AI Case Study

"The team had already tried matching online and in-store data, as well as assigning values to website actions that they thought were important, such as add-to-cart activity that didn’t result in a sale, and how many people visited the store locator page. Unfortunately, it was nearly impossible to calculate just how much each of these actions was actually worth to the business, and these metrics didn’t carry a lot of weight across the business when demonstrating the contribution of digital channels to sales. With a backlog of tests proffered by internal stakeholders and agencies, U.S. Cellular needed a way to prioritize testing.

Using purchase intent analysis – a statistical analysis in which information is extracted from data and then analyzed to identify patterns and make predictions about future outcomes/events –
Cardinal Path set about identifying the site actions that lead to sales across any transaction channel – offline and online.

Purchase intent research helped the move forward in two ways:
showing the site actions that did lead to offline sales, and which of those actions were most important, in order to drive testing efforts.

After learning this key insight, the digital team at U.S. Cellular was able to prioritize its long list of testing items, and started by working with messaging on the “Offers” section of the website. This way, the digital team knew how many new lines of service and how many current customer renewals were generated by their digital marketing efforts. These findings empower the digital team to speak in terms of dollars and enable U.S. Cellular to put
hard numbers against their return on marketing investment.
The results of initial tests have already driven a 23 percent increase in visitors to the “Offers” section of the website and a 61 percent boost in customer lifetime value by improving the blend of higher-value customers in the mix and increasing response rates."