Earlier this month, Digiday reported on an interesting phenomenon sweeping across direct to consumer (DTC) brands’ marketing teams: they’ve started spending significantly less on Facebook ads.
What made Facebook so appealing to DTC brands like Allbirds, Casper, Brooklinen and Quip in the first place, and why the sea change?
It all boils down to dollars and cents. Highly efficient global supply chains coupled with predictable and cost-effective Facebook ads meant DTC players could undercut their bigger competitors on manufacturing and shipping costs, then market to hyper-targeted Facebook audiences and reap the returns.
Now, with competition on Facebook heating up and CPMs going through the roof, DTC brands and others are moving to different channels to keep their audience-building efforts alive (listen to any podcast and you’ll see how popular this channel’s become).
As costs rise, GDPR kicks into effect and companies like Apple move to roll back Facebook’s reach, marketers should be wary of relying heavily on purchased audiences, and instead consider what they can do to boost their most valuable asset: first-party data.
First-party data is highly valuable both in terms of more effectively engaging existing customers and gleaning insights that aid in the acquisition of new ones. The challenge for many companies, though, is getting all available data into a single repository where it can be easily leveraged by the marketing team towards more personalized marketing.
That’s where a customer data platform (CDP) comes in.
CDPs collect data from disparate channels and sources, including sales transactions, customer profiles, website visits, mobile app sessions, email responses, chat transcripts, audio recordings of customer service interactions, social media comments, purchase orders and ad interactions. They can then identify individuals across those channels, even if they’re not explicitly connected, and aggregate the information into a unified view of the customer. With all of this customer data available in one easy to access system, marketers can develop smarter campaigns and execute them through a variety of marketing channels.
QuickPivot offers an integrated CDP that provides:
- A consolidated customer database
- Omnichannel campaign planning (including offline) and delivery across channels
- Machine learning modules for deeper predictive insight
If you’re ready to take control of your customer data and create a superior customer experience across all channels, we’d love to hear from you. To learn more, or see a demo, contact us.
