New Presentation on the Cross-Device Consumer

We've put together great data from the most authoritative sources in the industry for this one. If you are looking to get up to speed on US mobile and cross-device behavior, start here!

Cross-Device Consumers in America - 2015 from Jim Nichols

My Wonderful Experience with Elance Designer Emagegraphic

Digital has had transformative effects upon my professional life, and its global reach has helped me capitalize on amazing resources I never would have found without it.

In my new job role, I work with a fantastic US designer who I will write about in another post soon, But this post has been about my experience using an Elance resource found when I posted my first job on that large and growing service.

A big part of my approach to B2B marketing is content development. I believe it is the great equalizer - helping innovative young companies compete head to head with their well-heeled established competitors.

I was looking for an efficient and cost effective way to deliver a broad range of content to the digital marketing industry. So, on a recommendation from a friend, I decided to try Elance. I posted a job and received a variety of proposals for the work. Among them was a Pakistani design firm called Emagegraphic.

Elance enabled me to review past work from all of the designers who expressed an interest in the project, and several had strong work, Emagegraphic really stood out for me. It was the range of styles and attention to detail that impressed me most. The portfolio offered everything from B2B brochures to bodybuilding products to prayer books.

You don't fly blind with Elance.The service shows ratings and comments from people that have worked with the designers so that you have a better sense of their strengths (or red flags.)

I did a jump ball between them and another designer, awarding the job to both resources. While both did a good job, Emagegraphic impressed me with how they followed the creative direction, went an extra mile to really give great fit and finish to what they did. Interactions with Raheel, the head of the company, were cordial, professional, and clear.Turnaround times were great. And the finished product was a delight. Attention to detail deserves specific mention because I produce long form content and edits are often numerous. But Emagegraphics did it all right the first time.

Simplify Your Switch from Ad-X Attribution and Measurement from Jim Nichols

Since then, the team there has developed about 15 items for me - each one a great piece of work. And over time, they've created a set of content development aesthetic standards that I didn't even know to ask for but which have made each document better than the last. Raheel understands what a brand is, and is able to deliver brand-compliant - and brand enhancing - work every time.

Four ways to improve dmps from Jim Nichols

We have a great working relationship, and I think part of that is recognizing my responsibility to provide clear direction and pay promptly. Many Elancers use the service as a primary source of income, so I would imagine many have tales of people who don't pay on time, or even at all. I wanted to be different. By contrast, sometimes I pay before they have completed the final round of changes, particularly if my carelessness led to an extra round.. For me it is an expression of trust, as well as a recognition that people have bills to pay. And, indeed, we've built up a strong trust so that I know that deadlines will be met, and they know that Paypal payment will be prompt. After all, it's a do unto others system.

How to Choose a DMP (Data Management Platform) from Jim Nichols

True confession: part of the reason why I occasionally pay early is that I want to be clear that I am looking for a longer term relationship with someone - one that lets each side benefit and gets past some of the doubts that can come from being 5,000 miles apart. And the designer is assuming far more risk in these relationships than the buyer. If I can put a mind at rest paying a few hours before something if finished, then they know that I want to create win-wins.

And I can also say that I trust Raheel to always deliver.

In total, my experience with Elance has been stellar. But I think THEY THE SERVICE would be the first to admit that what makes a great experience are buyers and sellers that are aware of their responsibilities and work toward building strong relationships. Emagegraphic has made my Elance experience stellar, and if you are looking for new ways to buy creative and tech services, I really do recommend you try Elance and Emagegraphic in particular. Raheel and team do outstanding work every time, and deliver exactly what and when they promise. Just don't monopolize ALL of his time as I need to keep working with him! ;-)

Raheel didn't ask me to write this - I just want to see him succeed even more, and if my little blog here can help, well then there you go!

The Four Steps to Uniting PC and Mobile Customer Data

More and more brands are convinced that they must take ownership of their customer data. The burgeoning DMP business is a testament to the idea that marketers want to create and control customer profiles, leverage insights across their marketing programs, and keep their data safe. There's also growing awareness of the need to collect and measure activity across mobile screens in addition to PCs, and to combine mobile behavior data with PC-based data to develop comprehensive customer profiles. This primer outlines the challenges of collecting, measuring, and combining mobile data along with tips on how to make it happen at your organization.

