CMC: Reducing time to insight from market mix modelling by 15% with faster onboarding

Summary

• CMC Markets knew they needed to transition to a marketing mix solution, but wanted to get up and running quickly
• After assessing all the options in market, the team landed on Mutinex GrowthOS as the fastest way to get powerful insights
• The marketing team is now looking forward to onboarding the finance team

When Liam Loan-Lack joined CMC Markets as CMO in 2022, he set his sights on market mix modelling as a way to win executive hearts and minds. But reducing time to insight from market mix modelling – that’s where Mutinex GrowthOS comes in. Despite record breaking year end results, Loan-Lack and his team are not resting on their laurels. His focus is on “two speed” marketing – and he needed market mix modelling in place to ensure buy in.

Two speed marketing

Like many companies, CMC has been guilty of using short-term campaigns to drive growth at the expense of longer campaigns to grow share of voice. Loan-Lack is changing that approach and credits the record-breaking growth to a decision to stay in market over the traditionally “dark” Christmas holiday period.

“I’m trying to move us from having a one speed marketing plan, to getting the organisation to understand the need for two speeds. It sounds basic but most people would be surprised how important it is to have that in play,” says Loan-Lack.

The other priority is attracting higher value customers: “We are comfortable increasing our cost of acquisition, if we’re still getting clients that trade quickly and at high volumes. So the challenge is in moving the business from thinking about cost per acquisition to the lifetime value of the customer. One is an efficiency metric and the other one is a measure of effectiveness. We need to drive effectiveness above all”

Changing approach requires proof points and although Loan-Lack has been making headway, he recognised that he would never be able to fully showcase the impact of his initiatives without the right measurement framework in place.

Why market mix modelling is critical to success

Loan-Lack has seen large marketing budgets in play at enough companies to know that these changes can’t be properly embedded without a measurement framework that speaks directly to the boardroom. “If you’re investing $5 million or more in marketing and you don’t have a market mix model, it’s amateur hour”, he says.

Why market mix modelling? “Because otherwise you will never be able to talk to anyone with a C in front of their title and convince them of what you deliver in the short and medium term. It elevates the conversation from efficiency to effectiveness and it also enables you to talk about risk, reward and return – and when I say return I mean proper return, incremental growth. That’s why any marketer worth their salt will have it. And if you don’t do it, you’re not doing the things required of the modern marketer.”

Reducing time to insight from market mix modelling

If it’s clear that Loan-Lack is a devotee of market mix modelling, that’s because it’s not his first rodeo. He’s previously worked on market mix implementation both as an agency executive and client-side, so he knew what he was looking for in a modelling solution.

Firstly, Loan-Lack was looking for something SaaS based, that could be used hands-on, outside of a presentation. He quickly landed on Mutinex GrowthOS.

A crucial factor in Loan-Lack’s decision making was speed, both in terms of onboarding and of model refresh. Loan-Lack was acutely aware of some of the challenges that come with onboarding to a market mix modelling solution.

“I think every client underestimates the pain and the effort of onboarding to something like this”, he says, “especially somewhere like CMC where we haven’t done this before.”

While market mix modelling is new to CMC, Loan-Lack applied his previous experience in choosing a partner. By his estimation, the onboarding process with Mutinex has been roughly 15 per cent faster than with other companies.

Configuring the system to ensure that the results are clear, consistent and credible is also critical. “The data you choose with something like this is important”, he says. “the Mutinex team ask the right questions and are really invested in the answers to ensure that we get good results.”

Loan-Lack was also impressed by the vision of the Mutinex team around AI, automation and partnerships.

“Everyone knows that getting data from agencies can be like pulling teeth. Any company in the market mix modelling business that is looking at how to ease the pipeline of data using technology and automation is lightyears ahead of the competition.”

Working with finance to close the data gap

In the meantime, Loan-Lack and the CMC team have worked with Mutinex to set up a monthly data refresh process, enabling them to use the system to better inform marketing investment.

But Loan-Lack’s ambition for the tool doesn’t stop at the marketing team.

“I would love for it to be a tool that our finance team uses to recalibrate planning throughout the year. They’re excited about that and will be getting on board soon.”