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Claritas helps companies find customers. Through our podcasts we hope to help you better understand consumers, why they buy, and how they prefer to interact with you. We'll explore topics important to today's marketers so we can get you one step closer to your next customer.
Monique: [00:00:00] Hey there, marketers, and welcome back to the Marketing Insider, a Claritas podcast for marketers focused on finding and targeting their ideal customers at scale. I'm your host, Monique Ruiz, and we're continuing a conversation from last week with the president and co-founder of NEMA Hunter Incorporated.
Don, Carly, Don and I have been talking all about audiences activation and acquisition, and if you've not listened to part one of this episode, I encourage you to check out the description box for a direct link to that. But we still have so much to discuss. So Don and I are going to jump back into things.
Don, I wanna hear a few of your tips, tricks, and best practices for acquisition. Starting with, once you've defined your target audience or audiences, how do you acquire or
Don: [00:01:00] convert them? And when we're talking about consumer audiences, um, if the product is a financial service product, then I would turn to.
The Claritas cycle segmentation because it, while it takes into account demographic and psychographic characteristics, it, it also has an extensive set of, uh, data fields that are devoted to financial services, products and financial services related behaviors and intents. Mm-hmm. Um, if it was for a consumer product, I would.
Likely use the prism segmentation, which is okay. Yep. Going to be looking more at general consumer goods behaviors. Um, and, and in fact, um, you know, for, even for a financial services brand, if they said were, were interested in home equity loans that for consumers interested in home equity loans for, [00:02:00] um, Making solar plus battery investments in their homes.
There, there are additional products that are looking at specific behaviors related to things like installing solar or batteries or, uh, smart inverters and, and so on that, that can also access through, through Claritas. Mm-hmm. Um, and the only other thing is to look at, um, in some cases if I knew that my.
Audience was geographically specific. I might also perhaps look at geofencing data. So let me give an example. Um, in the pre covid days, there was a, uh, uh, uh, a credit union that wanted to open a new branch, and they were, the head of real estate was evaluating different properties. And I said, well, um, where are they located?
And they gave me the three. And I said, would you like to know something about the [00:03:00] populations that are in the market catchment for each of those three locations? And I said, how could you do that? I said, well, um, well first using another Claritas product called Geo Scape, we make the center of the catchment.
Your perspective, location. And then we ask the system to tell us what is the radius within which 80% of the economic activity for credit unions and banks takes place relative to each location. And that radius is dynamic. It depends on the location. Mm-hmm. So now we say, this is where your addressable market is.
And it's determined by things like driving time and walking time and, and even, you know, those things during certain times of day or days of week. And then we could say, well, we could also geofence the c v s location that's across the street from each location. Or, you know, some similar thing. And I could tell you over the past month [00:04:00] how many people.
Each of the cycle segments have visited that CDs or, or would have likely visited your parking lot, which is across the street. Mm-hmm. So we start to zero in on location, but then we say, well, that's not enough. I, I see that there are a lot of people in segments, you know, 1, 3, 11, 16, and 24. How could I.
Acquire that audience. And, and at that point we'd say, well, we could request account of how many people in those segments are addressable via email, postage, postal mail, direct mail, um, social channels like, um, Instagram and, and Facebook or via digital media or out of home. How can we reach them? Where do we have them in the identity graph?
And I could say the total number available is 20 or [00:05:00] 50,000. Right. Great. So now I said, well, 50,000. Is that a big enough audience? Well, no, I'd rather go for 150,000. Okay, let me look and see if there are adjacent segments and, and we could acquire those. And now we create an audience that we can conduct a.
Analysis of those other fields. Mm-hmm. And, and that helps us to narrow it down to the households and individuals most likely to be in market for what we plan to offer. Right. And it gives us insights about where they shop. Are they Neiman Marcus people or target people? Mm-hmm. What do they drive? Are they Ford people or Mercedes people?
