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Written on 06/12/18 5:08 PM

 

With only 23% of marketers confident in their ability to use data to optimize customer experience, and an overwhelming volume of data at their disposal, how can you develop a successful strategy? According to Altimeter’s customer research, there are four key steps to leveraging data for an optimal customer experience:

1. Focus on one customer experience category for your objective.

2. Prioritize only the data points you need for customer success.

3. Use a data management platform to view data holistically.

4. Create centralized data insights and experience delivery teams.

Want to learn more? Download the complete report, Creating a Data-Driven Strategy for Customer Experience, here.

 

by Jennifer Wiza

All over the America people are discovering a uniquely Italian bubbly beverage. Indeed, prosecco is most definitely having a moment. And RPM’s continuing campaign for Riondo Prosecco from Terlato Wines plans to make the most of it.

 

Beginning this spring, Riondo’s signature stripes and colors, as well as the bold look and language, will be splashed across an array of print publications, social media, banners and streaming audio coast to coast. It’s multi-channel national advertising with push-and-pull messaging that’s sure to build big on last year’s incredible success.

 

The Italian-inspired campaign will take wine drinkers on a playful journey complete with sun and fun and everything summer. With even more influencer marketing and digital initiatives this year, the Riondo brand is sure to be the go-to prosecco in 2018.

 

Over the coming months, Riondo will also take over the shelves with catchy and colorful display enhancers, stylish racks and big, bold club store tray packs. Branded point-of-sale clings, exciting in-store giveaways and coveted placements will definitely have customers asking for it by name.

 

Throughout the marketing effort, RPM has wisely positioned Riondo as something more approachable, more inclusive and genuine. Unlike prosecco brands that aspire to be special occasion, champagne-like brands, Riondo is the authentic Italian way to make every day more bubbly. For consumers, it’s the easy prosecco choice – the essence of laid-back, enjoyable Italian living.

 

2018 promises to be an exciting year for Riondo with greater distribution, including the addition of Walmart stores. And with the RPM campaign in full swing, there’s sure to be more excitement, more internet buzz and more sales this year than ever before. So get ready for Riondo Season. And let’s toast the good life, Italian-style. “Salute!”

    

What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember 20 years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers?

 

As marketers, our days are spent trying to figure out how to make our brand experience memorable. But what’s a memorable moment? In his book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, author Chip Heath looks at the mysteries of “experience.”

 

In an age where marketing has become as much science as art, Heath’s book offers fascinating insight into how experiences can stick with us long after the moment, and impact how we think and act years later.

 

View the video below to see Heath explain the puzzle of our memories of experiences.

 

RPM recently introduced a new, more effective digital optimization, reporting and cloud data storage solution for Client-Partners. The new tools provide each client with customized dashboards and reporting tools for real-time data about consumer and campaign performance. This data will be used to inform real-time optimization decision-making – from the initiation of a holistic digital campaign all the way through optimization.

RPM’s brand new suite of business intelligence tools are intuitive, agile, real-time, and come complete with a cloud data storage solution that provides the most granular view of a client’s digital campaign’s program performance.

The new tool means that clients can take advantage of the benefits that come with:

• Always-on performance, near real-time, 12-hour snapshots and trend analysis
• A deep granular understanding of channel and campaign performance
• Faster optimizations and reporting
• Intuitive, user-centric web-based dashboards

In addition to the tool, clients receive monthly communications containing a link to the custom as well as additional reporting (such as executive-level briefs) that may be helpful to marketing teams.

To learn more about this enhanced suite of digital marcom business intelligence (BI) tools, see the infographic below.

Attribution Modeling – Holy Grail or …

Attribution. It’s the word on every marketer’s lips, and it’s impacting how media budgets are developed and optimized. But in today’s multi-channel environment, attribution “science” may not be telling the whole story. While attribution modeling provides increased visibility into a customer’s journey, models often tell only part of the story – on-line conversions and channels. If your data shows that a significant portion of conversions have long, multi-step paths – meaning customers are engaging across multiple channels – you may have an attribution gap.

Attribution – On-line-to-off-line

If you don’t understand how online channels impact on offline revenue, you’re only seeing part of the story. Only looking at digital conversions and revenue fails to take into account the effect on offline sales and in-store visits. Of course, one way to address this is with unique promotion codes by channel to fill the gaps in the story, which allows you to track conversion. Google’s “In-Store Visits” metric uses multiple signals to determine online/offline impact, including Google Maps data, WiFi, GPS and more to create in-store visit estimates, but this only applies to the million opted-in users.

Platforms that leverage mobile device data are also a step in the right direction, although they don’t track a specific user’s activity.

Attribution – Cross-device

The proliferation of devices has created another attribution challenge – measuring consumer behavior and engagement across devices and screens. The migration of search away from taps on the screen and toward voice-recognition tools will only make this more difficult. Although some companies can begin to make headway through multiple screen and device logins, it remains an area of opportunity.

