Longbow FAQ

Is Longbow right for my business?

Longbow is for companies that want to get more revenue from their existing customers. You must have at least 1,000 customers, two or more products and a median number of transactions per customer greater than one. Some of our clients have only a few thousand customers and a few products while others have millions of customers and over 100,000 SKUs.

How do I get started?

First sign up and give Loyalty Builders a purchase order covering the amount of information you expect to download. Next you use the My Data tab to extract the relevant transaction data from your files and send that data to Loyalty Builders for analysis. When the analysis is done, you get an email notification. Then you can go to the Reports tab to see a high level view of your business.

You can now use the Target tab to create lists of prospects and view the results of direct marketing campaigns using previously created lists. After you use the selector to set criteria for a list select, you download the list of names and selected data for use in a campaign.

The next time the data is analyzed, you can see activity summaries for customers whose names you have downloaded.

See the Quick Start Guide for more details.

How secure is my customer data?

When your data is uploaded to Loyalty Builders, the transmission is encrypted. When your data is stored on our servers, the data is encrypted. If you send only a customer ID for each account, no one would have any idea who the customer is. If you send both ID and name and address information, your output is more understandable, but it is then important to protect the login information for your account.

How long does it take before we can see the results of the analysis?

For the first data set, allow about one to two weeks to iron out any questions about product names, SKUs or other data fields peculiar to your company such as your designations for sales channels. Thereafter, expect to see analysis results within a day or two of data upload.

Why is there a campaign calendar?

Purchase probabilities are perishable and change over time. By specifying when you intend to campaign against the prospect lists you download, you get names of customers likely to buy in the specified period.

What kind of data do we need to send to Loyalty Builders? How do we send it?

You upload transaction data: customer ID, transaction date, transaction amount and descriptors that identify the product sold. The My Data tab extracts the necessary records from your ERP data files and automatically transmits the records to Loyalty Builders via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or https over the Internet.

How do we measure the success of campaigns we run based on these predictions?

You should look at the uplift in response rate and revenue compared to your business-as-usual method. Longbow helps you do this by reporting campaign results as part of the analysis associated with the first data upload after the end of the campaign.

How often should we submit our data for an analysis?

The frequency of data submission depends entirely on the frequency you need to have the predictive analytics refreshed. For most direct marketing campaigns, quarterly will be sufficient. However there are many clients who require a monthly refresh of the data.

How do I locate the necessary transaction data in my systems?

Four kinds of data are needed: a customer ID, transaction date, transaction amount and one or more product identifiers like SKU and product group. The records with this data are typically in sales order processing tables.

What is a Back Test? How do I interpret the Back Test chart and table in Reports?

A Back Test is a measure of the validity of the predictive analytics. Predictions are typically made for the most recent period, the period that concludes with the latest analysis. The predictions are made by figuratively stepping back in time to the beginning of the most recent period and then predicting what will happen in the most recent period. The predictions are then compared to the actual results from ‘business-as-usual’ marketing. In Reports, see the comparison between predicted and actual results.