How Data Changed the World

Two exabytes or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data are now generated each day across all industries, a figure that continues to grow exponentially. It is now the case that 95% of businesses face some kind of need to manage their unstructured data and by 2023 it’s expected that the big data industry will be worth an estimated $77billion. Data has changed the practice of most industries and has in turn, changed the world.

In this blog we explore how different industries have taken advantage of insights that data provides in acquiring and retaining customers.

Technology Industry

Tech companies like Apple now have far less need to rely on customer feedback than ever before, with the ability to collect the data from the usage of products and services, allowing them to use data insights to remedy problems remotely with patches and bug fixes.

Data collected in an instant from millions and millions of users gives them the ability to figure out customer needs and wants without ever actually asking them. Gathering information like how long a user spends on their phone, what they spend their time doing on their device, etc. allows companies to determine how to evolve pre-existing products and what users require even before they’re even aware of what they want themselves.

Finance

The financial and banking sector generates huge amounts of data and the amount generated each second in the financial industry is expected to grow by an estimated 700% in 2021. Data is collected by credit card companies, banks, lenders and online marketplaces through customer transactions, buying behaviour and financial activity to formulate things like credit ratings with far more accuracy than in the past.

Similarly, big data has allowed companies to negate risk when lending and investing Investors, insurers and lenders can now paint a far more accurate picture of what is likely to happen with their outlay.

Real Estate Industry

Whilst the real estate industry is often late to adapt to new technology, that is now beginning to change. It was and still is often the case that property was bought and sold on minimal data points such as location, number of bedrooms and property type. But now, with the introduction of big data, estate agents can gain a much more accurate and insightful picture of a property’s worth and who to target when selling. Anything from how much light a home receives, levels of noise pollution, to even popular nearby restaurants can be gleaned and used to price, market and sell a property.

Estate agents in particular are beginning to make use of a new targeted marketing approach using sophisticated database intelligence. London based estate agents Douglas and Gordan recently used Address Intelligence to find applicants and generate valuations and instructions for a new branch opening. They needed a response driven campaign to complement their hyper-local brand awareness activities, which included digital advertising and out of home advertising such as billboards in the area.

Address Intelligence were able to analyse the details of 34,737 local households in a densely populated catchment area to target homeowners and private tenants with a property value over £350k. They identified 17,500 households that matched this criteria, allowing Douglas and Gordon the opportunity to deliver a mailout campaign without wasting spend on properties that were not of a significant enough value.  The campaign was made up of 4 separate letter mailings and 1 postcard to the selected households over an 8-week period, timing the landing dates for each item to coincide with other local marketing activity.

The campaign proved successful, gaining Douglas and Gordon 516 applications and 317 valuations , in addition to 141 instructions. 45 properties were let and 3 properties were sold specifically from the activity undertaken by Address Intelligence.

Sports

The 1990s saw the advent of data analytics in the sports industry and since the introduction of big data it has been used to enhance audience engagement, athletic performance, and branding and marketing strategies. The sports data analytics industry is estimated to grow to $4billion by the end of 2022.

Modern-day sporting franchises are using data analytics tools to recruit the right players for their team culture, using data analytics to hire talented but often undervalued players to build a more cohesive and successful team. The film Moneyball told the true story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team and their attempts to assemble a competitive team using a sophisticated sabermetric approach to scouting and analysing players. Since then, other sports such as football, cricket and basketball have used this method to great success and it has become commonplace in the industry.

Entertainment

Arguably, the most influential industry culturally to utilise big data, is the entertainment industry. Netflix generates in excess of $25billion in revenue each year thanks to analysing user behaviour and viewing preferences to aim tailored recommendations unique to each of its 100 million-plus subscribers. Using predictive analytics means that Netflix is now able to influence as much as 80% of content viewed by its subscribers due to accurate data insights they hold. So, the world has Big Data to thank for pop culture phenomena such as the likes of Tiger King and Stranger Things.

Spotify has done much the same by analysing the activity of its 356million monthly active users and now 50% of its top 20 most followed playlists are personalised and uniquely tailored to the users listening habits.

So, want to find out how we can help your business grow using data insights to improve your conversion rates, and ultimately increase your Return-On-Investment?

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