Attribution modeling will only continue to improve as tools emerge to support a holistic approach to campaigns – across channels and across devices. Working with an attribution model that supports holistic marketing campaigns and efforts while avoiding simplistic “first- or last-click” approaches will help ensure multi-channel campaign optimization. Tracking the interplay of on- and off-line behavior and activity isn’t easy, but it can be addressed with unique promotional codes tying back to the individual channel. Regardless of attribution model, challenges and opportunities remain for improvement as we seek to understand consumer behavior and invest in the areas of greatest value.

Bigger isn’t always better, at least not when it comes to social media influencers. Recent research shows that Instagram micro-influencers and macro-influencers garner similar average engagement rates on sponsored posts. Macro-influencers have greater reach than micro-influencers, so it’s no surprise that macro-influencer engagement levels are high in absolute terms, such as likes and comments. But when it comes to average engagement rate, size does matter. In fact, according to another study, engagement declines as followers increase.

• Instagram users with fewer than 1,000 followers generated likes 8% of the time
• Users with 1,000-10,000 followers earned likes at a 4% rate
• Users with 10,000-100,000 followers achieved a 2.4% like rate
• Users with 100,000-10 million followers earned likes only 1.7% of the time
• So how do you choose the right influencer strategy for your brand? First, let’s look at the differences.

Micro-influencers typically have around 500-10,000 followers and, while they don’t have the large reach of macro-influencers, they do hold significant sway with their audience. Followers value the influencer’s personal opinions, making micro-influencers great for higher brand engagement opportunities because of the perceived one-on-one nature of the relationship with followers. Micro-influencers are able to have high-value dialog with followers due to the intimate nature of the influencer/follower relationship, and this can greatly benefit a brand seeking to connect with the influencer’s audience.

With 10,000-1 million followers, macro-influencers tend to focus on a specific area or topic. This attracts followers looking to engage with content specific to one area of interest, for example food or cars. Macro-influencers can become “famous” to a distinct set of people, which benefits brands looking to go deep rather than wide.

Then there are the mega-influencers, who tend to be social media celebrities with over 1 million followers. Due to the scale of their following, mega-influencers don’t receive the engagement of micro- or macro-influencers, but they do have big reach. And big reach means bigger investment.

So which influencer is right for your brand? Each has its benefits, depending on your goal. Do you want a highly engaged niche audience, and are willing to sacrifice experience with sponsored content (and perhaps the “professionalism”) of macro-influencers? A micro-influencer might be right for your brand. Looking for larger reach but willing to forego high engagement? A macro-influencer may be the way to go. Of course, choosing the right influencer is key to ensuring that your strategy – regardless of size – delivers the result you’re after.

When our Client-Partner, Thunder Valley Casino Resort, made an adjustment to their customer relationship marketing program, specifically the redemption policies for its buffet, it had a negative impact on covers in the restaurant for 2017. In response, RPM was charged with developing a marketing program to drive business back to the buffet. The result was a TV spot within the “Live Out Loud” campaign that positioned the restaurant as a fantasy dining experience, a feast for the senses at each and every station in the buffet. The campaign launched in mid-September and by the end of the first month, revenue had increased significantly over the same period a year earlier. On YouTube, “Chef Spectacular” has already exceeded 35k views. On track to outpace revenue projections for the year, the increased buffet traffic adds incremental revenue to Thunder Valley’s casino floor. As we like to say, game on!

Analytics is embedded in everything today’s marketers do. This not only requires a cultural shift that impacts how marketing teams work together as much as it impacts what they do. An analytical marketing approach requires that teams act differently, as much as it demands that they think differently based upon what data is telling them.

In this Harvard Business Review article, Adele Sweetwood, the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Shared Services at SAS, looks at three approaches to build an analytical culture. The idea of a “common analytical culture” helps organizations develop the ability to make adjustments on the fly, creating the opportunity to implement real-time changes and empowering the marketing [are we missing a word here? Team? Group?] to respond more quickly.  She looks at three ways that teams in an analytical culture must think differently.

1. Use data to change the status quo – Teams need to think differently about marketing because the availability of new data and metrics allow them to be more effective and enable them to identify new approaches
2. Use stories to convey data insights – Teams can ask what-if questions to uncover other stories it can begin to tell, enabling teams to shift from being reactive to proactive, creating a culture focused on the future, rather than having one weighed down by the past.
3. Use different metrics – In the past, metrics provided something to react to, but today reacting to metrics isn’t enough. Customers now have greater expectations about what they expect us to know as marketers and how we interact with them.

Learn more about how an analytics mindset changes marketing culture, read the full article here.

