What is Zeta’s Approach to Artificial Intelligence?

In this blog, you’ll learn a little bit more about Zeta’s approach to artificial intelligence, and how it delivers BIG benefits to the modern marketer.

January 6, 2021 Monica Daniels

Blog

Personalization helps advance customer relationships, yet many consumers believe brands don’t speak to them at a 1:1 level. This disconnect is an opportunity for marketers. An opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage by tapping into Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create the kind of personalization consumers crave but struggle to find. As a marketing technology company, Zeta utilizes AI to build smarter audiences, create better customer experiences, and obtain more helpful consumer insights. In this blog, you’ll learn a little bit more about Zeta’s approach to artificial intelligence, and how it delivers BIG benefits to the modern marketer.

What makes Zeta’s approach to artificial intelligence so valuable?

Zeta’s AI technology allows brands to mirror the real-world exchanges that take place between individuals, and do so at scale. By mirroring these human interactions, Zeta connects, centralizes, and scores signal data in real-time. This (in conjunction with the Zeta Marketing Platform) allows marketers to create more personalized, 1:1 engagement across all channels and touchpoints.

Some key benefits of Zeta’s AI include:

Real-time insights
Increased efficiency
Improved segmentation
A better customer experience
More intuitive brand interactions
And more

AI for audiences

Zeta’s AI works with the Zeta Data Cloud to extract critical consumer insights and build highly-targeted, custom audiences from 2.4B unique identities and 2,500+ real-time signals. Some of the more critical capabilities of Zeta’s AI for audiences include:

Audience suggestion and discovery
Interest and intent scoring
Customer lookalike modeling
Spend and conversion prediction
Lifetime value prediction
Churn prediction
Deterministic attribution
Identity resolution

Two of the above capabilities most valued by marketers are customer lookalike modeling and churn prediction. Here’s a snapshot of how they work…

Customer lookalike modeling

Zeta’s AI supports marketers by suggesting audience segmentations based on specific, high-performing seed audiences (e.g. high-value customers). It uses unsupervised machine learning to identify the dominant traits within that seed population, before building new audiences of lookalike customers. Zeta clients can activate these audiences in real-time, engaging new, high-value customers, or existing customers ripe for an upsell. It’s a capability that’s best used for new product launches, retention behavior analysis, and improving conversion rates (in-app or in-browser).

Churn prediction

Zeta’s Identity Graph monitors behavioral and transactional signals so marketers can identify which customers are most likely to churn. Using these signals, Zeta’s AI proactively engages consumers through existing campaigns to deter them from churning and increase retention.

AI for experiences

Zeta’s AI for experiences allows brands to deliver the 1:1 personalization consumers demand through sequential, real-time messaging. The result? Brands cultivate an unbeatable customer experience that strengthens engagement across all channels. Some of the more critical capabilities of Zeta’s AI for experiences include:

Product advice
Content advice
Send-time cadence and frequency
Hyper-local targeting
Subject line optimization
Omnichannel experience mix
Offer/promo/price sensitivity

Two of the above capabilities most valued by marketers are product advice and hyper-local targeting. Here’s a snapshot of how they work…

Product recommendations

Zeta’s AI determines the optimal product selection for each customer based on a range of signals. Marketers can leverage this capability to deliver an enhanced customer experience through website personalization or cross-channel personalization in messaging (ideal for retailers, travel brands, auto manufacturers, and more).

Hyper-local targeting

By analyzing transactional and geolocation signals, AI for experiences can automatically trigger personalized messaging enriched with localized offerings (e.g., exclusive promotions, store-specific savings, etc.) across channels.

AI for insights

One of the core differentiators of Zeta’s AI is its ability to understand consumer interests at scale. By gleaning live, actionable insights from channel performance and continuously updated customer profiles, brands can identify opportunities and ensure media isn’t wasted. Some of the more critical capabilities of Zeta’s AI for insights include:

Automatic AB and multivariate testing
Deterministic attribution
Marketing impact and ROI
Advanced custom model insights
Natural language processing
Bidding, forecasting, and completion

Two of the above capabilities most valued by marketers are natural language processing and hyper-local targeting. Here’s a snapshot of how they work…

Natural language processing

Zeta’s AI for insights mines the Zeta Data Cloud’s more than 2.4B unique identities and 2,500+ real-time signals to distill consumer’s real-time interests at scale. It then uses this interest-related data to help marketers make more informed audience and channel selections, as well as deliver more personalized content.

