To really capitalize on the different advertising opportunities for clients, media and creative teams need to have a very collaborative and communicative process. Every day, technology and data deliver more innovative ways to reach known customers with more targeted content and media channels that aid in assisting the customer journey. This means it’s important, now more than ever, that the creative team is in on the initial conversations and actively collaborating with the media team to fully understand the customer journey and be best positioned to react accordingly to the entirety of different touchpoints. The result of this approach is more relevant and personalized messaging that improves the customer experience, while increasing conversions for the client.
Customer Data Platforms for the Win
It wasn’t very long ago when those of us in marketing saw the fragmentation of media channels, where you had to begin thinking about more than the standard TV, radio, print, and out-of-home media channels. Advances in technology brought along digital audio, advanced TV, digital video, social media, banner and native ads, as well as others. For creative teams, thinking in terms of campaigns and multiple mediums wasn’t anything new, however ensuring that campaigns were adaptable to the complexity of new and plentiful mediums became essential.
At Zion & Zion, it goes without saying that we always create a strategy for determining marketing channels. It’s not exactly easy, but it is expected—as it should be. What isn’t so commonplace is the ongoing collection of user and consumer data via consumer data platforms (CDPs), like Tealium. Collection, storage, and use of this data makes it possible to further segment an audience for more tailored brand messaging for digital marketing and advertising. It’s much more than general prospecting and retargeting of customers, and this creates a significant need for more varied and personalized messaging. In addition to these general audience categories, you can analyze the data collected to determine if the different segments within each category warrant different creative messaging.
As an example, if a client’s business you’re prospecting offers men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, this will mean there could be a different targeting demographic breakdown for media, as well as messaging and imagery that would best resonate with that specific audience.
Today, in addition to increased granularity with audience segmentation, there is a focus on creating seamless and brand-consistent messaging across marketing channels for customers. There is significant work in the strategy and planning phase to determine customer journeys. Customer journeys provide insights for developing more personalized messaging in addition to defining how you can reach known customers for the purposes of building and strengthening the customer relationship.
Building Deeper Connections with Thoughtful Creative
Below is a more thorough example of one way you could explore the various media touchpoints a customer would encounter in their journey, and the types of different messaging they might encounter along the journey via different media channels. This is all in response to the types of actions they have taken, such as in-store purchases, website visits, or specific content consumption.
How It Works
Jennifer is watching the Real Housewives on her connected TV and is served an ad for a new clothing line. Perhaps it’s the intriguing creative or catchy messaging that piques her interest, it reminds her she has been wanting to shop for some new fall outfits. Like everyone, Jennifer is armed with her smartphone, and searches for “cute fall fashion” and sees the same brand pop up in Google search results. She clicks on it and visits the website. She browses the current sale/specials, navigates to the seasonal specials page, then leaves the site.
A couple days later, as Jennifer is scrolling through Facebook, she sees an ad for the exact item she was viewing due to being dropped into the retargeting audience segment a few days prior. This is no coincidence, because she is now tracked as an anonymous user who has visited the website. She clicks on the ad, views the page with tailored messaging, and ends up adding the item to her cart. However, she doesn’t complete her purchase before closing out the tab. Tealium, and other CDPs, immediately recognizes and categorizes this action.
The next day she browses a local news website and sees another retargeting display ad that reminds her of her unfinished purchase. She returns to the clothing website, completes her purchase, and creates an account during the checkout process. Now that she has an account, each time she logs into the site, she will be assigned different attributes that align with her actions—potentially moving her into different audience segments based on these actions. After a predetermined amount of time, Jennifer receives an email with an offer inviting her back to the website to see the latest and greatest items.
Now that Jennifer is a known user with an account on the retail website, every time she visits, the use of a CDP like Tealium allows you to further analyze each of her related actions and determine how these attributes can place her into a specific audience segment. A few examples of these segments can be anything from visiting the site multiple times a week, making more than $500 in purchases over a certain period of time, abandoning a filled shopping care, or hundreds of other attributes—all of which allow you to determine the best future messaging to serve to her.
Conclusion
As results-driven marketers, the intent is to concentrate your efforts towards reaching users at every touchpoint along their journey. Leveraging a CDP like Tealium allows you to fully understand recent consumer actions, behaviors, and purchases. You can then determine the best media placements, tailor specific messaging that makes the most sense at that time and create imagery that resonates in an effort to maintain a seamless relationship with your online consumers.