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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]
Hello and welcome to The Marketing Insider, a podcast for marketers focused on finding and targeting their ideal customers at scale. I'm your host, Monique Ruiz. If you're listening to this episode as it releases, I'd like you to take a quick look at the calendar. You may be shocked to see that we are already midway through May. Q1 flew by, and now we're heading into the busy summer season, which probably includes lots of traveling and restaurants with outdoor seating in your future, shopping for new clothes to update your wardrobe from cold weather to warm weather fashions, and maybe a few home and garden renovation plants on your list to help you enjoy the changing of the seasons.
Whatever you are up to in your personal lives is likely what the customers you're trying to reach with your marketing efforts are up to as well. And while you're doing your own research into the best products, services, or destinations on the market, while simultaneously being bombarded with marketing campaigns, promoting the latest and greatest thing, so are they. How do you ensure your brand's message stands out? What did you do right or wrong in Q1 that you either need to continue doing or pivot away from? Are you even viewing the correct metrics to know what impact your campaigns have on your end goals? To help me answer these questions and a lot more, I'm happy to welcome Claritas' own Quinn Jalli to the podcast.
[QUINN]
Monique. So good to talk to you.
[MONIQUE]
All right, so you and I have collaborated on quite a few things, but this is actually your first time on our podcast. So for our listeners who may not recognize the voice yet, can you just give us the quick rundown on your role here at Claritas?
[QUINN]
Yeah, so I am the, uh, head of our campaign execution team. So we are the people that will not only help you, uh, kind of build your audience when you're trying to execute, uh, an acquisition campaign, but we're also the group that will actually execute it. And more importantly, for a lot of the clients we work with, we're the ones who will do the post. Campaign analytics and breakdown so we can help optimize that audience. Our job is to kind of span the three, you know, stages of the cla, uh, client lifecycle, which is identify, deliver, and optimize. We have a hand in all three making sure campaigns are, uh, a success for our clients.
[MONIQUE]
Yes, a very busy man. Speaking of which you have been working to transform what we call our deliver business, so those executable campaigns since you joined Claritas just a little over a year ago, what have been the biggest changes you've implemented and where do you see the organization going in the next year?
[QUINN]
Let me start off by saying, I'm trying to transform this notion that every client presents a unique scenario. Yes, every client has a unique set of goods and a unique customer base that is absolutely undeniable. What we have to remember. Is that every client, while they're messaging our audience may be different. The way we optimize and execute a campaign is very predictable. And I think once we take that notion to heart, Monique, I think what it does is ensure that we have repeatable success. And, and it's interesting because, right now, if we look back over the year, our unique open rate has tripled in the year and three months since I've been here. It's not magic, it's because we had to get to the simple concept that these marketing strategies team employ are repeatable, and that's the expertise we bring to the market. And so that's been our biggest, biggest change. Obviously, finding some of the basic processes, taking the complicated steps out of it, and unifying the. The whole, uh, campaign execution business under me are huge steps forward in making sure ensuring we deliver a consistent and quality product.
[MONIQUE]
Now that we're midway through Q2 as a brand, what steps do you recommend that they take to perform a lookback analysis on Q1 s performance so that they're always using those learnings to improve in the future?
[QUINN]
Yeah, so every, you know, couple months to client, not review their campaign performance. One of the things I think we see more times than not is that shifts in the marketplace as the economy contracts or expands or as interest rates go up and down, that customer base may shift, you know, and perceptibly at first, but more visibly later on. And, you know, doing these post-campaign analytics helped them, the tech tech fundamentally. You touched on something that I think is very interesting, which is as we drift towards the summer seasons, To engage in your campaigns are going to change. And so yeah, doing analytics are gonna be essential to making sure you fine tune that message. In fact, I will tell you that without exception, starting in June, ending in August, opening click rates will go down on, you know, campaigns because, you know, the, the, the purchasers who are above 22 i e, the parents. They have less time than they do during this the school season. Now, I'm not saying their school time is a slow time for parents, but I am saying they're gonna be doing a lot more family oriented activities.
What we typically see in those three months are open and click rates drop by 20 to 25%. Do analytics help you prepare for how you communicate? But also help you detect slight changes in audience composition. Not to mention, and this is most important, when you launch a new product, there are always a set of assumptions on who their audience will be. Those analytics will either confirm, deny those assumptions, or, and this is the really good scenario, help you identify customers that, Hey, yeah, we nailed our prime audience. Wow. There is a subset that is really over indexing from a response basis. And that's a home run for us.