But first: Why you should care

A few years ago, U.S. marketers might safely postpone addressing the mobile data "gap" because relatively little consumer time was spent in apps. But things have changed in a very big way -- and a lot more quickly than most people expected.

In 2014, comScore reported that time spent on mobile devices accounted for a full 60 percent of U.S. connected time. Even more interesting is that 52 percent of total connected time takes place in apps rather than on the web. This is significant because you can't collect data in apps the same way you do on the PC web. Net, without collecting mobile data, means that you're missing out on a massive proportion of the signals consumers are sending as to what they care about. That's why mobile data matters. This is particularly true if you have an app and use it to drive m-commerce.

Step 1: Getting mobile data

When most of us hear "customer data," we think first of third-party cookies, the little workhorses of that have done so much to help us begin to understand consumer digital behavior on the PC web. While there are a growing set of challenges to the veracity of third-party cookie data (cookie-blocking, deletion, etc.), cookies remain fairly effective on the PC web.

But mobile -- and especially mobile apps -- are an entirely different animal, and require very different data collection methodologies. There are a few mobile measurement and attribution options here -- many of which use SDKs that companies incorporate in their apps. Data from in-app measurement tools traditionally has been used to measure the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

The SDKs associate customer events with a "device ID" that is a (semi) permanent unique identifier for each smartphone. The common device identifier helps address the problem that apps generally can't -- or don't -- share information between one another. Without the ID, it would be extremely difficult to get a macro view of in-app behavior.

The good thing about device IDs is that they tend to be much longer lived than third-party cookies, so it is often easier to associate mobile activity with a single user. The challenging thing about them is that in order to be able to collect data on lots of devices, you need a lot of SDK installs. Only a small number of companies have that kind of device penetration.

Step 2: Measuring mobile activity

To measure customer behavior in apps, you must define the sorts of activity that are relevant to your business. We call consumer actions in apps "events." An event might be a product search, browsing activities, adding an item to a cart, beginning the purchase process, finishing a purchase, referring a friend, etc. Once you define events, the SDK tracks consumer actions by device ID, under the assumption that a phone is almost always used by a single person.

Mobile web activity works differently. Third-party cookies can capture some mobile web activity. But Apple's Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default. SDKs are far better data collectors in mobile.

Step 3: Combining PC and mobile data

Once you have your cookie data from the PC web, and your mobile data from an app measurement company, you need to bring them together into anonymized profiles that represent a single individual across devices. To understand this fully, all behavior data needs to be combined into a single profile.

To combine PC and mobile data, we use a "device graph." A device graph infers that two or more devices belong to the same person based upon signals like household Wi-Fi IPs, login information, etc. These are called probabilistic matches. The limiting factor for most graphs is the number of mobile devices they track. Companies that can "see" more devices can naturally make more matches. The matching is generally performed by "data on-boarders."

Most brands have many other sources of first party behavioral data that can be anonymized and aggregated into these customer profiles. Examples include CRM email interactions, purchase records, and website visitation. Including these data sources naturally further improves your customer view.

Step 4: Putting your data to work

Having profiles isn't an end -- it's a means to an end. What you really want is to leverage these profiles to empower audience development and analysis that you can export and utilize across your marketing mix.

Insights from these united profiles can be leveraged across many of your marketing platforms, powering tactical programs like PC and mobile retargeting, push notifications, triggered emails, site personalization, and larger analytics projects. Most marketing tactics can be made better with audiences and data built on these omni-channel profiles.

