Most marketers believe that programs powered by big data have the potential to radically improve business and drive growth. But understanding the potential value of big data – and actually realizing it – are two very different things. While many brands have invested millions to collect this valuable marketing intelligence, few CMOs claim to be maximizing their results with it. While leveraging your big data to drive sales isn’t necessarily an easy thing, it is possible – and it doesn’t require years to develop big data strategies and tactics you can count on to deliver higher return. In fact, many can reap the benefits in weeks.

1. Insights from a Conversant Executive
John Conley, Vice President of Data Warehouse
3 WAYS TO
DRIVE GROWTH
USING YOUR
BIG DATA

2. INTRO
GETTING THERE
• Unite Offline and Online Customer Data
and Associate it with Individual Profiles
• Create One-To-One Personalized Messages
and Communication Streams Across Devices at Scale
• Initiate a Best Next Communications Stream
PERSONALIZATION DRIVES REVENUE AND PROFIT
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Table of Contents
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3. Most marketers believe that programs
powered by big data have the potential
to radically improve business and drive
growth. But understanding the potential
value of big data – and actually realizing
it – are two very different things.
While many brands have invested millions to collect this
valuable marketing intelligence, few CMOs claim to be
maximizing their results with it. While leveraging your
big data to drive sales isn’t necessarily an easy thing, it is
possible – and it doesn’t require years to develop big data
strategies and tactics you can count on to deliver higher
return. In fact, many can reap the benefits in weeks.
3 WAYS
TO DRIVE
GROWTH
USING
YOUR BIG
DATA
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4. There was a time when marketing one-to-one to millions
seemed like a pipedream. However, with today’s platform
integration capabilities and advancements in technology, you
can turn your vast target audience into millions of one-person
audiences and actually treat every prospect and customer
as an individual. Best of all, you can do all of this by using
anonymized profiles that protect consumer privacy.
When you accurately process and transform big data into
actionable insights you have the opportunity to create compelling
brand experiences and programs that motivate purchase at
an individual level. This is all possible today with customized
messages tailored to an individual’s needs and preferences.
The following three-step approach has the potential to
dramatically grow your sales. Follow these critical steps to
deliver personalized marketing using your big data:
THE BIG OPPORTUNITY:
PERSONALIZATION
When you unite your brand’s offline and online customer data you can create a more
complete picture of your prospects and customers and understand their current needs,
buy stages and motivations.
This may seem like an impossible task, but it’s not. And it’s far easier when you leverage the
experience and expertise of others. For instance, Conversant spent a decade testing and
implementing technologies to meet this challenge. By leveraging advances in data warehousing,
we’re able to ingest marketing data from multiple online and offline sources and then associate
all of an individual’s actions with a single, anonymized user identity. That process turns enormous
amounts of cross-channel marketing information into rich, anonymized customer profiles.
We’ve found great success using a massively scalable database management system from
XtremeData. This solution allows us to combine the most granular SKU-level offline and online
purchase information, rewards program records, CRM interaction data, e-store activity and
more. We can then create a complete picture of a consumer and brand’s relationship surfacing
valuable insights into what a consumer needs and how best to motivate their purchases.
UNITE OFFLINE
AND ONLINE
CUSTOMER DATA
AND ASSOCIATE IT
WITH INDIVIDUAL
PROFILES
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5. Once you’ve created anonymized profiles from your
data, the next step is to make these profiles actionable.
Using big data, it’s possible to create personalized ads
that reflect a person’s interests, behaviors and lifestyle.
These ads together form communications streams that
consider demonstrated interest and buy stage so they
can most effectively move a consumer toward purchase.
A particular ad might reflect imagery and colors that
have elicited a positive response in the past or it may
feature the products that best meet the immediate
needs of the consumer. Because individuals vary
widely, personalized creative development produces
thousands, or even millions, of dynamic ad variations
that enable individual relevance at great scale.
It’s worth noting that personalized ads are very different
from retargeting ads that simply feature the last product
an individual viewed on your site. For example, two
consumers interested in the same watch should in many
cases receive two completely different ads. For the
prestige consumer, the ad might feature the watch in
context with edgy, luxury-driven imagery, whereas a
consumer who is driven by quality would receive an ad
that highlights the time-tested reputation and customer
ratings of the watch. This degree of personalization is
made possible with recent technological advancements
that enable rapid analysis of vast amounts of user-level
information. Massively parallel data processing is
necessary in order to ingest and analyze numerous data
sources and channels simultaneously in real-time.