Deterministic attribution

This capability helps marketers spend budget more effectively by avoiding those consumers who would convert without any exposure to paid advertising. In other words, it allows marketers to automatically zero-in on those shoppers that won’t convert without exposure to paid advertising to create incremental lift.

Interested in learning more about Zeta’s AI capabilities?

So there you have it—a brief (but hopefully thorough) introduction to what makes Zeta’s approach to artificial intelligence so unique. Curious to learn more? Then get in touch with a member of our team!

What Is the Zeta Data Cloud?

The Zeta Data Cloud helps marketers obtain a holistic customer view across all devices and channels. The result? Reduced media inefficiency powered by enhanced measurement and attribution at a 1:1 level.

January 4, 2021 Monica Daniels

Blog

When we think about the many challenges marketers face, understanding insights on prospects and customers is a pain point. Specifically, understanding those insights to unlock the full potential of customer data. This reality is what makes the Zeta Data Cloud so powerful. It helps marketers obtain a holistic customer view across all devices and channels. The result? Reduced media inefficiency powered by enhanced measurement and attribution at a 1:1 level.

How does the Zeta Data Cloud work?

The Zeta Data Cloud consists of an identity graph of more than 200 million adults in the US (almost 90% of the population). Within this universe, Zeta combines personally identifiable information (PII) such as name, address, and email, with digital identifiers such as cookies, MAIDs, and device IDs.

Why?

To determine whether the same person that watched Wheel of Fortune on their CTV program is that same individual that visited Toyota’s website.

From these 200 million consumers, Zeta collects more than 1 trillion signals per month including…

Content consumption across 5 million websites
Behavioral signals based on physical travel to stores, airports, hotels, etc.
Transactional signals based on trackable purchases and buying choices both online and off

At a high level…

This data is collected from proprietary opt-in sources and enriched in real-time using a range of online and offline signals (including up-to-the-minute identity and intent data). It offers marketers a holistic view of their customers and prospects to help drive high-value audiences and enable a wide range of marketing activities.

What's inside the Zeta data cloud — Pool of identity and intent data within the Zeta Data Cloud

The 3 keys to the Zeta Data Cloud

#1 – Identity

Identify and understand both new and existing customers to:

Enable rich customer experiences with robust customer profiles, continuous data collection, and profile enrichment
Resolve identities and recognize each customer as the same individual across channels through online and offline data

#2 – Intent

Capture intent by overlaying data-in-motion in real-time including:

Content consumption signals from publisher networks
Engagement signals and sentiment
Intent and churn signals

#3 – Connectivity

Leverage up-to-minute customer data to enable a range of marketing activities such as:

Targeting the most purchase-ready individuals across addressable channels
Creating meaningful message personalization across devices and channels
Attributing marketing results to the channels and messages that generate them

What type of data can be leveraged in the Zeta Data Cloud?

The Zeta Data Cloud is built from explicit opt-ins. All behavioral, transactional, and location data is derived from permission-based users (i.e. people who opt-in to messaging). This provides marketers peace of mind when activating data for marketing purposes, especially as privacy concerns continue to rise. (In other words, it does not share any client data.)

Moreover, the data within the cloud can be combined with your brand’s first-party data to enable a holistic customer view. Additional data may be derived from:

Transactions, interests, and engagement across channels and devices
Structured or unstructured data sources (e.g. CRM and ERP databases, point-of-sale systems, help desk and contact center systems, marketing and advertising software, analytics tools, etc.)

What differentiates the Zeta Data Cloud from other cloud services?

The key differentiator is that our deterministic data set uses AI-powered optimization and closed-loop measurement. We create a flywheel effect by ingesting and processing data to create high-value audience sets that you can engage with. In plain English, the way we capture data ensures constant updating and optimization. The Zeta Data Cloud’s feedback loop ensures marketers like you engage with the right consumer at the most opportune moment.

Using cloud-based data insights in marketing initiatives

While uncovering key data is important, knowing how you use that data to achieve business goals is crucial. The Zeta Data Cloud works in tandem with our Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP) to enable precise segmentation and personalized omnichannel engagement. Activating data insights from the Zeta Data Cloud within the ZMP can activate a range of marketing activities, from customer acquisition to retention to even winning back new customers.

Achieving measurable outcomes with the Zeta Data Cloud

The Zeta Data Cloud arms marketers with the appropriate data insights to help target the right customers at the right times.

