Since 2009, [Momentum Solar](https://momentumsolar.com/) has been one of the fastest growing solar installers in the country, helping thousands of homeowners make the transition to solar.

## The problem: optimizing the lead scoring process

Momentum Solar relies on their state-of-the-art call center as their main conversion channel, reaching out to leads acquired from aggregators to set up on-site assessments for solar installations.

But Momentum didn't become one of the nation's largest installers by being satisfied with _good enough_.

A solar installation is a significant investment, and it can be easy to get cold feet. When a sales rep needs to dedicate an afternoon to an on-site visit that can be canceled at any time, the cost to acquire a new customer can get expensive quickly. To help offset those costs, the Momentum team was looking for areas of optimization with the goal of reducing acquisition costs. One area they looked at for improvement was a lift in their lead conversion rate. They believed that [better lead prioritization](/solutions/lead-management) that allowed their call center to focus on the best leads was key to driving this lift.

## The obstacle: an incomplete picture of a solar customer

Traditionally, Momentum had leveraged a rules-based approach to lead scoring that focused on a few data points, such as lead source, lead demographics, home ownership status, and location of residence, to determine lead priority. The challenge with a rules-based approach is these data points are often subjectively chosen, and don't account for the full spectrum of both intuitive and unintuitive data points that are key indicators of whether or not a lead will convert.

Additionally, Momentum had a large collection of leads that had not initially converted. A major issue with the rules-based approach to lead scoring is that it's static, even though people aren't. With Momentum's existing approach, a lead's score–and in turn, priority–would never change.

## Why Faraday?

### Fresh data + models

To optimize their lead conversion, Momentum used the Faraday platform to add a [predictive layer](/features/customer-behavior-predictions) to their lead prioritization system.

The value of predictive models is the quantitative, rather than qualitative, approach to lead scoring. Machine learning algorithms run millions of simulations to find patterns in large datasets, meaning they transcend subjective biases.

Instead of scoring a lead based on a few key points, Momentum used the Faraday platform to build a [lead scoring model](/blog/why-you-need-predictive-lead-scoring-today) that ranked leads based on their probability of becoming a customer. The model trained on Momentum's existing customer base and the [hundreds of first and third-party data points](/features/faraday-identity-graph) that Faraday associated with Momentum's customers.

Furthermore, the lead scores were updated as new customers' examples were added and lead behavior was observed. This ensured that Momentum's prioritization methodology was never static.

## The results

### Appointments set 33% faster

To test the efficacy of this new approach to prioritization Momentum split the scored leads into three groups: red, yellow, and green, with red being low probability leads and green being high probability leads. The goal was to see a _higher_ rate of lead-to-scheduled appointments rates for the yellow and green groups (comprising the top four deciles  of leads) and _lower_ conversion in the red group (bottom six deciles).

Each of these groups received the same call cadence and performance was measured against a baseline performance of 180 connected calls per scheduled appointment.

As expected, the green and yellow groups converted at increased rates compared to the baseline vs the red group, which converted at a lower rate. Specifically, the green group saw a **+191% lift in conversion rate** over baseline, while the yellow group saw a **+51% lift in conversion rate** over baseline. Equally as important, the red group converted 4% _lower_ than the baseline, further confirming where the call center should spend its time.

Ultimately, the call center needed **33% fewer outbound calls** to hit their scheduled appointment goal.

Momentum Solar used Faraday to add a predictive layer to their call center's lead scoring process, resulting in the call center needing 33% fewer outbound calls to achieve their appointment goal.

How Momentum Solar cut calls-per-appointment by 33% with predictive lead scoring

[Advia Credit Union](https://www.adviacu.org/)'s mission is to provide financial advantages to its members through solutions that address life's evolving needs, including mortgage refinancing, debt consolidation, and auto loans.

## The problem: engaging customers with the right message

The average American holds eight financial products, yet only [19% of Americans](https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/financial-services/us-kickingitupanotch-092614.pdf) have three or more products with their primary financial institution. For many credit unions, including Advia, growing their "wallet share" with [existing members](/solutions/customer-engagement) is key to their long term stability and success. The challenge is how to do this effectively. There is brand risk in simply bombarding members with unsuitable offers that could result in members ignoring all communications from the credit union. Worse, it could erode trust, create frustration, and sow overall member dissatisfaction.

For Advia, they needed a way to understand the personalized financial journeys for each of their members so that they could surface the [next best product recommendation](/features/customer-behavior-predictions) for each member. Such an approach would ensure optimal use of their marketing budget, minimize member dissatisfaction, and help grow wallet share with their members.

## The obstacle: using data and remaining compliant

Advia understood that their member data likely held the key for developing next best product recommendations. Unfortunately, their lead data scientist had recently left the organization, and Advia was looking at a lengthy ramp period to hire and onboard someone new.

