V12 Marketing Blog

Audience Targeting by The V12 Group

v12group — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:36:49 +0000

In the world of digital media, marketing and advertising, it still seems like the power of high performance data is not fully appreciated.

Many companies out there seem to still be thinking in terms of name, address and phone number.

Now everywhere we look we see that data is getting a great deal more attention in terms of being a more robust player in the world of audience targeting.

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Audience targeting with audience segmentation

When a marketer is using a high-performance database, like that of The V12 group, then there’s so much more that they can do beyond just targeting – for instance audience segmentation. The V12 group has a unique method of mapping off-line demographic interest and purchase data to create segmented audiences.

The result is an off-line database of over 30 million individuals in the United States. And our audiences are updated monthly and are not connected to PII.

We map consumers against nine distinct audience categories and over 300 segments. The categories are:

Automotive
Buyers
Entertainment
Finance
Sports and fitness
Lifestyle and pursuits
Travel
Demographics
PYCO: personality profiles

The V12 Group, at the front of the changes in data for audience targeting

Many missperceptions happen in digital media in part because companies are thinking about data in ways that were accurate five years ago. While audience targeting has been around for several years, robust and high-performance data is continually changing.

At the V12 group, we are constantly looking for new ways to make our data more powerful. We have a proprietary, leading-edge database management platform that warehouses over 1.7 billion records.

By driving the right call to action to the right target audience, through the right channel, The V12 group helps establish better relevance with your target audiences and that is proven to drive better results.

Getting the Best Data for Cookie Targeting

v12group — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:00:46 +0000

In an earlier blog post we talked about how “Big Data” has become a hot topic, and how marketing organizations using automated tools for digital data aggregation, audience segmentation, cookie targeting and advertising delivery were getting significant results. We gave the example of how Catalina Marketing achieved coupon redemption rates in the 8-10% range by combining offline and online sales data. In this post we’ll take a little deeper dive in to enhancing data for cookie targeting by overlaying off-line data with online data.

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If you’re using cookie targeting for your online advertising campaigns you want to be sure that before you, or your marketing data service provider, strip the PII data out of your consumer data file and ship it off to the ad networks that you pack those cookies with as much data that can be used for segmentation and cookie targeting as possible. While many companies use only online data for their cookie targeting campaigns, there’s an incredible amount of rich data out there in offline resources. At V12 Group we are able to map that offline, “real world” demographic, lifestyle and purchase data into privacy compliant data segments that we use to enrich online data files and vastly improve the power of cookie targeting.

Catalog and Magazine Subscriber Databases

Over the next couple of blog posts we’ll explore some of the sources of off-line data and the opportunities for laser focused cookie targeting that they enable. We’ll start with two of the more obvious offline sources: catalog and magazine subscriber databases, and household and county deed records. Catalog and magazine subscriber lists provide a treasure trove of consumer data. Imagine the level of granularity you could bring to your cookie targeting by being able to segment and target consumers based on what publications they read and what items they purchase from catalogs.

County Clerk Records

Now, imagine taking that data set and overlaying additional data for each household taken from county public records like deed and building permit records, The County Clerk’s office is another treasure trove of consumer household data that can be used to improve customer profiling and cookie targeting. These public records which include documents like property transfer deeds, tax assessments and building permits are a great source of current data because they are updated on a regular basis. They provide data like home values, loan and lien information, dwelling type, other structures on the property, presence of a pool and length of residence.

An example of cookie targeting with high-performance data

Here’s an example of the power of combining the data from those sources. Let’s say you’re the manufacturer of home energy and security management systems that run on your PC and you can install by yourself. So, wouldn’t it be nice if your cookie targeting would result in your ad being served to people or households that recently got a building permit, have a home value above a specified threshold, subscribe to a number of publications for tech geeks and have broadband internet access?

