Balancing Algorithmic and Anecdotal Insights

Yes, I am a marketing geek at heart. I get excited by elegant, algorithmic answers to the messy, complex questions of how to help consumers buy. At the same time, the power of a few conversations with actual customers to get to the reality of things is astounding.

Today I spoke with Phil over at Cleverset, a company that has some exciting predictive modeling software. Here's what they say about it on their site:

Our dynamic behavioral models analyze past and current behaviors of each customer to predict what your customers want to buy. Each customer is presented with Product Recommendations that are tailored to their current shopping session.

Does it work? Don't know yet, but I'll be testing it to find out. At the same time, I'm talking to customers, looking at chat transcripts and reading order notes to ensure that marketing efforts are relevant to customers' reality. It may not be elegant or statistically significant, but it keeps me from floating off into some theoretical neverland of consumer behavior.