[MONIQUE]
Yeah, so you are very well, well aware of this because you just spoke about it, but every industry has emerging trends that they wanna capitalize on. And for example, you know, increasing deposits or selling CDs for financial services that's big right now. Fiber, internet growth for those smaller telco companies. You know, the list goes on. What exactly does a brand need to do or consider, uh, if they want their campaign to stick out in that sea of industry competitors who have that same exact goal in mind for their business.
[QUINN]
Well look, I mean, you're asking me what makes an acquisition campaign successful on its core, right? It's different for every industry. Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, if you're an established, well known brand, you wanna, you know, beat on the drum that works with your audience base, but also test new, you know, messaging. Because if you, for instance, Or a wireless provider that's safe. For example, rolling out a a, you know, a new low cost unlimited plan. You know, there, there are a whole host of potential. So you wanna state your core value clearly, cuz you're an established brand. You don't need to establish who you are, but rather what you are selling.
Now, if you're a new brand, that's a different challenge altogether because you're kind of saying, look at me, considerate the options of what we can do for you. And, you know, and, and you know, the subject line, which is if you're talking about email, is how we lure that man. Right? And so, and I use the word Lord, you've got to say something that states a value proposition. So, you, you very clearly and succinctly have to do this.
And I think I. You know, let's get to the basics here, because one of the, I always joke with our team that, hey, you know, we're a bunch of smart people. We have the worst people to try to communicate cause we're over eloquent. We're over, you know, we're way too sophisticated. We understand the industry too well if we're talking about internet service providers constantly look for the most common, basic methods because if it's over fancy, people will not get it quickly enough and they'll glance right past it. On the other hand, if your message doesn't clearly state your value proposition, people aren't gonna give you the time to research further. So, the, the core of message here would be keep it simple. Make it easy to grasp no matter who you are. Because if you're trying to acquire customers, you have less time to do it. Then, for instance, if, or your a company. I know, because if you're a company, I know. Then I will make some assumptions about your message, and I will take those assumptions for granted when I decide to engage with you as a brand, right? So a new product by Apple, for instance, I'm an Apple fanatic, so if Apple puts out a product, I will engage with that brand no matter what. Because I just have a curiosity. If on the other hand, you're a Dell product, you know, you have to be talking about something that I care about since I'm a nerdy gamer, then there you go. There's something, if they can appeal to that quickly, I might be inclined to engage with that, or otherwise I would not have done that. So there are things there that can be done. So those are the basic steps.
[MONIQUE]
Your answer there kind of segues me into my next question, and I hear a lot of our sales teams bring this up as a question that new clients or prospects will ask them when they first start working together.
So I thought it was great to bring up here. When you're creating your campaign strategy in mix, should you always divide your audiences into a group of those net new prospecting or acquisition versus your C R M based, you know, your upsell and cross-sell existing customers? Or is it okay to mix the two audiences with your messaging?
[QUINN]
Well, no, I mean, the answer I think is, is self-evident in the way you've asked it, right? I mean. I went back, this was for a client exercise. Yeah. Folks, I am a bit of a marketing geek, so I do do things like this. I actually went back through my own inbox. Cause I was curious. So for instance, I love Tom Ford, right?
Tom Ford is an amazing designer and I will open every email I get from Tom Ford where I will only probably buy once, uh, every six months maybe even more. Cause they're so expensive. On the other hand, There are brands in there that I will never open. So, you know, because I don't know who they are, they're trying to acquire 'em as a customer. So what I'm trying to say is, I think, yes, you have to treat them differently, right? Because for people who have purchased from you, they are the people who are raising their hand and saying, yeah, I mean, I am interested in you, and I will say this differently.
When we worked with some big retailers in previous lifetimes, you know, their open rates were 30 and 40%, no matter what the content was. And I, I think, man, that's, that is where their customer base knows that product or that brand, so well, no matter what they send, they will engage cuz there's an inherent value to them in that brand. Again, acquisition is a, is a different market because as you're an unknown qual quantity to that consumer. You have to articulate the value proposition very clearly in the subject line. You can't rely on assumptions that you get with the, uh, the retention brand, and you can't rely on a prepopulated set of understandings. So, yes, there's no doubt they have to be treated differently. And yes, the messaging has to be much clear.