That’s a relatively simple example of the type of customer profiling and audience segmentation that you can apply to your cookie targeting if your marketing data services provider has access to rich offline data sources. The right partner can help you build robust privacy compliant profiles of hard to find segments that can turn into high yield cookie targeting campaigns. Through our partnerships with leading third party advertisers, V12 Group connects our offline data to about 30 million online consumers. These individuals are mapped to 300+ distinct audience segments, helping you target the right consumers online.

The V12 Group makes your cookie data smarter

At V12 Group we offer a wide range of digital data, data management and digital marketing services including customer profiling, cookie targeting, modeling and analytics.

Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how we can help you to harness the power of “Big Data” and state-of-the-art cookie targeting platforms to increase the power of your digital marketing campaigns.

Direct Mail Lists Move Up the Value Chain

v12group — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:08:31 +0000

Question: When is a direct mail list not a direct mail list?

Answer: When it’s been transformed into a rich direct mail database via the data enhancement process.

Why is that important? Because in today’s post-recession economy the sub 1% or 2% response rates typically associated with a direct mail campaign is not going to cut it. The basic contact and demographic information that make up a traditional direct mail list is not going to give your direct mail campaign the yield you need to stay competitive. In today’s marketplace your direct marketing list needs to have enough demographic, psychographic and behavioral selectors to support razor-sharp segmentation and laser-focused targeting.

Adding punch to your direct mail list

If your direct mail list isn’t up to snuff, fear not. You can easily add significant punch to it with data enhancement services from a qualified, reputable marketing data services company. The first step in the data enhancement process for a direct mail list is data cleansing. Data cleansing for a direct mail lists includes: removing duplicate records (de-duping); moving data entered in the wrong field to the correct field; verifying postal addresses, e-mail addresses and phone numbers and correcting misspelled names, addresses, etc. where possible.

The next step for punching up your direct mail list is data appending. Data appending is a quick and easy way to increase your knowledge of the customers and prospects in your existing direct mailing list. It’s the simple process of adding data to your existing direct mail list from an external data resource.

Choosing a data partner

AT V12 Group we offer data appending from our multi-channel consumer database which is one of the largest in the direct marketing industry with over 208 million individuals and 110 million US households.

Our database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources. It combines postal, email, phone and mobile data, as well as 260+ selection parameters to improve targeting. These selection parameters include demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data.

The depth and breadth of our consumer data file enables extremely accurate customer profiling and granular audience segmentation which will help you to improve both your customer experience and your response rates.

The V12 Group will help you get most out of your direct mail lists. Contact us today.

Reach grieving New England fans with our new ‘Grieving Fan select’

v12group — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:04:31 +0000

We know it was a rough night for New England. Our heart goes out to all of the die hard fans and we know it must be a rough Monday morning. Tom Brady’s beloved Uggs aren’t enough to comfort this horrible loss. Even his stunning wife can’t help heal this wound.

V12 Group has developed a new select for ‘Grieving New England Fans.’ This data select makes it easy for marketers to target and reach any fan who is upset, distraught, and devastated due to the Super Bowl 2012 loss.

Just kidding! (Aren’t New York fans harsh?)

However, V12 Group does offer football and sports related email, postal and phone data to help reach and target the right fanatic. For more information regarding our data and our selects, contact us at 1.866.842.1001 or CLICK HERE to learn more.

In honor of the super bowl MVP (Eli Manning, #10), we are offering 10% off any data purchase this week only.

(New client orders only, on orders up to $50,000). Simply mention this email to your sales rep to receive your discount.

No related posts.

Inventive Online Audience Targeting

v12group — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:16:33 +0000

If you’re somewhat new to online audience targeting, this blog post will help point you in the right direction. Or you can click the “contact“ link and get right to The V12 Group.

Online audience targeting is perhaps the best way to improve your PPC campaign and other marketing strategies by segmenting your audience.

Here’s an example of the power of this data. Let’s say someone is looking for a vacation to the Virgin Islands. After finding some good websites, this person changes directions and looks up football scores on ESPN. Even though ESPN has nothing to do with vacationing, an ad about a vacation to the Virgin Islands appears, which promptly causes the person to click the ad. Most people who encounter such advertising are amazed and delighted that the website knows they were looking for such information. It’s the ultimate in personalized marketing.

