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Mining Insights from the Big Data Mountain

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MINING INSIGHTS FROM THE BIG DATA MOUNTAIN

A t its core, marketing is about how to connect to a customer. To serve that mission, marketing has always been about actionable insights into your customers’ needs, preferences, and

behavior. What’s changed is the exponentially increasing availability of consumer data, from both online and offline sources.

Customers now interact with businesses across a host of devices. In the B2C world, that interaction occurs not only anywhere but anytime. A Pew Research Center study found two-thirds (66%) of Americans with internet access own at least two digital devices (smartphone, desktop or laptop computer, or tablet), and more than one-third (36%) own all three.

For businesses, that means even more channels where data is accumulating.

The upshot? Brands have more data than they know how to manage — in fact, most brands have more data than they even know they have. And given the influx of new channels entering the fray– virtual reality, augmented reality, wearables, IoT, streaming TV, and even games – the volume of data will keep growing.

Some numbers to ponder: Gartner estimates that the typical family home will contain 500 networked devices by 2020, for a total of 6.4 billion devices worldwide – and that doesn’t include computers, tablets, or smartphones. 451 Research forecasts the data market will nearly double in size in just five years (from $69.6bn in revenue in 2015 to $132.3bn in 2020).

For marketers, this might be a case of ‘Be careful what you ask for.’ But truly, the growing data mountain is threaded with rich insights, if only you know how to mine them. Big data allows unprecedented intimacy with customers, each step along the journey. Marketing success means setting data free, asking the right questions of it, and making it actionable in the context of defined KPIs.

In this eBook, we provides a mix of articles that offer specific insights into how to take advantage of the data now available, as well as examples of marketing programs that accomplished their end goal– driving sales.

3 6 9 11 12 13TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Cross Device Identity Holy Grail

Shari’s Café and Pies Uses Data to Slice and Dice Re-ward Members

4 Practical Steps to Align Email Market-ing with the IoT

Citi’s Email Marketing Key to Customer Engagement

Using Direct Mail to Win at Engagement Marketing

How Testing and Personas Helped Super Shoes Find the Right Direct Mail Fit

Kim Davis Executive Editor DMN

Rich Insights and Challenges for Marketers

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The consumer of 2017 isn’t tied to a desk when online, and doesn’t shop exclu-sively in-store or on a desk-top. There are more mobile

devices than people in the world, and in the U.S., more than one third of the connected population own a comput-er, tablet, and smartphone.

In 2017, the consumer moves seam-lessly from mobile web browsing to in-app activity; visits a convenient store; uses a different screen in the car on the way home; and picks up the digital trail again on a desktop, laptop, or on streaming television. Then he or she watches a cable TV show.

For brands, building relationships means not treating the consumer as a complete stranger, at each individual touch point. It means continuing a conversation across multiple screens, controlling frequency of contact with the same individual in different chan-nels, and being intelligently available when and where the consumer wants to be reached.

Ultimately, it means understanding cross-device identities.

■ The genesis of cross-device campaignsCross-device campaigns began with the rise of the mobile phone, and with consumers spending more and more time on publishers’ properties in an essentially cookie-free environment. Because advertisers are motivated — obviously — to reach a relevant audience, and because their digital strategy for doing so was built around cookies for targeting and attribution,

The Cross-Device Identity Holy Grail For brands, building relationships means not treating the consumer as a complete stranger, at each individual touch point. By Kim Davis

there was a reluctance to buy ad space on mobile.

Someone needed to figure out how to monetize mobile apps, and the mo-bile space generally, and the first step would be to build a bridge from en-vironments that supported cookies to those that did not.

It soon became clear, notes Kate O’Loughlin, SVP of media at the New York cross-device solutions firm  Ta-pad, that fixing user identity across multiple screens created further op-portunities, such as:• More creative personalization• Better attribution• Effective frequency capping (ensur-

ing the consumer doesn’t see the same ad too often)“Now that mobile is eclipsing other

platforms for time spent, consumers will continue to want a personalized

experience and to have meaningful ads shown to them on their phones, so the need for cross screen is further catching momentum,” says O’Lough-lin. Previously a product director at MediaMath, O’Loughlin has lived and breathed the evolution of cross-device identity tracking.