[MONIQUE]
I know this number can sometimes vary, but in your experience, is there a number range for how many times you need to engage in audience before they actually convert?
[QUINN]
I love that question because what we find is, on average between three and six touches are required for a consumer to take a meaningful action. And what I mean is, let me use my favorite brand of cars, Audi. If I'm gonna buy an Audi, it's not gonna be based on one email. Nobody's gonna purchase a car from the first email. Right. However, I may schedule a loan test drive. So before that first meaningful action occurs, you're gonna need three to six touches. And I find that to be the rule of thumb. When we sell a multi-channel campaign to a client, we find that rule still applies, but time to get there is quicker, right? Because for instance, they're browsing their a new site and your ad appears on the top and they go, interesting. They don't click on it, but it, you know, they note the message, they see it again in email, and they're like, oh man. And then they'll quickly, you know, open the message and browse it in. But the third touch, now they've been thinking, and you know, as I often say, look, I'm a consumer, but I don't think I'm so different than other people that when I window shop something, see, Something that a person's using, it takes me a second to go, oh, I want that. It's not just immediate. That experience translates very nicely to acquisition. It takes a, a couple of experiences or exposures that consumer to translate to purchase. That's what we talk to clients about. Hey, if it's taking you six months to get to six exposures, it may be too long, so let's make 'em quick, but not so quick. They get inundated and say, you know what? This is too much. I'm walking away.
[MONIQUE]
Yeah, that's definitely a good point. There's a, a balance you have to strike. You know, I was gonna ask you a question about how do you determine if acquisition campaigns are something that you should focus on, but I'm. I kind of feel the answer is obvious. If you want new customers, if you want longevity for your business, you have to always be thinking about acquisition campaigns.
[QUINN]
You'd asked me five years ago. I would say there are some brands that are just not well suited and, and perhaps are, you know, my gut instinct living in New York City, that Tiffany doesn't sell a ton of diamond engagement rings over the internet, right? I mean, that's a brand you have to go in and people know your blue brand, and in fact, you don't see a ton of Tiffany's ads, right? If they don't go after customers, you either know 'em or you don't. That said though, there are very few epiphanies in this world. That's why they are, uh, they're synonymous with a certain thing. I think acquisition is something that 99 point that of companies in the world need to do. The real trick though is it's not whether or not someone needs to do acquisition. It's whether or not someone has the right parameters for success when it comes back. And I think that's the challenge we face, right? Because we get some clients and they wanna sell cars on one email. Now your parameters to success are completely outta line with what we're doing here. You know, and I use cars cuz it's just such an obvious example. Then other times you get people who come in and they're willing to wait and it's part of what we call quote unquote branding is really appropriately titled as building credential with the consumer. So that when they come in contact with us, they're ready to to, the answer is for almost everybody we come in contact with. Whether you're insurance, whether you're buy in, you know, whether you're a financial company. Or whether you're a, a sandwich shop acquisition works, and it's about changing customer's perspectives on you or introducing you into their context.
[MONIQUE]
How do you measure the success in acquisition campaigns versus maybe even a C R M campaign where you already have those customers?
[QUINN]
I mean, it's, it's in that funny, I, I was having this conversation today. It is, I think ironically, to some degree, they're measured on the same thing, right? Cost per incremental sale, cost per lifetime value. But I'll tell you this, when it comes right down to what our customers, when we do acquisition is cost per acquisition, how much are they having to pay us per customer, we drive for them. Now the only question here is what is they, what is acquisition on the c p A calculator? And I know in, in a previous I term, I know that I keep bringing up cars, but we worked with a major auto retailer and they weren't looking for us to sell cars. They were looking for us to drive test drives or inquiries. So their cost per acquisition, their acquisition was someone coming in and making a follow up inquiry. Okay? Other companies are very straightforward. Hey, we want you to sell a, a, a cell phone plan for us. We want you to help drive a, an, you know, a conversion on an insurance policy. I, I think success is largely gonna be driven by, in this world, it's a pretty pragmatic standard in a retention world, I think that it's even a little more complicated because, for instance, if you're a, a big store retailer, let's say you're, you know, somewhere up on Madison Avenue, how much do you drive consumers to come back into your shop? It's a really different measure, and I think that the assumption here, and I believe it or not, You know, only a few customers when I was on the retention side had really good metrics for measuring the success of their retention program. What's funny in acquisition is every single one of our clients knows what our cost per acquisition is. And it's really fun to talk to 'em about it. Cause you get some insight and how they're measuring you and what that acquisition of it really is.
