Why Behavioral Data Matters for Businesses: An Interview with Simon Yencken

I think the best way people can think about this from a business perspective is to think about CRM and the data that people traditionally capture in a CRM: who the person is, what’s their email address, what’s their physical address, phone number, what products they’ve purchased before, and whether they’re a member of a loyalty scheme. But it tends to stop there.

Then think about our own behavior on any site: we might visit ten times without buying, then finally make a purchase, or make regular purchases while browsing other products without buying them. The business is blind to all that activity.

If you think about the power of data—specifically behavioral data—you can understand individual behavior holistically and link it to other CRM data. You can anticipate needs and provide a better experience to that visitor.

Let’s be realistic: people aren’t totally altruistic. They want to sell more. If I know Simon always visits my site and looks at other products without buying, I can figure out how to motivate him to make that purchase. It has real revenue benefits. As the world moves away from cookies and a lot of traffic becomes anonymous, behavioral data is your best cue to delivering the best, most personal experience. That’s the power of data, and it’s what Fanplayr can do: show businesses how to leverage that data, make the most of it, provide a better experience, and make more money.

So essentially, it means that you can access an application as a service through the cloud, and it means that we came up with the idea. The invention of segmentation is incredibly powerful, but in every other technology provider, it exists only within their own walled garden, within their own technology environment. And given that we built one of the world’s leading segmentation engines, we thought there’s potentially a very large opportunity here to make that available to anyone as a service, so they can essentially call up the segmentation engine, run a calculation, get back an answer immediately, and then move along with their business. They don’t need to be heavily locked into the Fanplayr ecosystem.

I guess I’m a little bit of a skeptic about patents, because big companies have a lot of them. You hear about patent trolls and lawyers and patent attorneys, and you wonder what the ultimate value is. But for me, one of the really significant things about the patent that we have globally—the segmentation-as-a-service patent—is that nobody else had thought of it. We were able to get our invention patented not just in the US, but we have the same patent pending throughout Europe, Japan, China, Australia, and many other countries. To me, the main thing it says is, “wow, that’s amazing.” Nobody else is doing that. Nobody else has thought of the power of segmentation. If you can make that available broadly, you can transform many industries, and that’s really part of our invention.

Yes, I would say that just thinking about the Fanplayr platform, which is focused on personalization, we provide our platform in a few distinct areas that brands and businesses should focus on for using behavioral data and AI.

One area is on‑site targeting. This means monitoring all the traffic on your site, understanding where people are lost or about to leave—like abandoning a shopping cart—and taking action to keep them on site longer and increase conversion.

The second area is the Fanplayr messaging platform. We provide a single platform for businesses to message customers through different channels. Within our messaging infrastructure, you can reach customers in the channel that resonates most—email, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp. Businesses should be attuned to the channels their customers prefer and message them where it makes a difference. Many people don’t open emails; they end up in the spam folder. You might engage those people with SMS or notifications. That’s where Fanplayr plays—combining behavioral data and AI with a common messaging platform. When messaging someone with AI‑driven recommendations, you can tailor the channel: Shane prefers SMS, Simon prefers email, Allison prefers notifications or WhatsApp.

Finally, we have a merchandising platform, where we offer services like product recommendations and product ranking. Product ranking shows the most popular products in a category—people who like this also like that—and accounts for product availability or brands that want to push a certain category of products, perhaps because they have excess stock. This merchandising platform allows brands and retailers to use AI to promote products people want or products they need to sell in the most effective way.

I would say those three techniques are areas brands and businesses should focus on.

Sorry to interrupt, but this is incredibly important.

People tend to think in the classical way: we need email because we have an email service provider. Then they hear about SMS and consider notifications or LinkedIn messaging, thinking about running all those initiatives.

How do you make them consistent? How do you run a coherent strategy? It’s impossible and a lot of work unless you say: here’s our messaging platform. We’re linking it into AI. We’ll message people where they want to be messaged, not randomly in the wrong channel.

I think I have to say Melbourne to see the family. If we get past the pandemic, then I would say a really beautiful island called Paxos, which is south of Corfu in the Greek Ionian Islands. It’s kind of an undiscovered world, the most amazing world you’ll ever see in your life, with incredible boating and swimming and the Greek lifestyle. It’s quite a favorite place.

It’s not in the same island chain. This is an Ionian island, so it’s in a different part of the sea, but they’re all beautiful.

I have to say it would be time travel, because I’m fascinated by the past and the future and love to go back in time, meet my ancestors, talk to them, and really understand them. I honestly believe that we are shaped by experience and how we’re brought up, and so are our parents and their parents, and their parents, and so on. I’d love to go back and meet my ancestors, and it would be incredibly fun to go to the future as well. Back to the Future—I love those movies.

Yeah, look, I think I have to stay away from the business books, because that would be an expected answer, I would say, and it’s similar to my your previous question, that I’m intrigued by time travel. So I, like, as a kid, I read Time Machine by HG Wells, and, you know, really made me think about the future and how progress happens. And, you know, I was intrigued by the book, so.

Shane, so I would say LinkedIn. Simon Yencken, LinkedIn, email. simon@fanplayr.com, without the E. And then I actually have an Instagram account that post favorite photos on, @syencken, so please, if anyone’s interested, they have a look at my Instagram.

Well, I think it’s all. All that is AI technology. I mentioned that sacred power, that sacred for AI technology.