Capture intent, build audiences, and assign membership through better data inputs.
Leverage behavioral, transactional, and location data—all deterministically connected to a permissioned user base—through AI-derived insights.
Use personalized 1:1 marketing to increase engagement, brand affinity, customer value, and other positive business outcomes.

Ready to uncover key data insights?

To learn more about our Zeta Data Cloud offering, please contact us here.

9 Ways Marketers Can Increase Ecommerce Customer Retention

Want to learn how to increase ecommerce customer retention? Here are 9 helpful tips every marketer should follow.

December 29, 2020 Monica Daniels

Blog

While acquiring new customers is an important part of any marketer’s ecommerce strategy, retaining those customers is what drives success long-term. (Even a 5% increase in customer retention can grow profit by up to 25%.) But building a strong ecommerce customer retention strategy is challenging. This is especially true in the face of increasing online competition related to the COVID-19 pandemic. With that being said, here are 9 ways marketers can increase ecommerce customer retention.

#1 – Make the checkout process as seamless as possible

A major point of friction in the ecommerce purchase process is the amount of time it takes to checkout. Making it easier (i.e., faster) for first-time customers to complete a purchase can reduce cart abandonment and increase the likelihood of retention.

Make sure your brand offers a guest-checkout feature and links to online payment systems (e.g. PayPal, Google Pay, etc.) so visitors can become customers with the utmost ease. Give people the option to create an account for faster shopping in the future.

Making the checkout process seamless — PayPal and Google Pay options at checkout. Image source: ShipBop

#2 – Implement loyalty and rewards programs

One of the easiest ways to increase ecommerce customer retention is through loyalty and rewards programs. By offering customers “rewards” you’re enticing them to stay loyal to your brand and buy again in the future. 78% of rewards programs succeed in increasing customer retention and 64% succeed in increasing average transaction value.

When it comes to implementing rewards programs for your business, do more than offer “X% off.” Try to surprise and delight customers with your program. Offer specific gifts for reaching certain rewards levels, or run recurring deals like Chipotle’s “Guac Mode” promotion. Distinctive offers will impress new customers, keep old customers, and improve the value of your brand.

GuacMode from Chipoltle — Example of Chipotle’s “Guac Mode” reward. Image source: Hunt, Gather

#3 – Promote customer referral programs

Run referral programs to elevate ecommerce customer retention. In addition to being a great way to attract new buyers, referral programs help brands nurture their existing customer relationships. DTC beauty brand Glossier runs a highly effective referral program—current customers receive a credit for sharing a unique link with first-time customers. It’s a win/win/win for current customers, new customers, and the brand.

#4 – Create value by offering insights and advice

While discounts and rewards are a great way to increase ecommerce customer retention in the short term, they aren’t always great in the long-term. That’s where insights and advice come in. By creating insight-rich content that benefits customers (e.g., “why turmeric is a natural cure-all for arthritis”) your brand can keep luring customers back to your website.

#5 – Keep communication flowing via email

A lack of regular, relationship-building contact is responsible for 67% of lost customers. Use email to stay regularly connected with people who purchase from your brand, and encourage them to buy again. Build an ecommerce engagement cadence to promote to new arrivals, special sales, and exclusive offers only available to email subscribers.

#6 – Be savvy with social media

It’s impossible to increase ecommerce customer retention without a savvy social media campaign. Your brand should organize cross-platform social efforts that either excite or educate your audience at all times to increase loyalty. Leverage Instagram Stories to update people about new products or share thought-leadership content related to your industry. More than anything, remember that social media is best used as a relationship-building platform, not a product-hucking one.

Upwest Holiday Guide — Ecommerce clothing brand UpWest used Instagram Stories to promote holiday content linking to its website.
Image Source: UpWest Instagram

#7 – Provide customer support in a variety of ways

93% of customers are likely to buy again from brands with exceptional customer service. That means your brand needs to make it as easy as possible for customers to “get in touch.” Moreover, your brand needs to respond quickly and effectively to inquiries as they arrive. Social media (e.g. Twitter and Instagram), chat bots, and email should all be a part of your customer support strategy. Offering multiple points of contact makes it easier for customers to ask questions, engage with your brand, and get the help they need.