Generally how online audience targeting works

Online audience targeting is a sophisticated, yet simple way to section the market. When someone goes to most major websites, cookies are implanted in the person’s computer. These cookies record data such as trends, common searches and demographics. By working with this, you can easily make an effective online marketing campaign.

But the real horse power comes when a rich mix of data are combined with cookie data. At The V12 Group, we have a unique method of combining the analog (offline) and digital (online) worlds. We gather data from offline resources like catalog and magazine subscriber databases, and household and county deed records.

Catalog and magazine subscriber lists are a wonderfully precise source of self-selected data; the consumer enters it – so you know it’s accurate. As a marketer, knowing what publications your targets read and what items they purchase from catalogs can provide a real insight into their needs and buying habits. This will enable marketers to tailor offerings based on interest area, preferred buying method (i.e. – online vs. offline), frequency of purchases, and much more.

When this data is combined with online resources, you can begin to build comprehensive customer profiles that will vastly improve your audience segmentation and the effectiveness of your on-line advertising campaigns.

There’s an incredible amount of rich data in offline sources that many of today’s digital marketing database companies ignore, but at The V12 Group we are able to map that off-line “real world” demographic, lifestyle and purchase data into privacy compliant data segments that is one of THE most valuable online audience targeting techniques available today.

Through our partnerships with leading third party advertisers, the V12 Group connects our offline data to over half of the 220 million individuals in the US. These individuals are mapped to 196 distinct audience segments, helping you target the right consumers online.

Targeting the funnel

You must choose part of the “funnel,” or your target audience, before you can properly perform online audience targeting. The funnel consists of three parts, or three different groups of people. The top of the funnel, which is large, consists of the most people and has wide demographic information. This is good if people are nationally aware of your brand.

The middle of the funnel is smaller, but still somewhat broad. This is best if people know about your brand, but only in one or several states. The bottom of the funnel contains the least amount of people, but the demographic is very tight and it works best for new businesses.

Online audience targeting, right in any economy

Perhaps the only disadvantage to sectioning off your audience is that you cannot market to everyone, reducing the amount of people that might buy your product. If you’re a broad-based regional retailer, perhaps this sort of “broadcast” marketing is right for you. We prefer to think of what we do as enabling “broad-net.” We cast a very precise net out to a much more carefully selected target.

There are very few products and businesses that can cater to everyone, and to do so requires a lot of money and brand awareness. Instead, you can target only those consumers who are more likely to buy your product. The more personal your conversation is, the more you will increase your marketing efficiency and improves sales. Think of it, would you rather attract 1% of 1,000 or 30% of 100?

Contact The V12 Group if you’re ready to cast a very wide, yet very precise net. Our unique mix of offline and online data will make your online audience targeting campaign much more powerful.

Riding the Digital Data Flood

v12group — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:02:15 +0000

Digital marketers today find themselves in the middle of a flood of new data sources, targeting technologies and advertising delivery platforms that has resulted in an explosion of the amount of digital data available, as well as the complexity of managing activities like audience segmentation, profiling and targeting.

But, the good news is that while the explosion of digital data, channels and delivery platforms has increased the complexity of digital marketing, is has also increased the power and effectiveness of digital marketing.

Big data is big business

In today’s hyper competitive marketplace, “Big Data” has become a hot topic, as enterprises clamor to squeeze every ounce of competitive edge and profitability out of their big databases.

Marketing organizations using automated tools for digital data aggregation, audience segmentation, targeting and advertising delivery are getting significant results. For example, Catalina Marketing reports that, by combining offline and online sales data to help its CPG clients improve their yield on in-store promotions, they have elevated coupon redemption rates into the 8-10% range versus the traditional 0.5% rates for comparable mass-market couponing programs. So, harnessing the power of Big Data can have a significant impact on the bottom line, but you have to do it right.