[MONIQUE]
And when do you actually turn those acquisition focus campaigns into that more customer based style program? How does it transition from one to the other?
[QUINN]
Yeah, so that's an interesting question because the obvious answer is it's somewhere more than a click on a display add more than a click on a over media campaign, more than an open an email. A lot of our clients want to take that into a relationship somewhere before the purchase. Okay. And it's interesting, I'm not totally opposed to that, but I think, you know, one of the things is, is that in the consumer journey, when we're talking about a customer journey map and we're talking about how we speak to them, if we turn it over to a customer journey and they're not quite committed to purchasing, You know, maybe too soon. And part of what we do, and we talk about this, is to retarget openers in a short period after they've engaged with the brand for the first time. Because if you go to Amazon for honestly everybody listening, let's go stay Amazon, you know, I mean, everybody, I, I have friends and I live above a Whole Foods in New York City, everybody swears they hate Amazon and then they spend half their paycheck. And it's funny to me because we do, Amazon does something that's extraordinarily good, which is that, Hey, you were browsing this product, let us put it back in front of you. And it's extremely smart. And so we programmatically do that for customers, right? When they, when a consumer engages, we retarget them within a couple days.
So the question you're really asking is, when do you start treating prospects like customers? And while I will agree that it is right, it doesn't have to be at a conversion, it does have to be far along individual mental process. As consumer starts to think of you as, Hey, there's value there and I wanna keep opening this and I'm been arrested by the brand. Not a clear concrete answer, but I, I will say, we do talk about this with clients and we have one client now that we hand them a list of consumers. Once that consumer has hit the three or four engagement mark and it's been pretty successful.
[MONIQUE]
So this next question I have for you, it's a little bit of a two-parter. Is it important to take a multi-channel approach to campaign execution? And how does email fit into the mix considering it's been a longtime staple for marketers?
[QUINN]
Yeah, so that was absolutely a two-parter. So let me the first one. So look, there are two things that come into play with the multi-channel campaign. One is, Amplification. When you touch a consumer through multi-channel, you're amplifying the message i e. When that consumer starts, goes, oh, I'm kind of interested in this product, touching them somewhere else and repeating the experience, amplifies the experience that that consumer had. Look, if they're gonna buy, this gets in there quicker and it doesn't let them forget you who you are. But secondly, and this is, it's something that marketers far too commonly neglect is what I call channel bias. So channel bias is a concept that popped into my mind, which is, hey, if you're a 28 year old woman living in London, I mean, you may use Instagram, it's your primary tool, right? It's the way you engage with the internet. Whereas email is only open when you're expecting something or when you just ask someone to forward you something, meaning you don't go in there religiously. Whereas you're a 65 year old person living in the Midwest, you may use Facebook as your primary social media, but that's just to chat with your friends and email is your religion, right?
When it comes to digital, so the multi-channel just isn't for amplification. It's also to make sure that we speak to the consumer in the language they're used to being spoken to. If that person isn't gonna purchase an email, committing yourself to email to target the under 30 fives is guaranteeing you're gonna lose a lot of your ability to convert under 35 year old consumers, who, by the way, are a valuable subset. So yeah, there are two reasons for doing that. Multi-channel and. Any person engaging in acquisition that isn't doing a multi-channel campaign is by definition prejudice who's gonna be converted. It's over 35 to 60 above 60 consumers stop trusting email to make acquisition. Under 35, we find that social media, especially Instagram and in display, have an incredibly high value. Now, you know, TikTok is also a growing, uh, Uh, medium. Of course, the challenge with TikTok is, um, ai, I'm not sure what status is gonna be in 10 months once us gets done with it, but it's also one of those that you can't just stick up a static hat. People go there to expect live action data, right? And so we have to respond to that.
[MONIQUE]
Yeah, I was gonna ask about the best combination of channels to consider, but you just answered it. It really depends on your audience and you have to understand how your audience interacts with their devices, interacts with digital, interacts with offline, to know what that best combination of channels really is.