#8 – Consider offering subscription services

Online shoppers value convenience above all. For that reason, subscription services are a great way to increase ecommerce customer retention. Subscription models work in two ways—as a curated box of various products or as a recurring purchase of a single item. A subscription to Care/Of Vitamins, for example, provides customers personalized vitamin packs that ship automatically each month. It’s a “set it and forget it” approach that your customers will love given the minimal effort required.

Subscription Services to increase ecommerce customer retention — Care/Of Vitamins. Image source: CNET.com

Subscription boxes (e.g. Stitch Fix, Birch Box, etc.), on the other hand, require a little more effort for customers, but they more than make up for that additional effort by the excitement they deliver. How do they keep things interesting for consumers? By regularly introducing shoppers to new, curated products.

#9 – Highlight corporate responsibility initiatives

Here’s something that might surprise you: 63% of customers prefer to purchase from purpose-driven brands. For this reason, it’s important to communicate your brand’s efforts as they relate to sustainability, community engagement, social issues, and more. Consider working with charities and donating a portion of every purchase to a cause you care about. Or dedicating a portion of your website to educating customers on how your products are ethically made (Everlane does a great job of this). Keeping these practices transparent will make customers want to purchase from you time and time again for they know their money is going towards something worthwhile.

Wrapping Things Up

Maintaining happy and loyal customers increases customer lifetime value, which means more for your business than separate purchases made by one-time customers. The number of customers is important, but focusing on ecommerce customer retention can bring you better results (especially as it may cost up to 5 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain one).

Want more ideas on how to increase ecommerce customer retention?

Check out our recent blog which unpacks What Every Marketer Needs to Know About Customer Retention.

4 Ways to Increase eCommerce Conversion Rates This Holiday Season

Zeta Marketing | Need tips to increase ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season? Here are 4 helpful things every marketer should do.

December 11, 2020 Monica Daniels

Blog

Even though holiday shopping looks different this year, as consumers ditch brick-and-mortar for ecommerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people are still buying. Americans spent billions on Black Friday (including $9 billion online), and Cyber Monday was the largest online sales day in U.S. history. To make the most of the few weeks that remain in this distinctly digital holiday season, marketers must do everything in their power to increase ecommerce conversion rates. With that in mind, Zeta is pleased to provide 4 ways to increase ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season.

#1 – Create a Strong Homepage

Your website’s homepage may not be where conversions happen, but they’re a major part of the customer experience. This year, your homepage is as important as any brick-and-mortar location. It must be adorned and decorated for the season. Put any special holiday offers, discounts, or deals above the fold on your homepage to entice visitors to start browsing (and buying) as soon as they arrive.

Additionally, make sure your homepage is optimized to show return visitors products they’ve previously purchased or browsed, as well as popular or trending seasonal products. If you’re not using your existing customer data to highlight a personalized “hero item”, your homepage is effectively incomplete for the holidays.

To increase your ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season, try showing return site visitors some combination of the following:

Items viewed together with
Items bought together with
Items bought after viewing
Most popular (bought/viewed)

#2 – Leverage your mailing list to keep shoppers interested

Regularly engaging consumers via email is another way to increase ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season. Use an incentivized overlay on your homepage (e.g. Join our list and receive 25% off your first order) to encourage site visitors to signup for your mailing list. Once someone joins your list, email them at least twice a week with holiday updates, exclusive offers, gift guides, product recommendations, and more.

Although email marketing isn’t sexy, it’s the best way (return on investment for email can be as much as 42:1) to capture the attention of consumers during this digital holiday season.

#3 – Include category pages that are holiday-specific

When a visitor navigates to a category page on your website, it’s a good sign of intent to purchase. To increase your ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season, you need to add seasonal categories to your website—categories built on curated gift guides and special seasonal promotions. Why is this important? Because it eliminates the need for endless scrolling and aimless shopping. In other words, it makes it as easy as possible for visitors to say YES—yes, I will buy because it’s exactly what I need, it’s special (e.g. on sale), and it’s right in front of me.

Ulta Beauty does a great job of this on their website via an annual “Holiday Beauty Blitz” category—a site category where Ulta can offer special product deals every day during the month of December. It’s an easy way for their brand to drive a spike in ecommerce conversions during the holidays.

#4 – Use shopping cart data to your advantage

Shopping cart information is a great way to drive more ecommerce conversions, especially during the holidays. Once a visitor adds a product to their cart, offer seasonal footer recommendations with “holiday gift essentials” (seasonal products that complement whatever the visitor has already decided to buy). For those shoppers who don’t checkout, rekindle their interest and simultaneously increase ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season by deploying cart abandonment emails. Used properly, cart abandonment emails can deliver as much as a 10% boost to your ecommerce conversion rates.

