Like riding a bicycle or playing chess, what we do is simple – once you already know how to do it, that is. But, it can be hard to explain what we do for the first time to friends, prospects and customers who have not yet seen our work in action.

I find that metaphors are useful in explaining pretty much anything. Recently, when trying to think of the best metaphor for what we at MindEcology do, the first thing that came to mind was that of “reading the tea leaves.” However, upon further inspection, while simple and in a way elegant, the “tea leaves” metaphor misses the mark completely. That’s because the processes that we here at MindEcology use are not based upon any personal powers of prognostication, guesswork, having the “sixth sense,” or being otherwise talented in the area of fortune telling. In other words, it’s not based on what we THINK will happen, but rather what we know HAS happened within your business – along with suggestions for how to capitalize on that for the future.

In that light, I think a better metaphor than that of “reading the tea leaves” for what MindEcology does is that of DNA scientist. As you may have been following in the major press lately, you can now submit to DNA analysis companies a small sample of your saliva – along with saliva samples of your spouse and child – and receive back a wealth of information about you, your spouse and your child. In fact, they will supply you with a gene-by-gene account of what percentage of each parent’s DNA contributed to the creation of your child’s DNA. Very cool stuff.

While we are not DNA scientists, you could say that we are gifted with the ability to look at your business’s customer purchase history data (DNA) and tell you things you never thought possible about where you have been and where you should go next.

Here is a sample of the types of information we can tell you after performing an analysis of your customer database. If you give us 1,000 to 2,000 of your customer records (with just customer name, customer address, total customer revenue figures), we can tell you:

a. who your best customers are, organized by “marketing segmentation cluster” type* – in prioritized order of most-to-least valuable

* note: you don’t have to understand a thing about market segmentation to take immediate and full advantage of our findings

b. which segmentation cluster types are most likely to become a customer if marketed to, and, once a customer, which are most likely to spend more money with you (note: as a bonus, we also show you which types of prospects and customers are NOT worth putting resources into pursuing at all)

c. where to find more prospects just like your best customers

d. how to best go after those best prospects with direct response (direct mail, e-mail, doorhangers) and mass-media (TV, radio, newpspaer, billboards) methods, while “skipping over” those who are much less likely to respond

e. a profile of what your best customers look like, including which types of media (magazines, TV shows, radio shows, web sites) they consume, where they shop, and how they spend their leisure time

f. show you where to build a new store, restaurant or service provider business location based upon finding those geographical areas that have high concentrations of your best customers

In short, we build a custom “model” of your best customers based on actual, historical purchase data that you provide to us for analysis. Then, we show you how to apply that model to your market so that you can: a. do more business with your current customers and, b: find and go after more prospects who are the most likely to convert to being your new customers

Like the DNA scientists you have been hearing about lately in the news, at MindEcology we can take what seems like a relatively insignificant “input” and turn it into an amazing amount of actionable, useful information that you can apply to your business right now for better marketing ROI and better business results.

It is the rule, rather than the exception, that most customer databases that our clients bring to us have not been well-maintained. Whether the data we receive has been stored in a POS (point of sale) system, an online shopping cart application, an MS Excel file, or an MS Access or SQL database – a large portion of most companies’ data is “dirty” data.

Dirty data refers to a large data set which contains a possible wide assortment of imperfections, including missing data values, incorrect value types (e.g., text instead of numeric data for a given field), values that are out of the possible range, incomplete records, etc.

In fact, many of our MindEcology clients are almost apologetic when they grant us accesss to their database for the first time. It is almost as if they have invited us over for a seven-course meal but want us to “please excuse our messy house – it’s been a crazy week.”

Given that this is such a common experience for us, we are never surprised when a new client’s database is found to have not been maintained to ideal standards. Some examples of all-too-common database problems include:

* in an address file (or table): address data showing up in the phone number field * in an order history file: existence of blank (zero-value) revenue fields for some orders * in a customer name file: first and last names are transposed for some records * in a product list file: missing product IDs for products that show up in the order history file (etc.)

Fortunately, in mosts cases this is a total non-issue once we get started on a project. That is because, before we actually start analyzing a database for any project, we carry out what’s called “data cleansing” and, when necessary, data imputation.

Data cleansing involves:

1. validating codes (data values) against a list of acceptable values and deleting or fixing each one as necessary 2. deleting very “dirty” records 3. de-duplicating and merging records

Meanwhile, data imputation involves filling in missing values with intuitive data, such as with a reasonable estimate (this is better than leaving the item blank). There are a number of techniques for doing this.

These techniques are industry-standard in the data mining and modeling fields and help ensure that we have good, clean, well-organized data as we begin the analysis phase of a new project.

Market segmentation has gotten a lot more sophisticated in recent years, due to: 1. the advent of proprietary psycho-behavioral segmentation systems like Prizm, Mosaic, and Personicx

2. the increased sophistication of quantitative analytics techniques

3. the sharp increase in the sheer amount and detail of information that market research firms keep about each adult in the United States

Request: If you own, run or manage a business-to-consumer (B2C) business, I am interested in your thoughts on market segmentation. Here is a one-question poll I would like you to answer: http://polls.linkedin.com/p/70962/qhfcj. Thank you for your input!