V12 Marketing Blog

Email Data Services Critical to Successful Triggered Email

v12group — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:05:30 +0000

Jumpstarting your triggered email program

According to the Q4 2011 North American Email Trends and Benchmarks Results survey, recently released by the Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council and Epsilon, triggered email messages had, “96% higher open rates and 125% higher click rates than “business as usual” (BAU) messages. These benchmarks were compiled from over 51 billion triggered emails sent across multiple industries during 2011.

Triggered emails are those sent in response to some action, or trigger including:

Welcome
Thank you
Saved cart
Abandoned cart or click trail
Cancel
Anniversary
Birthday
Elapsed time, etc.

Why triggered email gets a better open rate

One reason why triggered emails are so effective is that they are, more often than not, sent in real-time, so they are highly relevant. Some examples of this and their source for the trigger data are obvious like saved cart on an e-commerce site, welcome and thank you. For other examples, like anniversary, birthday, purchase of an automobile, purchase of a home, etc., getting the trigger data requires some digging. In addition, the more triggers you have per household, the more frequently you can send them a highly relevant email promotion. This is where email data services from the right email data services provider can come in handy.

Our email data services drive successful triggered email

At the V12 Group we can combine data from offline resources with on-line data to build comprehensive customer profiles that give you the ability to establish multiple triggers for a given household. Some of the off-line data sources that we use for our email data services are: public records, catalogue and magazine subscriber databases, consumer survey data, on-line communities, e-newsletter subscriber databases, as well as transactional data from catalogs, affinity programs, discount houses, clearing house and infomercials.

In addition, our email database, which we update on monthly basis, currently has over 185 million records with 260+ selects including geographic, demographic, lifestyle, interests and behavioral data, as well as1,000 ZIP and CRRT.

To further enhance response rates we can support multi-channel follow-up campaigns with over 90 million records that have both email and postal addresses and 114 million records with email addresses and residential phone numbers. 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.

Contact us or go to our Email Resource Center to learn more about how email data services from the V12 Group can help you to create high impact triggered email marketing programs.

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A Scrumdiddlyumptious Way to Help Small Business Grow. Email Marketing.

v12group — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:51:45 +0000

A powerful way for small businesses like restaurants, gyms, florists, and dentists to quickly and easily attract more customers using highly targeted email marketing programs.

Direct Mail Alive and Kicking Thanks to High-Powered Lists

v12group — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 17:38:16 +0000

It May Not Be High-tech But It’s Still High Touch

Let’s compare the experience of email versus traditional mail:

Traditional Mail

177 billion received per year

53% is considered legit vs 47% Junk*

Consumers prefer it more than email as marketing method from brands**

60% of U.S. Postal Service customers said they enjoy checking their mailbox for postal mail**

Email

14.4 trillion received per year

19% is considered legit vs 81% Spam*

34% of U.S. consumers who prefer email over mail cited “saving on paper” as the main reason, up strongly from 2010**

We have some thoughts on this

Consumers might have fond memories of going to the mailbox. There’s always the chance of a letter from grandma. When they sort through their mail they actually pick it up and look at it. This may be one reason why direct mail has the potential to provide a much higher response rate:

the increased attention time
the tactile nature of it
the fact that a direct mail piece has much more messaging space on its exterior than the subject line of an email

To fully take advantage of the statistics above, marketers who use traditional direct mail must keep a few things in mind. Direct mail must:

Be highly relevant
Be carefully targeted
Have killer creative

Smarten up your direct mail lists for success

How can you achieve the level of relevance in your creative and granularity in your targeting required to drive high response rates? The foundation is your direct mail lists. In today’s marketplace your direct marketing lists need to have enough demographic, psychographic and behavioral selectors to support razor sharp segmentation and laser focused targeting.

With a rich set of consumer data you can develop highly relative creative that hits the right customers with the right message. Three tips to keep in mind are:

Make it touchy-feely – fold-outs, scratch ‘n sniff, flashing lights, sound chips all make a direct mail piece more interactive and therefore more engaging
Keep it simple – avoid information overload. Give the consumer just enough information to move them to the desired action (eg. Go to you web site, go to your store, call, etc)
Tie it in to the latest gadget trends – drive the reader to your web site, mobile app, Facebook page, etc. Try QR codes, etc.