Want more tips to increase ecommerce conversion rates this holiday season?

Read another article here.

4 Keys to Building a Positive Customer Experience Online for Retailers

Want to learn how to better connect with your customers? Here are 4 helpful tips on building a positive customer experience online.

December 3, 2020 Monica Daniels

Blog Digital Marketing Omnichannel Strategy

Retail moved online in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic (even Black Friday was a largely digital experience). For retail brands, the transition has required restructuring everything from inventory management and order fulfillment, to marketing and advertising strategies (especially as those strategies pertain to mobile where screentime is up 13.9% this year). To help brands better adapt to the loss of large-scale brick-and-mortar retail heading into 2021, here are 4 keys to building a positive customer experience online.

#1 – Project a consistent brand identity online

The consistency of your brand online is critical to the delivery of a great customer experience. Everything from your logo, to your color palettes, to your email templates, to how and when you decide to deploy dark mode needs to be consistent. The more consistent your brand is online, the more recognizable it will be to consumers, and brands that are more recognizable can see a per customer lifetime value that’s 306% higher than the average.

Sephora's Instagram is Building a Positive Customer Experience Online — Sephora Instagram

#2 – Personalize your customer interactions

80% of consumers want personalized retail experiences. To deliver a personalized experience, your brand must be able to analyze a combination of first- and third-party customer data, and activate on the insights obtained in real time for custom product recommendations, uniquely tailored marketing emails, and more.

Prose Custom Haircare does a great job with personalization to enhance the digital customer experience. Using data from past purchases, Prose recommends new products that are relevant to individual shoppers, which makes those shoppers feel like the brand understands their personal wants and needs. The stronger that feeling, the more likely shoppers are to remain loyal to the Prose brand even when aggressively marketed to by competitors.

Building a Positive Customer Experience Online with personalization. — Personalized Prose email

#3 – Pay attention to the customer journey

Journey mapping is a crucial part of building a positive customer experience online. It’s the only way for retailers to understand details such as which channels attract the highest value customers, where customers drop off in the sales process, etc. The insights derived from journey mapping make it easier to create a holistic picture of individual customers (as well as audiences of customers) so you can improve the customer experience across every channel and touchpoint.

A map of how starbucks customer journey looks — Starbucks customer journey

Starbucks, for example, uses journey mapping to understand how their customers interact with the brand (the digital channels most frequently used, order histories, etc.) so their business can be more successful in the future building a positive customer experience online.

#4 – Implement an omnichannel strategy

Building a positive customer experience online requires an omnichannel approach (69% of U.S. consumers spend more with brands that offer a consistent experience across all offline and online channels). Therefore, retailers should implement a closed-loop measurement strategy using industry-leading marketing software to synchronize all customer activity be it online or offline. Doing so will ensure more timely and relevant engagement with customers (i.e. it will stop your brand from serving a product-specific ad to a customer who’s recently purchased that product).

Want more insights into build a positive customer experience online?

If you found the above tips valuable and would like more customer experience insights, read more about How to Enhance the Customer Experience During the Holidays.

How Marketers Can Better Engage Gen Z Using Content

Do you know how to engage Gen Z using content? You should. They’re the most digitally-active generation and they drove a whopping $140+ billion dollars in transactions in 2020.

December 2, 2020 Monica Daniels

Blog

In an era of increased digital consumption, being a marketer means continuously updating your playbook to remain relevant with key audiences. One of the audiences that marketers are increasingly focused on heading into 2021 is Generation Z (those born between the late 1990s and early 2010s). Representing 40% of consumers and spending as much as $143 billion in 2020 alone, Gen Z are a valuable audience marketers can’t afford to ignore. As the first generation entirely born in the Internet-era, Gen Zers consume more digital content per capita than any other marketable generation. Such intense consumption means marketers must be smart in how they engage Gen Z using content.

Be quick to grab attention

Gen Zers know the internet gives them unlimited access to content. That incredible access means they don’t have to waste time with content that doesn’t capture their attention fast. How fast? Well, research shows Gen Zers possess an eight second attention span. To hook attention in under eight seconds, marketers must make use of personalization in their content. Studies show 38% of Gen Zers want to be served content that’s based on browsing history or public preferences. Therefore, to engage Gen Z using content, marketers should use first- and third-party data to create more personalized offerings.

