Today’s marketer has a growing number of channels they can use to communicate with their consumer but, unfortunately, we all know that more choice doesn’t necessarily lead to an easier decision making process.
The aim of omnichannel marketing is about immersing the consumer into the brand, across all channels and ideally, the customer experience should be seamless.
While this sounds quite straightforward, it’s actually still one of the biggest challenges for marketers as we move into 2016. In fact, recent research by Adobe reveals that only 35% of marketers could track customers across different devices.
Brands and agencies usually engage technology providers to work out which different screens, from tablets and laptops to mobile and desktop, have been used by the same person.
This then creates a holistic view of the user as they move across these devices. Single-device marketing on the other hand, often treats individual consumers as three or four distinct people — one person for each new device used. The downside of such device data silos includes wasted media spend, incomplete performance measurements and inconsistent messaging.
So why should marketers really care about reaching the cross-device consumer?
Increased reach
Cross-device marketing allows marketers to increase their audience scale beyond cookie IDs to a range of screens. With their reach now boosted, brands can streamline their messaging and advertisers can connect with users through other ID types such as device IDs and household IDs that have been mapped back to the original cookie ID.
In fact, this marketing technology places the mobile-first consumer reliably within reach of advertisers for the first time in history. Hallelujah!
More relevant messaging
By leveraging cross-device targeting, advertisers can take messaging one step further by tailoring creative messaging to specific screens. An advertiser can deliver an initial brand awareness message to a consumer’s laptop, and then deliver an in-store coupon to the same person’s mobile phone.
Visibility into the consumer journey
With cross-device technology marketers also gain increased visibility across the entire consumer journey. This helps marketers understand how ads are influencing purchases on different screens.
Information which can then be used to influence future budgeting and messaging decisions.
True reach and frequency management
Improved targeting ultimately enhances brand-consumer interactions by ensuring consistency of voice and avoiding over delivery and over-saturation of a brand’s message. In other words, the consumer isn’t served the same ad countless times.
The value of touchpoints
The good news is cross-device technology can help marketers better understand which devices drive the best performance at each stage of the marketing process. According to Forrester Research, customer identification is a cornerstone for advanced media measurement.
With the help of cross-device identification, marketers will be able to evaluate the impact that specific devices and touchpoints have on purchase behaviour. Marketers can finally understand the volume and velocity of high-value behaviours across devices in order to make smarter marketing decisions.
Currently an increasing number of additional devices are entering the mix such as outdoor and TV, that can also be bought programmatically. By fully understanding how they can leverage cross-device technology, marketers will be better equipped to future proof their strategy.
