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Three powerful analytics use cases for Customer LinkHow linked data powers smarter analytics and better predictive models

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The power of linked data

It’s an increasingly formidable obstacle for marketers and analysts who can’t answer fundamental questions because the data they need lives in disparate sources and silos.

Add to this the massive complexity of consumers anonymously buzzing between touch points, devices and channels (in seemingly random ways), and it’s clear that something needs to be done.

The key to squaring this circle lies in accurately linking anonymous data about online interactions with the offline data stored in places like CRM databases.

That’s where Customer Link comes in. A quick description:Customer Link is a LiveRamp Connect service that ties your customer data together in a privacy safe way.

We take in data from all sorts of data sources – like campaign impression data (from display, video, search, mobile, website traffic, email opens, CRM databases, purchase data, 3rd party data – and then return your data tied to anonymous links that represent a unique consumer.

This linked data can be delivered to your attribution platform or as raw files for your analytics team. We put the data in your hands, so you can create a unified view of customer activity.

We’ve gone into more detail about what Customer Link is and how it works elsewhere. So for now we’ll focus on three specific use cases it powers and why your analysts are going to love it. Of course, these use cases are only three examples – when it comes to harnessing the power of linked data, the sky’s the limit.

Let’s dig in.

When it comes to adopting new tech and trying out new tactics, you can’t beat marketers. But the range of tools, tactics and platforms used by marketers today has given rise to a whole new problem: data fragmentation.

Customer Link use cases

Closed-loop measurement

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#1 | Closed-loop measurement

Knowing that consumers who saw offer X were 30% more likely to go on to purchase a product than consumers who saw offer Y is a critical input to any program planner. But siloed data makes this simple connection prohibitively difficult.

How Customer Link helpsConnecting campaign data to your purchase data lets you tie all those expensive exposures to a tangible impact like purchases, even if the transaction happened offline.

Link campaign exposures to transactions everywhere they take place – in-store, through call centers, at branch offices, or online – and you’re closing the most crucial of feedback loops.

All of a sudden, marketing’s impact on the top line doesn’t seem so fuzzy any more.

Closed-loop measurement is all about connecting campaign exposure data in any given marketing channel to purchase data so you can optimize spend.

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#1 | Closed-loop measurement

Example: Increasing the impact of budgetsBefore:

A retail company could only connect banner ads to purchases if the purchase happened in the same session as the click. The ads were working – just not instantly with every consumer.

After:

With Customer Link, the company can credit the campaign even if consumers who are exposed to it go on to purchase a product weeks after exposure in a brick and mortar location.

Loop closed; campaign credited; budget impact increased.

Customer Link use cases

Cross-channel attribution

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#2 | Cross-channel attribution

But when the data needed for analysis is a mixture of data from anonymous interactions (like a desktop web browser seeing an online ad) and known interactions (like a consumer seeing an email or buying in a store) – it’s difficult to connect the dots.

The trouble is, when you can’t put the right data together, there’s a very real chance you’ll draw the wrong conclusions about how to allocate your marketing budget.

How Customer Link helpsBy linking the data collected from disparate online and offline touch points in a privacy-safe way,

Customer Link lets you create a unified view of customer activity to analyze.

And since it’s able to link anonymous data across channels and devices at the consumer level, the data set available for attribution analysis is much more accurate – because it includes everything from impression data on external channels to anonymous website traffic and your purchase data.

What that means for attribution analysesHere, the opportunity is to analyze every customer’s interaction from first touch all the way through to purchase.

That means knowing, for instance, that the smartphone that viewed an ad is connected to the same consumer who read an email last week, and then visited your website before making a purchase in store.

It’s a holistic view of how your marketing campaigns perform across channels so you can assign the proper weight to each step in the funnel.

It’s the vision of cross-channel attribution analysis executed in a confident, privacy-safe way.

An essential tool in the data-driven marketer’s arsenal, attribution analysis is about understanding how a combination of touch points contributed to a sale.

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#2 | Cross-channel attribution

Example: Redistribute the budgetBefore:

An online travel company had a limited attribution model fed by data silos. As a result, they overvalued search and undervalued social advertising.

After:

With Customer Link, a holistic, accurate view of each channel’s real contribution meant the budget could be optimized, increasing click-throughs, engagement and conversion rates.

Customer Link use cases

Audience modeling

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#3 | Audience modeling

By analyzing the interactions and behaviors of people and segments that have purchased from your brand in the past, it’s possible to develop sophisticated models of who is likeliest to buy in the future.

Once again, the key challenge is having a meaningful enough dataset of behaviors and interactions to start analyzing for trends and attributes.

How Customer Link helpsThe opportunity here is to link first-party data (the data you own) and third-party data (the data you can buy) in an accurate privacy-safe way.

That way you can link reliable evidence of purchases and engagements to a whole world of anonymous online interactions, identifying the patterns, audience attributes and journeys that are likeliest to convert.

What that means for audience modelingSo instead of all that anonymous data gathering dust in disparate silos, you turn it into the basis for a data-driven customer acquisition strategy.

The impact is huge: Not only do you detect meaningful engagement patterns from the past, you give yourself the ability to predict which offers will drive the right behaviors later.

It’s a strategic leap forward for your data-driven marketing.

In the same way predictive analytics propelled the analytics discipline into the future, audience modeling aims to propel the age-old discipline of segmentation into the future.

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#3 | Audience modeling

Example: Optimizing retention offersBefore:

A mobile operator needs to better predict which customers are most likely to churn so they can target them with the right offers. Siloed data severely limits their ability to aggregate interactions and behaviors to gather enough signals.

After:

With Customer Link, the operator can unite the interactions of previous defectors across all channels. This builds a much more accurate model of likely defectors. Retention offers are super-targeted, avoiding over-spend while decreasing churn.

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The way we see it, the masses of customer data spread across all your marketing platforms and offline data silos isn’t an obstacle – it’s an opportunity.

And if you’ll allow us to toot our own horns for a second here, with Customer Link it’s never been easier to make the most of it. Because you can put the data together and get the

insights your marketing team needs – without compromising the privacy and anonymit of your customers.

Crucially, this ability to link anonymous interaction data with purchase and CRM data isn’t academic.

As we explained in this eBook, the applications for linked data are both incredibly powerful and achievable.

Let your analysts loose on linked data, and you’ll see the space-age vision of data-driven marketing turn into an operational reality.

We’re definitely biased here, but that’s just downright exciting.

The anonymity opportunity

There’s never been a more interesting time to be a marketer. Because even though everyone’s been talking about data-driven marketing for decades, the ability to unleash its full potential has never been greater.

And we’re dedicated to connecting the digital marketing ecosystem. With our Customer Link and Data Onboarding services, we help marketers eliminate data silos and unlock greater value from the tools they use every day.

If you’re looking for a fully linked view of your market and marketing, we should talk.

We’re LiveRamp