Additionally, Advia needed to navigate a complex regulatory landscape. Advertising lending products comes with stringent compliance requirements to ensure fair lending practices and protect consumer privacy. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), for example, prohibits discrimination in credit transactions based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or receipt of public assistance. This means any data used for segmentation in advertising must not incorporate these protected classes, either intentionally or unintentionally, to avoid violations.

## Why Faraday?

To address these challenges, Advia partnered with Faraday. Advia used the Faraday platform to determine which of their primary retail financial products should be surfaced to each member. They initially tested this by looking at which members should receive information on their auto loan product.

Advia linked its historical member data with Faraday's identity graph, including information on member adoption of Advia's auto loan. With this training data, Advia created a set of predictive models that scored each member's propensity for an auto loan. They also leveraged Faraday's [bias identification and mitigation features](/blog/faraday-bias-management-announcement) to address historical bias in their training set, aiding their fair lending compliance efforts.

With Faraday's product recommendations in hand, Advia could segment their audience more intelligently. They identified the top percentile of members most likely to complete an auto loan application and targeted them through both personalized email and direct mail campaigns. This targeted approach ensured that the most relevant offers reached the right members, enhancing engagement and increasing the likelihood of loan applications.

## The results

The success of Advia's auto loan campaign was measured by the percentage of recipients that completed auto loan applications. Before using Faraday, Advia's benchmark for success was a 1.19% application rate.

**30-Day results**: After just 30 days of running the campaign that used Faraday's recommendation, Advia achieved a 2.41% application rate. This significant improvement resulted in **$1.1 million in new auto loans**.

**90-Day results**: The application rate continued to grow over the next 60 days achieving a 5.18% application rate after 90 days. This increase in engagement led to a total of **$2.7 million in new auto loans**, far surpassing the initial benchmark.

Advia Credit Union's use of Faraday's platform demonstrates the power of personalization and predictive analytics. Faraday gave Advia the ability to target the right members with relevant offers, leading to higher engagement and significantly improved loan application rates.

This approach not only boosted Advia's campaign performance, but also boosted Advia's regulatory compliance efforts, while safeguarding member trust. Advia's use of the Faraday platform exemplifies how financial institutions can harness data to drive better outcomes, provide superior service to their members, and use [AI responsibly](/features/ai-safety-and-responsible-ai).

The team at Advia Credit Union used customer predictions to deliver the right product to the right people in a direct mail campaign while using AI responsibly.

How Advia Credit Union generates $2.7 million in new auto loans with Faraday’s consumer product recommendations

In the competitive landscape of direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce, [personalization](/blog/personalization-at-scale-guide) is a key differentiator.

[Boll & Branch](https://www.bollandbranch.com/), a prominent DTC linens company, used Faraday to provide customer predictions that guide their marketing strategies.

## The problem

Boll & Branch was looking for a more accurate way to effectively segment their customer base so they could deliver more personalized and relevant content.

With a wide range of products and a diverse customer demographic, it was crucial to understand more about their customers, their preferred products, and channels.  They found that their initial segments had no correlation to specific products or marketing channels, limiting their ability to launch an effective personalization strategy.

## The solution

To address this challenge, Boll & Branch used Faraday's persona predictions to identify customer personas that represented distinct socio-economic clusters. Each persona had preferred products and marketing channels.

This approach differed from a traditional persona exercise in which a brand must either form personas from a qualitative process (e.g. surveys, focus groups, etc.) or leveraging pre-computed personas like PRIZM codes.

With [qualitatively derived personas](/blog/predictive-personalization-machine-learning), a brand can't easily assign new customers to a persona, unless a customer responds to survey questions. Given most customer surveys have single digit response rates, this limits a brand's ability to segment their customer base.

Pre-computed personas have the benefit of being universal, but are generic demographic clusters vs. specific patterns derived from a brand's data. This often results in persona segments with little variation in customer behavior.

Faraday's persona models leverage [rich data](/features/faraday-identity-graph) on nearly every U.S. adult–allowing for universal assignment–paired with an AI clustering algorithm that builds personas from a training set provided by a client's own customer data. The results are customer personas that can be applied to all known contacts in a brand's customer base, while also reflecting the socio-demographic nuances across this dataset.

### Data integration and persona development

Boll & Branch used the Faraday platform to identify three distinct personas based on a set of socio-demographic factors. They then were able to see that these segments had distinct purchasing behavior, preferences, and other relevant metrics.

These personas were then assigned to individual customers in Boll & Branch's [BigQuery](/integrations/predictions-with-bigquery) data warehouse, providing the metadata needed to support their personalization initiatives.

### Personas + attribution

Traditionally, Boll & Branch thought their demographic skewed older, and as a result they invested heavily in radio advertising. Pairing Faraday's personas with Boll & Branch's internal attribution system allowed them to see what kinds of customers were coming from which channels, what discount codes different personas were responding to, and what products they were purchasing.

