At Emerald Thinking

we apply a human lens
to transform your data
into human insights.

Delivered through our
3 core areas of expertise

Click on Uncover, Activate or Accelerate for our products, services, and expertise in action.

We blend, mine and analyse your data.  We then apply a human lens to transform your data into human insights, unlocking hidden value, customer experience opportunities and new revenue streams for your business.

The Data We Mine

We are constantly raising the bar on what different data sources can tell us about your consumers and your business. Developing innovative techniques to uncover hidden value, missed opportunities and ways to accelerate your customer experiences.

The Insights We Uncover

Here are just some of the types of insights we uncover with our Clients.

  1. Behavioural insights = what consumers do, their behaviour, their explicit needs and motivations.
  2. Emotional insights = what consumers think, feel, their implicit needs, motivations, perceptions, what they love, what they hate.
  3. Who insights = insights into who your audiences are.
  4. Brand insights = consumers perceptions, their met and unmet brand needs, reach, competitor and market share.
  5. Customer experience insights = the journey they take, how consumers navigate your brand in terms of both physical and emotional experiences,
  6. Content insights = content they love, hate, find, don’t find, themes and channels engaged with.
  7. Real-time insights = using Social Listening, Web, Search to uncover consumer behaviours and emotions in real-time.
  8. Optimisation and performance = where and how to optimize your business, brand, marketing and content to drive higher return on experience.
  9. Business insights = market and competitor insights, uncovering hidden opportunities and value in your business operations.

Our ‘Uncover’ Products

Designed to answer our clients most common challenges.

Brand Audit (360)

An audit of your brand positioning and values using ‘natural’ data sources to uncover your consumers brand perceptions and needs.

No compromise Segmentation​

Blending big data and research to develop a combined attitudinal and behavioural segmentation. Progressive, actionable and long lasting.

Digital Personas

Drawing on all digital footprints to uncover your different audience needs, motivations and the journeys they take.

Real-Time Customer Insight

Using Social Listening for insights rather than performance, we uncover consumers needs, motivations and perceptions of your brand.

‘No Database’ Segmentation

Blending all digital data to segment and identify your different audiences when no database is available.

Case Studies

Kaplan International Pathways

Product used: No data segmentation & Digital Personas

Kaplan International Pathways wanted to transform their digital experiences. We blended Kaplan’s Website, Social, Search and Email data together to identify their different audience segments, their met and unmet needs, journeys and content that worked and content not found.  Using the insights we uncovered, we developed a toolkit to transform their digital experiences from acquisition and content, through to website and social platforms.

Yorkshire Building Society

Product used: Real-time Consumer Insight

YBS (Yorkshire Building Society) were considering launching a new service to a new audience. We used social listening to inform the product development launch strategy; spanning audience insights, channel strategy and language that will resonate.

Neal’s Yard Remedies

Product used: Brand audit

There was a growing perception that Neal’s Yard Remedies had lost its pioneering ‘ethical’ beauty status and had become one of many – as opposed to the go-to brand for ethical wellbeing. We uncovered their audiences behaviours to answer a range of business challenges, including; how does the NYR brand and product positioning need to evolve to be seen as the go to brand, as consumers become more ‘ethically and sustainably’ conscious?

We turn our Human Insights into action plans and strategies to deliver better connected, omni-channel customer experiences.

Customer Experience Mapping

Our 5-step approach to develop better brand experiences for your consumers and greater return on experience for your business.

Dream

Uncovering how consumers are talking about your brand, product and competitors. Their conversations, perceptions and motivations to purchase.

Plan

Uncovering what consumers need to buy, their barriers to purchase, support needed, questions raised, interest and engagement levels.

Act

Uncovering what tips a consumer into the final purchase, or gets them to pull out of the purchase. How they buy, what they buy, where, when and how much they are willing to spend.

Enjoy

How consumers engage with your product and brand. Their post purchase perceptions, experiences, levels of engagement, and more importantly, what they love about you.

Personas

Description of each different audience; their needs, motivations, barriers, levels of engagement, what they love, don’t love about the brand, how they prefer to engage with you.

Our ‘Activate’ Products

Designed to answer our clients most common challenges.

Brilliant Customer Experiences

Activation and creative strategies developed to deliver truly connected customer experiences.

Data Strategy

Activation plan to get the most out of your data; what to use, collect, how to segment, model.

Contact & Communications Strategies

We map who gets what, when, where, how much, across which channel to deliver a better, connected customer experience.