There has been a lot of talk about “cleaning up” the digital media supply chain, but what does this mean? And how can clients ensure transparency when it comes to digital media investments?

Mark Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer for P&G, spoke at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Hollywood, Florida, on January 29^th and announced, “The days of giving digital a pass are over, it’s time to grow up. It’s time for action.” His words were a reaction to the confusing and often non-transparent digital ecosystem that surrounds the industry. He stressed that P&G does “not want to waste time and money on a crappy media supply chain.” He encouraged others in the industry to follow his lead. P&G is expecting that all of their media vendors and partners adhere to the accredited Media Rating Council (MRC) guidelines for viewability, fraud protection, verification, and transparency.

It appears that Mark’s words are sinking in, because recently Facebook has agreed to an audit of the information it sends marketers, hoping to increase trust and transparency. While there have always been complaints about the lack of transparency and consistency in social reporting, P&G has companies scrambling to give them what they want, which will benefit all of us in the long run. While other platforms like Twitter have yet to follow suit, Facebook’s move shows that social platforms need to continue listening in order to boost their credibility—especially as companies continue to see the importance of data.

Last year, RPM announced “Project Clean Ads”, where viewability and fraud protection are automatically engrained into the digital planning and buying process. All digital display ads through our vendor-partners must adhere to the MRC standards of:

• Display: 50% of ad pixels must be viewable on desktop/PC for 1 continuous second
• Video: 50% of ad pixels must be viewable on desktop/PC for 2 continuous seconds
• All ads must be Fraud Free

We are encouraged by Facebook’s new approach to accepting third-party verification and hope that other social media and digital ad tech providers will do the same. We all benefit by supporting and holding our partners accountable for what we purchase, because at the end of the day we all want what’s best for our client-partners—high quality inventory that provides value and delivers on our goals.

Credits and Sources:

http://adage.com/article/media/p-g-s-pritchard-calls-digital-grow-up-new-rules/307742/

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/business/media/facebook-takes-steps-to-improve-advertising-data-after-criticism.html

http://measurementnow.net/what-is-3ms/#.WKtrWfkrI2w

Skill-Based Slots Make Their Debut

There is a truism in the casino world: Slots are the kings of cash.

At RPM, we learned that on our first day in the casino business over 15 years ago, and it still holds true today. Slots are where the money flows. They are fast-paced and high volume. They come with a relatively small footprint compared their table game cousins, and they never ever take lunch breaks, vacations, or call in sick.

But there is a subtle shift in how the goose is laying its golden egg, and casinos and slot manufacturers are taking note. No longer are slots paying out purely by randomness. Skill-based slots are here.

Just as the name suggests, there is an element of skill involved in a game like “Danger Arena,” the first of its kind in the U.S. that pits the player against robots, and the more robots you kill, the higher the payout. Danger Arena debuted in the fall and so far is available only in Atlantic City. But it, and more like it, are coming soon to Nevada, and other markets are sure to follow.

The ultimate goal of these skill-based games: attract a younger audience to gaming machines.

Traditionally, slot players have skewed older, and in the past several years, younger players have looked elsewhere for entertainment. When they visit casinos, a good chunk of their time – and money – is spent in clubs, by the pool, at shows, or in shops.

So the big question facing casinos is how to get Millennials off the dance floor and onto the slot floor. The answer is a blend of Xbox and jackpots.

If the younger crowd viewed traditional slots with an apathetic eye, the new skill-based games are hoping to turn heads, millions of them. One survey identified a mix of 23 million Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers who play video games at home and also visit casinos. ¹

But if you consider yourself a video gaming guru ready to make a fortune at the new wave of slots, not so fast. Like always, the house will keep its edge and there are many random variables that will determine your potential payout.

Think of these skill-based games kind of like blackjack. You could be the sharpest player at the table, but if all you’re getting dealt are 14s and 15s, your blackjack acumen can only do so much. Danger Arena, for instance, has more than 10,000 “maps” so that each game is different. Sometimes it’s easier, and sometimes you’ll feel like you got dealt a 15 against the dealer’s face card.

New York-based GameCo and Gamblit Gaming out of California are two of the leading manufacturers of skill-based games. GameCo developed Danger Arena and the recently introduced “Pharaoh’s Secret Temple,” another Atlantic City exclusive. Other games on the horizon include titles based off popular movies like “Terminator 2,” “Mission: Impossible,” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” as well as a basketball-themed game called “Nothin’ But Net.”

Still in their infancy, skill-based games could be in most U.S. gambling markets by the end of this year. ²

What does all this mean for marketers? Well, eventually the question we will ask audiences will evolve from “Do you feel lucky?” to “Do you have mad skills?”

1 – “A Hands-On Look at Skill-Based Casino Games” 

2 – “GameCo Debuts “Pharaoh’s Secret Temple in Atlantic City”