Q4 Race to The Finish Line – How Companies Can Use Powerlytics Data to Close Last Minute Business and Position Themselves for Success in 2016

Published 8th Oct 2015
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With fall comes many changes: a turn in season, a transition in school year, and for many businesses, a move to new financial services plans or providers. And just as students dive deep into textbooks, Q4 is a good time to for businesses to buckle down and secure valuable year-end deals.

The following four sections offer plans for how marketers, banks, insurance brokers, and professional services providers can find new clients over the next three months and end 2015 on a high note.

Marketing

In today’s show-me-you-know-me consumer environment, having detailed data on the prospects and markets you serve has never been more important. Data makes pinpoint targeting of your most desirable customer easier than ever, yet many companies fail to capitalize on such valuable information.

With comprehensive data covering more than 200 attributes of all U.S. households, B2C organizations can create unique customer profiles to more accurately match product and customer. On the B2B side, Powerlytics data holds key metrics for all U.S. businesses, including the complete market size of over 1,100 industry sectors broken down by size of business and by geography (down to the zip code level).

Such rich data helps businesses and marketers refine segmentation and targeting, while understanding evolving market dynamics that impact customer behavior. With a market that fluctuates more than ever, fresh data is absolutely imperative for effective marketing. Without it, you’ll never know how much money you could be wasting on the wrong targets, or how much revenue you’re missing out on from the customers you aren’t marketing to.

Banking

As banks plan for the New Year, big data insights can help them plan not only for their futures, but for the futures of the people and businesses in whom they choose to invest.

With various ways to slice the data (over 1 trillion combinations to be exact), banks can capitalize on the multi-angle views provided by Powerlytics. The impact of having the full financial statements for 27 million businesses deepens the quality of any data-scientist-designed predictive models.

By understanding growth rates – organized by size of business, by industry sector, and by location – banks can assess market opportunities for small and mid-size business lending and pinpoint areas rich with prospective business. Analytics can also be used to credit score a new loan; Powerlytics has been able to add significant lift to the KS scores of customer’s loan default models.

Alternatively, banks may choose to look at loan portfolio concentration risk to decide where best to increase or scale back lending. Risk profiles coupled with exposure compared to the complete local market deliver big-picture insight on how to adjust your portfolio to meet your business goals.

In the personal banking space, the data can provide just as much, albeit very different, insight. If your bank wants to expand its relationship with young professionals, Powerlytics can identify geographies ripe with student loan interest deductions. Or if you want to increase applications for student credit cards or checking accounts, you could look at tuition and fees expenses to find neighborhoods with dense student populations. With Powerlytics you can accurately target products to wealthy prospects as indicated by interest and dividend income as well as capital gains — providing insight into share of wallet metrics at a neighborhood level. Targeting products geared towards retirees is also possible with Powerlytics database, which includes retirement-related income metrics at a block level.

Insurance

While most personal insurance is purchased at the time of an event – a home purchase, a car lease, a new job – rather than by calendar year, many households take the last quarter of the year to review their financial health, which often includes evaluating insurance coverage and its associated cost. Powerlytics data has proven to add significant lift to carriers’ retention models, enabling them to more accurately identify customers that are likely to shop and leave, then save millions in lost premiums. Deploying customer retention strategies is far more cost effective than attracting new customers to replace those that are lost.

Insurance brokers can use Powerlytics data to show households and businesses that experienced significant changes or, conversely, those geographies that have remained relatively unchanged in recent years. This information can help insurers determine the “low-hanging fruit,” and market insurance or coverage upgrades accordingly. For instance, identifying households paying real estate taxes without mortgage expenses could provide an opportunity to sell a homeowners policy. Alternatively, accurate wealth indicators can identify targets for specialty coverage areas, like boats or collector vehicles. And while Powerlytics data can help you segment targets by product, it can also assess your competition in those markets.

More than 50 percent of businesses buy insurance policies that take effect January 1, making Q4 a prime time to begin identifying and marketing to your targets. Insurance brokers can use Powerlytics to find quickly growing industries and sectors to grow or diversify their portfolio of clients. With search capabilities backed by business classifications, Powerlytics can also report on legal form of organization and size of companies – all complemented by geographic specification, helping insurance brokers target marketing and prospecting efforts accordingly. Such data also reveals the financial health of specific industry sectors to ensure profitable underwriting. Powerlytics provides an unprecedented view of market opportunities and risk profiles for the over 27 million private business in the U.S.

Professional Services

Differentiating your firm in an RFP for consulting, accounting, or tax engagements is never easy in the competitive world of Professional Services. When armed with ultraprecise knowledge about your prospect’s markets and their competitive position, you quickly demonstrate a level of expertise that will leave your opponents flatfooted.

Using Powerlytics data helps professionals home in on growing industries where their services are likely needed. If your goal is to be a trusted advisor to your client, then showing a client their competitive standing and benchmarks against peer companies provides value to them while revealing avenues for add-on services. Whether your client seeks to maximize income tax deductions, position the company for sale, or identify new customers, Powerlytics’ database and assessment tools deliver detailed analysis at granular industry levels within a zip code.

Larger firms especially need to leverage the disruptive nature of big data analytics to stay competitive. The current challenge is how to manage this expectation with accurate data that can add value and insight into decision-making and risk analysis. Powerlytics predictive analytics, default and risk scoring models, along with business and consumer insights can form the foundation for unparalleled analysis.

With the many events that can occur in a calendar year, professionals can capitalize on data now to secure new clients. Whether identifying new markets, evaluating risk, conducting due diligence for an M&A transaction, or evaluating financial statements or tax returns, having access to the most comprehensive and accurate financial picture of businesses and households can accelerate the growth of any firm.

While many businesses use Q4 to plan for the New Year, it’s important to focus on opportunities for new sales that come with the fall season. Although customer needs are ever-changing, there’s one thing that remains constant: all businesses can benefit from an end of year sales boost. And data is what makes that possible.