Originally appeared on Total Retail
Retail media networks (RMNs) continue to demonstrate how they can be a powerful monetization driver for retailers, creating a win-win-win for everyone involved. Retailers can monetize their valuable first-party data as well as their online and in-store inventory, while customers benefit from timely, relevant content that enhances their shopping experience. At the same time, advertisers can reach highly targeted audiences at critical moments near the point of purchase
Achieving this type of success requires overcoming challenges around fragmented and incomplete first-party data, which can limit a retailer’s ability to organize and use their data effectively. Additionally, many RMNs lack the analytical capacity to generate customer insights, build addressable audiences, and accurately measure success. To realize the full potential of their platforms, RMNs need partners that provide complementary data, strong identity solutions, and the expertise to transform insights into actionable strategies. This allows RMNs to drive winning outcomes for themselves, marketers, and their customers.
Here are the five steps an RMN should consider when selecting the right partner.
1. Build an identity foundation
First, the right partner needs to be able to organize and clean customer data. Given the millions of customer records and data points that a retailer has, RMNs need to make sure their data is highly usable. Whether it is a known customer record or an unknown customer with incomplete data, partners should fill in missing information and connect fragmented customer records to a single profile. For example, RMNs need to know that a purchase made in-store is by the same customer who bought online. The best partners will then organize those profiles into households since targeting (and purchasing) is often done at the household level. Without a strong identity foundation future steps of segmentation, insights, audience creation, and activation will not be successful.
Experian identity
Experian’s identity solutions provide RMNs with a comprehensive and accurate view of their customers across both offline and digital environments. We clean an RMN’s first-party data and organize their customer records into households since targeting is often done at the household level and purchases are made at the household level.
Using Experian’s Offline and Digital Graphs we work with the RMN to fill in the missing information they have on their customers (e.g. name, address, phone number or digital IDs like hashed emails, mobile ad IDs, CTV IDs, Universal IDs like UID2 or ID5 IDs). This ensures that the retailers’ entire customer base can be reached – and measured – across devices and channels.
2. Segment your customers
An RMN’s ability to segment its customer base and derive insights depends on the availability and usability of their data assets – not to mention some serious analytical chops. Some RMNs will split their customers into different product segments based on what’s relevant to an advertiser. For example, a home improvement retailer may segment customers by who is buying DIY supplies versus improvement services. Other RMNs may develop custom segments from their customer data and third-party data sources, so that advertisers can personalize their marketing based on life stage, age, income level, geography, and other factors. Either approach is effective but requires working with a partner who has high quality data and deep analytical expertise to develop those segments.
Segment with Experian
Experian Marketing Data helps an RMN learn about their customer beyond their first-party data. With access to 5,000 marketing attributes, RMNs can fill in the holes in their understanding of a customer. We provide them with demographic, geographic, finance, home purchase, interests and behaviors, lifestyle, auto data and more. RMNs can use this enriched data set to create addressable audience segments.
3. Generate actionable insights about these segments
Once the RMN determines how they will segment their customers, they can utilize demographic, attitudinal, interest, and behavioral data from a trusted partner to develop a customer profile that compares its customers against a relevant sample of consumers. Here, the RMN will gain insight that will help them answer questions about its customers. Examples include:
- What age and income groups are more likely to purchase my product?
- What is the current life stage of my customers – do they have children, are they married, are they empty-nesters?
- Is price or quality more important to customers in their decision-making process?
- What sort of activities do my customers enjoy?
- How frequently do my customers shop for similar merchandise?
- What media channels do my customers use to get their information?
Expanded insights with Experian
With Experian’s advanced customer profiling, RMNs can go beyond basic customer segmentation. We build detailed customer profiles by utilizing accurate, attribute-rich consumer data, so RMNs can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their customer’s preferences, life stages, and purchasing behaviors. Having this insight enables the RMN to:
- Design a targeted email campaign promoting home essentials to recently married new homeowners.
- Develop a social media post announcing the opening of a new hardware store to users within a specific location interested in do-it-yourself products.
- Create brochures and flyers at a local community event tailored towards parents with small children that promote equipment for youth sports leagues.
