Exact Media has announced the launch of its Smart Sampling Network. The company plans to use the service, which makes use of advanced targeting to pair brands with optimal retailers, to revitalize product sampling and reintroduce sampling as a viable marketing channel.
“We’re seeing marketers in every discipline move away from generic campaigns more toward targeted, measurable activities like adwords, and no one was doing that for sampling,” Exact Media cofounder Ray Cao said in a statement.
The Smart Sampling Network is designed to allow brands to target mailings of samples based on customer data such as clothing size, gender, products being purchased, or shopping cart size. The Network also uses a rate card model and selects brands based on target’s location, age, and shopping habits. Exact Media arranges shipment of brands’ samples to retailers, and trains retailers’ logistics teams to ensure samples are distributed properly.
The Smart Sampling Network entered closed beta during mid-2013. The service has doubled its client base each month since; clients include brands such as Unilever and Proctor & Gamble, and retailers such as Gilt and Coastal.com, according to the release.
“Our feeling is that any form of immeasurable marketing will be extinct within a couple of years. If it can’t be measured, it shouldn’t be done,” says Daniel Rodic, cofounder of Exact Media. “This is a new category people aren’t talking about yet, just like they weren’t talking about Facebook or Google ads. They’ll be talking soon.”
