Find Your Ideal Customers with Our Taxonomy Explorer Tool on bdex.com

Find Your Ideal Customers with Our Taxonomy Explorer Tool
October 24, 2018| | in category analysis methods, bdex, Big Data, business, Data Exchange Platform, Data Industry News, digital marketing, Direct mail, Email Marketing, General, in-market data, Internet of Things, Real Time Data, Thick Data, Third party Data, Web Design, website re-targeting Comments Off on Find Your Ideal Customers with Our Taxonomy Explorer Tool

See how quickly you’ll be able to gain valuable insight

These days, it’s impossible to talk about marketing without mentioning data. We now live in a world where almost everybody has information somewhere online, and smart organizations know that most of it is readily accessible.

It used to be difficult for businesses to gather detailed data on their customers, but that’s no longer the case. In fact, one of the biggest issues now is the opposite: there’s just too much of it. You can easily collect pages and pages of demographics, past behaviors, and numbers, but then there’s the matter of wading through everything in order to find the stuff that’s relevant to your business. And when you do find what could be useful, it may be outdated, incomplete, or too vague.

The key to using data effectively is specificity.

It’s not enough anymore to get a general idea of the wants and needs of your customers; painting them with a broad brush won’t give you the results you are looking for. But knowing what individual people are interested in buying can immediately give you the most fruitful leads, and this is where our Taxonomy Explorer tool can be a huge asset.

How the Taxonomy Explorer tool works

At BDEX, we have more than 900 billion data points businesses can use. While that’s certainly a lot of data to sift through, our Taxonomy Explorer tool makes it simple to find detailed and pertinent information. This allows you to locate your ideal customers while saving time and money.

Unique users

The first thing to think about when utilizing the Taxonomy Explorer is what type of unique users you’re looking for. You can search for people through email, mobile devices, browser cookies, and postal addresses. You can choose one, all, or a combination.

Industry

The next step is selecting an industry. We have more than 300 industries to pick from, and you can also put in a search term to narrow down the results. For example, let’s say that your business involves something related to kitchens. Choosing Home/Kitchen from the list – with every user category selected – brings up a total dataset class of over 74,000.

Digging a little deeper

Okay, so now you’ve got 74,000+ possible people to target, so you’ll want to whittle this number down to find your ideal customers. Just keeping the Email box checked immediately cuts the list to about 17,000. If you’re interested in using direct mail for marketing purposes, you’ll see that around 10,000 of these consumers have postal addresses you’ll be able to get. For strictly mobile purposes – both AAID and IDFA – that number goes back up to just over 39,000.

See what your customers are up to in real-time

One of the biggest benefits of this targeting is that you can learn about individual search and buying habits as they are happening. For example, if certain individuals buy a cookbook online, you will know about it immediately. And, if you sell cookware, you can right away serve them an ad or send a promotion for your products. Real-time targeting will get you on someone’s radar exactly when they’re in the buying mood.

Find customers wherever they are

In addition, through cross-device matching, you can keep tabs on buyer behavior across all of their devices, including computers, tablets, and phones. This also includes other avenues, such as browser cookies, email address, and postal address. No matter what they’re doing or where they are, you will be able to find people who are most interested in what you’re selling.

Take our Taxonomy Explorer tool for a test drive

Whatever industry your business is in, our database is almost certainly full of people who would make great customers. Test it out here, and for more information, please contact us.

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Better Sources Mean Better Marketing Data on bdex.com

Better Sources Mean Better Marketing Data
September 26, 2018| | in category Analytics, bdex, Big Data, business, Data Exchange Platform, Data Industry News, digital marketing, Direct mail, direct mail targeting, First Party Data, location-based data, Mobile Marketing, Real Time Data, sell data, Thick Data, Third party Data, Web Design Comments Off on Better Sources Mean Better Marketing Data

Making sure you get the best data

Finding a company to provide data services has never been easier. There are dozens of them, all just waiting to provide you with consumer data. Neustar, Acxiom, Infogroup, etc. But some of these companies try very hard to sell customers data that they don’t want, that they don’t need, and they can’t even use.

