Most companies are attempting an integrated approach to marketing across owned websites, email, paid advertising, SEO and social, with email and web being the easiest and therefore most commonly integrated channels. The recent arrival of audience targeting technologies such as real time bidding platforms means that significant new opportunities are available for marketers to boost the performance of existing marketing campaigns by adding a new direct channel – display advertising.

Over the last 20 years we have seen a steady proliferation of marketing channels. The introduction of this latest one is not the end but rather a sign of things to come digitally. This paper considers a planning approach that can be used to create multi-channel campaigns – now or in the future. The recognition of data’s role in marketing is now firmly established (some1 even describe it as “… the Sexiest Job of the 21st Century…”) so the addition of another data driven channel into the marketing mix is good news for marketers.

Whilst the opportunity to use data to drive better multi-channel marketing is clearly there, Callcredit research has shown that only a minority of respondents describe their marketing as integrated across channels. Equally, Econsultancy research found that over two thirds of clients have only an ‘okay’ or ‘poor’ understanding about the potential of digital channels (email, search, social media, etc.) to help grow their business. To make matters worse, channel budgets are often held as separate entities, eg one person owning the display budget and another email.

The audience targeting industry has quickly evolved

Display advertising first enjoyed success during the late 1990s at the height of the dot com boom. Along came keyword based advertising and by 2005, focus shifted from display to PPC, which marketers felt gave control over where ads were displayed. The emergence of the Ad exchange over the following five years was a sign that display was reinventing itself by giving advertisers better access to advertising inventory. Over the following years, some of these exchanges (such as Turn and Google’s Doubleclick Ad Exchange and the later purchase of InviteMedia also by Google) evolved into ‘demand side platforms’ (DSPs) giving brands the ability to target messages to specific audiences.

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In the last couple of years we have seen the emergence of a cottage industry of intermediaries across the advertiserconsumer value chain: a far cry from the simple advertiser-ad exchange-publisher model. The result of this is that a complicated array of moving parts have to work in close unison to deliver marketing messages to consumers.

To further complicate matters, we are now seeing the emergence of private exchanges (such as eBay’s UK exchange2 and Facebook Ad Exchange) as major publishers attempt to take back some of the control from advertisers, allowing only specified advertisers to purchase inventory using pricing structures depending on the advertiser in return for known quality, brand safe environments.

Traditionally, display advertising could only be targeted using high level consumer segments. Whilst context and behavioural targeting techniques have a role to play (eg for retargeting unconverted site visitors), the emergence of Real Time Bidding (RTB) and Data Management Platforms (DMP) now offer marketers a chance to implement audience-based marketing programs i.e. to whom. Opaque and sluggish ad networks are being replaced with programmatic enabled media buying that includes transparent, real-time biddable media and precision audience targeting.

These techniques are really catching on; according to Forrester, impressions, will shift toward programmatic exchangebased trading at a rate of 43% annually between 2012 and 2017, comprising 30% of total display spending by 2017. Many attribute this to high conversation rates, competitive pricing and ease of incorporation into multi-channel campaigns. We’re already seeing some surprising trends. Just look at what happened3 on the last Black Friday in the USA - spend on ‘Real Time Bidding’ advertising (ads bought and served on the fly) was driven not by online retailers but rather by brands looking to drive bricks and mortar awareness. Impressions were commanding four bids per ad compared to a comparable average of about half that. Everyone wanted the right audience at that exact time to maximise the number transacting on the target day

Marketing Service Providers (MSPs) such as Callcredit who have a long history in creating, managing and modelling consumer datasets in the offline space are now offering clients the same valuable targeting capabilities online. By partnering with appropriate technology platforms they can plug in to the online ecosystem and provide an end to end solution. Many clients are choosing to work with MSPs rather than having to build additional relationships with a fragmented range of independent platforms and suppliers.

New opportunities for finding customers have become available

Using targeting data in online marketing is nothing short of a game changer. The benefits of segmentation are well understood in the offline world but till now have not really touched digital advertising. The very rapid growth of real time bidding now offers interactive marketers a chance to implement audience based marketing: they can identify the audience they are about to serve an ad to before it is bought. Callcredit has recognised this and created a new service to deliver this for clients. Addressable marketing identifies individuals and delivers messages to them based on their individual characteristics. For example, it would be inappropriate to display adverts for a credit based product to someone who is unlikely to be accepted for the product by the lender – our new generation of display advertising can address such issues.

This new multi-channel advertising ecosystem allows a sophisticated mix of cost effective messaging across digital channels designed to maximise conversions. A contact strategy can be created to orchestrate customer engagements to enable brand experiences that are consistent yet customisable across channels – see below example use cases.

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So what can be done targeting wise? Well pretty much most things you would expect offline – and a bit more. Online data is only part of the jigsaw – the variables traditionally available to target display advertising are limited to context, some online behaviours or very limited attributes. What really makes data driven marketing interesting is the ability to combine offline data with other characteristics gathered online then generate the advertising with other direct marketing channels such as email, mobile or social. So now you can buy audiences wherever they pop up on the internet rather than buying particular ‘slots’ and hope the right people turn up. The use of third party data within this process allows brands to better reach target audiences who may be in play for particular products or services.

Marketers can now create campaigns and ongoing programmes with prospect to customer journeys mapped out across addressable display, email, and owned websites as well as even post or phone. Callcredit has created a number of multichannel templates which can be configured for specific verticals and propositions.

Whilst display advertising has relatively low click through rates, it allows us to quickly reach large audiences. Email and SMS has the advantage of higher open and click through rates (One source quotes SMS open rates as being more than 99%). Callcredit has access to over 24m marketable email addresses and 15m mobile numbers which can be used as part of an addressable display campaign. Even though the unit costs for email and display are low, they are not always the most effective choice in isolation, direct mail can be 10 to 30 times more effective according to Adage.com.

Traditional channels such as mail and phone show the highest response rates, yet online channels attract a greater percentage of marketing pounds because they generate a far better return on investment. The answer to this lies in finding the right combination of techniques for each offering, customer type and brand and whether we’re talking about acquisition or existing customer marketing.

So, what targeting data is available for your use? It takes into account both rational/ fact based as well as emotional responses to optimise the engagement with the consumer by the brand across the decision journey. This can be enacted across one or a number of channels and can relate either to acquisition of new customers or engagement with existing ones.

Make sure your contact strategy is planned to include the right combination of channels

With so many direct channels now available, how should you choose the right combination to hit your objectives? The process for creating a multi-channel campaign including addressable media is not that dramatically different to that which might be used for digital or traditional campaigns in isolation. The following diagram highlights some of the key steps you might consider.

Our partnership with VisualDNA allows us to enhance our consumer data with additional emotive and personality-based segments. These additional data points allow us to provide superior targeting capabilities and therefore deliver better performance for brand and response campaigns and best in class audience insight.

Callcredit incorporating Latitude can cut through the complexity of all of these channels for clients. We are unique amongst agencies – having media agency, trading desk, planning and display capabilities as well as being a primary data owner. Our trading desk has access to a wide range of Callcredit, VisualDNA and other third party data and our multichannel planning team has the experience to help you design and execute high performing marketing campaigns.