The next step

Doing it right requires making the transition from a marketing organization where multiple off-line and on-line marketing channels are separate silos to an organization with tight cross-channel integration and a single, unified database. For many marketing organizations it’s not an easy task because they find themselves saddled with legacy technology platforms that were structured to support “traditional” marketing data usage, and human capital that lacks the expertise to make the transition.

Making the transition entails migrating to an IT environment that supports rules-driven integration of disparate data sets, as well as automated software platforms for segmentation, targeting and ad delivery. The transition also requires migrating people and processes to a model that can deliver tight, cross-channel integration. It’s not an easy task. You can’t do it alone. Building a system for fast and efficient “big data” aggregation, analysis and throughput will require a vendor eco-system of data-centric technology and service partners.

At V12 Group we offer a wide range of digital data, data management and digital marketing services including customer profiling, targeting, modeling and analytics.

Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how we can help you to harness the power of “Big Data” and today’s breakthrough technology platforms to increase the power of your digital marketing campaigns.

Mobile Marketing Campaigns Find New Channel via Facebook

v12group — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:56:13 +0000

Facebook recently previewed a number of exciting new opportunities for targeting mobile Facebook consumers. According to a recent article in the on-line publication Mobil Marketer, Facebook claims that they have approximately 200 million consumers who access Facebook from their mobile device daily. Mobile marketing campaign architects have been salivating over the possibilities of executing mobile marketing campaigns on Facebook’s mobile destination, but until Facebook’s recent announcement it was unclear exactly what form Facebook’s functionality for mobile marketing campaigns would take.

A fundamental shift in mobile marketing campaigns

According to the article, Facebook’s spokesperson explained that Facebook is now at the center of a fundamental shift in how marketers think about the role of social media in their mobile marketing campaigns. There are three components of Facebook’s tool for mobile marketing campaigns:

Pages (owned),
Ads (paid)
Sponsored Stories (amplifying earned)

Facebook claims that, “When you combine an engaging Page with creative Ads and Sponsored Stories, the opportunity to achieve a truly “always on” status increases exponentially. Initial data on the success of Sponsored Stories is impressive. According to Facebook’s spokesperson, “On average we’re seeing twice the engagement over Ads and in some cases we’re seeing up to seven times the engagement.”

Another new function that Facebook offers for mobile marketing campaigns is “Check-ins and Check-in Deals.” Check-in deals offer mobile marketing campaign architects and their brands a powerful way to connect with local customers and turn them into evangelists. Taking Check-in’s a few steps further than Foursquare, Facebook’s Check-ins offer four types of Check-in Deals that can be used in mobile marketing campaigns:

Individual Deals: Mobile marketing campaigns can use individual deals for both new and existing customers to do things like: launch a new product, get rid of excess inventory, offer seasonal incentives, or to simply get more people into their brick and mortar locations
Friend Deals: Mobile marketing campaigns can be used to make offers to groups of up to eight people, when they check in together. Friend Deals give mobile marketing campaigns the ability to increase exposure for a business because more stories are generated when multiple people check-in.
Loyalty Deals: Loyalty deals are a great way to reward and incent your most loyal customers. Loyalty deals are to be claimed by customers only after a certain number of check-ins. You can vary the number of check-ins required. Facebook sets limits of no fewer than two and no more than 20 check-ins.
Charity Deals: Make a donation to the charity of your choice. This is a great way to add a human touch to your brand by bringing your corporate social responsibility efforts into your mobile marketing campaigns.

Once your mobile marketing campaign has captured the prospect’s imagination on Facebook, it’s time to lure them to a microsite where you can capture their basic contact information like name and e-mail address. Then you can work with a marketing data services provider to append demographic and behavioral data to the file, so that you can personalize you communications as your mobile marketing campaign moves them down the sales funnel or along the product or service life cycle.

Choosing a mobile data provider for your mobile marketing campaign

Look for a marketing data services provider who can append data to your mobile e-mail marketing list from a database that is a hybrid file built from both compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, phone and mobile data, as well as at least 250+ selectors including demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data to improve your targeting.

Contact The V12 Group to get the data you need for robust mobile marketing campaigns.

