Big Data Technology Drives Online Marketing With Offline Data

Campaign results improve when marketers close the direct response loop with offline data.

Most digital marketing campaigns serve ads based on the last click. But a click-through is not a sale. Too often, marketers optimize campaigns for click-throughs, even though optimizing for actual sales transactions is far more effective.

Direct response marketing techniques are among the most effective available to marketers. They involve advancing an audience one step at a time through a conversion funnel by:

  1. Designing every marketing message to evoke a specific response from a campaign’s target audience.
  2. Measuring who responds.
  3. Incorporating that response data back into the campaign’s targeting algorithms to refine the next set of messages and determine who sees them.

This technique benefits consumers by providing them with relevant information. It benefits marketers by delivering measurable improvements in campaign results. Closing the direct response loop is central to realizing these benefits, and it has long been considered the Holy Grail of online advertising.

Online campaigns often attempt to close the direct response loop using click-throughs as response data, even though campaigns perform best when they optimize against the campaign’s actual goal – sales transactions. Click-throughs are often used as a substitute because most sales transactions occur offline in ways that can be difficult to measure, and once obtained, offline transaction data can be hard to correlate to the campaigns that influenced them. But the walls preventing solutions to these problems are breaking down.

Recognizing that unique data (and the relationship assets that provide exclusive access to it) are sources of competitive advantage, digital marketing firms have begun investing in partnerships that provide access to this offline sales transaction data. And fundamental technology breakthroughs in big data analysis now enable digital marketers to correlate offline sales transaction data to the campaigns that influenced them in ways previously not possible.

For example, [x+1], a leading online marketing technology provider, has innovated in its use of big data technology to track attribution across both digital and offline channels. As [x+1] Chief Analytics Officer Leon Zemel states, “Historically, we talked about lift in the response rate or the conversion rate. Now we’re talking about lift in total digital sales. And we’re seeing a big year-over-year impact – 20 percent growth. Net-net, the client is seeing more revenue from more customers.” Additional detail can be found here.

Datalogix, an integrated database marketing and digital media firm, has also innovated in online targeting based on purchase data. “Our targeting isn’t about clicks, it’s all about sales,” says Joseph Benjamin, chief technology officer at Datalogix. “Look at the growing amount of time people are spending online, and then compare that with the amount of purchasing done offline – maybe 90 percent,” says Benjamin. “We’re bringing those two worlds together. We can tell the retailer when an online campaign drove purchases to the call center, the store or the website. In fact, in one representative campaign, the Datalogix platform’s unique ability to leverage offline data for online ad targeting increased the campaign response rate we delivered by 50 percent over that delivered by our competitors.” Additional detail can be found here.

Marketers understand that when their marketing tools each operate on independent data sets, much of the value in their underlying data is being lost, and that the more marketing data silos they unite, the more value they create. But smart marketers also understand that different types of data have different value in the context of their marketing campaigns. And there is no data more valuable to a marketer than customer-linked sales transaction data. So while a stepwise approach to uniting the disparate data silos created by various marketing technologies is a smart approach, offline sales transaction data belongs at the top of every marketer’s priority list.

Open Book image on home page via Shutterstock.

Subscribe to get your daily business insights

Whitepapers

US Mobile Streaming Behavior
Whitepaper | Mobile

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

5y

US Mobile Streaming Behavior

Streaming has become a staple of US media-viewing habits. Streaming video, however, still comes with a variety of pesky frustrations that viewers are ...

View resource
Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups
Whitepaper | Analyzing Customer Data

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics for Media Groups

5y

Winning the Data Game: Digital Analytics Tactics f...

Data is the lifeblood of so many companies today. You need more of it, all of which at higher quality, and all the meanwhile being compliant with data...

View resource
Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its people
Whitepaper | Digital Marketing

Learning to win the talent war: how digital marketing can develop its peopl...

2y

Learning to win the talent war: how digital market...

This report documents the findings of a Fireside chat held by ClickZ in the first quarter of 2022. It provides expert insight on how companies can ret...

View resource
Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy
Report | Digital Transformation

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Experience Economy

1m

Engagement To Empowerment - Winning in Today's Exp...

Customers decide fast, influenced by only 2.5 touchpoints – globally! Make sure your brand shines in those critical moments. Read More...

View resource