“Philip” runs a computer shop in Pennsylvania. He is trying to get a bit more foot traffic into his brick-and-mortar store, so he decides to send out some direct mail, or perhaps try to target some online advertising. In order to do that, he contacts a company that provides consumer data, so that he knows whom he is advertising too.

Unfortunately for Philip, the company he chose lumps data together that he doesn’t necessarily need. Now he has to sieve through a wide range of data about consumers just to find consumer data from the zip codes he cares about and the type of people he cares about. Further, that data probably doesn’t have actionable insights that indicate a prospect is actively looking for computers or related products – meaning they may not even be a prospect at all. And now he has a lot of useless data and doesn’t even know it until he uses it and gets no response – and this is data he spent his hard-earned money on.

The company he bought it from, of course, does not care. They wish to sell as much data as possible, regardless of the custom, personal experience they might be able to provide. And why should they bother providing such an experience? After all, they own more data than they know what to do with and have incentives to sell as much of it as possible.

Luckily, an alternative exists in the form of BDEX. BDEX specializes in providing a subscription model for data collection, allowing customers to buy only the data they want and need and none that they don’t. Philip can purchase data about consumers in Philadelphia that are looking for his products without having the hassle of sifting through information he doesn’t need. More than that, he’s getting more than just the data he would have with a single company. He’s getting access to the data available from many, many companies and sources.

This is because BDEX is partnered with about fifty major data providers, including Neustar, Acxiom, and InfoGroup. Customers using BDEX’s subscription plan get access to all the data these companies have licensed it to use. That means that subscribed customers get access to many of these companies’ benefits without having to build a relationship with them, and without paying for unwanted data – making their purchase truly customizable.

This access allows BDEX to aggregate data from discrete sources, filter them, and organize them in ways meaningful for the client. Ultimately, this piles up to 900 million mobile devices, 1.3 billion email addresses, and 220 million U.S. postal addresses, all part of the vast network providing data. This data is provided via purchase history, mobile apps, websites, supermarket clubs, geofencing, credit card providers, and more. Of course, not every customer needs to use all of this data. They can pick and choose what they want to receive in their subscription.

These fifty major data providers allow BDEX access to data of varying kinds. The core data comes in the form of consumer behavioral data, geofencing, audience intent, and demographic personal data. All of this is mined from sources like those mentioned previously and can be used in all sorts of marketing. These myriad sources provide a diverse quality and quantity of consumer data, ensuring that there is something valuable in it for any business. This turns BDEX into a marketplace where the best data can be selected and purchased.

This diversity of sources also gives a company an advantage against their competition. If every company in the area is using the same source of data, they will all be advertising to the same consumers. However, companies with access to more varied data, from more varied sources – along with actionable, real-time behavioral data that indicates a prospect is ready to buy – can both narrow things down to an efficient list and often target consumers whom others do not have access to.

All of this is readily available in a simple subscription model, without the need to interact with third parties or go through the hassle of sorting through unwanted data – saving you time and money, and vastly boosting the impact of your marketing efforts.

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Taking Control of Your Data on bdex.com

Taking Control of Your Data
September 12, 2018| | in category analysis methods, Analytics, bdex, Big Data, Data Exchange Platform, Data Industry News, data management platform, data marketplace, Direct mail, direct mail targeting, Email Marketing, First Party Data, in-market data, Internet of Things, IT, Mobile Marketing, Real Time Data, sell data, Thick Data, Third party Data Comments Off on Taking Control of Your Data

How BDEX’s Platform as a Service helps you easily monetize your customer data

Managing data can be complex. If you are trying to monetize data you’ve gathered, or just keep it organized when it comes in from discrete sources, it can take hours of work just to synthesize it in a usable and meaningful way. And even then, every bit of it has to be tailored to suit the formats of the various platforms on which data can be monetized.

