Match Rates Are Just the Beginning. It’s Time to Dig Deeper.

Match rates have emerged as a critical metric in people-based marketing. Brands view match rates as a fundamental, easy-to-calculate method for gauging an onboarder’s ability to find and recognize users within the advertiser’s audience data set, and advertisers routinely rely on them as a means of validating and comparing potential onboarding partners. Some have even …

Restraint Is the Key to Relevance: Why What You Don’t Say Matters

Note: a version of this article previously appeared in MarTech Series. Ask any CMO about the formula for winning with digital advertising, and the answer will inevitably center around “relevance” — the ability to leverage data to achieve that state of marketer nirvana bringing together the right person, right message, right time and right context. …

Why the Ads Retailers Don’t Send Are Just as Important

Note: a version of this article previously appeared in Retail Dive. Dads always seem to get the short end of the stick, even on holidays. Case in point: Father’s Day gift spending, which trails about $10 billion behind the pace set by Mother’s Day spending, according to the National Retail Federation. Even so, Father’s Day …

Five Steps to Building a Customer-Obsessed Brand

What brands want and what their customers want are two very different things. “Every brand says ‘We’re customer-obsessed.’ What does it really mean, though? What does it mean to say ‘I want to know the customer so intimately that I can serve their needs at a deep, meaningful level’?” asked Forrester vice president and principal …

Webinar: Marketing in the Moment

The relationship between brands and customers continues to grow closer… and more complex. Make no mistake: Your customers want to hear from you, and they want to engage on a more personal basis. But their expectations for meaningful, contextually relevant interactions have never been higher — and if your brand doesn’t consistently meet or exceed …

[Webinar] Identity Resolution: Secrets to Success

Identity resolution is the essence of superior customer engagement. Brands must know who consumers are and how they’ve navigated the path to purchase in order to deliver the individualized, contextually relevant experiences they demand. And that presents a significant challenge when a visitor to your brand’s site isn’t logged in. “A lot of brands don’t …

The GDPR Thaw: Marketers Tiptoe Back to Data-Driven Strategies

Note: a version of this article previously appeared in The Drum. Months after the panicked scurry to come into compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation effectively froze many marketers’ data-driven strategies, the true impact of the regulation on consumers and companies is coming into focus… and it’s much more promising than some …

Suppression Explained: Risks of Activating Media to Restricted Customers

Sometimes, what’s appropriate for one audience is anything but for another. Take ads for sports betting, an estimated $40 billion global industry gaining even more momentum in the wake of a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision granting states the right to authorize commercial wagering on football, basketball, baseball and more. Nine states now offer sanctioned …

Suppression Explained: Off-Target Messages Erode ROAS and Goodwill

Sometimes, less is more — especially in digital marketing. Ask Marc Pritchard. Procter & Gamble’s CMO made international headlines in 2017 when he slashed $200 million from the CPG goliath’s digital ad budget, returning to the spotlight when the gambit boosted reach by 10 percent. “We were annoying the hell out of people,” Pritchard admitted, …

Suppression Explained: Snail-Paced Data Onboarding Dooms Marketing

Sometimes, the ads your brand doesn’t send are just as important as the ads it does. Think about how consumers shop. A young woman may spend days, even weeks, hunting for the perfect bicycle. She scours the web at night, prowls local stores during her lunch hour and pores over mobile shopping apps on her …