An approach for the identification of cross-sell and up-sell opportunities using a financial services customer database

The collection, management and manipulation of customer data are key to the successful operation of many relationship marketing and customer relationship management endeavours. To make effective use of the data, however, requires that organisations know how to analyse it in order to generate valuable information for marketing purposes. One of the key challenges to maintaining an ongoing relationship with customers is to be able to predict what products customers will need to buy next and at what point so that appropriate marketing offers can be made. This paper illustrates an analytical approach that can be used in such a situation. Using actual customer data from a financial institution, the paper illustrates the application of segmentation analysis, purchase acquisition trees and survival analysis. While the results are of particular interest to financial institutions, the methodology has applicability in a number of contexts where customer data are available.