable than relying on a CRM or other marketing automation tools alone, and effectively point your sales team to the right clients, showing your company how to grow or alert you to clients that may be leaving. With decades of experience, our data scientists pore over your data looking for insights, opportunities, and solutions to your most-pressing problems. We demonstrate these insights via dashboards, which are fully accessible through your mobile device.

A Continuing Data Strategy

Most companies stop there, but at SIGMA we realize the untapped potential of unmeasured client and prospect data. We strategize with you to understand ways to mine future data insights from new data sources because the more clean and enriched data you collect, the more in-depth our insights become.

SIGMA’s data approach is varied and flexible, always ensuring quality data gets back to you in the form of useful insights to drive your business decisions. We will always work with you to maximize your data resources and transform your business.

For a deeper analysis of this topic, we encourage you to check out the eBook “B2B Data 101” here, or subscribe to our blog for more interesting posts related to data.