There are millions of people who are eager and ready to buy, but brands both big and small don’t always know where to find them.
It’s not a brand’s fault—it’s fairly easy for customers to fall through the cracks. Some customers haven’t given a brand any actionable information like a name or an email. Others are in-market consumers ready to buy what a brand is selling, but the brand doesn’t know they’re there. And some are buying from a brand’s competitors.
These valuable shoppers often go unnoticed by a brand, not because they don’t want them, but because they don’t have the right technology to understand and reach them in meaningful ways.
The key is using first-party data strategies to give brand’s highly valuable digital signals about in-market customers. Coupled with AI and machine learning, this data continually gets smarter and enables higher performing campaigns.
Making your first-party data actionable
Deploying effective digital media is the bread and butter of modern-day marketing and advertising. Brands have often relied on third-party cookies to find and message customers who they believe will buy their product, but as data deprecates, this is getting harder and harder to do.
That’s why first-party data has become such a powerful tool. Brands that have first-party data can collect and use it to drive messaging because they have a better understanding of who their customers are. The problem is when their first-party data is incomplete or inaccurate.
What does that look like?
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Unknown transactions: These are transactions that aren’t connected to someone in a brand’s customer file.
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Conquest opportunities: These are customers who are shopping with competitors.
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In-market customers a brand doesn’t know: These are customers who are in-market for a specific product—maybe even in market with that brand—but remain invisible because they haven’t actively engaged with that brand yet.
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Unreachable devices and browsers: These are people using devices you can’t reach because of evolving privacy regulations and data deprecation. Brands like Apple and Google have limited how brands can track identifiers for targeting, deploying and measuring digital ads
On top of that, brands may have an inflated customer file because they unknowingly have duplicate records of a person. Consumers don’t just shop on one device or with one email, and when brands can’t connect a person’s various identifiers, they unknowingly create duplicate records.
So, what’s the fix? Identity resolution. Marketing and advertising tech withidentity resolution built into the solution can use multiple sources of data to fill in first-party data gaps and create a unified view of a customer inside and outside of their owned channels.
There are many adtech and martech solutions where identity resolution greatly enhances their capabilities. We’ll highlight two:
Customer data platforms (CDPs): CDPs are a martech solution that, at its most basic level, organizes a brand’s customer file. CDPs that use identity resolution go a step further: They organize, clean, complete and enhance a brand’s first-party data. Then, they use those insights to fuel their digital media activation.
Digital media: Digital media solutions that integrate a brand’s first-party data (and use identity resolution) can create a more extensive view of a customer’s behavior, including customers a brand couldn’t previously identify.
At the core of Epsilon’s products is our identity solution CORE ID. Our digital media product, Epsilon Digital, uses CORE ID to integrate a brand’s transaction and conversion files to give brands item-level detail that’s tied to unknown and unauthenticated transactions.
Epsilon Digital CDP uses identity to reduce duplicate files and build more robust profiles thanks to our exclusive data enhancements—and plugs directly into Epsilon Digital for more efficient media activation. Tory Marpe, vice president of loyalty at The Container Store, explains why those robust profiles are so important:
“Epsilon’s Digital CDP was chosen because it contains knowledge about our shoppers that we didn’t possess while enriching our customers’ identity profiles. This is not an empty container, but rather a data rich platform that brought us speed to market faster than any other player in the space.”
Finding in-market prospects in the wild
Sometimes brands don’t know their in-market customers because they don’t have a lot (or any) data on them, like CPG brands whose products are typically sold by third-parties (retailers). Some brands might find a clean room to be the right option in this scenario. . Clean rooms provide a privacy-safe space where brands can access partner and third-party data for exploration and media activation. And if a brand does have some first-party data, they can plug that in there, too.
This helps brands find loyal shoppers who have uncapturable first-party data, people who are similar to a brand’s best customers but don’t shop with them currently, people who have shopped with a brand before but went somewhere else, and net-new in-market shoppers who are ready to buy.
With CORE ID at the center, Epsilon’s Clean Room solution is underpinned by our persistent, person-based resolution to give brands an enhanced view of individuals, not just audiences. Just like Digital CDP, our clean room integrates directly into Epsilon Digital for maximum media activation efficiency.
A data strategy in action
Finding their loyal fans: One restaurant chain used Epsilon Digital to find 2 million unauthenticated guests that had 15 million additional transactions. They also found 51 million net-new guests which resulted in an additional 404 million transactions. Because of this strategy, they had a staggering 1225% additional increase in customers.
Reaching the right (Apple) audience: A national beauty retailer reached 2.5 times more Apple users with Epsilon than a competitor, and found that not only did they increase their addressable customer base, they made more money. The retailer’s Apple customers spent an average of $98 per customer, $20 more than their non-Apple customers.
First-party data can be a powerful tool when it comes to reaching customers in ways that resonate. Learn more about how Epsilon can help you drive higher performing media activation.
