Algorithms cannot replace human marketers trying novel creative ideas
Corey Pearson · Corey Pearson, Custora // Data Driven NYC 23 // January 2014 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital) · Mar 3, 2014 · at 22:21
Corey Pearson, co-founder of Custora, discusses the limitations of purely automated predictive response modeling in retail marketing.
0:00 / 0:29exact quote · 29.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“There's something very, ah, helpful about having marketers in the mix there where they say, well, you know what, you know, that, that model will never realize necessarily, well, maybe we should try a funny email, or maybe we should try this type of communication because these types of customers, I kind of know that they're, they have a little bit of a zany personality, and so, there's a little bit of, I think, a balance of needing to do the response modeling, like you're saying, but also allow people to kind of just come in and try new ideas that you might not have any predictive assessment for yet and then you develop them over time.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Corey Pearson
Analytics dashboards are useless unless they directly drive action
“The dashboard, the insight's never enough. You need to get either to the decision, or you need to get to the doing of the thing.”
Retail churn is fuzzy and non-deterministic compared to subscription businesses
“And in the world of retail, this concept of churn is really fuzzy. So Netflix knows when their customers quit, you know, because you actually cancel. But a retailer, you know, your big retail brand, Amazon or something, and you had this customer who was orderi…”
Retailers lose 80% of customers who go inactive for 4-5 months
“What you can do is say, hey, a customer that kind of looked like this, that had this pattern, that ordered with this frequency, that bought this kind of stuff, if they go quiet for four or five months, 80% of the time, they never return.”