Big data also helps to optimize when and how
communication streams reach the consumer. A brand
can deliver messages to the same consumer across
different devices they use throughout the day – and
do so in the most effective format. For example, a
consumer who may be best persuaded through the
use of video can be reached as they browse on their
smartphone at breakfast, their PC during the workday
and on their tablet as they browse at night.
CREATE ONE-TO-ONE PERSONALIZED
MESSAGES AND COMMUNICATION STREAMS
ACROSS DEVICES AT SCALE
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6. PERSONALIZATION DRIVES REVENUE AND PROFIT
By associating big data with individuals,
marketers can create robust, dynamically
updated profiles that drive extraordinary
results. Statistically validated testing across
more than 170 leading retailers found that
personalized media programs yielded
significant incremental sales results. Our
research indicates that personalized media can
drive as much as 3-6% of total brand sales.
Measurement does warrant some specific
attention. When you want to assess the
business impact of personalized media,
or any other marketing tactic, you need
to understand attribution and the total
incremental sales delivered, which can only
be measured by evaluating both online
and offline channels. Incrementality can
only be measured by separating the sales
that were caused by the program from
those that would have occurred anyway.
We recommend a continuous A/B testing
methodology that encompasses online,
in-store, and other channels, in order to get
an accurate read. This methodology uses
statistically validated techniques to determine
total incremental sales from all channels.
In conclusion, it’s important to recognize
that big data and personalization may help
drive growth in your business – and it can do
so in such a way that maintains the highest
standards of consumer privacy. Don’t wait
another year to get your data house in order.
Your competition may already be steps
ahead on this critical work. This could be
a tremendous growth opportunity for your
business and the time to act is now.
As a marketer, you’ve likely heard of the “next best”
sales opportunity, but with personalization, marketers
should be more concerned with “best next.” A “best
next” personalized communication stream delivers
ads that are dynamically optimized based on both
recent and historical consumer actions.
For example, imagine that a consumer goes to
a store to buy an overcoat. When that retailer
prepares to deliver a new message to that person,
it’s likely they’re not in the market for another
coat. Instead, an ad featuring a scarf and gloves
that match the new coat would be more likely to
drive an incremental purchase. And not just any
scarf and gloves, but the set that best reflects the
consumer’s lifestyle and brand preferences.
A robust personalization platform identifies the “best
next” sales opportunity based upon a near-real-time
analysis of a person’s offline and online actions. Our
internal client research shows that the near-real-time
component is critical because the retailer is more
likely to sell him the matching scarf if they send the
message right after the coat is purchased.
“Best next” isn’t just about related items. Profile
analysis reveals a consumer’s precise stage in the
buying process and determines the right set of goods
and stimuli to motivate their next purchase.
INITIATE A
“BEST NEXT”
PERSONALIZED
COMMUNICATIONS
STREAM
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7. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Conley, Vice President, Data Warehousing, Conversant Media
John is a 1995 graduate of the University of Illinois and has spent his career working in data warehousing, with
a particular focus on how retail can leverage big data platforms for improved inventory management, customer
engagement and sales optimization. In May 2010, John joined Conversant and managed the transformation of the
company’s legacy database formats into the current technology formation, a hybrid Data Warehouse consisting of
both Hadoop and massively parallel processing database management systems. Today, he continues to focus on
delivering world-class hyper-personalization for Conversant clients based on the latest data platform innovations.
ABOUT CONVERSANT
Conversant, Inc. (NASDAQ: CNVR) is the leader in personalized digital marketing. Conversant helps the world’s
biggest companies grow by creating personalized experiences that deliver higher returns for brands and greater
satisfaction for people. We offer a fully integrated personalization platform, personalized media programs and the
world’s largest affiliate marketing network – all fueled by a deep understanding of what motivates
people to engage, connect and buy.
For more information, please visit www.conversantmedia.com.
Copyright 2014 Conversant, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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