Take Your Marketing Personal

Insights from a Conversant ExecutiveScott Eagle, Chief Marketing Officer

TAKE YOUR MARKETING PERSONALUNDERSTAND HOW TO HARNESS THE POWER OF PERSONALIZED COMMUNICATIONS

Table of Contents

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INTRODUCTION

FIVE ESSENTIALS OF MARKETING PERSONALIZATION

Centralized Data Management

Actionable Profiles

Creative Personalization Platform

Real-Time Shopper Location

Measurement & Optimization

CONCLUSION

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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TAKE YOUR MARKETING PERSONAL: FIVE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS NEEDED FOR SELECTING A MARKETING PERSONALIZATION PLATFORM

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Insights from a Conversant Executive

Virtually everyone agrees that a personalized message tailored specifically to an individual’s wants and needs is more likely to drive a transaction than a general one. Here are a few key drivers behind this belief and the increasing interest in marketing personalization:

• The population is more heterogeneous

• Products are more specialized and purchasecycles have fragmented

• Media channels and audiences have fragmented

• Relentless evaluation, extensive comparison shopping and show rooming are the norm, not the exception

• Individuals are more demanding – they expect a seamless brand experience, along with messages and offers that match their particular preferences

As a result of these market forces, many marketers are convinced that personalized communications with prospects and customers are essential to maximize their retail sales.

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TODAY THE VISION BECOMES REALITYWhen digital marketing began in the late 90s, pundits promised that digital could some day take us well beyond segmentation and into truly personalized communications for each individual. They also promised that each and every message would be customized and relevant to the individual, driving consumer happiness and retailer profitability.

Well, things didn’t go quite as planned. It quickly became apparent that most retailers didn’t yet have the foundation needed to collect all of the essential consumer data. Retailers also weren’t ready to associate all of that data with individual profiles. Finally, even if a retailer could collect all the data and associate it to specific individuals, there was no cost-effective way to deliver individualized messages, least of all across multiple devices.

Thanks to innovations in technology, creating one-to-one connections between brands and individuals is now possible. Advances in data collection, interpretation, creative personalization and cross-channel media delivery have made personalized marketing achievable. But in order to get there, you need the right solution. Here, we’ll closely examine the five essential components to look forin a marketing personalization platform.

FIVE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS TO LOOK FOR IN A MARKETING PERSONALIZATION PLATFORM

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Centralized online and offline customer data management

Actionable profiles associatedto real individuals

Cost-effective creative personalization platform to efficiently drive one-to-one personalization, at scale

Ability to identify and deliver messages to individual shoppers wherever they spend digital time

Accurate and completemeasurement and optimization

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Most brands collect a lot of customer data, but the information tends to be kept in silos. To make that data truly actionable, you need a centralized collection and management tool that can bring together, standardize and enrich all of your data.

Your data platform must bring together both online data (from website navigation, e-commerce stores, and online ad and

email campaigns) and offline data (from scanners and POS systems, store rewards programs, catalog sales, and call centers). After all, online data only reflects a small fraction of total sales and customer interactions. For most brands, a large portion of sales and interactions occur offline. With the right partner, you can activate this large pool of offline buyers for lucrative upsell and retention efforts. Also, by combining all of this data, you achieve a holistic perspective that provides you with superior insights about individual shopper behavior.

Display

Site

Video

Email

Mobile Affiliate

In-Store

Tablet

CENTRALIZED ONLINE AND OFFLINE CUSTOMER DATA MANAGEMENT1

You need a centralized collection and management tool that can bring together, standardize and enrich all of your data.

Conversant’s data unification and activation

capabilities are proven. We’ve helped more

than 170 leading retailers and brands unite

their online and offline data.

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Once online and offline data is merged, the next step is to tie all of a consumer’s activity to a single, anonymized profile — a critical step in the personalization process. After every brand interaction has been associated with a particular profile, the right partner can layer on rich behavioral, demographic and psychographic insights. Only then can we begin to fully understand what motivates that consumer. Analysis of this rich user surfaces insights about what messaging will appeal most to an individual, and also helps identify the creative elements that will result in higher conversion rates.

To empower personalized messaging and media, all of this rich data needs to be associated with individual profiles. This process can be rather challenging in a multi-device, multichannel world, but this step is critical. The extent to which a partner can link that profile to many devices and online IDs that represent the individual online will ultimately determine the actionability of that profile and the ultimate success of any personalized media effort.

ACTIONABLE PROFILES ASSOCIATED WITH SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALS2

Once online and offline data is merged, the next step is to tie all of a consumer’s activity to a single, anonymized profile.