■ Meeting the challengeOne of numerous early initiatives to solve the cross-device puzzle was identifying the devices themselves. BlueCava was one of the pioneers of the device-identification approach. Rather than creating cookies, device identification relies on tags inserted in sites to generate signals that it resolves into persistent device IDs it claims are actually more reliable and longer-last-ing than cookies.

“The problem with that methodolo-

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gy was that consumers didn’t under-stand how the identifiers were created and couldn’t opt out of their use,” says O’Loughlin. And the objective, after all, was to not just collect information about devices, but also to resolve back to their users, to generate information about their behavior, interests, and so on. (BlueCava now offers a broader portfolio of cross-device solutions.)

It wasn’t an easy nut to crack. Ta-pad worked for a time at an exclusive-ly app-based solution, but eventually abandoned it in favor of a more holis-tic approach. “Our strategy is to bal-ance scale and accuracy,” O’Loughlin explains, “and so our technique is to blend deterministic and probabilistic approaches into one algorithm that, with confidence, identifies that it’s the same person [on multiple devic-es] while ensuring that we have lots of coverage.”

“Deterministic” and “probabilis-tic” are key terms when it comes to understanding cross-device track-ing. Deterministic simply means log in-type credentials, where users es-sentially identify themselves. Tapad had originally considered using this type of data as foundational, but it provided only a limited framework. “How would you bring in television, or wearables, or other IoT devices?” O’Loughlin poses.

Probabilistic data is richer, but, of course, less reliable. “You know that it’s probably the same person, using different types of clues,” O’Loughlin adds. For Tapad, these include device proximity, time-based patterns, and context-based patterns:• Are the devices repeatedly appear-

ing in the same locations?• Are the users waking up and going

to sleep consistently?• Are the devices being used to look

at similar types of content?The clusters of associations emerge

over literally trillions of data points.

Deterministic data can be used to verify the probabilistic clusters, bring-ing accuracy to scale, and generating a perpetually updated Device Graph.

■ Different ways to bake the cakeNot all cross-device solution vendors take the same approach. One strate-gy is “house-holding,” based on using the IP address of home networks to tie devices together. That falls short, of course, of tracking mobility. As soon as the consumer is out of home, at work or school — or shopping — they’re out of sight.

An exclusive focus on deterministic data is limited too, not least because users don’t always log in. Also, one in-dividual can use multiple log-ins for the same device, which means that from a deterministic point of view, she looks like several different people.

But a lighter approach to cross-de-vice can work for specific goals. Un-like Tapad, 4Cite, a digital market-ing solutions firm with a proprietary identification technology called CrossLink, relies heavily on deter-ministic data, and even cookies. But then 4Cite is focused chiefly on ecom-merce and email marketing.

4Cite identified a gap in ESP ca-pabilities when it came to triggering emails. ESPs are quite good at push-ing large quantities of emails, but not so adept at identifying the online activity that should trigger them, ac-knowledges Jack Sturn, SVP at 4Cite.

CrossLink can trigger relevant mes-sages in response to website browsing activity, changes in product catalogue, and even to a user browsing on com-petitor websites. It can also trigger website responses, such as targeted lightboxes, when it recognizes the website visitor.

“We pull customers through the tunnel via repeat emails, lightboxes, and segmentation,” remarks Sturn. Reliance on deterministic data, he adds, “is the simplest way.” It does de-pend on associating individuals with email addresses, but it’s an approach that might make sense for brands concentrating on linking their website and email marketing efforts. (4Cite uses its technology to help manage di-rect mailing lists too.)

Other brands will want to reach more broadly across the digital envi-ronment. Cross-device identification might have originated in the desire to connect screens, but it’s increas-ingly relevant to a wide range of dig-ital touch points, including gaming consoles, television (both traditional and app-based), cars, and wearables. “We already have some Teslas in the graph,” says O’Loughlin. “There’s a browser in the car that appeared in our graph naturally.”

■ Putting it to useOverlaying all this data is what O’Loughlin calls “the application lay-er.” All the most accurate data in the

We don’t want to just take data from consumers. We want them to under-stand how valuable their data is and how it’s going to be used.— Kate O’Loughlin, Tapad

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world brings no value unless it can be activated. There are many benefits to doing so, and they’re much the same for brands and publishers:• Better insights into customers and

prospects• Better planning tools• Better execution, and• Better measurement.

For example, if you’re only look-ing at an individual’s behavior on a desktop browser (the cookie environ-ment), you only have a partial view. Planning the media that will work for them, and that will maximize reach and optimize frequency, happens more easily when the customer view is comprehensive.

