Introducing Origins Enrichment on PersonaLive

How Cultural Heritage Shapes Consumer Behavior

Names carry a powerful cultural fingerprint, often revealing heritage and cultural background. It’s amazing how our heritage can help explain what we do.

Consider the Hatfields and McCoys, famously feuding families in Appalachia. Their English and Scottish/Irish heritage, with its distinct codes of honor, likely fueled their ongoing conflict. Or think about studies at UCLA, which found that speakers of languages without distinct present and future tenses (such as Chinese, German, and Finnish) are more likely to save. Could this explain why Chinese Americans save 30% more than their peers? 

Introducing Origins Enrichment on PersonaLive

This depth of insight into cultural identity is why I’m thrilled to introduce the Origin Enrichment tool on PersonaLive. Starting today, retailers using PersonaLive can append a predicted origin code to their customer records, providing a new level of cultural understanding. Origins was developed by Dr. Richard Webber, the inventor of geodemographics in the UK and a personal hero of mine.

How it works: Upload your customer data to PersonaLive and select Origins enrichment. Origin’s uses the first and last name of your customer list to predict ethnic origins across 11 groups and 50 subgroups.

10 Ways Retailers Can Use Origins Enrichment

You can use Origins in PersonaLive for cultural segmentation in the same way you can currently segment by behavior. Here are ten ways Origins can enhance your retail strategy:

1. Analyze Your Customer Base: Discover if your brand resonates with specific cultural groups. For instance, a makeup brand found a small but extremely loyal Hispanic customer base they had been ignoring.
2. Design Culturally Tailored Campaigns: Use Origins data to create campaigns that resonate with specific cultural groups, boosting engagement and conversions. I’ve seen click-through rates increase by 16% when targeting underserved groups on platforms like Facebook
3. Optimize Product Recommendations: Identify products that resonate with different cultural groups. For example, an outdoor brand discovered a sports product line that over-indexed with African American customers, opening new growth opportunities.
4. Fine-tune Product Assortments: Align product offerings with the preferences of your local customer base to drive relevance and sales in specific locations.
5. Personalize Loyalty Programs: Create loyalty initiatives tailored to the preferences of diverse customer segments. This can be particularly useful for ethnic food restaurants and other businesses looking to celebrate cultural events.
6. Enhance Customer Service Training: Train staff to understand and respect cultural nuances, improving customer interactions and satisfaction. This does not have to be specific in retail, especially if the support ticket comes with a first and last name. For instance, route calls from Portuguese-speaking customers to team members fluent in Portuguese.
7. Engage Local Communities: Identify cultural segments within your customer base and plan community events or partnerships that strengthen brand loyalty.
8. Choose Targeted Advertising and Media Placement: Advertise on niche channels that cater to specific cultural audiences. Channels like Telemundo, Univision, BET, and NHK World-Japan can be much cheaper than mainstream media.
9. Build a Diverse Team: Ensure your workforce reflects your customer base so employees can better relate to and empathize with customers. By analyzing employee demographics at each location, you can identify differences between your staff composition and the local customer base, both by store and by role.
10. Analyze Customer Feedback by Origin: Segment feedback by origin to spot unique needs and preferences, improving service quality and customer satisfaction. You may find a specific niche that loves and promotes your brand above others.

The Growing Opportunity of Underserved Audiences

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2043, the U.S. will become a “majority-minority” nation, with 1 in 3 Americans already living in majority-minority counties. Yet, advertisers continue to battle it out for the top 25% of income earners, creating intense competition in a narrow segment. This focus leaves minority groups, particularly those whose primary language isn’t English, with significantly lower advertising spend.

What does this mean for retailers? Digital advertising is an auction, and no one is bidding on a huge and growing portion of Americans. A prime example is one of the best-performing Facebook ads I’ve encountered, run by a car insurance company with a significant Hispanic customer base (their founder is Hispanic). Their team crafted a highly targeted campaign in Meta, focused on this segment. The results were remarkable, with consistent 16% click-through rates—even though their ad looked like it was made in PowerPoint. This shows the potential in tapping into overlooked audiences.

Join Us for the Origins Launch

Join Dr. Richard Webber and me on Wednesday, November 13, for the launch of Origins within PersonaLive. Discover how cultural insights can transform your retail strategy and help you connect with customers on a deeper level.

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