NZ Post lets Genius loose, big time granularity floats marketing boats
When New Zealand Post isn’t deciding what marketing-related events to sponsor, it’s devising ways to make some more money to pay for them all. And the Targeted Communications team thinks it has a big one on its hands with Genius, a ground-smasher of a new data segmentation product that aims to provide Kiwi marketers with the most targeted consumer information available in New Zealand.
As well as helping to tailor direct marketing campaigns and ensure you get to milk those cash cows, the beauty of Genius is that it can also be used to identify target markets, new prospects, the best catchment area for a new store, the best product range for local clientele and cross-selling opportunities.
Genius was soft-launched to analysts in May and the NZ Posties say it has been creating plenty of interest in the industry as a result of the level of insight and accuracy it offers. So much so that New Zealand Post Targeted Communications analytics manager *deep breath* Susan Needham says “it’s the most exciting thing to happen in the New Zealand data space for years”. [insert wisecrack here].
She says Genius differs from other existing segmentation models because of the breadth and depth of the data, which is built from a variety of sources like The New Zealand Lifestyle Survey (unique to this product), Census data, BNZ MarketView and other proprietary New Zealand Post information, as well as other commercially available data sources such as PropertyIQ house valuations.
In total, it uses more than 1,000 data variables (including household value, household composition, lifestyle and geo-demographic categories) and divides New Zealand into nine clusters and 36 segments, each with distinct characteristics (and some rather entertaining tags like ‘Rice & Shine’, Joe & Joanna Bloggs’ and ‘Meat and Three veg’). 
It can also differentiate between urban and rural areas and the segmentation can also be customised for individual organisations to incorporate their own data.
“This allows Kiwi marketers to have a greater understanding of the people they’re talking to and communicate with them more effectively,” Needham says. “It will also enable consumers to receive more of the information and services they’re interested in – and less of the stuff they’re not.”
Companies can either sign up for Genius for a year ($20,000 thank you very much, with a 30 day trial) or for individual campaigns.
All addresses contained in New Zealand Post lists are compliant with the Privacy Act 1993, all contact addresses are opted-in and no names, addresses or other individual identification information are available.
For more Genius info than you can shake a USB stick at, check out the website.
Normal Business Owner
March 15, 2011
This sounds like a great resource for all business owners.
But the price to use this is completely out of the question.
This should be a tool the government provides businesses.