An example of this was the marketing team's identification of their highest value persona, whom the team nicknamed "Jen": a wealthier, settled, homeowner, that preferred clean modern aesthetics.

This qualitative insight gave Boll & Branch the confidence to organize marketing towards the Jen persona - from branding, product design, prospecting, all the way down to engagement and retention.

As Daphne Chow, Senior Manager of Consumer Strategy & Analytics puts it, Faraday helped Boll & Branch "see what kind of consumer we are seeing as crucial to our success, and our whole organization has rallied around that goal."

For example, they could see that individuals in the Jen persona were heavy users of social media, and as a result began being more strategic with their channel mix.

Knowing Jen also allowed them to conduct focus groups and surveys with members of that cohort, where they found they were influenced by interior design personalities - guiding them to a successful partnership with the star designer, Nate Berkus.

### Personas + email campaigns

Because every contact in their system was assigned a persona, Boll & Branch could also use these assignments to power their email campaigns. The team designed personalized content for each persona: not only did they use creative that aligned to the socio-demographic makeup of each persona, they also were able to draw insights about what products each of their customer personas over-indexed on, allowing them to select highly relevant product recommendations for each persona.

This approach ensured that each customer received content that resonates with their unique preferences and needs.

## The results

The implementation of Faraday's personas into Boll & Branch's marketing strategy yielded impressive results. By delivering personalized experiences through targeted email campaigns, the company achieved a **30% lift in conversion rates**. This significant improvement underscored the value of utilizing advanced predictive analytics to drive personalized marketing efforts.

Boll & Branch's partnership with Faraday exemplifies the power of data-driven personalization in ecommerce. By identifying distinct customer personas and tailoring marketing messages accordingly, the company was able to enhance customer engagement and drive higher conversion rates.

Or, in the words of their Chief Digital Officer, Katia Unlu, "Faraday is in our DNA."

Boll & Branch used customer predictions to drive hyper-personalized customer experiences, resulting in a 30% lift in coversion rates.

How Boll & Branch achieved a 30% lift in conversion rates with customer predictions

[Community First Credit Union](https://www.communityfirstfl.org/) (CFCU) started in 1935 in a Jacksonville high school basement and has since evolved into 19 branches and over 135,000 members. CFCU's success is rooted in its commitment to its members, offering tailored products to meet individual needs and utilizing innovative technologies to deliver an exceptional banking experience.

## The problem: finding the right members

A mere 19% of Americans have three or more products with their primary financial institution–that is, where their checking account lives–despite the average American holding [eight financial products](https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/financial-services/us-kickingitupanotch-092614.pdf).

In order to remain competitive & ensure long-term success, CFCU knew that they had to grow their "wallet share" with [existing members](/solutions/customer-engagement). More members adopting CFCU's comprehensive financial solutions deepens the financial relationship between the credit union and its members, fostering loyalty and long-term engagement. This diversification helps in spreading risk and maintaining a more stable financial base, while reducing the need for costly marketing and acquisition efforts.

The challenge they faced was how to accomplish this effectively. CFCU lacked the resources to compete directly with larger banks and fintech companies. That meant simply shoveling more ad spend into their [direct mail](/blog/personalized-direct-mail-strategy) program wasn't an option - CFCU needed a more efficient approach that could increase response rates from both new and existing members _without_ increasing spending.

## The obstacle: reaching the right members efficiently

Before Faraday, CFCU used traditional segmentation, like a member's current product mix, their income, and identifying members to whom they could extend pre-approved offers of credit. What they found is that this approach often failed to capture the nuanced preferences and [behaviors](/features/customer-behavior-predictions) of individual members. Because segments were built off broad categories, the generic messages tailored to these segments didn't resonate with recipients. [Personalized](/blog/personalization-at-scale-guide) and relevant content were essential to better find and engage loyal members.

CFCU understood that AI offered opportunities for more effective segmentation, on top of an unlock for personalizing a member's journey.  Their existing member data provided the historical examples of customers who had grown wallet share from one product to many. Their existing direct mail providers had exposed CFCU to the immense trove of additional third party data that could be leveraged to create distinct segments.

At the same time, they knew that were signficant costs associated with this data, the infrastructure needed to run AI models, and the in house talent needed to develop that level of modeling.

## Why Faraday? 

### Identity resolution & easy product recommendations

Partnering with Faraday turned out to be the unlock that CFCU needed to realize this vision of using AI to grow wallet share amongst their members.

They used the Faraday platform to connect their member data to Faraday's identity graph, giving them instant access to [hundreds of data points](/features/faraday-identity-graph) beyond those they had used to segment members in the past. Using Faraday's modeling engine, CFCU was able to build product recommendations that were personalized for each member and for all prospects in their charter territory.