In particular, you can treat estab-lished customers like established cus-tomers, no matter the channel. “If they already own a particular model of car, for example,” says O’Loughlin, “and you know they’re four years into ownership, then treat them like you know who they are and you have a re-lationship with them.”

■ Behind closed doorsOf course, the ability to track the same person from computer to phone, and from television to Fitbit, ultimately begins to look like round-the-clock surveillance. What about privacy?

Vendors working in the cross-de-vice space are sensitive to this con-cern. “We don’t want to just take data from consumers,” says O’Loughlin. “We want them to understand how valuable their data is, and how it’s going to be used. And if they don’t want us to use it, opt out.” The younger digital generation under-stands that its data is a currency, and, as O’Loughlin puts it, “helps to keep a free internet.”

While opting out sounds easy, all too often in a digital environment the choice isn’t clearly presented to the user. For example, Tapad uses the Ad-Choices icon, a blue triangle, in every

digital ad. Clicking on it tells a user what data has been collected and how to opt out of its use. Tapad says it was the first company to introduce in-app opt outs, and also offers cross device opt out: Opt out on one of your devic-es, and you automatically opt out on all of them.

Of course, demanding action by the user is bound to rely, to some extent, on the user being digitally savvy. The data versus privacy debate isn’t over yet, and indeed Tapad isn’t seeing large quantities of opt-outs.

■ Bringing offline data to the partyIf the aim is a comprehensive view of the consumer, then off-device behav-ior is relevant too. The first step in uti-lizing sales or CRM data is to onboard it to a cookie that can be used to reach consumers using traditional browsers. A number of vendors, such as LiveR-amp, offer this kind of integration into digital. The secret sauce of cross-de-vice tracking can then identify that consumer across all their screens. The cookie, essentially, is a first foothold in the process.

Making greater use of existing data depositories is another benefit of the cross-device approach. “We were work-ing with an automaker in Detroit,” says O’Loughlin. “They had a huge database of cookies across all of their properties, including third-party relationships — consumers looking at the product on non-branded websites. They thought they knew their universe.”

Looking at the situation from a cross-device perspective, it turned out that a significant percentage of the cookies were overlaps — and the over-laps didn’t necessarily encode consis-tent data (the same unique individual might be shown as an owner and not an owner in different cookies). Identi-fying the overlaps meant huge savings in marketing costs, and also enabled better relationships with prospects or customers.

■ Opportunities with retail dataRetail, of course, means very large collections of digital and non-digital customer data: Transactions, website log-ins, mobile browsing, and so on. Using cross-device technology, re-tailers can maximize the value of the data. They can know that a visitor to the store, the web property, and the mobile app is actually one and the same person.

“Imagine that I’m in a Target store one night, and the next day I’m on the Target website,” notes O’Loughlin. “If the store knows what I bought the previous night, the web experience can be appropriately personalized with relevant recommendations. For retailers, you can use cross-screen to unify what is going on in brick and mortar and what’s going on at digital point-of-purchases.”

Within retail, there’s also relevance for CPG. People do now buy tooth-paste and soap, for example, digitally. It’s no longer just a question of digital assisting brick and mortar sales, but each channel supporting the other.

“That’s what consumers want,” O’Loughlin says. “This kind of fluid-ity between the virtual and reality.” n

Nearly 40% of purchases occurred across multiple devices or channels in Q4 2015 — Criteo, The State of Mobile Commerce 2016

37% of respondents in a recent CMO Council study plan to address connecting digital and physical experiences — The Drum

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Shari’s Café and Pies Uses Data to Slice and Dice Reward MembersThe family restaurant chain uses demographic, behavioral, and purchase data to send targeted offers to its rewards members, and grow visit frequency and spend among younger customers. By Elyse Dupre

M arketers recognize re-wards programs as time-honored tradi-tions for driving re-peat purchases, but

segmenting those rewards members can help them get an even bigger piece of the pie. Pacific Northwest family restaurant chain Shari’s Café and Pies proved this to be true when it started segmenting its rewards pro-gram members to increase purchase frequency and spend among young customers.

■ Rolling out a new programCarrie Henderson, marketing man-ager for 95-location Shari’s, describes the restaurant chain’s audience as “predominantly senior.” The brand even implemented an Honored Cit-izens  rewards program  in 2008 that was reserved solely for customers 60 years old and above.

