What is Advanced Profile Synthesis?

On January 12th, Revinate is launching new functionality that will help hoteliers finally solve one of the biggest problems that has plagued the industry for years: dirty guest data in Property Management Systems (PMS). Our cutting edge technology, Advanced Profile Synthesis, is a highly sophisticated and effective AI and machine learning-powered process that automatically cleanses, deduplicates, synthesizes, and merges your guest data so that you can finally get a true and accurate view of your guests.

As a hotelier, you’re well aware by now of the importance of email marketing. Email is still the most effective channel to drive bookings. But in order for email marketing – or any other channel, for that matter – to generate big returns, you must be able to segment your database accurately and create highly personalized messages and promotions. However, none of this is possible with dirty and inaccurate data.

The truth is that your marketing is only as strong as the data in your CRM. We talked about this in our last post, “Why Messy Data is Holding you Back.” If your database is full of incomplete data or duplicates (multiple profiles of the same contact), your marketing results will suffer. But now, with Advanced Profile Synthesis, hoteliers using Revinate Marketing can rest assured that an automated engine is working around the clock to clean their database using the most advanced technology available. 

Here’s how Revinate solves the dirty data problem. First, we strip away all formatting from contact entries and cleanse your data so that our algorithm can read it. For example, phone numbers entered as (123) 456-7890 or 123.456.7890 would be stripped of the parentheses, dashes, and periods. From there, our algorithm creates clusters, or groups, of similar profiles and compares them to one another in order to determine which ones are duplicates and which ones are independent records. When looking at profiles, our algorithm evaluates as many data fields as possible before deciding whether to merge duplicate profiles or leave them separate. When our algorithm is confident it has found a true match, it will merge profiles together. If it’s unsure, it will wait until it has more data and will reassess it at that point. We’ve trained it this way, on purpose, so as to avoid false-positives. It will improve its accuracy over time as it processes more and more data.

With Advanced Profile Synthesis, you get superior matching. Our algorithm isn’t hindered by traditional merge logic, meaning it doesn’t depend on exact matches of data fields. For example, with traditional merge logic, the first name, last name, and email of a guest have to match exactly, otherwise duplicates are not merged. This is very limiting. Our algorithm not only considers a plethora of fields beyond simply first name, last name, and email, more importantly, information in these fields doesn’t have to be an exact match. Nicholas and Nick may have both been used as first names by the same person. Instead of leaving them as two separate profiles, our algorithm will take into consideration all other fields in those profiles to determine if Nicholas and Nick are, in fact, one person. This includes, but is not limited to: phone number, address, company, title, gender, etc.

The name and nickname example is but one issue that our technology solves. It also addresses other bad data problems, such as typos, misaligned fields (the right text in the wrong field – i.e. Last Name text in the First Name field), faulty text (abnormal text that is not applicable to its field – i.e. the word “Blank” in a First Name field), name changes (i.e. our algorithm is trained to know that, in general, women are more likely to change their last name once married), and masked OTA email addresses, making our algorithm a game-changer in the industry. The more information contained in your guest profiles, the easier it becomes for our AI to do its job and determine if there’s a match. And, what’s more, it does it with a processing engine capable of reviewing millions and millions of profiles every 24 hours.

Since the process runs automatically and seamlessly on the backend of your account every day, as new guest data streams in, Revinate continually cleanses the new data, searches for duplicates, and merges profiles. In other words, Advanced Profile Synthesis is like having an army of data cleaners that you don’t have to train or manage, actively working on improving your hotel guest database around the clock.

With a clean database, you can more easily understand its health, namely how many guests are actually reachable and, therefore, marketable. For example, once your data is clean, you will be able to see how many guest profiles are missing email addresses and how many of those guests have stayed once, or maybe even multiple times, at your properties. From an action standpoint, it then becomes easier to create a plan for how to better capture your guests’ data when they arrive at your hotel, or before.

You will also have a better understanding of your guests overall. How loyal are they? How many guests have stayed multiple times across several of your properties? Are there guests that have more stays than you previously thought? What is the average number of stays across all of your guests? With clean data and Revinate’s new reports, these answers, and others, are easily attainable.

With this information, you are better equipped to craft highly personalized, tailored, and relevant marketing campaigns. You might uncover new segments that you previously had no idea existed once you have a more accurate view of your guests. It then becomes easier to create those personalized experiences and the messaging needed to drive true loyalty and conversion. And, when you’re ready to take it to the next level, you can use your clean database to help inform your omnichannel marketing strategy. Although email marketing performs best, why limit it to one channel when you have so many options nowadays to reach your guests wherever they may be consuming content?

It’s no secret that good data breeds better decisions. Yes, our Advanced Profile Synthesis will help you, but at the end of the day, it will also benefit your guests. With a healthy database, you’ll more easily be able to improve upon the incredible guest experiences that your hotel is already known for, keeping your guests coming back for more. In turn, they’ll help you spread the word, thus allowing you to generate and drive revenue. It’s a beautiful, beautiful loop, but it’s hard to manage without the accurate insights you need.

If you’re already a Revinate Marketing customer, this functionality will be available on your account starting January 12th. You’ll see the results of Advanced Profile Synthesis every day in our database health dashboards. Not a Revinate customer yet? Reach out today for a demo and to learn more about how Revinate uses AI and machine learning to provide an effortless clean database that supports targeted marketing.