Meet the Kalibrate team: Jim Sellers, Senior Director Marketing Solutions at Intalytics

At Kalibrate, we believe our success is driven as much by our people as our technology. Here, we meet Jim Sellers, Senior Director Marketing Solutions at Intalytics — the latest addition to the Kalibrate Group.

——————————-

What’s your role at Intalytics?

I wear multiple hats. First, I work to ensure our client’s marketing departments leverage the insights delivered by our real estate site selection projects. Knowing the geographic limits of our client’s trade areas helps marketers improve business results through precision geo-targeting. Diving deep into the customer profile informs marketing strategies and tactics.

Marketers can’t be effective without a comprehensive understanding of who their customers are, what motivates them, where else they shop, and where they live. For every client, I think and act as if I were an owner of their organization. We constantly ask “what’s working, what’s not, and how can we be better?”

Next, I work with Intalytics’ clients to put our insights to work directly through developing, executing, measuring, and continuously improving marketing campaigns. We combine the knowledge of our clients’ business challenges and opportunities with our geospatial, analytical, and predictive modelling horsepower to deliver marketing messages directly to the highest potential households — across the marketing lifecycle of customer acquisition, growth, and retention. Our advanced digital and direct mail marketing capabilities give our clients new tools for their marketing toolkit, supplementing their traditional marketing channels.

What does a typical day look like?

A typical day this week looked like this:

• Met with a retail client to discuss key action items for the launch of a major digital ad campaign targeting multiple consumer segments. We reviewed creative concepts for pre-roll video, created a timeline for introducing addressable TV ads, and confirmed budget allocation across campaign tactics
• Analyzed the initial results from the soft launch phase of a client’s first ever brand level awareness, usage, and satisfaction primary research study. Based on those findings, we approved hard launch to a representative panel of the general population in the brand’s geographic trade area
• Completed a behavioral segmentation scoring project for a restaurant client. The project provided them the framework for a fact-based approach to allocating marketing budgets across their locations and across their customer segments
• Delivered a weekly update to a healthcare client summarizing results of an ongoing digital marketing campaign targeting new movers. Using the conversion zone tracking capabilities of our digital ad delivery system, the client was excited to learn that 725 mobile devices we’d targeted with ads later visited one of their clinics, a strong new patient acquisition result

This day also included calls with several Intalytics colleagues to discuss client opportunities they’d identified; an internal meeting to discuss a proof of concept for using geolocated social media posts to identify points of interest suitable for delivery of digital ads; and a weekly touch base with the marketing solutions operations team.

I’m a remote worker, based in Kansas City, so all of this occurred through virtual channels, with my two yellow Labradors, Lewis and Clark, paying me an occasional visit to remind me they wanted to chase each other around the back yard.

What do you love about your role?

Three things: the people, the variety, and the opportunities to learn and grow. The Intalytics’ team includes some of the smartest, most innovative, and most motivated colleagues I’ve had the privilege to work with over my career.

The same is true for our clients. Our client portfolio includes many of the world’s great brands. I work with clients in many different industries, including retail, restaurant, healthcare, education, and services. Each client faces a unique set of business challenges and opportunities. They’re positioned at different stages of the business lifecycle. Their competitive situations all vary.

The diversity of our clients requires all of us at Intalytics to be open-minded, agile, fact-driven, with an intense focus on delivering measurable value. Not a day goes by where I don’t learn something new and have the chance to put it to work quickly. We’re always looking to identify and integrate existing capabilities across functions to create new value for clients — that’s incredibly rewarding.

Why did you choose to join Intalytics?

I first discovered how real estate site selection insights can be put to work for marketers when I was leading the national promotions and local marketing teams at FedEx Office. Back then we were opening up 500 new format locations over an 18-month period. It was an incredible laboratory to test and learn what works and what doesn’t when building a new retail business model. It was an invigorating and stimulating period in my career, and Intalytics offered a similar opportunity to apply my knowledge of geospatial analytics, predictive modelling, digital, direct, and database marketing across a wide variety of clients and industries.

What do you think are the greatest challenges and opportunities
for marketers in a post-COVID-19 world?

Consumer behaviors and attitudes have changed more quickly during the pandemic than at any other point in our careers. Developing and maintaining a fact base of consumer driven insights that captures those behavior changes is more important now than ever before. Agility, a willingness to take informed risks to create value for consumers, a keen focus on brand business metrics, and an unwavering commitment to measuring and improving the results of our efforts will continue to create opportunities over the foreseeable future.

Where do you see Intalytics heading?

As the Kalibrate companies integrate across their unique areas of expertise, I see an expansion of Intalytics’ marketing solutions across our joint client portfolio, but also the development of new offerings that will benefit marketers.

Product and category level analytics that will point to opportunities for our client’s merchandising and product development teams; pricing sensitivity and attachment rate analytics for client’s pricing teams; and a growing set of promotional solutions for client’s customer management teams — all of these will increasingly accompany our advanced analytics that help clients find the most profitable new brick and mortar locations, and optimize their distribution strategy across an ever changing omni-channel world.

——————————-

Are you adapting to a more evolved retail environment? In this blog, Kalibrate’s CEO discusses his predictions how retail is changing post–COVID-19.