Look Up The Creepy Data Mining Profile that Delta Keeps On You

by Gary Leff

Loyalty Lobby highlights that Delta — like many major companies — engages with a data firm to assist them in analyzing their customers, assigning value to those customers, and targeting them for offers.

But unlike some companies, Delta isn’t very good with IT (witness: their broken award calendar, broken online award pricing engine). And so they have their consumer profile data online for you to see.

Since this is getting a bit of buzz at the moment, they’re likely to prioritize pulling down this information, so if you’re curious what Delta’s analytics folks know about you, you may want to have a look sooner rather than later.

  1. Log into your Skymiles account.
  2. Navigate to https://www.delta.com/databroker/bcdata.action in the same browser

You’ll get a bunch of data in a long string, copy and paste it into a text or word processing program for easier reading.

Here’s what Delta thinks they know about me, from Experian’s Mosaic targeting (pdf):

“actvtyPref”:””,
“bcInd”:”Y”,
“birthDt”:”[They have my correct birthdate]
“chldAgeRange”:”” [I don’t have kids, and they do not think I do]
“cobrandCardCd”:”STRW,AX,AX”, [interesting they know I don’t have a Delta American Express but do know that I have Amex cards – but I have more than they think I do, hah!
“ctryCd”:”US”,
“custID”:”[redacted]
“custValSeg”:”1″ [well I guess that is better than zero!]
“dgtlLangPref”:”en”
“discSpndngAmt”:”0″ [that’s about right!]
“drvdGndr”:”M” [yep!]
“drvdHmArptCd”:”DCA” [also correct – I am DCA-based]
“hmArptPref”:””
“homeValueAmt”:”647000″ [incorrect]
“htlBrndPref”:” [they could just read my blog?]
“incomeAmt”:”96″
“isLoggedIn”:”Y”
“isPwmElig”:”N” [I guess I am not eligible for PWN! Possible “Pay With Miles”]
“isSmCust”:”Y” [I am a Skymiles customer]
“mindsetSeg”:”MM” [I have an “MM” mindset!]
“mosaicCd”:”G25″ [I discuss this customer segment below]
“poCd”: [They know my zip code]

“prefDestCity”:””
“prefDestCtry”:””,
“savedSrchDest”:””

I’m not a Delta Skyclub member:

“skyClubFtrCntrctInd”:”N”
“skyClubMMSts”:””
“skyClubMbr”:”N”
“skyClubRnwlDt”:””
“skyPrtyInd”:”N”

And more:

“smAmexCntrnInd”:”N” [I don’t have an Amex Centurion – relevant because Delta gives those cardholders status in the Skymiles program]
“smAmexInd”:”N”
“smBalance”:”24602″ [wow, they even get my Skymiles balance wrong!]
“smMqmBal”:”10146″ [and they get my elite qualifying miles wrong!]
“smMqsBal”:”1″
“smNbr”:” [they at least get my Skymiles account number right!]
“smSunTrstInd”:”Y” [I have a Suntrust account]
“smTierLvl”:”FF” [No elite status with them, natch]
“stProvCd”:”VA” [Yes, I live in Virginia]

Apparently church missions use this sort of data, too (.pdf)

Here’s the customer segment they think I fit into:

[L]iberal, eclectic, singles.. risk takers who are comfortable with insecure surroundings, and may travel off the beaten path for an extended period of time. …live in the present moment and are not particularly anxious about tomorrow. Although traditional moral norms are uncomfortable, they are notable for their commitments to peace, equality, human rights, the environment, and free speech. Most are college educated, with well paying jobs in business, education, creative arts, and healthcare.

Well I am not single, I tend to be risk averse, and while I do have a singificant commitment to peace and human rights I don’t think anyone would expect to find me involved in the creative arts — and oddly enough they don’t even get my geography right, I live in the suburbs rather than the city.

What’s your customer segment? Have they got you figured out?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  4. “E20” Thriving Boomers “who have typically lived at
    the same address for more than 15 years and have deep roots in their communities.”

    This is so wrong in our case it is laughable. Must be an intern that wrote this up!

  5. O54 Can you tell my wife that I am young single hipster? I think they have my profile and income NAILED! For 1997..

  6. Dude, it’s all info you’ve chosen to give them either through your profile or through your purchase/website activites. Nothing creepy about it. If you don’t want tabs kept, don’t use a FF account. No different than other typical forms of customer profiles.

  7. @Plop:

    Income? Credit cards? Kids? A bit creepy if you ask me. Fortunately, most of the info except for my SM # is incorrect.

  8. Full pockets, empty nest. Love it.

    I suspect other airlines have a similar profile on me, but perhaps they manage to keep it from becoming so easily accessible. I know AA has their “Eagle” count that indicates value (or at least they did). As for DL, they are pretty close on me. I am not personally troubled by it. At least I can’t access others’ information….or at least I don’t think I can. 🙂

  9. Experian assigned me C11 “Aging of Aquarius”. I’m under 30 and live in the city! They also expect me to spend over $30,000 year on Delta tickets…

  12. Oh, and I’m labeled as a “soulful spender”, “Soulful Spenders consist of well-off African-American households living in suburban comfort.” Imaginemy surprise to find out that I’m African-American!

  13. Their data mining needs lots of work and the church piece reads like a horoscope.

    The easiest is of those should have been the home value, but it was wrong. They must have sampled at the peak of the housing boom.