What you can do at your company

Taking action at your company is a process of discovery and education. Whether or not your company has begun the process of uniting its PC web data, these five broad steps should help get you started:

1. Find out how/if your company is collecting mobile customer data -- both on the mobile web and in apps. If you are, then you have a head start. If not, you will need to identify means of collecting the data.
2. Understand the data ("events") that are being measured. Much of app measurement focuses primarily on app installs. This information is useful for evaluating the relative effectiveness of media vendors, but not at revealing what customers are actually doing in-app. Make sure that your measurement tool can and is collecting data on all of the event types that are relevant to your business.
3. Once your company has a way to collect the data, you must ensure it is being processed and retained in a DMP and a set of anonymized customer profiles. Be careful here, as many companies have DMPs that aren't equipped to collect or combine mobile web, mobile app, and PC data. Remember that a PC-only DMP is only seeing on average 40 percent of customer activity. A PC web and mobile web DMP is only seeing 48 percent. You need to make sure in-app activity data is in the mix. It is also immensely valuable to have other types of first party data combined in these profiles as well, for an even more complete customer view.
4. When all of these data types are being collected and retained, you need to ensure your company is combining them into omni-channel profiles. While it is useful to leverage mobile data for mobile targeting and optimization, and PC data for PC web efforts, it's far more effective to leverage a combined omni-channel profile and insights across the entire marketing mix. If you aren't, you'll need to task your tech team with identifying an on-boarder.
5. Once you have all the data together, get creative with how you leverage the profiles across your marketing mix. Retargeting and "look-alike" marketing are the gimmes here, but imagine how a complete view of a customer can, for example,  drive a precision push notification effort, or an individualized email program that responds to customer actions, or a marketing automation program that orchestrates a series of touch points to drive customer action. 
6. In conclusion, the "360 profile" is more than a marketing holy grail. It is (or soon will be) essential to drive optimal marketing effectiveness. While uniting PC and mobile data isn't a doddle, it is now possible -- and with more than half of connected time taking place on phones and in apps, it's a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have.

Thanks to iMediaConnection for publishing this first!

Choosing the Right DMP – Part Three of Three

Yesterday’s post focused on analyzing and actioning data and audiences. Today we’ll discuss the need for available analytics and account service, and finish with some conclusions.

SERVICE

1. Does the platform offer custom analytics services to support my internal marketing and analytics teams?

It’s probably no secret to you or your organization that experienced big data analysts and statisticians are in short supply these days. As more and more companies have embraced the importance of data-driven marketing, the demand for data experts has increased far more quickly than the supply. It is very valuable to have a data management partner with experienced staff to help make up for any resource shortfalls you may have as an organization.

2. Does the provider offer enterprise-grade service and support during both implementation and on an ongoing basis?

Your DMP should empower you and your team, and having smart and knowledgeable platform experts available to assist you is important. You’ll need a strong implementation team, excellent training resources, thorough documentation, and ongoing enterprise-grade account management support to get the most from your platform. Ask for specifics here, so there are no surprises after you sign the contract.

CONCLUSION

Choosing a DMP is a decision of profound importance – one that requires that we take a methodical and informed approach. We hope that is short list of questions helps make your process simpler and more effective.

As with many things in life, the key to taking the right action is not in having the answers so much as it is in asking the right questions. While it makes sense for you to have tech experts involved in your decision-making, thoughtful queries from strategic marketing generalists can also play a valuable role in driving the best choice.

Thanks for reading.

To Read Post One, Click Here

To Read Post Two, Click Here

Choosing the Right DMP – Part Two of Three

In yesterday’s post we provided some topics and questions to help you consider DMP alternatives as regards their ability to collect and organize first party data. In today’s post, we’ll provide some questions and ideas on how to evaluate alternatives based upon their abilities to analyze and action data, customer profiles and audiences.

ANALYZE

1. Does the platform allow for data to be transformed and exported to external platforms, including as audiences?

Data is as data does, meaning that your objective in having a DMP isn’t just collecting and organizing information but actually putting it to good use. The DMP you choose should make it easy to analyze your data, create cohorts and audiences, and make them available to your other platforms and partners for use in improving your marketing effectiveness. Most DMPs do fine on this score, but make sure and ask. Audiences are also valuable inputs for lookalike modeling, a tactic that media companies use to find more people “like” your best responders.