Data is a major business and an extremely valuable commodity that some are willing to pay good money for. So, when companies collect data and lack a way to properly monetize it, they are basically sitting on a deposit of gold with no equipment to mine it.

For example, a food delivery service could collect a good deal of information about their customers: spending habits, location, and the best contact methods. Unless that business is monetizing its data, however, it is not properly leveraging a potential revenue stream.

Unfortunately, many companies do not have the internal infrastructure needed to organize and monetize their data. It can be a challenge to track information, gather it from across networks and services, make it uniform if derived from different systems, and then present it in a way that can earn revenue. In fact, data is often only used profitably by many companies through their own marketing efforts or to enhance products and services, as selling to other companies can be somewhat complex.

You need a platform to organize and monetize your data

One way to meet this need is through the creation of a unique platform for data monetization. Companies gathering large amounts of data can hire developers to build a platform capable of sustaining the kind of data collection they want, one that then formats and sorts it for monetization. Unfortunately, as they gather more data, the platform necessarily becomes larger and more robust, requiring more effort and tools to maintain it. The data must also be tailored to the individual platforms that purchase it. This can get rather expensive.

This is where BDEX’s platform for data collecting and monetization comes in. Our Platform as a Service (PaaS), available to companies of all sizes and specialties, is built around managing data in such a way that marketing, as well as monetization, become easier and more efficient. Rather than trying to design an in-house solution that deals with the various formats and qualities of data (taken indirectly and/or and from third parties), BDEX is able to synthesize this data into an easy-to-use format.

To monetize data, it is typically sold to common third-party data buyers. Each of these entities requires customers to organize it and format it in a certain way. Data sellers must conform to each distinct set of parameters, including how often you can update the data and how it looks.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) simplifies this process. It already has all the functionality one could want in a platform that is custom-designed to monetize data. It can capture information in real time, manage that data in an efficient and organized way, and even transmit it to third parties – preformatted for specific data buyers. It interfaces with all kinds of data collection and purchasing systems, including those set up for mobile devices. All of the data you collect is entered automatically into the system and can be quickly plugged into external systems such as LiveRamp.

One of its features is its ability to authenticate duplicated data. If data is collected for the same user more than once on different sources, those occurrences will be used to verify the information and then gathered into a single identity to avoid unnecessary redundancy.

This system allows companies to take complete control of their data, keeping it organized and monetized as a way to gain passive revenue. No programmers or database developers required.

Like most BDEX services, this is a subscription model available to all sorts of companies for a monthly fee. To learn more, contact us.

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If You Market (Well) They Will Come on bdex.com

If You Market (Well) They Will Come
August 29, 2018| | in category analysis methods, bdex, Big Data, Data Exchange Platform, Data Industry News, digital marketing, Email Marketing, email retargeting, Real Time Data, Thick Data, Third party Data, Web Design, Web Hosting, website re-targeting Comments Off on If You Market (Well) They Will Come

The basics of successful marketing campaign management

Developing a marketing campaign for your product or service is one of the most important aspects of business success. And without a detailed plan, you’ll never reach your potential customers. You also have to know how to manage a marketing campaign once it’s launched, including measuring the effectiveness of the different executions, whether they’re in the form of direct mailers, digital ads, an email campaign, or other components.

We’ve put together some campaign management basics to follow, including the use of a customized BDEX data list of potential targets that are actively looking to buy your product or service – whether that’s pet supplies, household appliances, groceries, or a new computer.

Start with your data

Third-party data is going to give you vital information about your target audience; the people who are most likely to buy your product or service. The right data shows insightful characteristics and buying history to reveal patterns that enable you to specifically reach out to potential customers.

Adobe puts it this way: “If you are a marketer and you want to talk with your customers, then you have to first know and understand them … The more data you acquire, the better you will know your customers, which is a critical first step toward successful campaign management.”

