Combining multichannel and programmatic advertising will give brands richer audience insights for more relevant marketing.
Contributor: Chris Pemberton
Many customers today encounter the great divide between Madison Avenue and multichannel marketing. They may be served an ad based on their persona and then receive an email based on an alternate segmentation. However, what if a brand coordinates first-party data from their email database and third party data from the advertiser to send a customized email in the morning and an advertisement in the afternoon to visitors from a “Stranger” segment who abandoned a lead generation form? The customer experience becomes more connected and relevant.
In a marketplace where customer experience is a crucial differentiator, advertising and multichannel efforts must unite to give brands richer audience insights for more relevant marketing, noted Andrew Frank and Adam Sarnerduring the Gartner Digital Marketing Conference 2016. The mutually-shared desire for profitable engagement drives the coordination between advertising and multichannel marketing.
Why a merger makes sense
“Advertising is already part of the multichannel continuum,” noted Mr. Sarner. Customers don’t want separate experiences that mirror marketing’s silos. They see one brand and want one experience.
According to Gartner’s Strategic Planning Assumption, by 2018, over 40% of marketers from global organizations will have insourced programmatic advertising capabilities, up from about 10% today.
Customers don’t want separate experiences that mirror marketing’s silos.
When marketers combine the dynamic creative possibilities of advertising with the personalization of multichannel marketing they better serve their audiences. This richness of customer insight allows marketers to profitably engage customers throughout the various stages of a customer’s buying journey.
Furthermore, programmatic tactics match multichannel tactics and highlight overlapping interests. Both efforts use forms of real-time decision-making. For example, advertisers use real-time bidding and multichannel marketers use real-time engagement. Both seek to make course corrections on the fly. Marrying advertising’s third-party data with multichannel’s first-party data provides a rich behavioral/ demographic mosaic of audience needs and opportunities.
Bring the two sides together with the Action-Value Model
Use a three step Action-Value model focused on audience, action and attribution to operationalize the linkage of advertising and multichannel marketing. Start by identifying the audience and execute disciplined segmentation. Develop segments such as Loyads (loyal advocates), Churners, First timers or Strangers and set marketing goals for each.
See related article: The Secrets to Marketing Segmentation.
Then clarify valuable actions for those segments and set specific values for the actions. Example actions include rating an app, joining a loyalty program, or watching a video. Clarify how much the action is worth and how much it costs. Once you’ve crystallized the actions that matter to your business, set attribution by channel and by action to answer key questions. Did the campaign do anything? Were the results worth it? Were profits maximized?
Pay attention to skill differences
While interests overlap, the skills found in an advertising team are different from those in multichannel. Beyond just the hard skills gaps, there are real and significant cultural differences. Creative, media placement and a host of acronyms – DMP, TMS and DSPs are central to advertising while multichannel focuses on direct mail, email and database marketing. Be mindful of these differences when uniting the two disciplines.
Get help with your multichannel efforts by finding the right partner with research by Jay Wilson.
Gartner for Marketing Leaders clients can read more in How to Unite Advertising with Multichannel Marketing by Andrew Frank.
Learn more about digital marketing trends at the Gartner Digital Marketing Conference. Follow news and updates from the event on Twitter using#GartnerDMC.
For more visit Smarter With Gartner website.
