Do You Have a 2017 Cross-Device Strategy?

With mobile now a key platform for digital display ad, social media and e-mail viewing, and even print integrating with mobile and online, marketers clearly need a 2017 cross-device strategy. As a 2016 Econsultancy survey noted, only 14% of marketers said their company was able to handle the customer matching across multiple devices, even though almost three-fourths of respondents felt cross-device customer tracking was a strategic priority. A recent Direct Marketing News article by Pierre DeBois offers some good tips for initiating a cross-device strategy. Start with analytics platform reporting now that Google Analytics, Piwik and Adobe Analytics all offer a user ID feature, a modification to the analytics tag, to allow cross-device visits to be an identifiable segment in the analytics reports. DeBois also suggests setting up report filters for digital traffic to take advantage of what is already known about the digital points at which customers engage, such identifying web traffic by the IP address of a store site to track customers who shop the site while in-store. A mobile site that makes it easy for customers to act immediately—whether they want to order, call or download—is a must. With strong mobile traffic, a marketer can even develop enough audience to support an app launch. Since accessing social media is a key activity for mobile users, and video viewing continues to soar, marketers will want to leverage social traffic stats and demographic parameters to tailor content to social media platforms, with an eye to mobile and visual/video impact. DeBois cites the Google Customer Journey tool as one way for marketers to adjust when media content should be deployed. Then design ads for cross-device viewing and response and take advantage of the paid search platforms' expanded mobile and IoT (Internet of Things) offerings, with device selection for re-marketing and paid search ads, call extensions and cross-device reporting. For the full post, go to http://www.acculistusa.com/do-you-have-a-2017-strategy-for-cross-device-marketing/

New Product Injects Direct Mail in Retail Clickstream

A debut "programmatic direct mail" service hopes to inject a direct mail response boost into Internet retailers' clickstreams. The new PebblePost product, described in a recent Direct Marketing News report, offers a direct mail retargeting mechanism using real-time digital analytics so that, for example, an online customer's shopping cart abandonment triggers a postcard mailing that puts a personalized offer in the customer's mailbox within a few days. Pilot product testing mainly has involved online retailers and catalogers with the required first-party mailing address data. PebblePost is supported by partners that include Axciom, and the startup venture just received $3 million in funding for expanded visibility, per DM News. The article quotes PebblePost's CMO David Cooperstein, a former Forrester marketing analyst: "It is physical retargeting of digital activity, but it's also a powerful new form of direct mail. Here we know there's interest and there's relevancy, because these people were just on the website." For more, go to http://www.dmnews.com/direct-mail/programmatic-direct-mail-makes-its-debut/article/444135/