…plus why improving your cross-channel measurement can help you boost ROI
By Cort Irish, VP, Marketing & Communications at Claritas
For marketers, engaging consumers just keeps getting more complicated. The average American uses more than 10 connected household devices[i] and pays for three streaming services.[ii] Globally, the average consumer interacts with more than eight social media accounts[iii] and has around two email accounts.[iv]
That makes it very difficult for today’s marketers to measure what’s actually causing customers to engage and/or buy. Fortunately, one tool can help marketers accurately calculate conversions across channels. It’s called an identity graph.
Below are four ways an identity graph can help you boost your return on investment (ROI) through better multichannel measurement:
Multichannel Measurement Secret #1: Be picky about your data
An identity graph is only as good as the data it contains. A good identity graph helps ensure you’re both reaching the right prospects and accurately measuring their engagement by filtering through raw data to eliminate invalid traffic – such as IPs that are blacklisted, commercial, public, cell tower, etc. It should also help you eliminate households with outlying behaviors that may impact the accuracy of your ROI.
When you use the right data, it can improve your ROI dramatically. When ImOn Communications relied on Claritas’s identity graph data – with insight into 100% of U.S. households across 800 million devices – to reach the right prospects, ImOn reduce its cost-per-lead by 27% and its cost-per-sale by 40%. Read the case study on Claritas.
Multichannel Measurement Secret #2: Be sure you’re measuring true incremental lift
Many vendors claim to do lift analyses to measure the impact of a campaign. But not all lift methodologies are created equal. To accurately measure a campaign’s direct impact on sales, you of course need an incremental lift methodology that filters out revenue increases or other key performance indicators (KPIs) that would have occurred even if the campaign had not run.
But you also need a rigorous control group development process to ensure that the unexposed households that are used to determine lift match the exposed group in every measurable way. You need the ability to capture data accurately across all cross-device and cross-environment behaviors. Plus you need a data team that’s experienced in building ROI solutions.
Claritas’s unique analysis methodology and expert data scientists and modelers have helped the world’s largest advertisers and media companies – in industries like financial, automotive, telecom, retail and broadcast—measure ROI for two decades. For example, media and entertainment leader Audacy (formerly Entercom) relies on Claritas’s proprietary incremental lift methodology to allow its clients to measure which campaign channels and messages directly contributed to a purchase, store visit or app download.
Multichannel Measurement Secret #3: Measure conversions across all channels (online and off)
While many identity graphs claim to measure performance across channels, most still lack the ability to capture data from all major channels. Therefore most identity graphs are unable to accurately measure precisely how multichannel exposures contribute to both offline and online conversions. In contrast, the Claritas Identity Graph can precisely measure how key nuances of your campaign perform – including message, media channel and even media partner – across both online and offline channels.
Claritas’s cross-device and cross-environment attribution integrates impressions across digital display, OTT/CTV, streaming audio, podcast, direct mail, mobile and OOH. But that’s not all. It also integrates conversions across most advertiser websites, in-store traffic, offline sales (credit card and CPG shopper card data), in-app purchases and OTT/CTV viewing data.
Consider this example: Using Claritas proprietary tools, Wrapify proved that its wrapped vehicle billboards delivered a 20% boost in online flight bookings for its client Alaska Airlines.
Multichannel Measurement Secret #4: Optimize your campaign as it runs (and boost ROI as a result)
Measuring results as the campaign runs allows you to quickly pivot – and fix what’s not working. That’s why it’s important to rely on an identity graph that makes in-flight campaign measurement fast and easy – and also gives you the ability to quickly onboard new messages and channels via email, social media, direct mail, display, podcast and more.
The result? You can quickly optimize your marketing plan to focus on the messages and channels that perform the best. That’s exactly what one Claritas financial client did – and the client decreased its cost of acquisition by 94% as a result.
For more information on how to leverage an identity graph to find and reach your best customers and improve ROI, check out our recent whitepaper.
[i] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107206/average-number-of-connected-devices-us-house/
[ii] https://www.allconnect.com/blog/average-american-spend-on-streaming#:~:text=According%20to%20streaming%20statistics%20in%20a%20recent%20report,overstate%20what%20a%20big%20deal%20that%20number%20is.
[iii] https://backlinko.com/social-media-users
[iv] https://99firms.com/blog/how-many-email-users-are-there/#:~:text=The%20average%20user%20has%20at%20least%201.75%20email,is%20estimated%20to%20grow%20to%201.86%20in%202022.