2. What kinds of packaged/out-of-the box analytics does the platform offer? Will technical experts be able to explain how they chose the methods of analysis, and why they’re appropriate? Does the platform enable custom analytics so that additional types of analysis beyond the out-of-the-box methods can be quickly and efficiently conducted?

The power of a DMP is in doing more than creating audiences, although that is a very important task. If you think about a DMP as a living organism for a moment, imagine that audience export is like a reflex action. Absolutely critical to survive and thrive. It is analogous to the question – what happens when I do X. But strategic marketing leaders are at least as interested in the whys as they are in the “whats.” For what reasons do these sorts of customers act in these ways? What are the drivers of my business? Are there ways to innovate to power even more rapid growth? Many DMPs have built-in reports and analyses, which can be useful in getting value from your platform quickly, but it’s important to understand the basis of these analyses – is the methodology sound?

ACTION

1. Can the platform automate the process of connecting audiences and profiles to my marketing platforms and partners of choice, or does it require manual integrations?

Most marketers have (or have heard) tales of platform integration challenges. A recent survey of leading retailers showed that they were working with an average of 27 platforms and media partners, which perhaps explains why integration is both important and challenging. Your DMP should simplify this process, with pre-developed integrations that your brand can literally plug into.

2. Can the platform ingest actions and export data in real-time to drive individualized marketing experiences?

The best DMPs combine an ability to deliver data to other platforms periodically (in batches) or in real-time. Real-time data sharing is increasingly valued by marketers because it enables a brand to capitalize on perfect moments of opportunity. Brands can take action immediately when consumers take “trigger” actions. Perhaps the easiest to understand example here is the cart abandon. If a customer uses your app or estore and places items in a cart, and then fails to make a purchase, real-time data sharing would enable you to use marketing automation to send a push notification or email to incent the customer to finish their transaction. Studies show that the sooner after an abandon that you can reach the customer, the more likely they are to take the desired action.

TOMORROW – GETTING THE CUSTOMER SERVICE LEVEL YOU NEED, AND SOME CLOSING THOUGHTS

Choosing the Right DMP – Part One of Three

So you’ve decided you need a DMP. Congratulations on making a really smart decision – to put data and customers at the center of your strategy and programs! Now the key challenge is to choose the right platform for your business. You have a number of choices in DMPs – each with its own unique sets of strengths and features. As with all platform decisions, making the right choice will have a big effect on the amount of value you ultimately derive from a DMP.

Because a DMP is a complex piece of technology, it can feel daunting for a marketer to thoughtfully evaluate alternatives. That’s why we’ve created these posts – to help strategic marketing generalists understand some key things they should look for as they weigh their alternatives. In essence, to help you have the right questions so you get the answers you need.

The discussion questions in this document fall into five broad categories, each one of the core capabilities for a robust DMP. Each capability area contains just two questions to help you focus on the most important discussions with your potential partner:

• COLLECT: Data collection and ingestion
• ORGANIZE: Data management and profile development
• ANALYZE: Ability to examine, transform and export insights and audiences
• ACTION: How the platform integrates with your preferred set of partners and platforms
• SERVICE: Critical component of any enterprise technology offering

The balance of these posts will review the questions and the rationale for each.

THE QUESTIONS

COLLECT

1. Can the platform collect or ingest ALL of the first party data types you wish to unite, including mobile app, mobile web, PC web, website interactions, estore activity and purchases, and email CRM interactions?

Your DMP is supposed to be the source of record for all of your data and customer intelligence. That means it needs to be able to collect or ingest all key first party data sets, including mobile app, mobile web, pc web, CRM interactions, site analytics, estore data and any other key data sets you might have. Most DMPs find mobile app data very hard to collect, process and associate with anonymized customer profiles. And given that mobile apps represent more than half of connected customer time, that’s a big issue.

2. Can the DMP work with all of the data collection partners you currently use, including your web analytics solution, ad server, email solution provider, estore platform, and mobile app attribution platform?

Your data platform should conform to you and your brand, not the other way around. Make sure that your DMP can ingest data from all of your preferred partners, so you keep implementation as simple as is practicable.

ORGANIZE

1. How does the offering unify and standardize all of the disparate datasets into anonymized profiles? What partner are they leveraging for device matching, and how accurate is the matching?