[QUINN]
Yeah. And you kind of highlight on something, your money that's important in every. In every digital marketing, uh, program that is put into place, there is no one size fits all. Right? So that has to be exercised from the brain of, of marketers, Hey, I've got the perfect combination. Let's not fit your audience to the channel. Let's fit the channel to match your audience. And make sure that we've got, we're speaking to the people, how and when they want to be spoken to. Email is a good foundation, but I mean, I, I just, you know, I can't. A scenario in which they don't consider social media as another channel when display, while it definitely resonates more poignantly among under 35, this is one of those things that just has a good response rate among all age groups.
[MONIQUE]
You mentioned earlier that a brand basically wanting to execute their campaigns, they can work through their agency and just utilize our audiences, or we can execute on behalf of them. Can you talk a little bit about when it makes sense for us to execute a campaign on behalf of a brand versus them working through their agency, getting those audiences from us and and doing it on their own?
Is there an ideal scenario for both cases?
[QUINN]
Yeah, well, obviously as the head of the i b acquisition campaign, uh, execution group, uh, every campaign should be run through us but look, I, I realize that's not a reality, and in fact, we've talked to many companies lately that have, for instance, distinct, uh, display groups, right? Uh, that they handle programmatic display. And listen, we can easily, in those groups, whether they're a large company that have a robust marketing team, we can make our audiences available to those groups using features like Live Ramp, great solution in the marketplace for those companies that have either their, their marketing teams overstretched, which believe it or not, that seems to be a reality would no matter if they're a Fortune 500 company or a brand new company, right? We can augment existing services by executing form on their behalf. And one of the interesting things we do, and it's, I, it's really, it's really valuable, is when we execute a display program, it's, it's executed against the discrete audience. We're not targeting under 50 year olds who live in Indiana, for instance. What we are doing is we're building an audience of known consumers with email addresses that we can upload into social and display. And we can execute a gift that discreet audience, which is interesting because. Even if you're, you've got a very healthy, robust, for instance, programmatic display program, you most times don't necessarily know who you're targeting specifically. And we can augment those existing programs. And again, I, in the case where you're, your A team is either so overwhelmed or so small, we can do the soup to nuts display, social, and email for you. And we do that in most of the cases we work with. We are actually handling the full, full cadre of, uh, solutions.
[MONIQUE]
That's good to know. Marketing budgets, they are feeling the squeeze. So what is the best way to approach pricing considerations for multichannel campaigns so that you as a service provider, i e Claritas are earning a profit and staying competitive. But your client is feeling though they're getting the right value for the service, knowing that their budget might be a little less than it has been previously.
[QUINN]
Yeah, so two things. We're getting some real insight to this. In the, the financial world is we execute credit score driven campaign. As the economy seems to be heading towards the slowdown. Look, digital marketing tends to be a rate savings pathway over direct mail. And let's be honest, you know, we are in the digital age, but everybody still executes direct mail campaigns. So one of the things you know, to consider is what are you spending? And more importantly, if you were to execute for instances, we just talked about an email campaign, does that mean I have to hire additional people to do that? Mm-hmm. Or can I outsource that? Et And I think part of this is, you know, considering from the marketer's perspective, Hey, what are my current capabilities and B, what, what are the, the channels I'm executing on today? And can I move to a lower cost solution? We get a lot of clients who are moving budgets. This has started to happen in the last six months with a growing trend. We get a lot more clients are doing direct mail. We're moving some of that budget to us, and whole goal here is help us pre-qualify a consumer. We're getting an engagement, getting some kind of level of meaningful consumer reaction. And then migrating them to a direct mail piece, cuz now we know they know who we are. So those are the considerations clients, you know, kind of go through. Right. But you know, look, I, you know, I will say I love being in the digital marketing space because when things are good, it's good for us in the digital market space. And when things are bad, they have a tendency to be even better.
[MONIQUE]
Well, Quinn, I wanna thank you again for sharing your wealth of knowledge with our podcast audience. I know we're, we're gonna collaborate on more things, but appreciate you jumping on the podcast with me today.
[QUINN]
Uh, it was certainly my pleasure and I enjoyed talking to you.
[MONIQUE]
So I wanna thank those of you that are listening at home or on the go for supporting us. If you want a few more resources related to this episode, topic. Make sure you check out the description box and we'll include a couple of links for you. Also, if you've not already, please take a moment to follow the Marketing Insider so you never miss an episode. Rate us five stars on your podcast app of choice, our favorite being Spotify, and share us with a friend or colleague so we can keep the conversation going. And with that, we'll see you next time with a brand new episode. Bye now.