“We had a really robust, active, and engaged senior group,” she says, “and thought it was time to expand it to a larger audience.”

Henderson wanted to find a better way to attract a younger demographic while still staying true to Shari’s core customers. So in the summer of 2014, the restaurant chain launched a new, more encompassing rewards program called Shari’s Café Club.

■ Baking in the dataUnlike its previous rewards program, Shari’s Café Club is open to all cus-tomers who are at least 18 years old.

Members earn one reward point for every dollar spent. Once customers reach 100 points, they receive $5 in Reward Dollars, which they can apply to food and beverage orders.

Customers can enroll in the pro-gram in-store, online, via text, or via the brand’s mobile app. At the time of enrollment, participants are asked to provide a range of data points, in-cluding their name, address, phone number, birthdate, email address, and preferred store location. They can also opt in to receive Shari’s email offers and customize which types of promotions they’d like to receive, such as children and family offerings, healthy menu options, special events, and late-night offerings.

Shari’s also works with rewards pro-gram solutions provider Paytronix to

track everything from the items cus-tomers order, to their spend, to the number of times they visit a Shari’s location.

Paytronix’s loyalty engine con-nects directly to Shari’s point-of-sale system, which allows the restaurant chain to manage reward balances and track customers’ purchases. So when customers visit a location, they can present their reward card to the cashier to redeem points for their or-der. Members can also provide their phone number or use Shari’s mobile app to check-in to the restaurant and provide a three-digit code.

“Younger folks don’t necessarily want to carry a card for every pro-gram,” Henderson explains.

This wealth of demographic, behav-ioral, and purchase data helps Shari’s

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uncover insights, such as which menu items are popular among different segments, when people are coming to the restaurant, and which reward promotions are most relevant to cer-tain groups. In a recent Paytronix we-binar, Shari’s used this data to shape its menu and send targeted offers, like a promotion to people who like apple pie on National Apple Pie Day.

“We have such a large demographic that’s older and we’re bringing in the young demographic, so certain re-wards are going to motivate different groups,” Henderson explains.

The restaurant then uses Paytronix’s messaging platform to segment its au-dience and send targeted communica-tions based on these insights.

■ Serving up the segmentationLee Barnes, head of data insights for Paytronix, says Shari’s segments re-wards members primarily based on their purchase behavior, such as how frequently they come in, how much they spend, and what they order. Cus-tomers with similar visit frequencies are placed nto one of four groups—bronze, silver, gold, or platinum—and and are sent design promotions that speak to that segment.

For example, in the Paytronix webi-nar, Henderson cited a 13-day cam-paign in which Shari’s sent four differ-ent offers to all of its members based on which category they fell into. The most active customers (the platinum and gold members) were sent the “least rich reward,” while the least ac-tive (the silver and bronze customers) were sent a “very rich reward.”

The restaurant chain saw increas-es in frequency and spend across the board. And while it experienced mod-est lifts in frequency among its plat-inum and gold members (7% and 16%, respectively), it saw significant increases among its silver and bronze members (20% and 28%, respective-ly). Sales lifts were also higher among bronze members (8%) than they were

among platinum members (5%). Sales hikes among silver and gold members were the same (6%).   

“This tells us that we see the most promise with our least active guests when we send them an amazing re-ward that they respond to,” Hender-son said during the presentation.

And while Barnes acknowledges that behavioral data can skew by age, it’s important for Shari’s marketers to not rely too heavily on demographics. For instance, Shari’s ran a promo-tion for its late-night menu option over Halloween, expecting to attract younger consumers; however, Hen-derson says older customers partici-pated in the promotion, as well.

“[Age is] a consideration but not a deciding factor on the right type of promotion,” Henderson adds. 

Still, the brand uses members’ birthdates to send out promotions for a free slice of pie during their birthday months.

Shari’s talso targets participants based on where they are in their customer lifecycle. For instance, the brand targets lapsed and active customers differently—often giving lapsed customers more generous of-fers. In one campaign, for instance, Shari’s sent a “rich,” four-day pro-motion to new and inactive members. The restaurant chain saw a 27% in-crease in visit frequency and an 8% lift in spend.

“We’ve seen a lot of success with inactive folks when we send them a richer offer. We’ve been able to bring them out of the darkness back into Shari’s,” Henderson says. “It’s prom-ising when you have guests that aren’t very active and they’re responding to your emails and acting on the offers.”

