1. Analytics versus Intuition for Precision Targeting.
Marketers often rely on their own human intuition to make targeting choices rather than leverage analytics to drive these important decisions. For example, marketers will often use past experience to estimate the selection of target variables and cutoffs for direct mail, email or digital campaigns.
While intuition can be a powerful tool in life, using it for marketing decisions can backfire as individual biases are then built into the decision process.
On the other hand, analytics rely on past behavior to statistically predict the future and have proven to be far more effective than intuition in establishing the right targets for marketing campaigns. Click here to learn more.
2. Discretionary Spend versus Household Income to Identify Potential Buyers.
Household income is the most common selection criteria for consumer marketing. But studies show income may not be the best tool to predict consumer spend.
Our experts recommend the use of other affluence data, such as discretionary spend for better targeting. For example, 14% of the wealthiest US households are in the lowest 10% of spend while 16.5% of the lowest affluent households are in the highest 25% of spend. In this example, leveraging discretionary spend over household income alone is a more effective method of targeting prospects who are likely to buy. Click here to learn more.
3. An Emphasis on Offer and Targeting to Get to the Right Audience.
Studies show that creative execution drives only 20% of response while the right offer and target audience each deliver a whopping 40%.
As a marketer it makes sense to plan accordingly and spend enough time crafting the right offer to the right target market and then execute a creative strategy accordingly.
4. Getting to the Right Channel for the Prospect.
US consumers have many channel options today which provide marketers selling opportunities across digital, social, direct mail, email and mobile channels. We now know consumers have very specific channel preferences and experienced marketers will identify individual preferences and target their multi-channel campaigns accordingly. Identifying the right channel for the prospect and customer will result in increased response rates and greater engagement. Click here to learn more.
5. Tailoring the Right Content to the Right Prospect
Consumers are bombarded with hundreds, even thousands of marketing messages each day. Marketers know first impressions are significantly impactful which is why it’s important to immediately capture a prospect’s attention with a relevant offer and message.
Conducting the upfront research to really understand the prospect interests and preferences is a critical step towards getting it right. Highly predictive and market available analytics and segmentation systems are great tools to gain a more in-depth understanding of customers and prospects. Both help target the right content and improve the customer experience resulting in better campaign performance.