If your direct mail list doesn’t have a rich enough data set, don’t worry. You can easily add significant depth to your direct mail list with data appending services from a qualified, reputable marketing data solutions provider. 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.

Direct mail lists and services from the best

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. The 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.

Click here to learn more about how V12 Group can help you to get the most out of your direct mail lists.

Sources -
* U.S. Postal Service data from 2009

** Epsilon study

Data Vendor Helps You Get More from Big Data

v12group — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:29:15 +0000

According to a recent interactive marketing survey by Chief Marketer, the “list of interactive tools marketers can reach for to engage customers grew longer than ever for this year’s survey.” The survey also found that digital marketers are still struggling with, “not being confident they are using the right platforms to reach their target audiences… to finding the budget resources to implement those tactics and managing the fire hose of data that somehow still doesn’t illuminate the true ROI of campaigns.”

Digital marketing gets more complex every year, and so maintaining a competitive edge in your marketing gets tougher and tougher. It’s a complex environment, and even if you’re a large, well-funded marketing organization, you’re probably going to need some help. The best place to get that help is a data vendor with a full suite of services that cross the entire marketing value chain.

V12 Group is the data vendor that’s developed a full suite of services to help digital marketers manage today’s complex digital marketing technology environment and the big data it generates. The suite ranges from a full set of traditional digital marketing services like customer profiling, audience segmentation and targeting, data appending, etc, to two comprehensive data management solutions:

Data Management as a Service (DMaaS) – helps clients integrate their disparate data sources together to create a 360 degree view of their customer and operational data accessible via a variety of integrated business intelligence and data visualization tools delivering improved business insight for marketing, operations and financial functions.
Data Distribution Platform (DDP) – is a centralized direct marketing platform that provides clients with access to multi-channel, consumer, auto and business information, as well as a variety of business intelligence and digital campaign execution tools that maximize the usability of the information for new customer acquisition or cross-selling current customers

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 and analytics, as well as creative, design and execution.

All of these services will help you to be more adaptive to changes in the marketplace, as well as significantly improve the performance of your campaigns.

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). We’re the data vendor that goes far beyond being a data vendor.

Using Auto Data in a Post-Recession Environment

v12group — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:40:36 +0000

Narrowing your targeting focus to improve results

The automotive market has always been highly competitive and extremely complex. It’s made up of numerous manufacturers with multiple models; consumer age demographics the range from 16 to 60 and beyond; and buying behaviors that change with the season and the economy.

Prior to this latest recession, many of the major auto manufacturers focused an entire brand on a demographic segment. But, during the recession, the auto industry underwent some significant changes in which some of the major manufacturers had to trim the number of their brands in order to survive. This resulted in an auto marketplace where there are less brands chasing less demand which has increased both the level of complexity and the competitive pressure.

If you pay attention to automotive advertising, you may have noticed that since the recession, there is a much greater focus on tailoring specific models within a brand to much narrower audience segments than in the past. For example, take the Fiat Abarth and their racy TV commercial that premiered on the Super Bowl – clearly targeted at single males in their 20’s. Also, advertising for the new Buick Verano – targeted at young upwardly-mobile females in their late 20’s and 30’s. If you look at the current auto brands and their advertising campaigns, like Buick for example, you’ll see that each of their models is designed and advertised for specific audience segments.

In this highly competitive environment, how do you implement a cross-channel marketing strategy that will give you the results you need to stay ahead of the competition and be profitable?

The answer: personalization, cross-channel integration and stickiness. The keys to personalization and stickiness are segmentation, consumer profiling and creativity. The foundation of a successful multi-channel automotive marketing strategy is a huge auto database with a mountain of high quality, granular consumer auto data.

At V12 Group our Auto Database is a hybrid-file compiled from both on-line and offline resources including auto service and repair records, auto parts and after-market accessory purchase transaction data, warranty firms and many other after-market sources.

