“You have been pre-approved for a credit card.”
That’s three in the last month. It seems that you’ve been pre-approved by your airline, by your local department store and by your automotive association for a new credit card. These pre-approvals can be very helpful, although you took out a new credit card two months ago with your local bank, so you’re not really in the market for another one.
This is a pretty frustrating experience for consumers. Yet it’s not uncommon to receive offers that don’t match your financial needs at the time. And for marketers it means a missed opportunity to help more people, as well as a reduced return on their marketing budget.
What many people don’t realise is that the planning for a marketing campaign may have started three months ago. The data on which you were pre-approved for a credit card can be months old. That’s a long time when people want to grasp new opportunities quickly and move onto the next thing in their lives.
We created the world-first Ascend Sandbox, a platform which provides near real-time data access and enables scenario modelling for marketing campaigns. So it made sense for us to take the next step and create a product that enables marketers to activate those campaigns in the real world, quickly and efficiently.
That’s why we created Ascend Marketing. Using Experian’s advanced pinning technology it combines the freshest credit data available with new datasets, such as property assessor, deed and mortgage data from third parties, as well as customer data. It then helps marketers segment that information so they can better understand their customers and find those who might benefit from a credit offer.
Its powerful Audience Engine is purpose- built for advanced campaign management. It enables marketers to apply their creativity, tailor messaging and launch cross-channel campaigns. They can assess whether particular campaigns resonate with consumers, make any necessary adjustments, and measure their return on investment.
As a one-stop shop it has completely changed the marketing game. By removing the delays in getting a campaign into production, such as time spent on third-party agencies, as well as on data transmission, aggregation and processing, we’ve taken a process that previously took 60 to 90 days and brought it down to just seven days. This is a significant operational improvement for marketers, helping them reduce costs, free up resources, drive higher conversion and quickly respond to external events.
The consumer experience has now improved from receiving outdated offers to receiving ones which are more relevant. Companies are now able to keep pace with their customers, better matching the company's offers to the customers' changing needs.