Um, do they rent or lease their car? Do they rent or lease their home? Um, what sports teams are they fans of? Um, what type of hot sauce do they prefer? I mean, literally it's 15,000 different [00:06:00] characteristics that are more or less true, and we can look at. To what extent a particular group with a set of characteristics, indexes above the norm for the geography to say, well, you know, there's a high concentration of people.
80% of the people in this ZIP code or in this census tract have these characteristics, and they index at 200% of the norm for all of the other zip codes in the area that we've decided to focus on. So, Now I can really hyperfocus on where those prospective customers are most likely to be and who they are and what would be of interest to them.
Right. And then acquiring it is quite literally placing a production order to have the digital identifiers, the postal addresses. Mm-hmm. The mobile identifiers. Mm-hmm. The, all of the other identifiers that link back to that identity graph delivered. So I can [00:07:00] create campaign assets for social, digital, direct mail, email, and out of home, aligned with the strategy, aligned with the characteristics of that audience that.
Are likely to have resonance and I can now begin to field an omnichannel campaign and track impressions by where they came from, right? Multitouch and Last Touch. I can track engagements, but where they came from and where those impressions were both to a website through the use of a tool called Audience Anywhere or even to a physical LA location through geofencing.
So I can say these customers who came to your branch, we geofenced your branch, we know they came from our audience. Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, that audience acquisition process is requires, um, you know, there's a production services group at Claritas who provides support for that. Um, but we work with multiple agencies.
Um, a [00:08:00] digital agency is given the digital audience identifiers and they upload the audience to LiveRamp. Social, uh, campaigns we typically manage through Claritas production team. Same with email, right? Um, and, and then direct mail. The client will often handle themselves, so we deliver postal addresses to them.
We. You know, get a suppression file from them to make sure we're not bothering people who don't want to be bothered. Um, very important. Yep. And, uh, and again, it, it all comes through in an integrated tracking where as a general rule, when campaigns will run, Anywhere from six to eight weeks as a, as a rule.
Mm-hmm. Um, and during that time, all the parties that are involved, the digital agency, the client, the Claritas team, um, the agency team at Otto and, and their partner at branding business will, will all come together for a standup meeting, you know, half an hour, 20 minutes, [00:09:00] and it's a status check to say.
Have we got all the assets? Have, have we deployed? Mm. Okay. What are the, yeah, what have the, what have the, um, engagements been so far? What have the conversions been so far? Um, and, and, and then at the end of the campaign, we give it a 30 day count and then do a matchback analysis in el lip analysis. And if we're gonna do a second campaign, we take all the learning from the first campaign and we can optimize and.
It's not uncommon to see the difference in incremental engagements and conversions be. Double what it is for an, an audience that was unexposed to the precision marketing campaign. Mm-hmm. Just, you know, phenomenal
Monique: metrics that Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And those types of, you know, all that research that goes into it, all that preparation and then those calls, you know, those checkin calls, that's what's telling you what consumers are responding to when it comes to being engaged or activated.
And obviously, you know, there are [00:10:00] nuances depending on the industry or the audience, but there's always some sort of. Channel mix consideration, the campaign messaging, the call to action, and that's what ends
Don: up getting that engagement. And then there's, there's life itself and Yes. You know, things like, um, a, a covid outbreak or, yeah.
Of, you know, a, a default risk or any number of things. I mean, just, right. We had a client that launched a high yield savings account and. The first question was, oh my goodness, is our interest rate gonna be attractive enough? Well, the Fed was raising interest rates every other week, and so. At some point you have to lock it in and say, okay, we're gonna commit to this interest rate.
Yeah. And, and then, you know, you do that and Goldman Sachs and Apple announced that they're gonna offer a high yield savings account and well now what? You know, so the good news is things don't always work out is even some bigger, technologically sophisticated and financially [00:11:00] substantial companies might plan and the customer doesn't always.