■ Eating up the resultsWithin one month of launching the re-wards program, Shari’s had more than 50,000 members. Today, it has grown its enrollment of Café Club members 45 and under by 30%. Shari’s has a

“strong” rewards member penetra-tion rate; members spend, on average, 10% more than non-members.

But Shari’s isn’t done growing yet. Henderson says the restaurant chain may experiment with mobile push notifications in the future. However, she acknowledges that most of Shari’s new initiatives are the result of trial and error.

“We learn a lot from trial and er-ror—what works and what hasn’t,” she explains. “And when something works, we definitely roll with it.”

The brand also ran a new promo-tion this past holiday season in which rewards members who bought 12 pies got a 13th one free. Not only did this help propel pie purchases, but it also incentivized people to sign up for the program. Henderson acknowledges that some of Shari’s customers vis-it the restaurant to strictly buy pies. The idea behind this promotion was to help Shari’s identify those core pie buyers and encourage them to try other menu items through targeted promotions.

“It’s a great way to introduce [them] to the larger brand at whole than just our pies,” she says.

As for marketers looking to repli-cate Shari’s success, Henderson ad-vises them to learn as much about their customers as they can.

“One size doesn’t necessarily always fit all,” she says. “One promotion that one group might respond to, anoth-er may not find as incentivizing. Seg-mentation is really key.” n

51% of marketing influencers report that the ability to segment email lists is the most effective personalization tactic —Ascend2, 2016

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4 Practical Steps to Align Email Marketing with the IoTWith all the buzz about the Internet of Things, and other innovations, marketers can easi-ly overlook the vital role of stalwart strategies such as email marketing. Email subscribers represent a reliable, reachable audience. By Pierre DeBois

1 Use advanced analytics tag protocols

Many advanced tag protocols are designed to capture dimensions and metrics in a way that standard reports may not.  Using those protocols can allow for flexibility in capturing data and labeling it so that it better aligns to IoT devices.

The Google Analytics Measurement Protocol is an excellent example.  It is

designed to send data from any online device or system, from digital home appliances (such as washing machines and coffee machines) to networked POP systems.

To incorporate in email, marketers add an image tag to an email template, and then install the Measurement Protocol script in a tagged site that is a central point in an IoT-influenced network. The metrics are labeled in

Consumers have already ad-opted email as an essential activity in the one device central to IoT campaigns—smartphones.  eMarket-

er  noted that mobile-only viewership of email rose 64% back in 2013. Email subscriber opt-in, therefore, is a bridge between the initial contact with a cus-tomer and deploying a strategy with mobile as a core starting point.   It is why many companies consider email campaigns a key element in a multi-channel initiative.

So what steps should marketers take to ensure that email campaigns fit with an IoT environment?

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the parameters, and the parameters are sent via HTTP POST. Marketers should work with developers to create and vet the functionality of any ad-vanced analytic protocol.

2 Establish the basic email metrics 

Email metrics can be a weak link in the customer experience campaign chain.  Examining a few basic metrics  can eliminate those weak links. Key met-rics typically include the following:• Number of emails sent• Number of bounced emails—simi-

lar to a bounce rate in analytics, but expressed as the number of emails rejected due to bad email addresses, network problems, or other issues

• Clicks—the number of clicks gener-ated from links within an email

The metrics should then be factored into ratios reflecting email campaign performance.  The ratios include the following:• Click Open Through Rate—the

number of reader clicks on email links divided by the number of emails opened 

• Delivery Rate—the difference be-tween the number of emails sent and emails bounced, divided by the number of emails sent

• Open Rate—the number of emails opened by viewers, divided by deliv-ered emails

• Unsubscribe Rate—the number of unsubscribe requests, divided by number of delivered emails

Marketers should graph these metrics to see how email response occurs and changes over time.

3 Label links with programmatic activity in mind

Labeling the links assists in plan-ning programmatic strategies.  Labels are created via tags from a URL build-er, with each tag consisting of param-eters. The parameters are dependent on the digital analytics solution used,

but most parameters are set with the following framework for meta infor-mation:• Source—where the referral traffic

arrives from• Medium—the type of media used in

a given campaign• Name—the given marketing cam-

paign name• Content description—typically used

for different variations of an email message.

So the tag labels identify email-relat-ed data for reporting, ranging from simple analysis to advanced analytics modeling.