  14. Frequent one-time charges on new loyalty credit card accounts, typically at gas stations, before card is canceled and another application made.

  15. Well they got my income off by about $6K. Home value is right around what my GF’s condo is worth. discSpndngAmt: was actually very close to my annual take home pay after mandatory expenses. I’m a G25 as well

  17. I’m in my early 20s, travel for leisure, and tend to think of myself as a normal guy … But I’m mosaic A01 = American Royalty. My house value is hundreds of K’s off but probably because I still have my parents address on my SM profile (and don’t want to change it now). They think I spend $72,000 a year on whatever metric that is. They know I have an AXCP (Amex Consumer Platinum) though I have more Amex cards (they still think I have my Delta Amex since I’m PWM eligible but don’t currently have it). I have a DW mindset.

  18. D15: Middle-aged, ethnically-mixed suburban families and couples earning upscale incomes.

    Everything in mine is pretty accurate, except they think I have three kids instead of two. (Don’t tell my wife?)
    And the income, if it’s just for me it’s close to accurate but not for a family income?

  21. I wish I lived the life Delta has painted for me. Most interesting my home value 1371000 . I rent a condo. Who’s living in my mansion?

  22. K39, which is laughably wrong in my case (though they did get the “single” part right). I hope DL gets this targeting data cheaply, given how much of it seems to be incorrect!

  23. They’ve got me as J35 – “Rural Escape” – over 65 year old retired agricultural worker living in the country who rarely travels, uses the internet for orders at walmart and gunbroker.com and watches Little House on the Prairie re-runs! (I’m actually a 30-something internet geek who lives in a major metropolitan city, and spends half the year travelling internationally. hmmm. i don’t expect to be getting any exciting offers from delta with that profile!

  25. Delta apprently thinks I’m a Urban Jet Setting Member of the Power Elite (A06) – I’ll have to not let this get to my head!!

    @Plop Even if you didn’t use an FF number, Delta could still track you using your Secure Flight data (full name, gender, birthdate) which you’re required to provide in order to travel. So unfortunately cash on a Greyhound might be the only anonymous travel option.

  26. Hmmm, they pegged me at O51 – the description says that I’m undereducated (cough, cough, my medical school loans would beg to differ), underemployed (?), and underpaid (well, they have me there). Oh, and also a decade younger – I’m flattered, really. But not sure how they concluded that this O51 would spend $12k+ with them!

  27. They got my salary almost right but my condo price was about 100,000 off. I am a J34 which is Aging in Place. I am not a Senior (they missed by over 15 years).

  28. Does anyone know what the “SS” means for mindsetSeg?

    Gary had: “mindsetSeg”:”MM” [I have an “MM” mindset!]

  29. Wow. Everything is so wrong in my profile. Now I have to locate those 5 kids Delta thinks I have somewhere. I’m dying to meet them.

  30. @AndyP, Not sure, but I had an “SS” mindset too…

    My wife’s and my profiles are identical and they have us pegged as A06. They even have the exact same “SpndngAmt” for us down to the dollar….but it’s in the $24k range…which is more than $23k extra what we actually spend on Delta in a year. Still, our ValueSegement is “0”.

  31. Wow, Most of my info correct. My CustValSeg is 2 and my mindset is FL. Does anyone know what this means?

  32. Incredible.

    The customer segment(Mosaic) has me as an A02, Platinum Elite, just one notch down from “Royalty” as part of the Power Elite in this country, a measly 1.43% of our population.

    I’m part of the top 2% !!! (not)

    Like you, my mindset is MM. What does that mean–aiming for the Million Miles? Or I’m a mouthy misanthrope? one can only guess.

    Truly a testament of marketing algorithms gone wrong.

  33. A06 – Jet Set Urbanite
    Used to live in Manhattan and now moved across the river to Hoboken, so they got that pretty good. Although I wish my condo was worth $2.8MM.

  34. “But unlike some companies, Delta isn’t very good with IT (witness: their broken award calendar, broken online award pricing engine).”

    This is where we disagree. I think they know exactly what they are doing and nothing is really “broken”. We sat down with the big wigs at the first FT Delta Do almost 5 years ago. They knew about the issues then and said they were going to fix it. They’ve redesigned their website twice since then, and the same problems still exist.

  35. O53 – Colleges and Cafes

    Apparently I’m an undereducated and underemployed “aspirational consumer” living in a college town with a SkyClub membership and a few AMEX cards…

    To be fair, Chicago is kind of a college town…

    This pretty much made my day though!

  36. Thank you so much for publishing this, Gary. I love this kind of stuff, and it’s so refreshing to read articles like this about things other than credit card offers ad nausem. Thanks!

  37. They pegged me correctly – A01 American Royalty. Seriously. 🙂 Thanks for interesting look at this. Off to check my son’s…

  44. You the man, Gary! This is actually good information to know, as it could potentially drive card offer and approvals.

  45. My wife and I have different mindsets, whatever that means.

    My customer value is “2” and hers is “8,” which makes me thing that customer value has less to do with dollars spent and more with physical attractiveness.

  46. I don’t have children. In the kids’ age range field, it states “POCT03.” Does anyone know what that means?

    They have me in segment A03, “Kids and Cabernet.” Half right (though I prefer Shiraz…).

    My home value estimate is about 2X its actual value – how I wish DL was correct here!

  49. My wife’s account had no relevant data at all. No SM number, no birthday, almost nothing. She’s a silver with 173,000 SM’s. Weird.

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