Enjoy the experience, so, right, right. I, I think that what I've learned is precision marketing provides, um, a way of being agile, a way of being, um, responsive and, but also a way of, of being anticipatory. It allows us to, in advance, build models of behavior. And to then test through these dynamic campaigns, whether our hypothesis, whether our model is consistent with the market's behavior, because opinion research is only opinion.
Mm-hmm. Behavioral data is far more valuable than opinion data. And what precision marketing provides us with is, is [00:12:00] behavioral data.
Monique: My next question for you, it's not totally how I was originally introduced to you, but it is a similar situation and you are very well aware of this. But not only are brands worried about acquiring new customers, but a lot of them are simultaneously running down this path of mergers and acquisitions with other companies.
Sure. And it often leads to a rebrand, which you know well, well about, so. Perhaps it's because it's an industry that I'm hyper focused on, but it seems to be especially true in financial services with banks and credit unions. M and a then puts them in this position where they're working to retain existing customers or members and transition them to the new brand.
What types of questions should the leaders be asking as they're transitioning their brand and customers or
Don: members? Yeah. I, from, from my work with branding business, um, which is a, a B2B brand strategy firm mm-hmm. And, and auto brand lab, which is, uh, it does quite a bit of b2b, but it does a great deal more, uh, [00:13:00] business to consumer.
Uh, and, and I agree to more creative. I, I've and from my own work at, at Xerox, um, where I, I was very lucky to. Work with some brilliant marketers. One of, one of the, um, people we first brought in was the former Chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola to consult to Xerox about branding. Mm-hmm. Now, and this is similar, I, I think to what happens with, let's talk about credit unions in particular because so many credit unions have acronyms.
As their brand name. Yeah. Yep. Um, and they're known to their members. And, and typically those members are all geographically very close together. Um, and if they do merge with another credit union, though, the, the importance of brand awareness and the goodwill or trust that [00:14:00] the members have in the brand.
Doesn't exist outside of their membership and their immediate served market. Mm-hmm. And their served market geography. And, and for many companies or entities that have kind of grown up organically and become comfortable with an esoteric brand, um, you know, some acronym, um, they don't necessarily understand the value of building a brand and.
The value of brand strategy and, and messaging and positioning for a brand. And, and I think that what we try to help people with is to first take an as to assess the strength of your brand in terms of unaided and aided awareness, consideration, and also your, your own members or customers in terms of their likelihood to recommend or [00:15:00] better yet their actual behavior.
In recommending and, and also look at factors like churn. I mean, have you been losing members or customers right lately? If so, why? That may call for doing that kind of voice of customer work that I had mentioned earlier where we'd say to the client, it's not enough to just look at them churn. We need to talk to the people who've left and find out why we need to talk to the people who've left and see what it would take for them to come back.
So there's a lot of. Ethnographic research and market research that we often do with clients to establish where they actually are in terms of those key marketing metrics, aided unaided awareness, consideration, as well as things like referral and satisfaction and, um, uh, you know, other, other, both bleeding and lagging indicators of brand health, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, and, and very often, you know, they need to. [00:16:00] They get very attached to the brand. They know and they're afraid they're going to lose members or customers if they change it. Mm-hmm. They're also very often unaware of how difficult and expensive it can be to build awareness for a new brand. They're also not necessarily always aware of the value of.
Unaided awareness. Mm. Okay. The, the value of uncontested consideration, right? The value of loyalty, especially when it translates into referral. Right. So a lot of the work we do is to help them underst understand and quantify the value of those things, and ask them questions about what their customer acquisitions costs are at present.
What they expect the cost of customer acquisition is going to be for this expansion after merger or [00:17:00] acquisition, how much churn they expect and why, and, and then what they expect, not only what, what they expect, the what, the lifetime value of the members that they're requiring. Are, but, but what's the lifetime value they're going to ascribe to new members they hope to attract?
And those, you know, in many cases it's, it's going in and asking questions that people have just become, I, I don't wanna say resistant to, but they're almost afraid to ask.