Emphasize visual content

Gen Zers love visuals and video more than anything else. The average Gen Zer watches 68 videos a day and spends the majority of the time on the internet exploring visual-centric platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. To engage Gen Z using content, marketers should replace text-based content (blogs, whitepapers, etc.) with more visually-based content (bite-size videos, GIFs, etc.).

Be a part of something bigger

No generation likes altruistic initiatives like Gen Z. Members of this generation will go out of their way to support brands that take a positive, public stand on key issues like climate change, police brutality, women’s rights, etc. In fact, a recent study shows that 69% of Gen Zers expect brands to make their stances on social and political issues publicly known. As such, marketers trying to engage Gen Z using content should focus more of their campaigns and messaging on issues like sustainability, racial equality, voter suppression, etc.

Communicate with authenticity

Engaging with Gen Z is about more than acknowledging their interests and passions—it’s also about delivering an authentic message (e.g., 82% of Gen Zers say they’re more likely to trust a brand if it uses images of real customers in its advertising). A great example of this can be seen with Aerie’s ongoing #AerieREAL initiative, which strives to promote body positivity and diversity to create a sense of inclusivity.

Experiment with new ideas to engage Gen Z using content

Gen Zers love interactivity and they love the unexpected. Therefore, marketers should experiment with new channels (e.g., TikTok), new messaging (e.g., Doritos recently eliminated its tagline and logo to better appeal to Gen Z), and unconventional modes of engagement.

Want to learn more about what it takes to engage Gen Z using content?

Talk to the marketing experts at Zeta today!

5 Email Marketing Tips for the Holidays

Looking for email marketing tips for the holidays? Here are 5 “must-dos” every email marketer should follow.

November 25, 2020 Monica Daniels

Blog

The 2020 holiday season is here, and the presence of a global pandemic is going to make it the most unique holiday season in recent memory. For B2C marketers, much of the uniqueness is tied to the fact shoppers will be living online this year, instead of pounding the pavement and visiting brick-and-mortar storefronts. So, to help you and your brand better connect with consumers during this decidedly digital shopping period, Zeta would like to present 5 email marketing tips for the holidays.

Use these 5 email marketing tips to stand out in overcrowded inboxes, connect with customers, and convey a healthy dose of holiday cheer in these challenging times.

Create a sense of nostalgia

Consumers want to feel a sense of normalcy this holiday season, and promoting seasonal products from the past is a great way to catch their eye. Moreover, it’s a great way to build rapport and retain customers (especially considering 25% of consumers say personalized campaigns will sway them to make a purchase this season).

Revisit your previous holiday campaigns for insights you can use to make your email marketing that much more effective this season. See which customers opened your emails, shopped with your brand, and who your most loyal patrons were. You can use these and other insights to create segmented audiences that can be targeted with personalized, nostalgia-triggering messaging.

Tap into holiday gift guides

While some holiday shoppers are great at finding the perfect gift for everyone on their list, others need a little push in the right direction. Delivering well-curated gift guides directly to a customers’ inbox helps eliminate the stress of endless searching (and may even help them find something for themselves). Be sure to include ideas from multiple product categories so that there’s something for everyone.

Bring the best prices

Shoppers will be the most price sensitive they’ve been since 2009. That means they’ll be hunting (and hunting hard) for the best deals. As a matter of fact, McKinsey reported that 48% of consumers’ motivation to buy from one retailer over another during the holiday season will be tied to price. To be effective, a promotion must be relevant and useful to the individual shopper, so make sure you segment your email recipients into lookalike audiences, so you can customize the email creative accordingly.

Create a personal connection

To connect with your customers on a personal level, you need to know their likes, dislikes, passions, etc. As long as you’re using the right platform, tapping your customer data to obtain those highly personalized insights should be easy. Ideally, you should use a platform that leverages AI to drive personalized email content to each of your customers—from items previously viewed to items they’ve previously purchased.

Acknowledge the current reality

It’s important to remember that not everyone will be feeling very “merry” this holiday season. The dire circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic (recession, lockdown, illness, etc.) are forcing many people to focus on far more important priorities than “gift shopping.” Therefore, make sure at least a portion of your email messaging acknowledges (in a tasteful way) the current realities people are facing.

Want more email marketing tips for the holidays?

