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Custom Audiences Data Quality Pre-built Audiences

How to Get Your Advertising Advantage

How to Get Your Advertising Advantage

How satisfied are you with the quality of the marketing data you currently license from your existing data provider? According to Lotame, US marketers spend $11.9 billion in third-party audience data year on year. Yet, only 20% of marketers are confident about the accuracy of the data they buy. That means that billions of dollars could be being spent each year on data which is considered inaccurate. 

At the same time, more than 80% of marketers claim accuracy is the most important factor when buying audience data. If you count yourself as one of these marketers who prioritises data quality, what can you do to ensure the data that you’re using is indeed accurate?

Assessing the Quality of Your Provider’s Data

1. Understand Where The Data Is Sourced 

Has the data provider you’re currently working with explained where they source their data from? This could be a great indication of how accurate their data is. For example, at Media Source Solutions, our data is sourced from form fills, registrations, brand signals, online engagements and email openers. In addition to this, we only work with privacy-compliant data that is opted-in to receive third party offers. If your data provider is reluctant to share details on the source of their data, this should ring some alarm bells and prompt some follow-up questions

2. Understand What Data Hygiene Processes Are Used

What steps does your current provider take to ensure data hygiene? Do they cross-validate their data to ensure its accuracy? How many sources do they use to verify their data? At Media Source Solutions, our data is validated with 5+ declared touch points per record for performance & quality assurance.

3. Understand Their Scale

What scale does the data provider you work with claim to offer? Do the numbers make sense? For example, if your current data provider claims to have far more data for US ophthalmologists than the American Medical Association estimates, the likelihood is that the data they are providing is not all that accurate. At Media Source Solutions, we are proud to offer extensive scale – for some segments 2-3 times the scale compared to other leading providers – but we will never claim to hold more data than we actually do.

Your Advertising Advantage

If your existing data provider doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, why not try our data for your next campaign? Our data is regularly evaluated and scored by TruthSet, an independent data evaluator, and they have found it to be amongst the most accurate of leading data providers. If you’re looking to target the elusive Generation Z, for example, our data was scored 56% more accurate than the industry standard, meaning more impressions within your target audience and overall a better performing campaign.

What’s more, our ethnicity data quality earned a badge from the ANA’s AIMM for transparency in multicultural marketing and we’re a member of the TAG registry, demonstrating our commitment to combatting fraudulent & criminal activity in digital advertising. 

Using our data, you could have an advertising advantage over your competitors. Talk to us today to discuss your data needs.

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CTV Marketing Direct Marketing Email Marketing Multichannel Campaigns

Every Channel Has Its Purpose

Every Channel Has Its Purpose

Recently I came across a blog post which stated that direct mail tends “to go straight into people’s trash” and is “a waste of money.” The blog post went on to advise marketers to focus on email marketing instead. Now I don’t want to suggest that there’s anything wrong with email marketing – it’s a channel that we support here at Media Source Solutions and our clients have seen a lot of success in their email campaigns. And certainly it’s true that per contact reached, direct mail campaigns will cost more than an email campaign.

But surely we shouldn’t make things so simplistic and disregard an entire marketing channel, without even considering the purpose of the campaign, the industry the brand works in and the type of audience the brand wants to reach. 

I am very much a firm believer that every channel has its purpose and the skill of the marketer is to pick and choose which channel will prove effective in their upcoming campaign. Having assisted many marketers over the years with targeted data for their multichannel marketing campaigns, these are some of the nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way.

Don’t disregard direct mail just yet

I think it was back in the late 90s when dot coms were all the rage that the phrase “direct mail is dead” started to be uttered from marketers’ lips. Email was the new fashion – Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were at it after all – and the days of direct mail looked numbered. Ironically, email was also the saviour of direct mail. In the early 2000s, as email inboxes flooded and people’s physical mail boxes remained on the whole empty, marketers began to see an interesting trend – direct mail campaigns were performing.

Email for most marketers has now become the norm, to the extent that, receiving something through the post can be a great way to grab people’s attention. For some industries, it can also be a way to show you care. For example in B2B, yes, some lower-tier clients may only receive an email, whilst for top-tier clients, marketers may prefer a more personal touch with direct mail. The same could be said for brands in the luxury sphere.

As well as considering the industry, marketers should consider the demographics of the audience they’re trying to target. For example, consumers over the age of 65 are much more likely to respond well to a direct mail campaign. A study showed that seniors still prefer print communications even if they are becoming more comfortable with digital content. At Media Source Solutions, we’ve seen evidence of this firsthand when a direct marketing company approached us, looking to source a data file of consumers aged 45+ with an income of less $40K for a direct mail customer acquisition campaign. The campaign achieved a 3% conversion rate and due to the excellent results produced, the company continues to use our direct mail data for their campaigns.

When email marketing makes sense – and when it doesn’t

If I’ve given the impression that I’m averse to email marketing up until this point, I promise that is not the case! But it is frustrating to see email being used as a catch-all marketing channel by some marketers, with no thought as to whether it’s appropriate for the audience or the campaign objective. And of course, the more we abuse email marketing, the tougher the anti-SPAM rules will become, and the more difficult it will be to use this cost-effective and performing channel.

