Stop wasting your data: Turn IP data into marketing dollars

Most retailers know they need to use buyer data to provide better targeted messaging, personalized advertisements, and customer rewards. But with so much customer data coming from so many different directions, many businesses are throwing away valuable information that could provide useful insights around customer behavior and their locations. Keeping track of internet protocol (IP) data could mean better messaging, along with a boost in sales. 

Content produced in collaboration with Digital Element.

Data exhaust could be costing your business money

These days, customers are trusting brands with more data than ever before. Nearly all of our digital touchpoints leave behind fingerprints–from blog post clicks to social sharing or even browsing products on a website. Putting all these touches together tells the story of an individual customer’s entire experience with your business, and could give valuable clues to the kinds of personalized messaging that might resonate in the future. 

According to Accenture, there’s $2.95 trillion of potential profit at stake through 2025 for retailers that want to personalize customers’ experiences. 

However, there is a very real chance that your business might have thrown that valuable data away. The term “data exhaust” has been used for years to describe data that companies toss out because they feel it provides little or no value to their core business. 

Even though data is becoming increasingly more important in today’s retail world, a large number of retailers may have been inadvertently dumping this precious resource. 

But IP data could set your brand apart

Delivering personalized messaging is often about responding to consumer touches — all those small online interactions that help a company understand who their customer is and what they might be looking for. 

For example, IP data allows retailers to pinpoint online users’ geographic location (country, region, state, city and ZIP/postal code), as well as uncover numerous other actionable insights about demographics, interests, connection type, mobile carrier, and more—all based on a user’s IP address. 

While many retailers overlook the power of IP data, smart retailers realize that collecting and capitalizing on this critical data could boost sales in the long run. 

Compliance with privacy laws and standards around the world is more important than ever when it comes to data. So relying on anonymous IP data without using cookies or tracking users’ online behaviors helps retailers stay GDPR-compliant while still providing personalized messaging that appeals to buyers on the individual level. IP data gives customers privacy while providing brands with incredibly valuable information.

Make sure your data matters

Ever had a slow-loading ad make you close a website completely? IP data could make those frustrations a thing of the past. 

As customers increasingly rely on multiple devices to make their purchase decisions, delivering customized messaging that is viewable regardless of device and connection speeds can mean the difference between earning an impression and frustrating a customer who can’t see your ad. 

Using IP data for targeting means delivering custom targeting by device, with online video ads served based on a user’s connection speeds. And geolocation data provided by IP-enabled wifi connection enables businesses to create ads that are delivered consistently across devices. 

Personalize your message

But delivering device-specific content is only part of the puzzle. As buyers are increasingly overwhelmed by online advertisements, only messaging that speaks to their particular needs is going to cut through the clutter. Leveraging IP data allows retailers of any size to customize content, language, currency, products, promotions, and more. 

IP data enables brands to enhance the shopping experience by customizing website content, language, currency, products and promotions to create an instant connection that will have consumers spending less time searching for products and services and more time buying them.

Location-based IP data gives advertisers the ability to anticipate where in the country — or even the world — customers are shopping, which means automatically delivering foreign visitors to country-specific sites. 

Geolocation data also gives businesses a chance to identify and better understand regions of high customer engagement for app installs, software downloads, or other conversions. 

Data drives dollars

As important as data is for personalization and targeting right now, most research indicates that data is set to become even more important in the very near future, as better technology means customers will continue to demand better communication with brands. 

And as the internet makes brands more discoverable, there are no “international” or “local” customers anymore. They’re all digital. Using IP data to provide personalized messaging to all customers, no matter where they come from, means treating online shoppers as if they have just personally interacted with a sales associate, even if they’re halfway around the globe. Those personal connections mean more impressions, more conversions, and ultimately, increased sales. 

For more information on how you can customize your digital advertising by making the most of IP data, check out Digital Element’s white paper “How to Turn Wasted Data Into Dollars.”