Do you find yourself wanting to target campaigns to improve response and conversion rates, in a more timely and productive way? Do you want to control your advertising costs, while also improving overall ROI? Would you like to target a niche audience, but at a large scale? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, it sounds like you need a data management platform.
A data management platform, or “DMP”, allows advertisers and agencies to take control of their first party and campaign data. While many technology companies claim that they are a DMP, a true data management platform provides marketers with centralized control of ALL of their audience data, helping to manage and analyze it to craft, target, and optimize campaigns that reach more of the right people and drive improved ROI. That is the most basic functionality of a DMP – using it to collect, organize, and analyze your first-party data, and then using that information to target or retarget those consumers across the web.
For advertisers and agencies considering a data management platform, we have identified a few items to be on the lookout for. These include both basic and advanced functionality. So before you begin, you may want to have some internal dialogue about your company’s data strategy, and what you are planning or hoping to achieve with it. Once you have that part figured out, this article will help you identify some key features of a data management platform, and how a DMP can help you effectively achieve your campaign goals.
The data management platform collects, organizes, and manages your first-party data, ALL in one, centralized place. Rather than having your campaign, CRM, web, social, and mobile data living in different silos, a DMP aggregates it in one platform so you can put it to work. Your data is then organized into “audiences”, which the DMP analyzes, and then provides insights about them. Who are your valued customers? What are their habits? What else interests them? A data management platform gives you a complete understanding of who your customers are and what drives them to make a purchase, so you can improve your marketing campaigns, leading to increased sales.
In case you don’t have a lot of first-party data, or want more insights on what they like, DMPs allow companies to compare their first-party data to third-party audience data. By understanding how your first-party data compares to third-party data, clients can make smarter media buying and campaign planning decisions to reach future KPI goals. And for campaign managers looking to increase the size of their target audience, purchasing additional third-party data allows you to reach more of your target audience, wherever they are. The Lotame Data Exchange offers 4 billions data points on users around the world, directly inside our DMP, to be added to audiences seamlessly and smoothly.
Yes, DMPs are essential for connecting advertisers’ first and third-party data, but let’s not forget second-party data. (For a definition of what these all mean, check out our post on 1st, 2nd, 3rd party data.) Lotame’s Second-Party Data solution is located within our DMP and is called Lotame Syndicate”, a solution that allows customers to share their 1st Party Data from their custom hierarchies with other clients, of their choosing. Learn more about the power of 2nd-party data in our Second Party Data Guide to Success.
The data management platform that you utilize should offer the ability to link users across multiple devices. Whether they are using a laptop, tablet, or mobile device, a cross-device DMP connects all links in the user’s decision-making process to help you understand what drives them, and where an advertisement should be delivered for maximum impact. Did the consumer search for a motorbike on their computer, and then did they purchase it on their tablet? A cross-device function can link that user to any or all devices that they use in the process, so you can reach the right person at the right time.
Your data management platform should offer audience insights and analytics, so you can learn more about who they are and what drives them to make purchases. Lotame’s DMP offers Insights and Audience Profile Reports, which offer demographic and behavioral information you can dive into to truly understand your audiences composition and other attributes. Audience analytics enable smart marketers to make educated campaign decisions for your future campaigns.
The data management platform takes your campaign data (impressions, clicks, conversions) and categorizes it in a way that you can easily understand a consumer’s journey. But DMPs also offer the ability to edit your audiences (either manually or through machine-learning) to increase the effectiveness of your campaigns. Lotame’s Audience Optimizer is our proprietary technology that helps increase conversion rates or clicks (whichever KPI you are measuring against), and we also offer Lotame Insights, which is a manual solution for analyzing which behaviors are contributing to the success of your campaign.
For example, let’s say you have a campaign targeting an audience of John Mayer fans. Lotame Insights will analyze the “clickers” on this campaign, and may tell you that the same people who click are also really interested in Sara Bareilles. These insights can be used to adjust your campaign targeting or other parameters (the creative or inventory) to improve your click through rate and drive more visitors to your landing page. Your data management platform should offer you similar insights about your audience to improve your campaign strategy.
The goal of any marketer is to increase the effectiveness of a campaign while decreasing cost, or reaching more visitors for less money. Audience Optimizer helps to find look-alike and act-alike audiences that are most likely to take action on your campaigns, in order to improve your or your advertisers’ KPIs, while increasing the reach of your campaign.
The bottom line? A data management platform is essential to sending relevant advertising messages to the people who actually want to see them. For marketers looking to drive increased engagement with consumers, waste fewer advertising dollars, and increase conversion rates, a DMP is essential to accomplishing all of this, and yielding a higher marketing ROI.
For more information on Lotame’s data management platform, or to see a demo of the platform in action, contact us. We’d love to tell you more!