Behind The Tool: Cary From Decile

Where did the original idea for Decile come from, and what made you excited about the category to build a business around it?

Cary: Interestingly, Decile started as a business unit incubated within another company I co-founded in 2010 called SocialCode. What was initially developed as an audience intelligence platform within SocialCode quickly grew appeal with mid-market clients as a way to help marketers leverage their first-party customer data. In July 2020, Decile spun out as its own operating entity as an analytics platform with a mission to help brands grow profitably.

The idea of an analytics platform that would allow e-commerce marketers to improve customer lifetime value really resonated with mid-market, e-commerce brands, an underserved sector at the time. We saw the world shifting towards identity-based marketing and realized the potential for helping marketers utilize their most valuable asset: first-party customer data. Leveraging this data effectively could help brands identify higher-value audiences, retain them with more highly personalized marketing, and ultimately drive profitable business growth. Before a tool like Decile, brands would either make assumptions that weren’t data-based, would have to invest a huge amount into a variety of tools, or would have to compile and analyze their data manually - which is a very inefficient process. 

The name "Decile" comes from the concept of dividing a population into ten parts, or deciles, which reflects our analytical approach. At Decile we are focused on helping brands acquire and retain their ‘top decile’ (highest value) customers.

How does Decile work and what do brands leverage it to do?

Cary: Decile ingests a brand’s first-party customer data, including purchase and sales metrics. Then, we enrich that data with third-party attributes, such as psychographic and behavioral insights, to provide a fuller picture of who a brand’s customers are. This enriched data is crucial for more personalized marketing. Not every customer is of equal value or shares the same product preferences, so quickly and easily accessing insights is central to a strong personalization strategy.

For instance, a wellness brand might have different customer personas, like wealthy suburban moms trying to get healthier and millennial middle-income bachelors hyper-focused on strength training. With Decile, we have an automated integration with the Shopify commerce platform so we can ingest and update the sales data daily along with integrations with key marketing platforms like Meta/Google/TikTok (for acquisition) and Klaviyo/Attentive (for retention). We provide richer insights that can be used for analytics and ultimately to deliver more personalized marketing experiences that create loyalty. 

One powerful capability of our platform is predictive analytics. Our models help identify repeat purchasers or those likely to buy in the near future. Our clients can also segment and cohort their audience by various dimensions, such as demographics, purchase behaviors or product affinities.

Additionally, Decile helps brands better understand the customer journey and lifecycle so they know what products customers are likely to buy next and the optimal timing between purchases. This enables marketers to communicate strategically with their audience. Decile can also determine the best advertising platform for acquiring and retaining high value customers, whether it's TikTok, SMS, or another channel, ensuring highly personalized messages that resonate with individual customer preferences. These actionable insights allow brands to optimize their marketing strategies and drive higher engagement and sales.

What are some things that brands actually do with the Decile data and insights?

Cary: Brands use Decile to gain a deep understanding of their customer segments and how to market to them more effectively. For instance, by segmenting their audience, brands can uncover insights such as the difference in value between male and female buyers. A skincare brand we worked with initially targeted females for a new product line but discovered that their highest value audience was actually males, who had a higher lifetime value (LTV) by an average of ten dollars. This insight allowed them to reallocate their marketing efforts without neglecting their core customer group.

Decile also enables brands to analyze product affinity by different cohorts or personas. For example, a beauty brand found that their core customers, aged 45 to 60, were more responsive to specific product types, like serums, and less responsive to trial kits which led them to adjust their creative and marketing strategies. This kind of detailed insight helps brands make small but impactful changes that attract more valuable customer segments.

Another key use of Decile is understanding the sequential purchase path. Brands can determine which products a customer is likely to buy next and the typical interval between purchases. This allows for strategic communication and personalized marketing campaigns. For example, if a customer buys a skin cream, Decile can predict whether their next purchase will be sunscreen or eye cream and when they are likely to make that purchase.

At what stage in a brand's growth journey do they typically come to Decile?

Cary: Brands usually come to Decile when they have established their commerce platform and are starting to look for deeper insights into their customer data. Typically, this happens when they are in the $10 million to $100 million annual revenue range. At this stage, they begin to invest in data warehousing capabilities and predictive analytics to best leverage their data, beyond just the native capabilities of their commerce platform.