Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

More about the impact of Act 10

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sources, said Michael De Boer, founder of the company.

Peak Harvest, the firm’s platform, learns who is actively in the market, what they’re specifical­ly looking for and where they are, both in terms of the sales process and in terms of their ZIP code, De Boer said.

His company stops at ZIP code, by the way, and doesn’t identify individual­s without their permission, he said.

“Our metrics are all tied to serious business metrics like revenue, leads, customer acquisitio­n and profitabil­ity,” De Boer said.

Internet data is much more powerful than traditiona­l advertisin­g metrics such as likes, opens, page visits and ad clicks — which can’t uncover people’s intent to buy, as evidenced by the products or services they are actively searching for, he said.

In the “old days,” 10 or 15 years ago, people went to product websites to find what they wanted to buy, said Charlie Tarzian, founder and chief executive officer of The Big Willow Inc., a Wilton, Conn., provider of the data-driven, predictive marketing technology licensed by Harvest Strat. Now it’s the opposite. “People accumulate informatio­n, intelligen­ce and knowledge in advance of making a decision,” Tarzian said. “The buyer is un-chaperoned.”

With ad exchanges and other tools, the Internet advertisin­g and marketing ecosystem is sophistica­ted enough to evaluate behavior down to an individual device, said Tarzian, whose career in data-driven marketing stretches back to the 1980s.

So it is apparent that about 70% of the purchasing decisions made by businesses are informed by reviews in peer-to-peer forums and blogs, he said.

Harvest Strat recently did a project that exemplifie­s the power of the data X-ray vision technology, De Boer said. The firm ran a test for a major online car dealer to identify people whose behavior suggested they were looking to buy Mustangs or Corvettes.

It identified several hundred thousand people by device and ZIP code who fit the bill, he said.

“Once we know so and so from Appleton is in the market to buy a Mustang, we could send them to the dealer’s website and track them when they come there,” De Boer said.

The process — called an ad-to-website conversion — can identify people who are in the market to buy with 80% certainty, he said.

“When we do ad-to-website conversion work, our results are four to 12 times better than the industry average because we know intent,” De Boer said.

Mile of Music plans to use Harvest Strat’s technology to create a yearround connection with its fans as it develops more music events, such as its Rhythms and Brews at Riverview Gardens event that it organizes every Wednesday night throughout the year, Willems said.

The organizati­on’s overriding goal, he said, is to make the Fox Valley a music destinatio­n that continues to provide an affordable way to experience original music.

Harvest Strat is helping it achieve that goal by, among other things, tracking whether attendees are engaging with sponsors, an important element in keeping costs down, Willems said.

“We’ve had millennial­s staying in the Valley because of what’s happening from a cultural and arts perspectiv­e,” he said. “The more of this type of stuff we can do, the better off we’re going to be.”

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