Monique: Yes. You have to ask those hard questions. Going
Don: into a, a brand that's been in existence for 80 years and saying, well, Your brand is your problem,
kind of demands that you substantiate that, right? You've kinda able to, and let us explain to you how right, and why and what changing your brand would entail. Mm-hmm. But [00:18:00] most importantly, not only what it would entail in terms of commitment and training and time and money, but what the benefits will be.
In terms of member growth and growth in your assets Under management? Mm-hmm. Or in. The, the dividends that you can Well, and they use other terms. I know, but, but what you can return to your members. Mm-hmm. Um, because you've, you've overachieved in terms of, um, deposits or, or, or lending that does not default.
Monique: You know, rebranding is one piece of the puzzle, but then you also have to ensure that there's adoption of your strategy across your entire organization. That's another piece.
Don: It, well, you know, that's something that, that. Auto brand lab and, and branding business both in their respective domains, excel at, and a lot of it is, is actually, um, support for the leadership.
Yes. Um, [00:19:00] and it's a, it's a transition, it's a journey. It's not a sprint. Yes. What we explain to people is it will take years. Not months. Right, right. For you to realize the benefits of the investment you're making in your brand, especially if it's a new brand rather than just a refresh. Mm-hmm. Um, but in a world where increasingly the consumer has data at their fingertips, the value of emotional connections and.
Resonance with the values, not just the transactional objectives of those consumers can have become more and more important. Mm-hmm. What it takes to build affinity, what it takes to engage and a perspective customer, remember and see them [00:20:00] develop an affinity and an engagement with them that is multidimensional.
That isn't just about a transaction, but is about the things that matter to them. You know? So it's not just about direct mail and advertising, it's also. Through, through a consistent positioning and and messaging that's designed to be relevant to the audience and individual groups within your audience.
It, it supports things like your engagement in the community. Mm-hmm. It, it, it supports the, the causes that you commit, not just your money, but your people's time to, right. Yeah. Um, and it reflects itself also in the way the employees of the brand. Live the brand promise are consistent in the way they express the brand promise.
Mm-hmm. In the way they behave. Not because there's a rule or that there's a, you know, a process, but because they have an understanding of what that brand stands for, so they can make decisions on the spot and be empowered to [00:21:00] represent the brand in a consistent and if you will, believable manner.
Monique: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Hmm. All right, Don, I know I've chewed your off quite a bit, but, uh, I wanna end on, uh, a bit of an action plan or key takeaways, if you will. Yep. Sure. So what are the top couple of things that a brand will need to do now or in the future to stand out from their competitors as they continue to pursue those customer acquisition goals?
Yeah,
Don: I, I think they've gotta invest in voice of customer. Mm-hmm. And it, and it's, it's often thought that, well, we talk to them every day. Um, we know what they say. We know what they think, but they, they really haven't, not in the way that, as, as a research professional, we work to, to eliminate bias in gathering voice of customer.
Mm-hmm. And frankly, the way that as [00:22:00] outsiders, we are more likely to ask the difficult questions. The, the ones that. Challenge the very beliefs that leadership often has. Um, maybe the problem is your brand name. Yeah. Or maybe the problem is what, whatever, so, right. To a degree, it's, don't be afraid to have kind of a red team, you know, a, an external advocate for your brand to ask those difficult questions, to challenge the comfortable assumptions that you.
Are living with every day. Yep. Um, I, you know, it, it's, it's, um, we become acclimated to the way things are and it's often the way things are that needs to change. That's true. And I often say to people, you know, when you, when you start a, when you start a new job, that's the day [00:23:00] you should pay attention. To how the restrooms look to you, because after a month, you'll no longer be.
In a position to make a judgment, you'll become accustomed to the way they look. So if you're gonna say something, say it on the first day.