4 Get hooked to webhooksWebhooks, offered by email providers, can offer nuanced responses to cus-tomer activity with email.  In general webhooks are short lines of code that function as an instant message system between two applications, allowing them to communicate. Many email systems use an HTTP callback as the message syntax, while users have a number of ways to configure the in-formation received.    MailChimp, for example, allows users to type the URL

from the application where they want to send webhook requests. This URL will receive data about update activity from a MailChimp list, such as cam-paign sends, changes email, or a sub-scribe/unsubscribe.

In many instances, webhooks re-quire developer skills to configure, so marketers who are “code-shy” can compensate with an outline matching activity to triggered messages. Out-lining applications that communicate with IoT devices can reveal the effec-tiveness of an email within an overall experience. This can be particularly helpful with beacons and notifications stirring smartphone-related engage-ment between IoT devices and cus-tomers.

In a digital economy where custom-er experience becomes too complex to execute, email is a clear fit for a cam-paign that links up with IoT devices.  Assessing how best to use email in the context of an IoT-influenced cam-paign can be a valuable starting point for establishing a comprehensive view of the customer…and delivering the experience that customer truly desires -- and expects. n

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Citi’s Email Marketing Key to Customer Engagement

▼ How would you broadly define Citi’s email strategy?We engage and inform our customers through sending timely servicing com-munications, promoting awareness of product benefits, sharing special offers, and recommending addition-al card products that might fit their needs. Within our U.S. marketing function, we also oversee email mar-keting for co-brand credit card prod-ucts within our partner’s channels.

▼ What’s the purpose of the emails? At present, we only contact exist-ing customers to inform them about products and ensure they’re engaged with the Citi brand and our evolving offerings. Within Citi’s U.S. Branded Cards business, which services more than 23 million customers, over two-thirds of all customer interactions take

place digitally, so email marketing is of immense importance to ensure we’re meeting and exceeding custom-er expectations.

▼ How do you get customers to sign up for emails? In a world that is increasingly digital by default, customers overwhelming-ly volunteer their email address at the time of acquisition. Today, more than 85% of new customers provide their email address as part of the applica-tion process.

Our early engagement market-ing provides links to enrollment and where possible links directly to the webpage where the action can be tak-en, whether that is enrollment in Citi Online, Online Payment set up, Alerts registration, Mobile App downloads, or  viewing and accessing card bene-fits. And, within our early engagement marketing efforts, we’ve seen that we’re connecting with customers in a highly relevant manner as CTRs are about double the industry average.

▼ What tools do you use overall for email marketing?Email marketing is based on actual customer behaviors to ensure that we are communicating with customers how they want and when they want. We use MarketSwitch.

▼ How would you describe the editorial operations? We prioritize content based on busi-ness goals. Once a message is priori-tized, the marketing or servicing team that requested the communication be

sent manages the actual content of the communication. They work with-in standardized templates that help reassure cardmembers that the mes-sage is indeed coming from Citi and meets our brand guidelines and best practices.

Early engagement emails are pri-oritized based on customer lifecycle. For example, “Application Approved” and “Welcome to Citi” are the first two emails for every cardmember. From there, the eligibility is based on key variables such as card activation, acquisition offer reinforcement, dig-ital engagement, and learning about the card benefits.

▼ What is your normal frequency of communications?We deploy email communications dai-ly. However, individual cardmembers are receiving an average of four mar-keting emails per month. Servicing emails are based on customer behav-iors such as enrollments, payments received, or alerts the customer has signed up for and deploy as triggers.

▼ What sort of ROI metrics do you look at to determine success?When it comes to ROI metrics, it’s re-ally campaign dependent. Overall, we are incredibly dedicated to ensuring that emails are relevant to our custom-ers, and we closely analyze open rates and unsubscribe rates and address as appropriate. In the past two years, we’ve seen our click-to-open rate start to exceed financial services industry benchmarks and our unsubscribe rate drop by more than two-thirds. n

Devika Mathrani

Devika Mathrani, managing director and head of marketing at Citi Cards North America describes Citi’s program

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Using Direct Mail to Win at Engagement Marketing

Direct mail is not standing idly by as digital technol-ogy makes its mark in the modern marketing envi-ronment. Despite a rep as

a marketing tool that is dead in the wa-ter, direct mail, too, is data-driven, and is now more targeted, more personal-ized, more relevant, and more efficient.