4. Create high quality lookalike audiences
The RMN now knows what distinguishes their customers from other consumers and can create audiences that enable advertisers to run personalized marketing campaigns at scale. RMNs can do this in several different ways:
- Work with a data provider who can create custom audiences for the RMN (e.g., Ages 40-49 and Leisure Travelers and past purchase of travel item)
These custom audiences are created by joining multiple first- and third-party data attributes found to be significant in the customer profile or using machine learning techniques to develop a custom audience unique to the advertiser.
Custom audiences with Experian
With an enriched understanding of their customers, RMNs can create addressable custom audience segments, including lookalike audiences, for advertisers.
5. Expand addressability of audiences and activate on multiple destinations
Once audiences are created, RMNs will want to increase a marketer’s reach across on-site and off-site channels. With the right identity graph partner, an RMN can add digital identifiers to customer records that enable activation across media channels, including programmatic display, connected television (CTV), or social. RMNs should work with identity providers that are not reliant on third-party cookies. They should select partners that offer more stable digital IDs in their graph like mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), hashed emails (HEMs), CTV IDs, and universal IDs like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2).
Experian powers data-driven advertising through connectivity
Using Experian’s Digital Graph, RMNs expand the addressability of their audiences by assigning digital identifiers to customer records. Marketers will be able to reach an RMNs customers onsite as well as offsite since Experian provides several addressable IDs.
Audiences can be activated across an RMNs owned and operated platform as well as extended programmatically to TV and the open web through Experian’s integrations across the ecosystem.
Maximize your RMN’s revenue potential with Experian
Organizing customer data, segmenting customers, generating insights, creating addressable audiences, and activating campaigns are all critical steps for an RMN to realize that revenue potential. RMNs should select a partner that provides the data, identity, and analytical resources to create the winning formula for marketers, customers, and retailers.
Experian’s data and identity solutions are designed to help RMNs maximize their revenue potential.
Reach out to our team to discover how we can support your path to RMN success.
Latest posts
![Price matters, but behind other factors in Deal Seeker analysis [VIDEO]](https://stg1.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/wp-content/uploads/default-post-image.png)
Watch our video chat with John Fetto as he shares insights from the Deal Seekers Report. This new report provides an analysis on the six deal-seeking consumer segments and information that savvy marketers need to know about them in order to more effectively target, reach and engage each group. Download the free report and watch John Fetto share some of the data:
As more consumers take pictures, make phone calls, read books and listen to music on smartphones and tablets, these devices replace the functions of the traditional gifts of years past. Read on to learn about this holiday’s hottest products and check out our recent Hot Holiday Products webcast to gain insight into how to capture more consumer visits during this busy season. Hot this week: Experian Marketing Services' analysis of online search trends this holiday season indicates that tech gifts are increasing in popularity this season. Smartphones and tablets rise to the top of the hot product list, as their functionality replaces that of traditional holiday gifts like cameras, books, clocks and stereos. New gaming consoles releasing this season, the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, are among the hottest products for 2013, with PlayStation currently in the lead. Tablets are also popular and the iPad is in the lead. Searches for iPad outperform those for Galaxy by a margin of more than 4:1. Hot holiday products With a scant 26 shopping days this holiday season, retailers need to identify hot products even faster than usual in order to run appropriate promotions and keep shoppers happy. Every year, Experian Marketing Services identifies the “hot products” that consumers want based on online searches driving traffic to the Hitwise® Retail 500, a grouping of the top online retail sites. This year, like last, the immediately recognizable footwear brand Ugg claims the top position on our list, as of November 9th. A new pair of cozy boots may sound nice as temperatures dip, but gadgets and electronics are what consumers are really hot for. Driving demand are two new major gaming consoles that hit the market this season. After several years without a major update, Microsoft will release the Xbox One and Sony will release the PlayStation 4. High consumer anticipation for both consoles won the PS4 and Xbox One a spot at number two and number three, respectively, on our hot products list. As of November 9th, variations on searches for PS4 were about 50 percent higher than search variations for Xbox One; however, the new PlayStation hits stores a week before the new Xbox, so this may change once both consoles have shipped. With smartphones and digital tablets performing the functions of traditional gifts of years past, such as