Um, so I, I think that's, you know, my experience in all the years that I worked with Xerox, I was very lucky, lucky to work with some absolutely brilliant executives who weren't afraid to hire me to ask the difficult questions. Right. Good. And to sit at their staff meetings and challenge the things that were being taken as givens.
Yep. And, and it's the same, I think with our credit union clients and, uh, our, our B2B clients, they, they really do value our understanding of brands and branding and brand strategy and messaging. Mm-hmm. Um, to, to ask those fundamental questions and then to be able to back up our challenges to the con to the conventional [00:24:00] wisdom with data.
That's key. Yeah. And end voice of the customer. In context, right? So that it's not just we talk to 20 people. Well, so what? You know, that only tells you what it's possible for 20 people to say, right? Yep. But then we take the 20 things and we say, well, of the 20 people, there were a couple of themes that we heard and some things we didn't hear that we thought we should have.
So now let's feel the study that's designed to be eliminating bias that could creep in when we let people kind of do it ad hoc. Mm-hmm. And let's find out. What the statistical likelihood of those things being heard nine times out of 10 mm-hmm. Are, and, and, and in that way we can help them to de-risk their decisions and to feel more confident that it's not just our opinion.
That yes, our opinions are informed by years of experience and we have a. Heuristic understanding [00:25:00] of, of things that, that may be hard to translate into numbers, but we realize that people do need to see empirical, objective, quantitative data to support an argument. Um, in the end, the decision does mean someone's gonna have to use their belly, brain and make a gut call, but we try to give them as much evidence to support their decision as possible.
Monique: Well, Don, I think, uh, this has been a great conversation. It's been one of the, the best ones that you and I have had a chance to have, and we have so many more conversations and in, uh, collaborations in the works. But I, I do wanna, um, give you a chance to plug anything that's new and exciting for you, the brands that you work with every day, and obviously let our listeners know where they can connect with you.
Don: Wow. Well, they can certainly connect with me on my LinkedIn page if they're mm-hmm. If they're, um, you know, business folks. Um, I, I got a NEMA hunter. Is my consultancy. [00:26:00] Uh, but they can also find me through branding business and auto brand lab. Uh, those are two of the, the firms that I, I work in this capacity, uh, to, uh, direct research and, um, assist with precision marketing campaigns.
Um, and in terms of things that I'm particularly interested in, I suppose the most interesting thing to me these days is looking at how people are jumping to the conclusion that. Artificial intelligence is gonna solve all their problems. So, um, I'd say that that's my, that's the thing that I'm paying attention to this day is, you know, what, what is it that.
AI actually is capable of, and what is it not capable of? I, I think that what I'm finding is, um, at first I, I thought, oh, will this be the end of research or will this be the end of, oh yeah. Advisory services. Mm-hmm. For precision marketing, it'll get better, no question. Over the next, next three to five years, maybe even within two, but [00:27:00] right now it, it, most of these platforms.
Wildly hallucinate at least one or 2% of the time. And it's kind of like having a thousand research assistants that bring you all this stuff. But you still do need someone with a well-developed, um, executive function and an ability to. Check for Yes. The instances that are just Exactly, yes. Crazy.
Monique: Yes. We have those conversations over here.
Yeah. Every day too. So,
Don: so don't, you know, don't, don't be too enamored with the, the new shiny object. Um, yet just yet. It's, it's, it's good to experiment. It's good to challenge the conventional wisdom. Agree, as I said earlier. Um, but, At, at this point, we still need, um, we still need some humans in the loop that have experience and, uh, and who use data exactly in a, in a responsible and, um, in a hopefully informative way.
Right.
Monique: Well, thanks again, Don. Thank you. I've enjoyed having you on the podcast. It's been a pleasure. [00:28:00] So we'll make sure to add, uh, links to our description box so everyone can check them out, but wonderful. Since that's all we, uh, all the time we have for today, I wanna again, thank Don Carly for joining me, but I also wanna thank those of you that are listening at home or on the go.
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Bye now.