At least it can be.Data-driven analytics allows direct

mail marketers to customize each piece, with individual’s names and ad-dresses, as well as personalized imag-es, using the same data pool that mar-keters use for email and social media marketing. Additional technology lets direct mail marketers measure effica-cy, while driving down costs due to postal discounts.

One issue that keeps cropping up within the direct mail environment is how little marketers understand about the channel’s capabilities. Di-rect mail integrates well with email, mobile, and social media marketing as part of an omnichannel campaign.

But how to get the word out to mar-keters? That was the question of the day at Ricoh’s Engagement Market-ing Executive Symposium, a three-day event held in Boulder in early No-vember that brought together brand marketers, direct mail providers, and industry consultants. Ricoh manufac-tures color inkjet presses with vari-able-data capability, used to produce customized direct mail pieces.

In his opening presentation, Jeff Hayes, managing director of Info-Trends consultancy, shared data gath-ered in a recent survey on consumers’ use of direct mail.

The study offered proof positive of

millennials’ crush on direct mail. Con-sumers were asked if they were more likely to read an email with a sales or promotional offer, as opposed to look-ing at a direct mail piece; 23% of to-tal respondents preferred email, while 33% answered direct mail. Here’s where it gets interesting: broken down by age group, 26% of those in the 18-24 year group preferred email, while 38% preferred direct mail.

Millennials’ interest in direct mail was also evident in a follow-up ques-tion: “Which is more effective at get-ting you to take action?” Looking at total respondents, 28% said direct mail, 20% said email. Turning just to millennials, 30% said direct mail, 24% said email.

“There is a misconception among

many marketers that to reach and con-nect with millennials requires a digital/social-only program,” notes Hayes. “Our research indicates that millenni-als react more favorably to relevant and creative direct mail pieces than boom-ers or Gen Xers, particularly when it is part of a multi-channel campaign.”

At the symposium, Tri-Win Direct, Heeter, and Ricoh made their case touting direct mail›s role in the omni-channel marketing mix and how it can contribute to a campaign›s ROI.

Heeter, located in Canonsburg, PA, creates actionable and relevant cus-tomized direct mail pieces produced on its Ricoh color inkjet press, and used in combination with Imperium, its proprietary personalization and data collection dashboard. Imperium gives Heeter’s customers instant access 24/7 to information on their direct mail pro-gram’s reach, reported Tom Boyle, VP sales and marketing. Customers are able to track their direct mail piece’s arrival through MailPRO, allowing the sales team to time their outbound calls to the mail’s arrival.

Scott Fish, president of Tri-Win Di-rect, a direct mail provider based in Dallas, has also used targeted direct mail programs to great effect.  For a quick service restaurant customer, Tri-Win was able to drive revenues up $3,000-$5,000 per store, using full-color, targeted direct mail. And, by taking advantage of postal dis-counts, it was also less expensive than a traditional direct mail program.

“I knew what our client’s goals were, and showed them how to do it better. Our responsibility is to help our customers get the best response possible,” said Fish. n

Data-driven, direct mail is targeted, personalized, and relevant. By Joann Whitcher

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MINING INSIGHTS FROM THE BIG DATA MOUNTAIN

How Testing and Personas Helped Super Shoes Find the Right Direct Mail Fit

L ike the fit of a shoe, direct mail is not a one-size-fits all medium. From postcards and coupons to flyers and booklets, there are a num-

ber of formats and creative options marketers can choose from—each at different price points.

Super Shoes, a footwear retailer specializing in occupational products, used postcards and tri-fold mailers to drive brand awareness and engage-ment; however, its director of mar-keting Matt Willard wanted to know if one format worked better than the other. The only problem is Willard knew he didn’t have the resources to run a multivariable test.

“[The direct mail pieces] had vary-ing prices, varying design sets associ-ated with them,” he says. “For us to determine if one was better than the other was going to require multiple events, lots of calculation, and it would become very expensive and time con-suming to try to perform that.”

So in fall 2015, Willard decided to leverage Quad/Graphics’ (Quad Graphics) Applied Marketing Test Pro-cess (AMTP)—a testing platform that would allow the footwear brand to ana-lyze multiple combinations of variables.