Perhaps the most critical task of a DMP is creating 360 profiles that encompass data from all sources. It’s important to ask questions about how each vendor does that. There are two big things to consider here – their adherence to digital privacy principles and practices, and the methodology with which they connect cookie data to other types of data. It probably makes sense to involve a tech expert in this part of the evaluation. There are a variety of companies in the business of device mapping today, and they vary with regard to the scale of matches they can provide, coupled with the accuracy of those matches. Ask about both. Make sure you are satisfied with the quality of their answers. And if you already have a partner of choice in this area, ask if they will work with them.

2. Can it offer additional contextual or 3rd party data as an enhancement to the first-party data that you bring to the platform?

First party data can help you understand customers and predict their needs better than any other type of data, but it can also be very beneficial to enhance your customer profiles with third party data including demographics, lifestyle and life stage, psychographics, and more. A good DMP will have preexisting relationships with leading third party data companies to make the process of enhancing your profiles in this manner easier.

TOMORROW’S POST: ANALYZE AND ACTION

Mobile: $1Trillion in Retail Purchase Influence, Says Deloitte Digital

Most of us are aware that digital’s influence on offline retail purchases is strong, and getting stronger. How strong? Well, a study entitled Navigating the New Digital Divide, from Deloitte Digital, puts it well into the 11 digit range.

According to the report, all of digital influenced more than $1.7Trillion in retail sales in 2014, with mobile influencing a strong majority of that total, at $970Million.

The report points out that digital’s influence varies by category, with industries like electronics having the highest influence exerted by mobile and digital, and food coming in at the low end. The study also offers this thought-provoking grid on the many ways digital and mobile devices are used within the retail buying process.

Studies like this are important because they provide quantitative data – hard figures that underscore the need to take mobile seriously as a sales and influence channel. And that underscores the need to ensure that we understand the actions that people take with their phones and the signals that those actions can give us. There’s lots more info available in the report, which you can download here. A related study, entitled The Dawn of Mobile Influence, is available here.

So What’s a Mobile DMP? We’re Glad You Asked

It’s Time to Think Mobile-First

The terms “mobile DMP” and “mobile-first DMP” are being used in digital with increasing frequency. This trend reflects the growing importance of mobile in many brands’ customer contact plans, as well as increasing marketer awareness of the need for capturing and leveraging mobile data. There are a range of definitions for these terms being used by various solutions providers in the industry, which can make it confusing to understand what these terms SHOULD mean.

At Apsalar, we use a strict definition that reflects:

• Mobile time now represents some 60% of total connected time in the US (and more in other countries) and that apps now represent 52% of total connected time (both comScore.)
• All of mobile behavior must be reflected in customer profiles, including both mobile app and mobile web activity.
• Brands need an omni-channel approach to data management to capture the richest possible customer view.

In our view, a mobile DMP uses mobile behavior data as the foundation for omni-channel customer profiles. Mobile data is combined with data from other marketing channels in order to create a 360 customer view. The DMP then enables both the analysis of those profiles for insights and the grouping of profiles into high performing audiences that be exported to all of a brand’s digital marketing partners and platforms. Let’s organize all that into three core capability “buckets” and discuss each one.

Collect and Measure

Many companies have effective ways of collecting all major forms of first party data, EXCEPT mobile. That’s because collecting and measuring mobile actions is harder than gathering information from many other consumer touchpoints, given that cookies are problematic in mobile environments.

Years ago, omitting mobile from your data and modeling wasn’t a huge issue because only a small portion of consumer connected time took place on a phone. But now, mobile represents the majority of customer time. Yet for most brands, collection of mobile data is in its infancy. Some brands have a means of collecting at least some activity from the mobile web, but very few have visibility into all of their mobile web and in-app customer behavior.

A mobile DMP should have the capability of collecting and/or ingesting all forms of mobile customer behavior data. This includes both mobile web and mobile app data. Most mobile data collection is done via attribution platforms purpose built for that task, like Apsalar Attribution. Apsalar Attribution is part of the Apsalar Mobile DMP.