The more specific you can get about your target audience the better. It’s fine to know you want to target women, but it’s better to know you want to target married working mothers who live in a particular part of the city or single men who enjoy outdoor adventures such as hiking, kayaking or mountain climbing. These elements are known as demographic, historical, and/or predictive data.

Even better and more specific is real-time behavioral data. BDEX’s actionable data allows you to narrow down the list to individuals who are specifically looking for certain items or services …

Data that tracks real-time online activity

One of the best ways to define your target audience is with data that tracks recent online activity, including purchases, online searches, and more. BDEX collects real-time data based on actual behaviors of potential customers. The data can tell you that people have been on a travel site, bought or shopped for concert tickets, browsed makeup, and more. Our data also tracks when someone has visited a physical store using the technology called geofencing, as well as collects information from POS (point of sale) systems at brick and mortar stores.

Managing data

Compiling data based on information you have collected about your customers or buying a data list from an outside company is not enough. You must also manage your list. In many cases, a marketing firm or company will have a massive amount of data that is being used by different departments and in different formats and systems, which makes it harder to analyze and interpret the information. You’ll need to have an adequate infrastructure in place to manage your data list to ensure accurate information.

Developing content to reach your target audience

Knowing who your customers are is only the first part of managing a campaign. You’ll need to develop the right content in order to speak to your audience. As they say, content is king. And the way you approach your target audience is crucial for a successful campaign. The keys to success are to make content that is attractive (gets noticed and read, watched, or seen), valuable to the individual and provides a clear and compelling proposition.

Determine the best execution for your campaign

This is where you will develop your specific plan to bring your marketing campaign to life. You have to decide the best media to use, which should be easier once you understand your target audience. Remember, if you use real-time behavioral data, you already know that your target has been actively searching for your product online or they’ve visited a store that sells a similar product.

The media you choose will be dictated by the prospect’s habits, demographics, and the devices they use. For instance, you would probably choose different media to target teenagers or millennials than you would if you want your message to reach senior citizens. The use of specific media can also be tracked by the data; you’ll know which devices they tend to use, as well as which media generates specific responses when later analyzing the impact of the campaign.

Common vehicles include:

  • Inbound website
  • Direct mail
  • Email marketing
  • Mobile marketing (SMS/text)
  • Social media (passive and paid campaigns that boost posts)
  • Online display advertising
  • Print display advertising
  • Broadcast (TV/radio/streaming)

Of the above vehicles, certain ones are more amenable to target marketing than others. Generally, they are those that involve an outbound message to a specific person (direct mail, email, mobile text), though online display ads and social media can also be highly targeted to individuals based on data, as can tailoring what is shown on your website for certain categories of inbound web traffic.

You’ll also decide how much you want to spend for each medium, which again is going to be dictated by the characteristics and habits of your target audience, as well as the measurable ROI of each. If you know your customers get most of their information via their smartphones rather than a direct mail piece than you would probably earmark more money for mobile advertising.

To clearly measure impact, you must either tie a campaign to a very specific offer or have a CRM system that tracks they customer’s journey from the first contact to eventual sale. Speaking of which …

Track the results of your campaign

Finally, you’ll want to develop a plan for how you will track the results of the campaign as well the return on investment (ROI) for each medium.

Analyzing the results will help you:

  • Understand which elements of the campaign worked and which ones didn’t (creative, message, and targeting)
  • Learn how your target audience responded to your campaign
  • Reveal if your campaign accomplished the goals and objectives that were in place
  • Gain valuable information for future campaigns
  • Establish a baseline ROI

One last note: privacy and managing customer data

One thing to always keep in mind is the privacy of customer and prospect data. In many cases, you can’t send emails or text messages unless existing customers have chosen (opted in) to receive messages from you. In some cases, it can even be against the law.