■ Sizing up its audienceFor the test, Willard identified a few variables within Super Shoes’ direct

The footwear retailer sent targeted versions of two direct mail pieces to see which one would outperform. By Elyse Dupre

mail pieces that he wanted to test for performance. For instance, he tested whether customers responded better to postcard or tri-fold mailers and whether they preferred minimalist designs or product-oriented ones. The brand tested these variables by way of online surveys, which were sent to a pool of customers who had opted in to participate. The brand then qualified that list by geograph-ic and demographic data to create a pool that more closely resembled its customer base.

After participants completed the test, Willard worked with Quad to analyze the findings. Based on the data, the AMTP platform predict-

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MINING INSIGHTS FROM THE BIG DATA MOUNTAIN

ed that the postcard would generate a higher ROI—a pleasant forecast considering that the postcard is the less expensive format. But because the postcard is smaller than the tri-fold mailer, Willard was concerned that the postcard would limit Super Shoes’ exposure.

So, Willard decided to run another test in December 2015 to confirm the AMTP predictions.

■ Strapping on the segmentationUnlike the first test, which was strictly digital, Willard and his team decided to actually send the postcards and tri-fold mailers to Super Shoes’ consum-er base. But not everyone received the same creative.

In the past, Super Shoes had done its own internal segmentation and then sent its analysis to a third par-ty to have them develop personas. The footwear brand decided to tweak the mailers’ creative based on its top-performing and largest persona groups: its influencers, who are more rule-binding and information-hungry, and its trailblazers, who are more in-dividualistic, indulgent, and excited by new ideas, Willard says. In addi-tion to sending the targeted mailers to these groups, Super Shoes had a control group.            

■ Tying up the resultsWhen it came to measuring success, Willard and his team tracked response rate (by way of coupon redemption), as well as sales versus marketing in-vestment. The sales versus market-ing investment metric was calculated through a “loose” attribution study, he says, in which Super Shoes ana-lyzed whether the recipients of the mailers made a purchase within the following four weeks.

In terms of response rate, the tri-fold mailer outperformed the post-card with a variance of nearly two

points, Willard says. More specifically, the influencer postcard had the low-est redemption rate at 3.5% while the trailblazer tri-fold card had the highest redemption rate at 5.4%. Still, Willard considered this metric more of a “superficial analysis.”

“Redemption rate only gives you the coupons that were redeemed,” he notes. “It doesn’t necessarily speak to the amount of money being spent or the quality of those respondents.”

As for sales versus marketing in-vestment, Willard says this metric was “extraordinarily higher” for both the influencer and trailblazer postcard, confirming the AMTP prediction. In fact, the tri-fold mailer and the postcard outperformed Super Shoes’ baseline by 200%.

■ Polishing up the strategyTruly eliminating variance within the 2015 test was one of Super Shoes’ biggest challenges, Willard explains. He also admits that it was hard to in-terpret the results at first with an open mind.

“You go into a review with a set of expectations,” Willard continues, “and it was easy to get caught up in the uncertainty of what was import-ant between response rate versus re-demption rate, conversion rate and marketing investment.”

And if there’s one thing he’s learned from this experience, it’s that “not ev-ery event was created equal.” In other words, Willard’s goal for a direct mail piece may not be to drive sales all of the time. If he wants to drive aware-ness and response, for instance, he and his team might send out a tri-fold mailing; however, if the goal is to in-crease sales, then they may send out a postcard.

“We’re not always seeking to drive increased profit,” he says. “In some cases, we’re willing to settle for a re-duced profit for more eyeballs....

[AMTP] predicted that the postcard would be more profitable and that the tri-fold would have a greater response. So as we move forward, we’ve adopt-ed those sensibilities into our direct mail strategy.”

Super Shoes has continued to work with Quad on several print and digital initiatives. For instance, the compa-nies ran a mobile campaign in which customers within a certain radius of a Super Shoes’ store would receive an ad directing them to a newly created mobile site. In addition, the compa-nies recently completed a print cam-paign in which a fall catalog was sent to a large portion of Super Shoes’ customers. When customers engaged with small icons inside of the catalog, they could view additional content, like behind-the-scenes video from a photo shoot. n

52% of consumers polled like it when cus-tomer service is person-alized to them and their interests. — Opinium Research LLP, Ovum

17% of marketers say outbound paractices pro-vide the highest quality leads for sales —HubSpot

40% of U.S. marketers surveyed view direct mail as well-positioned to drive value in concert with oth-er media channels —Winterberry Group, From Theory to Practice: Bringing Omnichannel to Life