360 Channel Strategy

We map the optimum channels to get closer to your consumers and the role of each channel in the customer experience mix.

Content Framework

Overarching content pillars and themes to satisfy your customer needs, motivations and barriers to purchase.

Case Studies

Suzuki GB

Product used: Brilliant Customer Experiences

How do you launch the Jimny, a new car 19 years in the making? Where consumers, journalists and auto professionals think they know the new model inside out, how do you bring the car to life when it isn’t in the country? Yet, keep consumers wanting to buy until it arrives? And on top of all of that – get consumers to feel part of an exclusive club?  A content strategy, challenging how content is traditionally used in email to make consumers feel they are driving the Jimny, and a communication strategy timed to continuously build excitement.

Autistica

Product used: Brilliant Customer Experiences

Autistica wanted to move from a one size fits all communication strategy to one that recognises the needs of different Autistic community groups. And in doing so, make the most of their great content to drive deeper engagement and commitment. With limited customer data we blended Website, Email and Social Analytics to uncover 5 distinct needs and motivations and 5 discrete audience segments. From these insights we created an easy to use tool kit including a communications, channel and content strategy to drive access to support, engagement and donor value across the groups.

Asthma UK

Product used: Data Strategy

Asthma UK wanted to identify data and audience quick wins to apply to on-going and future data and communications strategy. By blending their website, social and database data together we uncovered how consumers perceive Asthma UK and the needs they seek to satisfy. From these insights we developed a new way of segmenting their database, targeting strategy, communications framework all designed to recognise the different needs and motivations of each segment.  And more importantly to convert consumers from ‘patients’ to ‘supporters’.

We test, measure, learn and optimise everything we do for you.  With our measurement and optimisation toolkits we empower your teams to make brave and innovative decisions.

Our ‘Accelerate’ Products

Designed to answer our clients most common challenges.

Return On Engagement

Measuring the value that engagement activity delivers for your business and predicting future levels.

Return on Experience

Measuring the value each area of your customer experience delivers for your business.

Content Intelligence

Measure the relevance and effectiveness of your content across all your channels.

Experience Tracker Dashboard

Track the performance of all your customer experience including comms and content in one place.

Case Study

Yorkshire Building Society

Product used: Brilliant Customer Experiences

YBS have a series of successful campaigns built around regulatory messaging, not around customer needs. We empowered the CRM team with audience insights and customer-centric approaches to help them look at their customer journeys with fresh eyes. Empowering the YBS team to make brave, informed and innovative decisions for the business to power new, brilliant customer experiences for Mortgages and Savings Customer journeys.

What our clients say...

We set Emerald the challenge of understanding our audiences to identify how we improve our current and shape our future communications strategies.  What they have delivered goes beyond this and more.  They have uncovered hidden needs and motivations of our audiences.  In doing so step changed our segmentation and the way we talk to our supporters, enabling us to transform the way we talk about Asthma UK.

Mark Hopkins

Head of Supporter Giving and Engagement, Asthma UK

The team at Emerald Thinking have been instrumental in supporting the development of our fundraising proposition and messaging framework. They provided amazing insights into our audiences and showed us how to deliver the best supporter journeys for our donors by working with us to ensure supporters received the right messaging at the right time to increase engagement. They always go the extra mile and are a complete joy to work with.

Alex Talcer

Director of Fundraising, Pride in London

Emerald Thinking is our go-to partner when it comes to all things data strategy. They have a unique approach of innovating and blending data to help demystify and simplify our clients’ complex challenges, creating actionable human insights that we can apply across a range of client strategies and business solutions.

Nick Baker

Founder stickandtwist.com

The team at Emerald take a fresh approach to all things data, with an eye for opportunity and insight they are really helping us to drive a new strategic approach to our communications. Their enthusiasm, passion and excitement for what they do speaks volumes and has taken hold of the whole team who are genuinely interested to see what new things we have learnt and how we can use this to give our customers a better experience with us.

Clair Phillips

CRM Manager, Suzuki GB

You may have a huge amount of data on your customers but what does it tell you? Claire can help you truly understand your customers’ behaviour, what that means in terms of their future choices and purchases. This high quality insight can be transformational in terms of customer engagement, satisfaction and ultimately maximising commercial advantage. Claire’s expertise, at the strategic level, in all things CRM and data are second to none.

Debbie McElhill

Fresh Snow Consulting Limited. Former Head of New Business, Royal Mail