Identity Graphs: The Antidote to Spray-and-Pray Marketing

Unify Data Into Actionable Intelligence

Cobb EMC – a not-for-profit U.S.-based electric cooperative providing reliable electricity to more than 180,000 residential and commercial customers – was looking for a better way to launch and sell new products.

Cobb EMC’s marketing strategy largely involved launching new products and services by sending out a blast of information – through emails, events, etc. – telling new members about the offering. Then they waited, “hoping that someone’s interest would be piqued,” said Krista Williams of Cobb EMC Marketing.

The organization knew it needed a new approach – and it turned to Claritas and its intelligent Identity Graph for help. Specifically, Cobb EMC wanted to get to know its members better and discover which type of new programs its members wanted.

Claritas helped Cobb EMC classify its membership into target groups – and found that a few key target groups in particular were very interested in electronic vehicles. Cobb EMC quickly set about to create electric vehicle tools, resources and programs for their members.

The next step, of course, was marketing that program. Instead of using its normal “spray-and-pray” approach, Cobb EMC tapped Claritas for additional data on its members – on lifestyle, media preferences, etc. – that would help the organization target its message to specific groups within a larger email campaign.

The results? Open rates for the campaign ranged from 34% to a whopping 56.7%, with click-thru rates as high as 9%.

A Simple Method to Increase TV Audience Engagement

The targeted strategy that Cobb EMC used doesn’t only work with email. Just ask INDYCAR, which explored a more targeted marketing approach to increase its TV audience size and drive event attendance.

INDYCAR worked with Claritas to determine what INDYCAR’s best customers looked like and to launch an aggressive online campaign to identify and reach “look-alike” prospects that had characteristics similar to their best customers. As a result, the organization achieved a 24% improvement in TV viewership!

Those are just a few examples of how companies are turning to the Claritas intelligent Identity Graph to boost their marketing ROI by more precisely targeting their marketing efforts and leaving spray-and-pray marketing in the rearview mirror forever.

They’re using identity graph intelligence to turn customer data into effective marketing campaigns that deliver the right message to the best prospects across multiple channels.

Connecting the Dots Between Customer Identity and Campaign Delivery

An intelligent identity graph links the critical physical insights of your ideal audience segments (such as their household addresses and income) to their digital behaviors (such as the devices they engage with, their favorite social media apps and their favorite TV shows).

This lets you understand how real customers are taking real actions – in both the digital and the non-digital world. This allows you to build a campaign based on the digital channels, non-digital channels and messages that each specific customer segment prefers – so you can deliver the right message across the right channels at the most critical moments of the buying process.

An intelligent identity graph also makes it easy for you to onboard customer profile data directly to a preferred channel marketing partner – no middleman needed. This not only saves you money and frustration but can also reduce errors and avoid accidental privacy breaches.

Of course, that’s not all a good graph does…

Target Multiple Consumers in a Household Using Identity Graph Intelligence

An intelligent identity graph gives you insight into household behavior that allows you to target multiple consumers in a household – and connect a specific household to a specific purchase.

By connecting an IP address with a postal address and then tying multiple device IDs or multiple email addresses to a particular household, you’re able to more intelligently build targeted campaign execution strategies.

For example, an intelligent identity graph lets you engage both the 18-year-old who might be looking for new athletic shoes and the mother of the household, who will be paying for them.

It tells you when an individual within a household that received your catalog made a purchase on their mobile phone or laptop two days later. It helps you understand when a digital advertisement viewed by Tom was followed by an in-store purchase by his wife Sarah the next week.

And it means understanding if your latest television advertisement caused an individual in that household to visit your website and buy.

Get the Intelligence you Need to Reach Audiences Across Multiple “Log in” Environments

An intelligent identity graph also helps you deliver your message more effectively in another key way: It helps you unlock those “walled gardens” – the log-in environments operated by digital giants like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

While social media remains a critical channel for companies – accounting for over 25% of total digital spending – companies still lack the information they need to make sure they are targeting the right audiences within these walled gardens.

Intelligent identity graph data can help you better reach the consumers behind the walls. For example, say you have a customer named Mary Jones in your customer database, and you want to identity her Facebook account so you can engage her via that social media channel.

You can find the right Mary Jones by matching the email address you have for Mary Jones in your identity graph to the address she uses to connect with her Facebook account. This allows you to target Mary using the customer data you already have – and to more easily integrate a social media campaign targeting Mary with your marketing efforts across other channels.

For more information on how an intelligent identity graph can help you boost your ROI by giving you the ability to better identify your customers, deliver the right message to those customers and optimize your campaigns as they run, check out the new Claritas white paper, Leveraging Identity Graph Intelligence to Find and Reach Your Best Customers.