Experience Marketing: Efficiency for the Enterprise

I have an awkward shoe size, and finding a pair to wear has always been a challenge. I can only get hold of my size online. But there is one thing that has always annoyed me about making an online shoe purchase: after I make my decision and complete the transaction with a retailer, I get followed around with ads from that business with an offer for the shoe I’ve already purchased. It doesn’t just happen on one device — the ad appears on both of my laptops and smartphone taunting me with a discount deal I can’t enjoy.

This is certainly not a great customer experience. Thinking now as a marketer, I also think about how many ad impressions this business has wasted. With the average consumer being exposed to up to 10,000 messages per day, understanding how to minimize wasted ad spend is critical.

As digital marketers, the goal is to deliver ads based on a customer’s unique experience while also maximizing ad relevancy and minimizing ad wastage. The solution seems simple — you need to exclude existing customers from the prospecting campaign for that product or service as soon as possible, across their devices. However the execution can be challenging, especially with the emergence of new devices, like connected TVs which are only supported by a handful of niche targeting platforms, as AdExchanger highlights in their recent article.

The device proliferation problem

Let’s dissect this challenge with a simple example where you want to exclude current customers from your prospecting campaign. Begin by defining a suppression segment, which is a segment of users that you want to exclude from a larger targeting segment. This suppression segment should use an event that identifies customers who have already purchased the product — for example, hits to a purchase confirmation page. Executed correctly, this will prevent ad impressions from the prospecting campaign being delivered to the device that completed the purchase.

The problem is that same customer may own multiple devices (desktop, tablet, mobile, smart watch, connected TV) that they use regularly. While this customer may not be targeted in the ad campaign on the device that completed the purchase, they will continue to see ads on those other devices until those devices individually qualify for the suppression segment. This will only happen if a purchase is made on each device.

In order to target all of these devices consistently, you need the ability to evaluate multiple device profiles all owned by the same person. Then you must evaluate if the person (not the device) qualifies for the segment and, if they do not, remove all of those devices from the segment and therefore from any campaigns targeting that segment.

A new way to think about experience marketing

To truly understand why cross-device suppression is important for experience marketing, imagine the following example:

This example may not illustrate what normally comes to mind when we think about experience marketing. As marketers, we often focus on delivering consistent experiences across devices, but may overlook the significance of suppressing an experience across devices. Simply put, delivering a relevant experience is just as impactful as not delivering an irrelevant experience. Not only does the user benefit, but you can gain maximum efficiency on your ad spend, allowing you to reallocate those dollars to prospecting or upsell efforts.

The Adobe difference

To execute this at scale requires a data management platform (DMP) with the capability to combine online and offline data sets tied to multiple device in nearly real time. With Adobe Audience Manager, you already have capabilities to link devices, even if they haven’t been seen on your brand’s domains. This is done through the Adobe Experience Cloud Device Co-op, which pools linking data sets from participating Adobe customers to recognize customer devices in a privacy-compliant way.

The DMP should also be able to determine in real time if the device no longer qualifies for the segment and, when this happens, it should push a signal to all targeting platforms informing them to remove all the devices from the corresponding segment in their platform.

Earlier this month, Adobe Audience Manager released an enhancement to our identity management capabilities called Instant Cross-Device Suppression, which sends an “unsegment” call to our partner demand-side platforms (DSPs). This release will make sure that qualification for a segment happens in real-time at the user level, not the device level. If one device doesn’t qualify for a segment, the other devices linked to that user are no longer eligible for targeted campaigns.

This new level of control and precision adds to the “Swiss army knife” concept of identity management tools that Adobe Audience Manager customers have at their disposal. By using these tools, you can deliver dynamic and responsive experiences to your customers, as well as extend the reach and efficiency of your marketing efforts.

Learn more about how Adobe Audience Manager can help you enhance your customer experiences.