Not All Data Vendors Are Right for Your Marketing Supply Chain

v12group — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:28:09 +0000

In today’s fast paced, hyper-competitive marketplace, quality and speed-to-market are essential to superior results and a healthy return on marketing investment (ROMI).

But, as you may have experienced, working with multiple vendors across your marketing supply chain can not only be extremely cumbersome but also leave you vulnerable to errors and finger pointing. What you really need is action and results. Put simply, what you need is one data vendor that can provide you with a complete marketing data services eco-system (beyond just straight data services) that you can use to augment your in-house capabilities on a pay-per-use basis.

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A good, full service data vendor should be capable of providing you with a complete suite of marketing database services that spans your entire direct marketing supply chain from strategic planning to post campaign analysis. These services should include:

Customer profiling
Audience segmentation and targeting
Modeling and analytics
Database design and maintenance
Campaign planning
Email marketing services including:
1. Email creative and design
2. Email blasting

Marketing data services including:
1. Data Structure verification
2. Data cleansing
3. Data appending

Data management

In addition, some of the more sophisticated data vendors have developed solutions tailored to specific industries like: automotive data, banking, insurance, and health care, to name a few. These solutions typically have customer profiles, modeling, and analytics built on an industry database that the data vendor has compiled, as well as the data vendor’s experience in the industry.

Beyond the role of data vendor

At V12 Group we are focused on helping clients deliver relevant direct marketing communications that improve campaign performance and return on marketing investment. Based on research and experience we have developed marketing data services solutions for the following industries:

Automotive
Credit Card
Insurance
Retail
Ad Agency
Call Center
Printer
Travel/Hospitality Marketer
Ad Server

We also offer a complete range of marketing database services that spans your entire direct marketing supply chain from strategic planning to post campaign analysis including data acquisition and analysis, data appending, and customer profiling as well as email creative, design, and execution.

Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how our suite of database, direct, and digital marketing services can help you increase the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing programs and improve your return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Data Vendors, Selecting the Right One for Your Marketing Campaigns

v12group — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:45:47 +0000

If you’re like most marketing departments you probably find yourself using more and more data to improve your profiling, your audience segmentation, and the performance of your marketing campaigns. Up until now, you may have also found that your existing business or consumer marketing lists as well as other data sources within your company have provided enough data for your needs.
But, as advances in information technology continue to give marketers more sophisticated analytics that gobble up data, you’ll need to find a reputable data vendor to work with.

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There’s a wide range of data vendors out there, so how do you find the data vendor that is the best fit for your data needs. Well, whether you are a corporate Marketing Manager, ad agency, call center, email service provider, or etc., the criteria for selecting a data vendor is pretty much the same. In addition to obvious attributes like financial stability, the reliability of their IT infrastructure and the skill sets of their delivery organization, the key criteria for selecting a data vendor are:

Breadth and depth of data resources
Data quality
Data access interoperability
Data licensing flexibility
Full service capability

Breadth and depth of data resources – Whether you’re a B2C or B2B business, it is of the utmost importance that your data vendor has a robust, multi-channel database that spans the postal, email, phone, and mobile domains because they are essential ingredients for data vendor provided services like customer profiling and data appending.

At V12, our multi-channel Consumer Database is one of the largest in the direct marketing industry. The database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources and combines postal, email, phone, and mobile data, as well as 260+ selectors to improve targeting including demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data.

Our multi-channel Business Database is one of the largest multi-channel B2B databases available. Like our Consumer Database, our B2B database is a hybrid file built from compiled and proprietary data sources. It combines postal, email and phone data, as well as more than 20+ selectors to improve targeting including firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.

Data Quality – Accuracy and completeness are the key components of data quality. In today’s highly mobile society postal addresses, e-mail addresses, landline and mobile phone numbers change frequently. People opt-in and opt-out of e-mail marketing lists on a daily basis. So, a data vendor’s database must be up-to- date, and accurate, i.e. the data must be current and spelled correctly, and the records should have a full spectrum of data beyond basic contact information.

