The Transactional Co-Op: Targeting Valuable Customers at the Right Time

The data influx also creates a unique opportunity to close the gap between online and offline initiatives. Time spent with digital marketing campaigns is up, but offline efforts like direct mail and telemarketing are still large contributors to sales. In fact, a recent Epsilon Targeting study of nearly 5,000 North Americans found that 50 percent actually prefer direct mail to email. The study suggests that brands should begin with trusted, traditional channels, subsequently "layering the message to re-enforce it through other channels." MarketingSherpa data reinforces this concept, finding that 79 percent of B-to-B companies still find direct mail effective.

The speed of data is increasing every day, creating opportunities as well as challenges. Marketers must find a great data partner to refine marketing efforts and integrate offline and online campaigns for maximum impact on high-quality prospects. When data is put to its ideal use, marketing channels work together creating a powerful blend of targeting, lead generation and sales.

The Benefits of an Optimized Transactional Co-Op Environment
Though not all data is created equal, transactional data helps get you to the right customer at the right time. Customer data is a powerful card for a marketer to hold. Finding out who customers are and what their preferences are gives a view into how to best market to them in the future. Transactional data also helps marketers find similar prospects and provides insightful buying behavior and purchase history, as well as an understanding into customer preferences.

By taking advantage of a transactional co-op database, marketers can get even deeper information on current and future customers, as well as future motivation. The transactional co-op environment brings in a larger pool of online and offline information, allowing marketers to look at larger spending trends, ultimately increasing the effectiveness of their current data. Transactional data is predictive in nature. Past purchase history gives marketers a clear window into what prospects will find relevant in the future, what motivates prospects to become customers and what leads customers to make future purchases.

An optimized transactional co-op solution also provides access to a developed prospecting environment. Information can be tailored to individual business needs while still maintaining the benefits of a full database. This also means there's a large number of variables to use for modeling. After all, the more data that goes into the model, the more powerful the model becomes in its focus and impact. A developed prospecting environment allows marketers to identify a larger number of sites as well, making use of contacts within sites.

Timing and personalization are crucial factors to maximize sales from the modern consumer. A powerful model can incorporate both of these, tailoring communications across multiple channels. An optimized transactional co-op environment allows for enhanced timing and personalization in email, direct mail and remarketing, all based on what led to purchases in the past.

One Solution, Multiple Problems Solved
Transactional co-ops solve efficiency problems on multiple levels, enhancing the entire marketing apparatus. Email can be used for grasping and testing as well as lead generation. A personalized URL inserted into each email allows for monitoring of digital behavior and patterns to optimize the email channel's timing and personalization efforts. Capturing cookies gives even further marketing opportunities through remarketing banner ads that run personalized marketing copy based on past browsing history. By creating more brand impressions and a call to action in further web interactions, remarketing finds prospects at a time when purchasing is top of mind.

Online data can also be used to retarget offline marketing efforts like direct mail. Transactional data and online behavioral patterns give marketers excellent opportunities to tailor direct mail to the best prospects via an integrated approach. This not only minimizes wasted direct mail spend for low-quality prospects, but also increases the effectiveness for high-value prospects.