With this segmentation in hand, CFCU used Faraday to easily build mailing lists of the individuals they most wanted to target in their direct mail campaigns.

## The results

### Acquisition campaign

CFCU used the Faraday platform to predict which consumers were most likely to become their next loyal members, defined as a member with a high account balance and strong net interest revenue. To test the model, CFCU ran a direct mail campaign with a 50/50 audience split (50% from high-scoring model predictions; 50% from traditional segmentation techniques).

The new members generated using Faraday's targeting saw **61% higher average account balances** and **24% higher net interest revenue** than the new members acquired using traditional segmentation techniques.

### Next product recommendation

Faraday also predicted which members were most likely to need a checking account, auto loan, first mortgage, and more. To test the model's predictions and get in front of members with the highest potential for engagement, CFCU ran a direct mail campaign with the same technique in a 50/50 audience split (50% based on Faraday's next product recommendation; 50% from traditional segmentation techniques).

The members contacted with offers recommended by Faraday saw **54% higher net interest revenue** and **88% lift in projected ROI**.

With Faraday, Community First Credit Union used customer predictions to drive highly effective acquisition and engagement campaigns with great results.

How Community First Credit Union unlocks 61% higher account balances using Faraday’s predictive AI

Thirstie is a technology company that offers an end-to-end solution for the alcohol industry, connecting brands with consumers through an integrated e-commerce platform. Their services include regulatory compliance, delivery logistics, and data analytics to streamline the online sale and delivery of alcoholic beverages.

## Challenge: Pioneering direct channel consumer data for the alcohol industry

E-commerce has revolutionized the way alcohol brands reach their consumers, offering a direct sales channel that bypasses traditional distribution models.

This direct relationship unlocks the most valuable data asset for a brand, a list of end customers. Prior to the emergence of an e-commerce channel for alcohol, alcohol beverage brands' customer insights were limited to the data they could garner from their distributors and retail sales data.

Recognizing the opportunity within this order data lie, Thirstie set out to make consumer insights a central component of their service offering. Their goal was to go beyond mere transaction data, providing brands with deep, actionable insights into a given brands’ customer base.

## Obstacle: Going beyond transaction data with predictions

While Thirstie had ample transaction data, they lacked any additional data on these buyers. Thirstie’s ability to deliver customer insights meant they would need access to 3rd party consumer data and the analytical resources to make sense of it all.

Challenge one, was licensing and reconciling thousands of transactions with a large consumer database would be both expensive and complex, involving substantial investment in ETL and computing power.

Challenge two, was identifying meaningful patterns and trends consistently and at scale.

## Why Faraday: Plug and play persona analytics

Facing a long development cycle in a competitive market, Thirstie looked to Faraday as an infrastructure provider who could not only handle data enrichment and ETL, but also the modeling workload to derive insights from this combined dataset. With access to Faraday’s Identity Graph, Thirstie only needed an email address associated with an online transaction to tap into hundreds of data points on every customer in their database. The consumer data covered the full spectrum of demographic, financial and psychographic data, ensuring a complete view of each brand's customers could be built.

With this combination of transaction and consumer data, Thirstie used Faraday’s k-means clustering models to produce customer persona sets by alcohol beverage type.

Each time a transaction was observed, Thirstie used Faraday to assign each buyer to the appropriate persona, populating this information automatically in their data warehouse. Instead of building a bespoke solution, Thirstie could link Faraday’s consumer data with their warehouse, ensuring data is refreshed daily.

Thirstie displayed these personas in an analytics dashboard in their product, providing its clients with a rich understanding of the distinct socio-demographic segments within their customer base.

Thirstie also made this data available at the order level, so that their clients could leverage it for personalized engagement and advertising..

## Results: A Faraday powered core offering reduces Thirstie’s sales cycle by 30%

By partnering with Faraday, Thirstie was able to quickly bring deep insights and customer personas to its users, on scalable infrastructure. They did this without having to increase their expenditures on data science resources or the licensing of third party data assets.

Since partnering with Faraday in 2020, Thirstie has seen its client base more than quintuple, and the length of its sales cycle has dropped by 30%.

In May of 2024, Thirstie was acquired by Cocktail Courier.

Thirstie, an e-commerce platform for beverage brands, built a new analytics feature, powered by  Faraday, that drove adoption.

Customer stories

How Momentum Solar cut calls-per-appointment by 33% with predictive lead scoring

How Advia Credit Union generates $2.7 million in new auto loans with Faraday’s consumer product recommendations

How Boll & Branch achieved a 30% lift in conversion rates with customer predictions

How Community First Credit Union unlocks 61% higher account balances using Faraday’s predictive AI

How e-commerce platform Thirstie reduced their sales cycle by 30% with an analytics feature powered by Faraday