"What stops people churning?"

O₂ is one of the largest mobile telephone providers in the UK. They, like all mobile phone companies, developed an acquisition based marketing strategy that attracted new users to the network by the million. However, the acquisition focus of all of the major telephony providers left existing customers with little incentive to remain loyal to the brand. tree tracked the phone usage and campaign responses of the Business customer base and found that some customer profiles were churning at a far higher rate than others. Through a detailed database analysis we were able to look into greater detail at why certain customers were behaving differently.

tree designed an analytical project to understand:

• The differences between customer types
• Why customers churn
• What would make them stay
• What did they want from O₂
• What attribute were predictive of churn
• What campaigns were working

Our research identified clear differences between the behaviours, needs and traits of different customer typologies. Additionally we created composite variables such as service need and price sensitivity that could be applied to all customers on the base. tree developed a segmentation to encapsulate all of these learnings and applied it across the base to form part of a churn prediction model.

O₂ benefitted from having a renewed focus on churn that influenced the creative communications strategy and redesigned retention programme – leading to significantly lower churn rates and a greatly improved ROI.

tree are always professional whilst being flexible and adaptable in their approach. They work very much as an extension to O2 and have a fantastic understanding of our business and market

--Esther Hughes, O₂, Head of Campaign Development

"How does the British public decide which mode of transport to use?"

tree was approached to pitch for developing a segmentation for Virgin Trains. Traditional segmentation approaches tend to follow one of two routes – qualitative, or database. To qualitatively produce a segmentation focus groups are held with customers, usually split by demographics or purchase behaviours. The groups then provide insight into what defines them as homogenous or separate from other groups. A database approach to segmentation usually starts with transactional behaviours and overlays additional information to look for patterns and clusters in the data.

Our solution was to build a needs based profile of the existing customers using a combination of methodologies. The data we collected enabled us to develop a rich profile of the motivations, travelling needs and lifestyle attributes of the UK population. The resulting segmentation provided a unique view of the travelling population, and market differentiation for Virgin Trains.

Virgin Trains benefited from having a market segmentation that offered insight into motivations whilst being actionable and applicable to a database.

tree use a fresh approach to segmentation, enabling us to understand our customers motivations and how best to provide what they really want

--Craig Inglis, Virgin Trains, Sales and Marketing Director

"Understanding why people choose the Skoda brand"

tree's nine year relationship with Skoda started with a simple list buying brief. How could Skoda target and find more people who would be willing to contemplate buying a Skoda. We ran the usual lifestyle profiles on existing drivers and looked at purchase patterns, but something was missing. We could identify likely prospects but conversion rates were too low. The data we had wasn’t identifying why people would choose a Skoda – we had qualitative data suggesting there was a definitive mindset associated with choosing the Skoda brand, but we had no way of identifying that mindset on lifestyle lists.

Our solution was to build a psychographic profile of the existing owners using a psychometric questionnaire. The data we collected enabled us to develop a rich profile of the motivations of Skoda owners that we could model onto a lifestyle dataset. The resulting lists provided substantially better conversion rates and led to the adoption of psychographics across the Skoda brand.

Skoda benefited from having a unique perspective on their customers motivations. We applied the psychographic profile to TGI and media selections, as well as selections for focus group respondents. Our profile became a central tool in the planning process and put the customer at the heart of Skoda’s marketing.

tree tell me what Skoda customers really think

--Mary Newcombe, Skoda Auto UK, Head of Marketing

"What do people say about NS&I?"

In order to understand the needs of their customers, NS&I approached tree with a proposal to investigate the "online buzz" and make recommendations to the marketing team for social media communications.

Using our proprietary tool, Earwig™, we searched discussion forums, blogs, social networks, Twitter and news comments for mentions of NS&I brand and product related keywords. These were fed into a statistical process which objectively analyses the conversations and generates overarching themes of conversation. The result was four main themes, relating to different areas of the business. This allowed tracking and monitoring of how the shape of the "buzz" changed over time as various activities were carried out.

A very definite link was established between online chat about NS&I and sales of their products. This correlation is still being tracked over a year after the initial link was found and is still strong.

NS&I have benefitted from having an immediate source of public sentiment as well as a tracking tool that has a proven correlation with key business performance measures.

We are committed to delivering a first class service to our customers and see tree as an important partner in providing us with a complete picture of our customers

--Ayesha Da Silva, NS&I, Head of CRM

"If you like to listen...We’d like to talk."

Victim Support is a membership charity with over 300 member organisations throughout the UK, and approximately 15,000 volunteers. The organisation provides support to recent victims of crime and those who need advice relating to crime prevention. Its objective was to recruit more volunteers.

Traditionally Victim Support volunteers have been older, more community driven people. However, as generations have changed and moved away from communities this pool of people was dwindling. Our approach was to look for traits that newer recruits had in common and develop and understanding of how we could motivate similar people to get involved with Victim Support. Typically we were seeing younger volunteers coming from professional backgrounds; law, medicine. This suggested that perhaps there was more to volunteering than "helping others".

tree developed a qualitative psychographic profile of volunteers, identifying key personality traits that they had in common. These traits were then validated against the whole of the volunteer base using a psychometric questionnaire. The resulting profile enabled us to revolutionise the recruitment process – by focusing on the volunteer and what they get out of volunteering. This was eventually expressed as "If you like to listen... We’d like to talk" emphasising the volunteer and the benefits they could feel from volunteering for Victim Support.

Victim Support benefited from having a new approach to recruitment that put the volunteer at the heart of the message and delivered increased numbers of volunteers.

tree revolutionised the way we understood our organisation, and the types of people we engage with. We face tough challenges and this level of understanding is essential in building our brand

--Paul Fawcett, Victim Support, Head of Marketing & Communications

"How does the UK react to American advertising?"

The Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau, Inc. (Orlando CVB) is the official tourism sales and marketing organisation for the Orlando and Orange County region. The Orlando CVB works with a variety of business partners and industries, including the travel trade, meeting planners and the media to promote visitation to the region.

The Orlando CVB wished to understand the decision-making process that consumers experienced in deciding to holiday in Orlando and how advertising informs and affects their decision.

tree ran a number of focus groups across Great Britain in Orlando's existing and potential heartlands. The research explored consumers general travel behaviour, as well as their perceptions of the brands and associated advertising material, their emotional and rational needs, how these are addressed by advertising and what they take out of the various advertising channels.

As we look to build our marketing campaign for the UK market, it is important that we understand what drives consumer decision making. Through this research we will gain valuable information to better understand what drives consumers and how effective our current marketing is

--Daryl Cronk, Orlando CVB, Director of Research