One of the reasons why email is so ubiquitous on the marketing plan is that it can be used at all stages of the funnel: from building brand awareness, to nurturing leads and obtaining prospects, to generating sales. For this reason, it’s perhaps best to consider when email marketing doesn’t make sense for your campaign. You have a huge number of cold prospects you want to reach and your list isn’t segmented.

While high volume email is possible, it requires help from a specialized email service provider – Mailchimp won’t suffice. In addition, working with a large amount of data that hasn’t been segmented is unlikely to result in the performance you would be looking for. High-volume email data is something we support our clients with but we would always recommend being as targeted as possible. If the client shares their campaign objective with us, we can also use behavioral targeting to ensure the consumer or business emails we provide have taken a similar action to their campaign objective recently, e.g. submitted a form.

You want to run a campaign to prospects but you only have their email address and no other data. Obviously, it’s possible to still run an email campaign in this instance but you may well find it doesn’t perform as well as you’d like. Email generally always generates higher engagement rates when marketers have enough data in order to personalize the email to the user. For example, something as simple as including the audience’s first name in the subject line can increase the open rate by 26% according to Campaign Monitor. In addition a study by Experian showed personalized emails deliver 6x higher transactional rates.

If you do find yourself in the situation where you want to run an email campaign but don’t have enough data on your audience, remember that data providers like Media Source Solutions are out there to help. Our data append service allows marketers to send us what data they do have, and specify which fields they’d like added such as name, address etc.

CTV – the new kid on the block

CTV is another channel that has received a lot of press recently. Much of this has been driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, with households spending more time at home and therefore in front of their TV. A recent Samsung study revealed that more than 60% of all viewing time in the US is now spent on streaming services.

CTV is great as it enables marketers to be much more targeted in comparison to traditional TV ads. But keep in mind that this channel is still best suited to brand awareness campaigns. Due to the simple reason that users cannot click on their TV screens, the customer conversion journey may well involve a CTV touchpoint but it will most definitely not end there – prospects will always convert using a different device.

Integrated multichannel marketing campaigns

We are big believers here at Media Source Solutions in the power of integrated multichannel marketing campaigns. That’s why we provide data from across the marketing spectrum, including: email, telephone, postal, hashed emails, cookies, IPs, MAIDs and CTV IDs. The marketing mix is a smorgasbord of channels marketers can choose from. Don’t limit yourself to just one thing from the menu.

Are you interested in making your multichannel marketing campaigns perform better via scalable and accurate data? Talk to us today to discuss your needs.

Categories
Custom Audiences Pre-built Audiences

Preparing for the Georgia Runoff

Preparing for the Georgia Runoff

Election day has passed but that doesn’t mean the political showdowns are over! All eyes are now firmly fixed on Georgia as the Senate race moves towards a runoff on January 5 between Senator David Perdue & Jon Ossoff and Senator Kelly Loeffler & Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock.

Why is the Georgia Runoff so important?

Essentially control of the Senate is in the balance. Should either Republican Senator Perdue or Loeffler win, the Senate would remain within the grasp of the Republicans, enabling them to block more effectively any legislation coming out of a Democrat-controlled White House.

Should, however, the Democrats manage to see off their opponents in both races, the Senate would be split, with a 50-50 tie, enabling Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to cast the deciding vote to drive forward Democrat legislation.

How have both sides fared in runoffs in the past?

All candidates now face the difficult task of trying to encourage their base to get out to vote on election day. Given that the country has already gone through a long election process for the Presidency, as well as a manual recount in their own State, it wouldn’t be surprising if many voters in Georgia are already feeling “election fatigue”. Plus this year, there’s the added issue of the pandemic which for many may prove decisive in their choice to go to the polls on January 5. Looking at past voter data, Republicans typically fare better than Democrats in runoffs.

News outlets have generally agreed that the success of both campaigns will fall on each side’s ability to reach young voters. There are 23,000 17-about-to-turn-18-year-olds who will be old enough to vote in the runoff. As USA Today put it: “the Georgia Runoff could hinge on registering new voters” before the cutoff date on December 7.”

What options are available to political operatives?

Political organisations looking to support their candidate need to split their efforts into three:

First, they need to prioritise the December 7 deadline to ensure as many non-registered voters as possible register to vote in the runoff. That will require targeting non-registered voters, particularly the 23,000 17-turning-18-year-olds we mentioned earlier. These new voters are unlikely to be on any of their databases and so political organisations will need to think about where to source this voter data from.

Secondly, they’re going to need to fill their campaign coffers with any many monetary donations as possible. According to Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, Republicans have $28 million extra to spend on campaign advertising compared to their Democrat opponents. Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson has already been beseeching Republican donors for more campaign contributions in their campaign’s bid to defeat Raphael Warnock: “We need every single dollar, every single supporter, every single Republican vote because Chuck Schumer, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are stopping at nothing to radically transform our country into a socialist state.”

Thirdly, they’ll need to use the donations they’ve received to get out the vote on January 5. Already, voters are being targeted with Twitter messages, robocalls and television ads. Perhaps the most effective campaign will be the one which uses data to the greatest effect to get their message across. If your opponents are using social and TV, why not try targeting connected TV, especially for targeting a younger audience? If others are doing Twitter ads, why not try digital audio ads like Spotify?

At Media Source Solutions we specialize in providing pre-built and custom audiences that can be targeted based on demographic data such as age and location, and political affiliation. If you need voter data or donor data for your upcoming campaign, get in touch with us today.

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