At V12 Group, the CASS mail-ready score of our B2C database is 99.2% with over 260+ selects that can be used for targeting, and our B2B database has been DPV confirmed to have 99% deliverable addresses with over 20 selects that include firmagraphic and contact level demographic data.

Data Access Interoperability – You want to be sure that the data access and delivery methods that a data vendor offers are compatible with your CRM and other data driven systems, so you don’t have to spend additional time and money converting data from one format to another. At the V12 Group, we provide our clients with access to the data in an operating format that best suits their operating infrastructure including access via: API, FTP, jump drive, look-up basis or a combination of these.

Data Licensing Flexibility – If you are going to be using a lot of data over an extended period of time, you also want to be sure that your data vendor is able structure your licensing deal so that it supports your marketing plans and objectives. At the V12 Group we are extremely flexible to give you access to the amount of data that you need (anywhere from the entire database to specific sections, like all e-mail addresses in a specified region or category, for example) over a certain period of time, and for specified uses (like modeling, appending, mailing, etc.) for a negotiated rate. Our rate structures include: monthly/quarterly fixed fee, CPM rate on a usage tier tied to a threshold, or a blend that flexes to accommodate your particular budget/usage scenario.

Full Service Capabilities – In today’s fast paced, hyper-competitive marketplace quality and speed-to-market are essential to superior results and a healthy ROMI. But, working with multiple vendors across your marketing supply chain can not only be extremely cumbersome, but also leave you vulnerable to errors and finger pointing when what you need is action and results. Look for a data vendor who offers a full suite of marketing data services. V12 Group is a full service provider capable of providing you with a complete ecosystem of marketing database services that spans your entire direct marketing supply chain from strategic planning to post campaign analysis including data acquisition and analysis, data appending and customer profiling as well as e-mail creative, design and execution.

Contact the V12 Group to learn more about how our suite of database, direct and digital marketing services can help you increase the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing programs and improve your return on marketing investment (ROMI).

Mobile Marketing Campaigns Become Mainstream

v12group — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:53:26 +0000

Mobility is the new frontier of information technology. Mobile applications are popping up in almost every facet of our professional and personal lives. Wherever you go you see people interacting with each other and applications on their mobile devices.

In fact, smartphones and other mobile devices, like the iPad and other tablets, have become virtually ubiquitous. So, it should come as no surprise that, driven by this explosion of mobile devices, mobile marketing campaigns have become as sophisticated as traditional on-line campaigns.

Some noteworthy 2011 mobile marketing campaigns highlighted in a recent article on mobilemarketer.com include:

Range Rover’s Evoque – mobile marketing campaign used a banner ad to drive traffic to a mobile microsite with many of the same type of features and functions that can be found on a full scale automotive web site. For example, the viewer can move the view point around just like they’re walking around it. They can “build their own” car. And they can get a sense of how it performs under different conditions. All in all, this is a very robust mobile experience.
Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cerial – used QR codes and SMS short codes on the cereal box to drive more than 40,000 scans and 6,000 texts during a recent cereal promotion.
McDonald’s and P&G – are running mobile ads within the Pandora iPhone app

Mobile marketing campaigns will continue to grow in both sophistication of interactive functionality, as well as popularity. But it’s important to note that to be really effective in today’s B2C marketplace, mobile marketing campaigns should be just one component of a multi-channel marketing strategy. Mobile marketing campaigns are a great way to reach out and engage customers, but it’s just the beginning.

Once you get their basic contact information you need to learn more about them so that you can personalize your communications. You can do that through interactive mobile marketing campaigns and on-line conversations, as well as working with a marketing data services provider to append demographic and behavioral data to the file.

Look for a marketing data services provider who can append your mobile e-mail marketing list from a database that is a hybrid file built from both compiled and proprietary data sources. Also, make sure they combine postal, email, phone and mobile data, as well as at least 250+ selectors including demographic, geographic, lifestyle, interests, and behavioral data to improve targeting.

Click here to contact us and start improving the effectiveness of your mobile marketing campaigns.