If you found the above tips valuable and would like more email marketing tips for the holidays, read more about our Email Deliverability Best Practices for the 2020 Holiday Season.

The Future of Marketing: Is Addressability Going Away?

October 6, 2020 Mike Rossi

Blog

In recent months, curious marketers have been asking themselves a question: is addressability going away?

At Zeta, we think the answer is pretty clear:

Absolutely not.

Here’s why…

Addressability isn’t under threat—access to it is

In the realm of digital marketing, addressability is a broad term. If a device or channel allows marketers to message (i.e. “address”) the browsers or web-enabled devices of a particular audience (rather than broadcasting to everyone who visits a given website), addressability is in play. Without addressability, marketers (and the brands they represent) would struggle to reach the consumers most likely to engage with their message, adversely impacting both campaign effectiveness and return-on-investment.

Moreover, marketers need addressability to measure the value that’s being generated from their campaigns. Given that it’s impossible to improve that which can’t be measured, the measurement capability afforded to marketers through addressability is critical to marketing success.

Right now, a few major technology players are planning to take steps that will transform the digital marketing universe. These changes—specifically, getting rid of cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs—won’t do away with addressability, they’ll just restrict marketers access to it. If cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs go away, these major players will be the only large-scale providers of addressable digital marketing left standing.

That is why we say addressability itself isn’t under threat, but free market access to it is.

Why aren’t people more concerned about this?

In a word?—Confusion.

People aren’t concerned about the suggested changes to cross-publisher IDs and mobile-advertising IDs because they’re confused about this being a privacy issue.

They assume—incorrectly—that all digital IDs (mobile-ad IDs, cross-publisher IDs, etc.) are known IDs that can be easily associated with someone’s offline identity.

This is not the case.

Most cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs are pseudonymous, meaning they’re kept separate from offline identities and they’re not tied to any real-life names. This makes them different from directly-identifiable IDs which are be linked to an offline identity. Given that most of the risks related to consumer privacy stem from directly-identifiable IDs, leading government regulators—including the authors of GDPR and CCPA—make it clear that pseudonymous mobile-ad IDs or cross-publisher IDs aren’t a major issue.

Follow the money

The people pushing for the retirement of mobile-ad IDs and cross-publisher IDs are trying to frame this as a “privacy” issue. But the idea that cross-publisher and mobile-ad IDs need to go away to “protect consumer privacy” is a false narrative. IDs and addressability will continue to be available, but they’ll only be available within the “walled gardens” of a few major tech companies. The very few privacy risks associated with IDs and addressability that currently exist, will continue to exist within these “walled gardens.”

The push to eliminate cross-publisher and mobile-ad IDs is an initiative rooted in creating better profits, not better privacy. To put this in perspective, look at addressability through the lens of basketball…

The elimination of cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs won’t change the sport itself—the size of the ball, the point value of a basket, and the height of the hoop will stay the same.

However, their elimination will change where the game is played and (most importantly) who can play.

Right now, the game is held on an open court, where all teams are welcome to come and play whenever they want.

But if mobile-ad IDs and cross-publisher IDs go away? Well, the game will move into a private court where only a select few can play.

Why it all matters

The future of addressability matters because it is the backbone of a free and open internet—it pays the proverbial bills of the web. If tools like cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs go away, so too will the diverse array of content that makes the internet THE INTERNET. These proposed changes will stifle creativity, hurt freedom of expression, and make it harder for end-users to get the information they need (from breaking news, to medical advice, to Almond-free biscotti recipes). To ensure the internet continues to thrive and exist in its current format, responsible addressable advertising powered by digital IDs is non-negotiable.

So, what’s next?

Addressability isn’t going away, but its future remains uncertain.

While the largest, vertically-integrated platforms strive to create rules that will do away with pseudonymous cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs, other industry authorities are trying to keep the playing field open and accessible to all.

As far as Zeta is concerned, we believe the responsible use of cross-publisher IDs, mobile-ad IDs, and other pseudonymous IDs is essential to the preservation of a free and open Internet. Therefore, we encourage digital marketers to stand-up and take action. We encourage you to contact the W3C and other digital thought leaders to express your concern about the ramifications of eliminating cross-publisher IDs and mobile-ad IDs.

How to Create Innovative Customer Experiences with Zeta Channel Manager

Mike Rossi

Blog

Consumers own more cutting-edge technology than ever before, with households possessing an average of 10 internet-connected devices (smart speakers, smart TVs, laptops, etc.).