For instance, the European Union recently enacted GDPR, which is meant to protect the privacy information of consumers. There are explicit rules in place regarding how data can be used and how and when to contact customers with marketing messages. It’s important to note that certain media, such a direct mail, and social media advertising, don’t require opt-ins or permission – while others, such as text messages, unsolicited phone calls to non-customers, and email, do.

An effective marketing campaign requires a plan and data that provides the most accurate information about potential customers. BDEX can help with the latter by providing real-time data via over 700 million device ID connections and more than 900 billion data signals available through our proprietary Data Exchange Platform.

Call us at 917-410-6616 or send an email to info@bdex.com to start putting this information to work for your business.

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The Elements of Effective Targeted Marketing, Part 1 on bigdataexchange.com

The Elements of Effective Targeted Marketing, Part 1
July 18, 2018| | in category audience groups, Big Data, business, Data Industry News, digital marketing, Direct mail, direct mail targeting, Email Marketing, email retargeting, Mobile Marketing, Real Time Data, Third party Data, Web Hosting, website re-targeting Comments Off on The Elements of Effective Targeted Marketing, Part 1

Identifying your ideal customer

The first, essential element of any targeted marketing strategy is identifying the ideal customer for your product or service. Actually, this is crucial for anyone who wants to build a successful business.

And it applies no matter what you’re selling; whether it’s a car, a washing machine, diapers, or legal services. Any successful strategy relies on having a basic understanding of the specific target market.

How to identify your target audience

1. Compile the demographics and habits of your ideal customer

Start to identify your target audience by thinking about the characteristics and behaviors that make a person your ideal customer.

These demographic and psychographic factors include:

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Cultural heritage
  • Geography
  • Occupation
  • Marital status
  • Income
  • Lifestyle
  • Type of residence
  • Education level
  • Interests
  • Common problems

To summarize the findings, think in terms of one to a few people who represent your customer base, and then build an ideal customer avatar for each one.

For example, a 35-year-old married woman with two children and a full-time job. You must also try to detail what kind of residence she lives in and where its located, as well as her interests and common problems, such as being too busy to … [insert pain point]. The more specific you can get, the better.

These avatars will be influenced by …

2. Studying your existing customers and accessing third-party research

If you have an established business, you’ll want to study your existing customers. Who is buying or ordering your product? Is it single men, married women, Millennials, Baby Boomers, outdoor enthusiasts?

Look at which of your products have the best sales record and think about why they do better than others, and with whom. Understanding the buying habits of your customers helps you determine the best way to reach them and with what message. There are of course differences between the demographics and psychographics of someone looking to buy a minivan versus a BMW, for example.

In addition to your own, highly-valuable experience with current customers, there are third-party research services that can add layers of contextual demographic and psychographic information tailored to your industry, products or services, and geographic area.

3. Conduct a competitive analysis

You should also do a competitive analysis by looking at similar businesses in your area (or your industry). For example, a dealership that sells Hondas would research what competing dealerships are doing, in terms of pricing and deals, as well as other marketing specifics. Who are your competitors targeting in their marketing? What kind of marketing vehicles are they using?

You’ve defined your ideal customer and the media and products/services they use. What’s next?

Studying what you believe to be your ideal customer won’t tell you the full story. If you own a car dealership, simply advertising to everyone who falls under the basic profile of a car buyer won’t be very effective.

That’s still a pretty wide group. Not everyone in that demographic is actually looking to buy a car right now, and you’ll end up wasting vast resources marketing to people who aren’t even thinking about a purchase.

As we discuss in the next installment of this series, the basic profile of an ideal customer interface with both predictive analytics and the latest actionable, real-time data that pinpoint individuals who are actually ready to buy.

Click here to read part two.

BDEX features the first-ever Data Exchange Platform (DXP). The BDEX DXP and DAAS platforms enable companies to acquire impartial, quality-scored, third-party data reaching the right people at the right time like never before. We offer cross-device matching, auto dealership services, DAAS, real-time targeting, and custom segment building that is ideal for any industry, including auto dealers, retailers, brands, agencies, out-of-home, and franchises. Contact us today to get your customized marketing data.

