“For years the technology itself was driving [marketing technology] purchase decisions,” says Matt Seeley, president, Experian Marketing Services. “Now we’re seeing more customers who understand the value of data. As a result, data capabilities are leading more and more purchase decisions now.”
That focus on customer data is one of the drivers behind enhancements to the Experian Marketing Suite, announced during the company’s 2015 Client Summit. Those upgrades include addressable advertising and predictive intelligence tools, both of which are powered by Experian’s consumer database of more than 700 million individuals in 270 million households. The tools are designed to help marketers identify and interact with their customers across channels and devices.
“Customers want to be treated as one person no matter how many social profiles they have or devices they use,” said David Evans, senior director of solutions engineering at Experian Marketing Services, during the summit’s opening keynote.
To address cross-channel audience activation, Experian’s new offering is designed to help marketers execute one-to-one campaigns across digital and traditional channels. The addressable advertising functionality is designed to enable marketers to select the best audience for a specific campaign based on first-party CRM data, Experian’s data, or both. The tool also provides data on which customers saw an ad, whether they saw it more than once, and if it influenced their in-store or online activities.
In terms of real-time, predictive intelligence, the new functionality in the Experian Marketing Suite integrates real-time identity and intelligence data. This is designed to provide marketers with predictive insights that help them optimize campaign performance. For example, marketers can test email subject lines, send times, and channels across customer segments, and then use that data to predict the performance of future multichannel campaigns. These predictive insights, in combination with customer data, allow marketers to see how content performs with specific audience segments, and as a result identify what drives customers to take specific actions.
Using Experian’s new tools to get a holistic view into their first-party and Experian’s third-party data, Seeley said, marketers have an opportunity to create a rich understanding of their customers—and then take decisive action based on that insight.