Our auto database is also fully integrated with our consumer database of over 200 million consumers and 110 million households and has more than 140 million vehicles including passenger cars, vans, SUVs, light tricks and motorcycles. We also offer a complete suite of analytics and digital marketing services to provide an end-to-end solution.

Click here to download a white paper on auto databases and learn more about how V12 Group can help you reach the right audience, at the right time with the right message.

Or click here to contact us about using our robust automotive database.

Auto Data and Multi-channel Marketing

When is a Data Vendor More Than Just a Data Vendor?

v12group — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:42:23 +0000

When They Offer a Full Suite of Digital Marketing Services and End-to-end Solutions

In this age of the next gen consumer you need a marketing strategy that engages consumers, through their channels of choice, on an ongoing basis and keeps you top-of-mind throughout the sales cycle. The keys to success here are: personalization, cross-channel integration and stickiness, and the keys to personalization and stickiness are segmentation, consumer profiling and creativity.

In order to do all that you need a database that enables you to develop a 360-degree profile of your audience, and you need to be able to test, measure and adjust your cross-channel communications and media mix based on test and campaign results. It’s a complex set of tasks, and even if you’re a large, well-funded marketing organization, you’re probably going to need some help. The best place to get that help is a data vendor with a full suite of services that cross the entire marketing value chain.

The foundation of a successful multi-channel marketing campaign is a robust database with enough granular data to build a comprehensive 360-degree view of your target audience. Once you’ve selected a good marketing data vendor, the first thing you want to do is map your house list against the data vendor’s consumer database and append the necessary data fields to create your 360-degree customer profiles.

Then work with the data vendor to use e-mail marketing to test your consumer database segments and affinities to tweak the model, and then roll out your campaign through the multiple on-line and offline channels that you have selected. Next use your own analytics and/or analytics provided by the data vendor to monitor the performance through each of the channels, and continue to test, measure and tweak in order to optimize the return from each channel.

At V12 Group we are focused on helping clients deliver relevant multi-channel 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

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Audience Targeting for the Rights of Spring

v12group — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:05:48 +0000

Take Me Out to the Ball Park – Online That Is

Today, more people than ever before are following sport online as they simultaneously surf the net via their smartphones, tablets laptops and desktops. It’s an audience made in digital marketing heaven.

Cash in on the rights of spring with high-powered data

V12 Group has 260 selects to help you achieve razor sharp audience targeting, including:

Demographic data like age, gender, education, occupation, number of children, home value
Lifestyle data including readers of sports books and magazines
Geographic: City, State, Zip code
Behavioral data like PYCO Personality Profile data and purchasing channel preferences

Our offline data segments will boost the power of your online audience targeting with laser-like focus

At V12 Group, our consumer data file is one of the largest in the direct
marketing industry. It’s a hybrid file, built from both compiled and
proprietary data sources. You’ll have postal, email, phone and mobile
data.

And, by the way, our consumer list is triple verified. We use National Change of Address Data (NCOA) to keep the postal address accurate by scrubbing, deleting and updating household addresses on a monthly basis. We also use Directory Assistance and White pages compilations to verify the household addresses and phone numbers, and we use credit issued data compilations to identify the type of credit card (Amex, Visa, MC) a person has and whether it is a pure credit card or a debit/check card.

But that’s not all, we also corroborate the demographic data points using transactional data from a variety of off-line sources several feeds of off-line and online self-reported data. The bulk of the self-reported data comes from national survey/questionnaires on things like products, opinions and consumption. This data is very accurate because it is self-reported.

So you’ll know you’re reaching baseball fans with the precise demographic, geographic and lifestyle parameters that you select. For example, you can target fans of a specific team, with incomes in a specific range, who have children in a specific range who also made a purchase at a sports retailer within the last year.

This high-powered data from V12 Group will give you the kind of targeting power you need to meet and exceed your digital marketing KPIs and give ROI that will put a smile on your CFO’s face.

Map that data to IP addresses and you’ve got a grand slam home run

Thanks to the explosion in the number of multimedia edge devices out there – powered by the advent of the Kindle Fire and the cost down of smartphones -online sports viewership is at an all-time high. Combine that with Major League baseball’s 8 month, 162 games per team season and you have one gi-normous, extremely fertile marketplace where you can reach fans at the height of their positive emotions with laser focused targeting.