THE CONVERSANT PLATFORM IS ADEPT AT CREATING

INDIVIDUAL PROFILES THAT INCLUDE ALL OF A RETAILER’S

CUSTOMER DATA. WE THEN ENHANCE INDIVIDUAL

UNDERSTANDING WITH THOUSANDS OF POINTS OF

INTEREST AND ACTIONS TO SHOW BRANDS A COMPLETE

PICTURE OF INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER NEEDS AND BEHAVIORS.

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Once you have robust, actionable profiles, you need a system that enables those individual insights to be reflected in beautiful, brand-enhancing customized creative. These personalized ads must be developed quickly, in keeping with your brand guidelines and at an affordable cost. These assets must then be rendered in real-time to reflect individual needs and preferences. There are two types of creative development platforms in use today:

RETARGETING TEMPLATE ADS

The favored approach of retargeting solutions, so-called “dynamic creative” starts with highly templated designs that are synced with image databases. Often, the product that populates the template is the last item that the consumer browsed in an online store.

You’ve probably seen such messages in your own Internet browsing. As an example, after you viewed a pair of shoes online, you found ads featuring that same pair of shoes being presented to you around the web for the next 30 days. Even if you bought the shoes somewhere else online or in-store, that same template ad continued to be displayed again and again.

The retargeting template ads approach enables the cheap creation of thousands of different ad units on

the fly. But these ads aren’t truly personal, because they typically are customized only in the product they feature. Additionally, these campaigns tend to focus only on your lowest funnel engagers. Note also that when some retargeters don’t frequency cap, the relentless repetition of such messages can be offputting to the consumer.

CREATIVE PERSONALIZATION

Creative personalization combines the art and science of human creative talent with advanced dynamic personalization software. This enables the creation of truly hyperpersonalized units in massive numbers. Each piece of creative is developed based on the characteristics of the person who’ll view it. Using the wealth of information found in the anonymized profile, our solution calibrates more than 200 components to build the optimal ad — one that’ll foster engagement and motivate purchase. Virtually every aspect of your brand message is tailored to perfectly reflect the needs, desires and lifestyle of your target consumer:

THE PROFILES REVEAL TWO CONSUMERS WITH VERY DIFFERENT LIVES AND NEEDS

Even though these two profiles are within the same zip code for geo-targeting, a personalization creative platform should recognize they are completely different individuals with unique buying habits and preferences. One individual requires promotions and discounts to complete a conversion vs. another individual who wants the latest styles before anyone else and isn’t price sensitive. Your marketing should speak to them individually.

COST-EFFECTIVE CREATIVEPERSONALIZATION PLATFORM 3

• Ad Copy

• Ad Format

• Call to Action

• Brand and Lifestyle Imagery

• Featured Products

• Offers and Promotions

Female/Age: 39

ID 9A73NQ1

Female/Age: 28

ID 5F89GW9

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Creative personalization is about more than simply sticking a product into a banner template. As an example, let’s review how a brand might speak differently to two separate individuals for a fictional departmentstore chain called BrandCo.

The woman on the top is a married mom who loves shoes, is somewhat price sensitive and buys clothes for multiple members of herfamily. She also tends to buy online.

The woman on the bottom is a single fashionista who loves clothing from upscale brands like Alexander McQueen. She isn’t terribly price sensitive, but she does love rewards points. She tends to buy at retail.

Now in reality, the platform personalizes on more than 200 dimensions, not just four or five. But you get the picture. We also think about personalization in terms of an ongoing creative journey or conversation, not just one ad.We deliver messages and analyze user activity both online and in-store.

Based upon these attributes, we can determine the content for the next ad based upon what we algorithmically determine is the “best next” sales opportunity at that moment. So, for example, imagine the fashionista buyer purchased a new outfit after seeing the fourth message. Based upon that purchase, we will deliver ads for a matching handbag to complement her previous purchase.

Creative Personalization combines the art and science of human creative talent with an advanced software solution that enables the creation of truly hyperpersonalized units in massive numbers.

FALL FASHION LAUNCH

FALL FASHION EVENT

FEATURED PRODUCTS

FALL PROMOTION

“NEXT BEST”OPPORTUNITY

Female/Age: 39

• Income: $130K• Oakbrook, IL• Married, Presence of

Children• Multichannel Shopper• Value Shopper• Outdoor Fitness/Yoga• Buying for Man• Purchased In-store Last

Month: Jeans, Tops• Recently Purchased Online:

Sweater, Blouse

Female/Age: 28

• Income: $85K• Oakbrook, IL• Single• Redeem Shopper Points

with last 3 months• Urban Style• Fashionista• Multichannel Shopper• Recently Purchased Online:

Gown, Couture Pants

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Once a brand has its creative firepower, the technology partner must be able to deliver personalized messages to the maximum number of individuals at the most opportune moments. In light of the growing trend toward cookie

blocking and cookie deletion, your solution must go beyond standard third-party cookies in order to maximize the ability to find shoppers online.