The challenge is that these technologies don’t all interconnect.

This limitation forces digital marketers to use an average of 91 different tools in a vain attempt to engage consumers across every channel and provide real-time personalization along the way. The results of this are, unfortunately, painful for both the consumer and the marketer:

Consumers see disconnected or irrelevant messaging across multiple channels.
Marketers know their current approach fails to deliver a relevant, congruent customer experience across all channels, but they lack a better solution.

Put another way:

Customers want exposure to relevant, sequential messaging that’s based on their lifecycle with a given brand across every channel.
Marketers want to deliver such an experience—but know that doing so is only possible through a unified decision engine that connects all touchpoints.

To alleviate the pain of both the consumer and the marketer, Zeta is proud to introduce Channel Manager.

Unrivaled in its speed and agility, Zeta Channel Manager enables marketers to integrate, manage, and measure any marketing channel (email, direct mail, social, etc.), so they can deploy improved omnichannel experiences from a single interface—no complex integrations required.

Once live, marketers can access a real-time performance analysis on each and every customer touchpoint. Marketers can also adjust messaging dynamically to scale successful campaigns in seconds, ensuring all disparate tools, data, and channels are used in the most efficient way.

By leveraging the Zeta Channel Manager, you and your marketing team can create seamless omnichannel engagement, and finally give consumers the experience they’ve been looking for.

August Release Radar

Welcome to a new installment of Zeta Release Radar, a communication series designed to help you elevate your customer experience with innovative new features in the Zeta Marketing Platform!

August 30, 2020 Zeta Global

Product Updates

In this release, we’re excited to launch a range of new insights tools powered by the Zeta Data Cloud, the ability to connect to any engagement channel with the all-new Channel Manager, major usability enhancements for Audience Explorer, email validation and more.

Opportunities

New Opportunity Calendar

Make your campaigns more timely with the all-new Opportunity Calendar, which shows addressable audiences and opportunities based on upcoming events relevant to your brand!

New Vertical Insights

Discover new vertical insights in Consumer Banking, Dining, and Entertainment. The New Mover Index unlocks new revenue opportunities based on location and transaction patterns of consumers that have recently moved or are planning to move.

Visitation Trends

Identify revenue opportunities in Designated Marketing Areas (DMA) based on real-time traffic to competitor brands and other location visits.

Online Trends

Create more engaging messaging by incorporating Online Trends that track customer and prospect interests in real-time.

Key Opportunity Summary

Save time with the new Key Opportunity Summary, which shows your top actionable opportunities available now.

Experiences

Create Innovative Customer Experiences with the all-new Channel Manager

Channel Manager is a powerful new interface that lets you add any external engagement channel to the Zeta Marketing Platform. Add new channels in minutes for instant use in the Experience Builder to seamlessly create, deploy, and optimize your omnichannel customer experiences across all of your marketing technology.

To learn more about how to leverage the Channel Manager, check out the video here, and reach out to a team member to get started!

Drive Stronger Customer Connections with Two-Way SMS Messaging

New Two-Way SMS capabilities allow you to automate real-time customer conversations in the Zeta Marketing Platform, including quick-response surveys, mobile opt-in workflows, appointment confirmations, and more!

Validating your Email Content has Never Been Easier!

Reduce the risk of email content and template errors with new content validation controls. Preview and send test messages to multiple recipients in a single step. Add subject line prefixes, curate custom mailing lists, and properties for testing dynamic creatives.

New APIs for Better Customer Service

Two new APIs will help you solve a common Customer Service issue. When a customer has not received a particular email, Customer Service can now easily see what messages customers previously received, preview an email message, and re-send an email to any email address with a lookback window of up to six months.

Audiences

Maximize Audience Targeting with your First-Party Data

New Audience Explorer enhancements will supercharge your ability to discover, explore, and segment Zeta audiences with your first-party data overlay. Combine the power of your own customer data with Zeta Data Cloud attributes to create enriched audiences for better targeting.

Easier Segmentation in Audience Explorer

We have simplified the Audience Explorer navigation to make it easier to find and activate your enriched customer lists and lookalikes. Clearer filtering, new suggestive search criteria, and bulk include/exclude capabilities allow for real-time counts and discovery through an intuitive, drop-down navigation.

We encourage you to try these new features and look forward to hearing your feedback! As always, if you have questions about any functionality, please contact your Zeta Account Team.