Get out of the bullpen and onto the field

There’s no better time to get in front of baseball fans than right now! Our high-powered offline data will put you right in your target’s strike zone.

Click here to contact us and learn how V12 Group’s high-powered offline data
and how it can help make IP addresses more targeted.

Powerful Direct Mail Lists Differentiate Ad Agencies

v12group — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:59:27 +0000

In the ad agency business, standing out has never been more difficult. The metrics with online and digital marketing have made tracking and accountability the number 1 priority of most clients. They want to know they’re getting ROI from every marketing dollar spent. Ad agencies have had to scramble to keep up. At V12 Group, we’re proud to offer you a powerful way to stand out from your competitors – high-powered data.

Customer profiles, not packages

At V12 Group, we’re able to tailor our offerings so ad agencies can bring their clients unique targeting abilities, while simplifying revenue streams and vendor management.

We don’t package our data into pre-conceived groups like “Soccer Moms.” We know that segmentation of audiences is best left to the experts in your media department. We know you understand your clients’ target markets much better than we ever could, so we let you do the grouping using over 260 selects.

This kind of control over your direct mail lists means your creative department can create campaigns which are relevant to each of your client’s segments with creative imagery, messaging and the right call to action.

High-powered data for better direct mail lists

Sophisticated clients typically want to see the results of your campaigns. If they see too many incomplete deliveries, you’ll have an unhappy client. At V12 Group, our average CASS mail ready score is 99.2%. But deliverability is just one of many ways direct mail lists with V12 Group data help ad agencies.

1-to-1 marketing is the most effective form of outreach. Our data composition and sources give ad agencies ways to accurately target sub-sets and zero in on the right target with the right message.

Freshness of data is another critical consideration. Because our data is proprietary, you’re getting the freshest information possible. Most other data vendors actually get their data from other companies, so there’s no way they can keep it up to date. In these changing economic times, people are moving more often. Their economic situation is changing. That’s why we refresh our data every 30 days.

Size of the list is critical for testing and to give you wider sub-sets. V12 Group’s list has:

208 million individuals
110 million U.S. households
81 million opt in email records
68 million records with email address and matching postal address
112 million records with residential phone numbers (pre Do Not Call Scrubbing)

Contact V12 Group about your direct mail lists

Stand out from your competitors by using high-powered data from V12 Group. Contact us today to see how flexible we are in working with your data needs.

Audience Targeting During March Madness

v12group — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 02:43:27 +0000

By now, you probably know that V12 Group has a Consumer File with 208 Million records in it.

With our high-powered data, you can target consumers:

Who like sports such as basketball, baseball, and golf.
Who read sports magazines.
Who recently purchased sports memorabilia, sports apparel, etc.

So if you’re trying to reach basketball fans during March Madness, we can help you zero in on them.

Aim your audience targeting at basketball fans with high-powered data

We’ve got 260 selects to help you improve your targeting, including:

Demographic
Lifestyle
Geographic (like Kansas!)
Interests
Behavioral

Our offline data segments make your online audience targeting more powerful

V12 Group has one of the largest consumer files in the direct marketing industry. It’s a hybrid file, built from compiled and proprietary data sources. You’ll have postal, email, phone and mobile data.

Our sources include survey data, and catalogue and magazine compilation. So you’ll know you’re reaching Basketball fans, overlaid with precise demographic, geographic and lifestyle selects.

High-powered data from V12 Group will give you the kind of targeting that helps you get real ROI out of your online marketing campaigns. For instance, you can target those from the demographic selects above who ALSO purchased at a sports retailer within the last year.

Marry our data with IP addresses and you’ve got a slam dunk

Online sports site viewership goes through the roof this time of year. There’s no better time to get in front of basketball fans than right now! Our high-powered offline data will put you right in front of your target when they’re glued to their favorite March Madness websites.

Click here to learn more about V12 Group’s high-powered offline data and how it can help make IP addresses more targeted.

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.

Get the FREE Whitepaper: “The PYCO Personality Score:
The Science of Motivating Consumers to Respond”

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.