Razorfish launched a new technology called R-Index that measures disparate online and offline customer interactions (including for paid and owned interactions) and generates prescriptive insights on consumer sentiment, brand performance and business impact. R-Index turns otherwise disconnected data into strategic insights on consumer journeys and brand sentiment.
R-Index is based on a custom algorithm that leverages Google Cloud, Big Query, and a suite of machine learning and Vertex AI, working together to analyze what customers are doing at every step and providing actionable insights about customer insights and learning how to engage with customers better.
What Is R-Index About?
I interviewed Razorfish to get a better idea of what R-Index is and why it’s an important tool for brands.
I asked Razorfish about what’s being measured:
“R-Index helps measure brand performance, consumer sentiment, and business impact. It includes a brand’s experience touchpoints across the consumer journey, including paid and owned interactions.”
The press release notes how there’s an abundance of data about “moments that matter” but that its inherent disparate quality makes it challenging to get a holistic picture of what it all means and extract meaning from it. So I asked them to elaborate on that.
“The holistic journey looks different for different consumers and consumer journeys. R-Index aims to capture how consumers start their journeys through purchase and loyalty, and distill how resonant each of these touchpoints are along the journey into a single, easy-to-use metric.
A moment that matters is a specific engagement that a consumer has with any of our experience touchpoints, whether that’s marketing, going to a website, etc. These are the moments where we see
more engagement based on our observations. They can be different across consumers and segments.As we analyze what the consumer is doing across the full journey, we’re identifying touchpoints that are resonating more and helping brands refine and optimize those experiences. This could be increasing the frequency, delivering a more personalized message, or focusing on a specific touchpoint. But with R-Index, we’re capitalizing on this behavioral data and using it to serve consumers better.”
What are the concrete real-world “touchpoints” you are referring to?
“Real-world touchpoints include call data, CRM information, web traffic, mobile app clicks, ad traffic or offline interactions like TV. As the number of avenues for consumers to interact with a brand continues to increase, data from those sources is continuing to fragment and shift further into silos.
Similarly, despite recent delays, third-party cookies will continue to deprecate and newer regulations will further the challenges in data collection, making it vital for brands to be able to access and process any and all data options into one source.
When you think about how traditional measurement tools have looked at performance (ex: acquisition and how that works across specific channels, paid media, or television) they aren’t really connected to measuring the actual sentiment or perception of consumers and how these translate into specific business value for brands.
And sentiment descriptions really differ from brand to brand, as some labels that are considered “negative” for one brand might not be the same for another.
R-index is meant to aggregate all the different touchpoints that a consumer could theoretically interact with and get to a perspective of what’s actually driving either positive sentiment and resonance for consumers or what areas need to be optimized for better experiences.”
Tell me more about the insights and how R-Index provides more a “nuanced view”?
“R-Index is a simpler tool to get the insights that are needed to help a brand optimize overall performance, dive into the specific drivers of that performance for a brand, and make those experiences more resonant and relevant for their core consumers. R-Index provides more insights into what’s truly driving positive and helpful consumer experiences, and driving resonance for brands across the entire marketing mix and marketing investment.
Even if you have specific segments of consumers, they can behave very differently based on how they’re interacting with the touchpoints. While the aim is not to drill down to any one
specific customer, it can provide improved segment understanding to make each touchpoint more appropriate and personalized.There are many measurement solutions in the market that can look at channel performance or sentiment performance in a silo, but R-Index is putting everything together in one place. R-Index has the components of being more dynamic, being able to scale and being able to plug into a number of different tools and AI capabilities to provide predictive optimized recommendations at scale.
The combination and connectivity of the data being pulled, the AI capabilities, and rigorous testing of the tool is helping drive the more nuanced views of insights that provide prescriptive strategic recommendations and analyses of data with greater detail. The definition and understanding of a brand’s audience segments will be deeper than ever before.
R-Index is prescriptive, providing automated insights and recommendations, and allows for drill-down insights at granular levels for components that make up the index score.
R-Index’s capabilities go beyond simply understanding what ads work to understanding how nuances across media investment, macroeconomic data, etc., impact overall consumer perceptions and interactions with brands, and how to best refine experiences to be resonant to consumers with those insights in mind.”
A Powerful Tool For Actionable Insights
R-Index is a powerful marketing insight tool that measures brand performance, consumer sentiment, and business impact and provides prescriptive recommendations to help make marketers and marketing teams improve consumer experiences and business outcomes.
Read more about R-Index:
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