cameras, stereos, books, watches, etc., it’s no surprise that the iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C and the new iPad Air are solid contenders on the hot product list. Likewise, the old-fashioned pedometer has been getting increasingly high-tech to the point where Fitbit, the wearable fitness tracker that links to your smartphone via Bluetooth, is the number four item on our list and searches this year are nearly three times what they were at this point in 2012. But not all of this season’s gadgets are high tech. In fact one of the hottest gadgets burning up the Web this season is about as old school as you can get: the loom, the Rainbow Loom, to be exact. We’ll cover this hot product in more detail in a bit, but it’s the number seven product on our list and one that every marketer targeting kids needs to have on their radar. Electronic spotlight With the tablet market heating up, iPads still enjoy a comfortable lead in terms of overall search. In fact, as of November 9th, search variations for iPad were more than four times higher than the nearest tablet competitor, the Samsung Galaxy. The Galaxy, however, overtook the Kindle Fire back in April of this year to become the second most searched for tablet. Tech Junkies, the segment comprised of online adults who visit technology review websites and technology content sites, are naturally more inclined to search for electronics and gadgets of all sorts, but they are even more disproportionately apt to be searching for Google and Microsoft products. For example, while Tech Junkies are 69 percent more likely than the average online adult to be searching for “iPad Air,” they are 2.7 times more likely to be searching for “Nexus 7” and 1.3 times more likely to be searching for “Galaxy Note 3,” two Android-powered tablets. Microsoft’s new tablet, the Surface 2, is also searched for by Tech Junkies at rates double that of the average online adult. Toys! Toys! Toys! When it comes to toys, it’s all about rubber band bracelets. In fact, four of the top 10 hot toy searches are tied to this trend. The Rainbow Loom and Crazy Loom (or Cra-Z-Loom, rather), are handheld looms that the young and the young-at-heart use to make rubber band bracelets (think: friendship bracelets) and other crafty creations. Since the start of the current school year, loom-related searches have taken off much to the ire of school administrators who have increasingly taken to banning the item from school premises. Video games aren’t just for grown-ups; they’re also for kids. The Skylanders SWAP Force and Disney Infinity are two sought after kid-friendly video games this year. Both allow players to bring physical action figures to digital life in video games. This is the third game in the Skylanders series and the first of its sort for Disney. Visit and bookmark http://ex.pn/hhp for up-to-date trends on hot products this holiday season, as well as a list of the top 20 online retailers capturing the greatest share of visits to the Hitwise Retail 500. We’ll update the data every Monday, so check back often!
If you are a mother, or if you know any mothers, you know that being a mom of an infant or toddler can be challenging. Not only is there an extreme amount of responsibility involved (and very little sleep!) but there is also a shift in social priorities. It’s no longer easy to ‘catch up with the ladies’ over drinks. Finding time to go on a date means finding a baby sitter and scheduling far in advance. And weekly poker nights at the neighbor’s house may no longer be feasible. It’s not a surprise, then, that moms with young kids (MYK’s) are very apt to become active on social media websites. In fact, according to a recent whitepaper by Experian Marketing Services, these moms are two times more likely than the average adult to use social media more than three times each day. And not only are they more likely to visit these sites, but they are also more likely to be active, posting and commenting two times more than the overall population. A possible explanation for this observation is that MYKs, especially those with infants, spend a lot of time at home with the kids and need an outlet that allows them to stay connected with family and friends. In that sense, social media—especially sites like Facebook (the top choice for MYK’s) where users can share photos, statuses and private messages—is ready-made for this segment. Beyond catching up with friends, these moms have a high propensity to follow brands and companies on social media platforms. Because they are so participatory as a segment, they offer a huge opportunity to marketers who may be looking to expand their target audience or narrow in on young mothers. Brands looking to target moms with young kids should consider offering deals through these social channels. They should also encourage moms to participate in their branded social media posts, both to interact with the brand directly and to support conversations between moms. Brands that offer time-saving ways to keep in touch and share ideas across platforms will do well with this segment. And marketers can get creative, too! Sponsoring “most beautiful baby” contests or starting discussions about the best way to calm a fussy child will not only give moms an entertaining break in their day, but will also help them associate the brand with positive, helpful experiences. For more information about moms with young kids, their online and mobile behaviors, and how to best reach them, download the whitepaper: From Diapers to Preschool: a window into the world of the Mom with Young Kids.