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Is That Data You’re Buying Any Good? on bigdataexchange.com

Is That Data You’re Buying Any Good?
July 3, 2018| | in category analysis methods, Big Data, business, buy data, Data Exchange Platform, Data Industry News, data management platform, digital marketing, First Party Data, Real Time Data, sell data, Third party Data Comments Off on Is That Data You’re Buying Any Good?

3 big problems with common, overused data resources

The sale of data is big business. Data is of course used by businesses to target consumers who are likely to be interested in their products. Media companies use this same information to sell advertising packages for everything from TV and radio spots to direct mail services and digital ads on websites. And many organizations use data to inform market research that drives strategic decisions.

Unfortunately, there are three big problems with much of the stuff that is being sold and used: data that is too vague, massive overuse of the same third-party data, and flat-out incorrect information.

Problem #1 – Data that is too broad

The data that is being sold by most companies tends to be very broad and much of its use is based on predictive analysis rather than solid information. For instance, the predictive analysis projects that 10 million people might be looking to buy a new car, based on third-party data that shows these individuals are about to pay off their car loan. However, statistics might indicate that only about 1 million of those people will be actively looking to purchase a new car.

Marketers who rely on traditional data and predictive analytics are forced to market to all 10 million – wasting nine out of every 10 ad dollars on people who will never turn into customers. The numbers get even worse, of course, when factoring in the different response rates for different marketing vehicles.

And certain marketing firms looking to sell a business a direct mail campaign or an online ad buy, for examples, aren’t always interested in having a client reaching an exactly relevant audience. It’s in their best interest for the marketing vehicle to work, of course – but it’s also in some of their interest to upsell campaigns to 10 or 20 or 30 million potential targets, necessitating more impressions or pieces of mail.

Problem #2 – Massive overuse of third-party data

Another common problem is third-party data overuse. Basically, everyone is using the same playbook. Or the same databases, in this case.

If football teams followed this strategy, games would be a lot less competitive. The problem with overuse is that most platforms sell much of the same info to everyone, and the information they do sell is not very narrowly targeted. This doesn’t provide much of a competitive edge, in addition to the inefficiencies involved.

Problem #3 – Incorrect data

If you buy data from a company, you probably assume the information is correct. In many cases, this assumption is wrong. There are often mistakes in lists. The data could identify a consumer as a 35-year-old male when that person is actually a 35-year-old female. An individual could have moved from a previous address four years ago, but if the data is not sufficiently cross-referenced with other sources to verify it is current, more marketing dollars are wasted.

It’s crucial to authenticate data, and not all platforms have the capacity to do this effectively – either because they don’t have the right algorithms or they don’t have access to a wide enough range of sources.

How BDEX solves these problems

BDEX collects data in real time based on known behaviors of consumers. For instance, our data tracks when someone has searched online for a car or any other product or service, such as appliances, flights, and even diapers.

We also use the technology called “geofencing” that allows you to see the physical locations people have visited, whether that’s a car dealership, an IT services provider, or an appliance store. This gives you better quality data that includes your true target audience – only the individuals who are actively looking to buy your product, rather than the 10 million or so who are just maybe, possibly, likely to buy.

We also double, triple, and quadruple check information from multiple sources, to authenticate our data and ensure that it is current and correct.

Read more about how BDEX gathers its data.

BDEX features the first-ever Data Exchange Platform (DXP). The BDEX DXP and DAAS platforms enable companies to acquire impartial, quality-scored, third-party data reaching the right people at the right time like never before. We offer cross-device matching, auto dealership services, DAAS, real-time targeting, and custom segment building that is ideal for any industry, including auto dealers, retailers, brands, agencies, out-of-home, and franchises. Contact us today to get your customized marketing data.

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