In addition, your technology partner must be able to work across devices and channels. Because shoppers on average

spend more than half of their time on devices other than desktop computers, your solutions provider should be able to message specific individuals across their smartphones and tablets as well.

The right partner will not force you to limit all of that gorgeous creative to display ads. Partnering with a vendor that can extend your creative to other marketing channels will maximize the impact of your one-to-one program and the efficiency of your ad spend.

Conversant has developed a highly advanced proprietary network to achieve all of these goals. Our proprietary 1st party identification network sees more users more often so Conversant can drive more connections and conversions. And because Conversant offers a true cross-device targeting and media delivery system, you can reach all of these people across all the devices they migrate between throughout the day.

Conversant’s proprietary 1st party identification network mitigates many of the challenges of cookie blocking and cookie deletion so that we can actually pinpoint many more of your audience members than other solutions that use the prevailing technologies and approaches.

ABILITY TO IDENTIFY AND DELIVER MESSAGES TO INDIVIDUAL SHOPPERS WHEREVER THEY SPEND DIGITAL TIME

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Because shoppers spend more than half of their time on devices other than desktop computers, your solutions provider must be able to target specific individuals across their smartphones and tablets as well.

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Most pure play retargeting companies take credit for sales that their ads don’t actually influence. They do this by delivering ads to the people who visit your site but don’t purchase anything immediately. When any of those people return later to make a purchase, the retargeter claims credit for that sale. The problem? Many of those people — as many as 90 percent — would have returned to make the purchase regardless of whether they were retargeted with ads.

Your personalization solution should provide robust measurement that pinpoints the conversions that it truly influenced — both online and offline. In other words, what incremental sales did your program drive? To do this, you need an advanced measurement system that goes beyondlast-touch attribution and has visibilityinto your offline sales systems.

CONVERSANT PIONEERED

A STATISTICALLY

VALIDATED MEASUREMENT

METHODOLOGY THAT CAN

DISTINGUISH THE SALES THAT

ARE TRULY DRIVEN BY ITS ADS

FROM THE PURCHASES THAT

WOULD HAVE OCCURRED

NATURALLY. FURTHERMORE,

OUR METHODOLOGY

EXAMINES BOTH ONLINE AND

OFFLINE SALES TO DETERMINE

THE FULL IMPACT OF

CONVERSANT CAMPAIGNS.

AN ACCURATE AND COMPLETE INCREMENTAL-SALES-BASED MEASUREMENT AND OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM

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Your personalization solution should provide robust measurement that pinpoints the conversions that it truly influenced — both online and offline.

CONCLUSION

Many leading retailers and brands are exploring personalized marketing as a way to improve sales and foster shopper loyalty. But not all solutions are created equal. Whether you choose Conversant or another vendor, make sure your partner can deliver on the essentials discussed here. Personalization is too important a strategy to get it wrong.And you’re too busy to have to go through the process of finding and implementing a personalization solution twice!

Conversant welcomes your thoughts on this topic and the larger subject of measurement.Please feel free to contact Scott Eagle at [email protected]

ABOUT THE AUTHORScott Eagle is CMO of Conversant. He leads Conversant’s global marketing function, including strategy and the integration of marketing programs across our solutions groups. An accomplished senior executive with a strong background in client-side digital marketing and consumer brand management, Mr. Eagle has over 25 years of experience as a marketing leader managing major Fortune 500 brands and building successful new companies. Mr. Eagle has served as CMO for Empowered Careers, eHarmony and Claria Corporation, and he has held management positions at Concentric Network Corporation, MFS Communications and P&G. Mr. Eagle holds a B.S. in economics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and serves on the board of Akademos, Inc.

ABOUT CONVERSANTConversant, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNVR) is the leader in personalized digital marketing. Conversant helps the world’s biggest companies grow by creating personalized experiences that deliver higher returns for brands and greater satisfaction for people. We offer a fully integrated personalization platform, personalized media programs and the world’s largest affiliate marketing network – all fueled by a deep understanding of what motivatespeople to engage, connect and buy.

For more information, please visit www.conversantmedia.com.

Copyright 2014 Conversant, Inc. All Rights Reserved.11