Predictive Marketing Platform AgilOne Tunes Up Its Predictions Of Customer Lifetime Value

Unlike other marketing platforms that later added data chops, AgilOne began as a predictive customer intelligence platform and then added marketing tools.

Today, the Sunnyvale, California-based company is beefing up its predictive powers even more, with the announcement that it is adding the ability of brands to assess which customers could turn into really big spenders — if encouraged.

This goes beyond assessments of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), vice president of marketing Angela Sanfilippo told me. In the standard LTV that AgilOne previously had, she said, there is an estimation of what the customer’s spend could be worth to the company over the entire relationship, based on what the customer has spent, as well as average patterns.

But, she said, AgilOne’s new Predicted Lifetime Value compares a customer to the top 20 percent of a brand’s customers, the biggest spenders. Based on such data as visits to Web pages or the downloading of marketing material, it estimates if this customer could become a much bigger spender.

It also assesses the Likelihood to Buy, using such info as whether the customer in question has abandoned a product in this category in an online shopping cart.

A window shades company, for instance, might want to find customers who have never spent as much as their biggest customers but could if prompted the right way.

An AgilOne screen, showing the new Predicted Lifetime Value

Sanfilippo said that the ideal target is someone who has a high Predicted Lifetime Value but a low Likelihood to Buy. Such a person, for instance, has visited window shades stores and signed up for more info, registered at home furnishings websites and bought other kinds of home furnishings but hasn’t actually stocked their home with new shades.

These kinds of customers are a marketer’s dream, she said, because they might finally succumb if presented with a juicy-enough discount coupon.

After all, who among us is totally resistant to a great bargain for those kinds of things you really, really love but have been holding back from buying?

“You can get more aggressive with coupons” with these kind of buyers, Sanfilippo said. “These are tomorrow’s best customers.”

In addition to this refinement of its Lifetime Value estimations, AgilOne is also announcing today it has a new Distance to Store indicator and functionality with marketing segmentation that can target, say, prospects within a five-mile radius of a store selling window shades.

Also new is Householding, where AgilOne can group-target its marketing to multiple members of the same household who might share an interest, via physical address matching of various types. This capability, the company said, can also account for the cross-influence among several household members, so that each household member doesn’t get the exact same messages.

With this, as with all of its targeting, AgilOne is focused only on identified users, such as those who have logged on to a site or an app.

While other marketing platforms offer location-based targeting, location-matching or Lifetime Value, Sanfilippo said that AgilOne differs because it provides “an all-in-one automated solution” out of the box.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.