Unite and Manage

Since a DMP is to be the source of record for ALL forms of first party data, it must ingest and organize data from all channels, including mobile web, CRM, website visitation, estore and more. From that list, you can see that mobile data is a necessary component of a true DMP, but it is by no means sufficient.

Once all of the data is ingested, it must be cleaned and united into individual customer profiles that represent the total behaviors of one anonymized individual. Mobile data is actually an ideal foundation for multi-channel or omni-channel profiles because:

• Mobile activity represents more than half of connected time, as we mentioned earlier
• Mobile data is usually associated to a device ID, which is a far more permanent anchor than transitory third party cookies
• Mobile devices tend to stay with their users throughout the day, which makes it easier to reliably link all of someone’s devices to their anonymized profile

A mobile DMP should also enable you to easily enhance your profiles with third party data. Then it must enable analysis of customer behavior, as well as the creation of audiences for future marketing.

Export and Optimize

Insights and audiences from a DMP are only valuable if they can be actioned. A mobile DMP should make it easier to export audiences and data to your choice of platforms and partners. Exported information helps optimize and focus marketing efforts on key tasks that have been shown to be of value in the DMP. In addition, the DMP should offer two-way sharing with all of your marketing platforms so you can drive ongoing improvement in your marketing effectiveness.

Conclusion

Ultimately a mobile DMP must perform the same functions as any DMP. Thus a mobile DMP is by no means for mobile data only. Instead it ensures complete mobile information is the foundation of an omni-channel customer and business view. If you’d like more information on why mobile matters so much for brands today, click here to download our whitepaper.

mCommerce Conversion Rates Catching up to PC eCommerce

There’s some really interesting data available today in an article on eMarketer entitled Smartphones Are Closing the Retail Ecommerce Device Gap. The data compare the conversion rates on different devices for digital commerce. From the piece:

Smartphones have the lowest conversion rate of any device—at 1.0% in Q1, it was just half the rate on tablets and even lower compared to desktop or laptop PCs. But it has also more than doubled since the same period the previous year, even as PC conversion rates fell and tablet rates climbed by just 18.1%.

That indicates a growing comfort level with transacting via phone, which could relate to waning concerns about data safety as well as improved check out experiences. Average revenue per visit also increased in a big way between 2014 and 2015, up even faster than mcommerce transaction rate increases. AOV gaps are also closing, albeit more slowly.

It’s clear that mcommerce is growing even more quickly in the US than many expected, which underscores the need to reliable and accurate mobile behavior data collection, as well as customer profiles that are just as well informed on mobile-based transactions as PC-based transactions. If your business relies on digital transactions, its clear that you need to close the mobile data gap – a data “hole” that afflicts virtually every major brand.

As Retailers Embrace Programmatic, Harnessing ALL First Party Data Grows Even More Important

An interesting article on eMarketer today outlines how retailers are increasing their investments in programmatic media as a means of connecting with individuals with consistent messaging across channels. The data come from a study by WBR Digital and MediaMath, and reveal among many other things that more than two thirds of retailers who had tried programmatic would increase their programmatic spend this year.

Success in programmatic is all about precise and accurate targeting. It follows that more and more relevant data improve precision and accuracy. Which is why we believe it is so important to unite ALL your data from across channels and devices into rich profiles. And further, that analytics are best conducted with a complete cross-channel data set as well. The post goes on to outline how rare it is that companies have a unified analytics view. From the article:

However, while retailers using programmatic were seeing its value in everything from brand awareness to ROI, multichannel campaign analytics had some way to go. Just 8% managed such metrics on a single platform and had great visibility into performance.

Further, the article’s conclusion makes the situation even clearer:

While programmatic marketing is useful for retailers throughout the purchase funnel, those that lack a single analytics strategy will struggle to tie together customer data from various channels, limiting their ability to act on insights from multichannel programmatic efforts. 
More arguments in support of the idea that united data and analytics are fast becoming table stakes in consumer marketing. If you’d like more information on the challenges and Apsalar’s approach to solving them, download our free whitepaper.