Howard Thompson Email & Phone Number

London, United Kingdom

Helping financial service and ecommerce brands align teams around a single data driven marketing plan...Having worked at the sharp end of optimisation for many years, I found that for many companies we were simply too advanced.Looking at eCommerce companies of turnover between £1m + £100m, many struggle with; data silos, consistent reporting, answering some basic fundamental questions.I reflected on my earlier work at Transactis and realised most of the questions I had were fundamental.For example, if I send a DM pack out and it doesn't lead to a sale - is that the pack or the website?So I built WebFusion, with a view to have (as much as possible) a single tag on a website that would run all your analytics & abandon cart type data in one place.By having the data all in one place, we found that it enabled us to; create better models, more complete reports, and activate more data than ever before.As part of work we have managed to achieve some great outcomes, with our 28+ partners:An Motor insurance company - review their marketing grow plans and show that to achieve them they needed more budget and to change strategyUtilities company - We created a postcode ranking to plan smart meter roll out based on not just who would take one; but who would let them in on the dayA large mutli-media company - cross applying segmentations from research basis to transactional and loyalty card systemsAn Home insurance company - create an automatic event tracking tool to monitor their under writing processInternational asset manager (1) - saving £200k pa of analytical resource managing their 210 sites more effectivelyInternational asset manager (2) - Creating organisational lead scoring systemsA B2B Lift company - Fully automating their inbound lead process & automated communicationsHome furniture company - Creating a hybrid econometric / digital attribution modelsOther work in travel, retail, ecommerce

London, United Kingdom

I started Berry Thompson to create a platform to talk about marketing optimisation.All too often, marketers get stuck in a position where they can get quick returns by remailing the same old lists; however this can soon decay.Our two core products were designed to optimise, the customer journey and the overall marketing budget. Each typically providing a 10-20% uplift against a base scenario.When looking at customer journey optimisation, we would be reviewing the best individual communication strategy for each person; within certain budget or structural constraints.As part of this we would consider; segments, propensity to buy, next best action, vs contact density.Companies like JD Williams used the tool to manage, specifically catalogue mailings, where there were over 40 types of catalogues that anyone could receive in a given month.Our budget optimisation tool would take in saturation curves (or diminishing returns models), and blend it with econometric model outputs, to achieve the right scenario.We had some great successes with the likes of Amigo Loans and Sun Life direct, who could:1. Validate the current models & understanding that they had, and find some new opportunity2. Run scenarios quickly to get the optimal plan, reducing resource & planning time3. Achieve an uplift of 10%+ return for the same marketing spendAs well as designing, building, or running the development team for these tools, I was responsible for overseeing the wider range of analytical services.Some of the better known projects include:- Building the Go Analyse system, for Go Direct; which is one of the original out of the box CDPs processing customer and prospect data- Working with Football clubs like Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United; supporting them understand their fans engagement both digitally and offline- Bespoke customer segmentations for the likes of; Cambridge Satchel Company, Stonegate pub group- Working on projects with the team at Swiss Re

Richmond, Surrey

Providing analyitcal and sales support to a variety of both internal and external clients, by applying statisical analysis in a practical and commercial context to prove the value of; insight, software, and database management. This includes a mixture of project and people management pooling a wide range of resource and skills.Some examples of projects include:1. Designing the pre-sales experience of customers, to maximise the potential conversion of analytical software.2. Acting as head of analytics for a global re-insurer developing their data asset and producing analytical products that could be used across a global client base. This role including managing 4 analysts from the client side and greenstone3. Improving the data quality and analytical processes of a UK wide data product, improving response of direct marketing acquisition improving results upward of 10%.4. Developing an R&D personality based data product on a UK wide dataset, and then supporting the commercialisation of this product, highlighting key areas of application5. Creating product based solutions to support the incremental effect of marketing in a b2b environment which reduced resource required for campaign analysis in future monthsI took on wider responsibilities in May 2013 when I joined the leadership team. Responsibilities included; finical forecasting, designing and creating new revenue streams, and generally steering the company.

When I arrived at TCP there was an "urgent" issue, the contact optimisation software had been sold to a client; but no one could get it to work.Working with the development team, and the client, I managed to create a process to run the optimisations whilst the system was debugged. The client went on to use the tool for many years and we event won a database marketing award for it.One of my proudest moments was running a POC of the contact optimisation software against 2 of the largest software companies in the world. It was down to two of us, who both had similar value returns, however theirs had 50% more sales. When we looked at this we managed to prove that it was mathematically impossible to achieve; and the other vendor was thrown out when they were unable to back up their claim. Win!Generally my role was providing analytical support to clients in support of and to be included in TCP data and software products.Key success include:1. Designing and overseeing the production of three unique analytical software products, turning them into practical functional systems2. Sales support and delivery of 5 software units to UK and non UK clients3. Project management of various specialists and liaising with several teams4. Supporting and developing the insight teamDuring this role I acquired the account management responsibility, being the key point of contact for all software clients.

I joined Beyond Analysis at an interesting time, pre-merger with their client Visa.At the time, the two analysts that were working there were leaving, and I was left as the only analyst.The spanner in the works was that I had very little SAS or SQL experience, only having seen the code on a few systems at Transactis. The two main tables were over 17bn records, a 30min limit on any query; and I only was allowed to access it via a laptop chained to a desk in Paddington. Which meant I had to learn fast!With a copy of "The little book of SAS" & 300 pages of code/notes, I was sent on my way. It was challenging at the start, but by the time I had left, I had run numerous projects & dashboards, created an automated a data extract tool from their database, developed an automated report for consultants to share with banks; meeting the IT restrictions whilst extracting the vast amounts of data.Today my SAS skills are generally classed as second to none:For example, I had to analyse over 10peta bytes of data in one week, when an entire (very well known) database consultancy failed to in 6months. The client thought they had 20m records, the other consultancy thought it was nearer 5m (but couldn't confirm). I managed to process the whole data and show that there were three; with a full list of links between accounts & Ids. I even had time to create two top level earn/burn segmentations, profile them and prepare a presentation. That organisation now has one of the "largest" subscription basis in the world.I guess I have Beyond Analysis to thank for that!

I was fortunate enough to work in Transactis under the Tony Lawes and Chris Morris tenure; if you ask anyone there it was a fantastic place to start your career. I still keep in touch with many of my ex colleagues, and love to see them out and about.Many of them remember my; attendance at the pub - every Friday, the ever shrinking Fred Flintstone T-shirt, and an expression about a box & my thinking (you will have to ask someone who was there).My role was to select the optimal people for mailing, by creating audiences, based on criteria (i.e. age bands and affluence) or via statistical modelling. This is not too dissimilar from how people buy online media now (e.g. machine learning models) - it just had to be done by hand back then!What was interesting through this process was how we were very good at creating large volumes of consistently performing selections. We made sure that it was clear the exact rollout potential of a model; and would work hard to build up volume.My proudest moment here was taking a client from testing 15k per quarter, to over 500k per month. All through AB testing & selections.In my time I built over 1000 regression models for the purpose of data acquisition, using a SAS based system. Analysed customer data using Fast Stats and SPSS; building bespoke retention models, segmentations, and profiles. Created strategies for customer contact optimisation, cold data acquisition rollout, and prospect pool design.One of my greatest realisations was that as I worked more with clients, they tended to listen to me more than the sales guys. This was because I had usually put a lot of work in to make sure there was a firm grounding for all my suggestions.To this day, I hate to "pitch cold", my preference is always to engage with clients and find out what their challenges are - to see if I can help.

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