Mobility data can help brands fill in the blanks when it comes to measuring campaign performances.- Top marketers joined Insider and
Arity for a roundtable discussion this week. - They discussed how mobility data can transform future consumer experiences.
Data has become an integral component in most marketers' toolkits in recent years. And with people in some parts of the world back on the move, marketers are once again thinking about the applications of mobility data in their ad campaigns.
Top marketers from companies including
They discussed how to use mobility data to make ad campaigns more useful for people, how to sift through the data to find the most relevant nuggets, and how to best measure the success of mobility ads.
Mobility data can help make ads more useful for consumers
The ubiquity of mobile phones can unlock new insights for marketers when it comes to targeting potential customers.
But people can get annoyed - or worse, spooked - if the ads they're served aren't relevant, Saleel Sathe, Walmart's VP of performance
When Uber pushes an UberEats discount code on someone's Uber app while they are on their way back home from the airport, or Walmart Plus alerts members to discounts when they are in the vicinity of a store, they are using mobility data in the right context, he said.
Jason Harrison, North America CEO of Essence, agreed that there's a fine line between being useful and being creepy.
Loyalty programs and mobility data can go hand-in-hand
Brands have accelerated their first-party data-collection efforts as privacy regulation gains steam and platforms clamp down on ad targeting. One way of doing that is through loyalty programs, which can enhance their ads when coupled with mobility data, Chris Brand, chief marketing officer at Chipotle, said.
Chipotle, for example, makes sure that it offers people something valuable whenever it uses mobility data, like informing its app users that might be coming into a restaurant that mobile pickup might be faster, he said.
Relevant offers are key to engagement, he added.
And doing this right can also lead to better returns in the long run. Chipotle's loyalty program has helped the restaurant chain swiftly grow its digital sales, which have now surpassed $2 billion. Chipotle has been able to drive more incremental transactions from loyalty members compared to non-loyalty members, he said.
Testing and targeting using mobility data
The precision that mobility data offers in terms of targeting may be enticing, but it's important to not get carried away and test different creative with different audiences, Kelly McGee, director of digital marketing at Jersey Mike's Subs, said.
Marketers shouldn't shy away from testing out smaller micro-campaigns and seeing what sticks, Fred Bucher, CMO of
But Chipotle's Brandt warned against the temptation to get too targeted, saying that the audience segments should remain broad. He added that marketers' emphasis on one-to-one marketing had gotten a little extreme.
Mobility data can help measure campaign effectiveness
Mobility data can help brands fill in the blanks when it comes to how ad campaigns drive foot traffic to stores, Walmart's Sathe pointed out. But mobility data can drive not just performance, but also help build the brand, he said.
Even if there's no immediate transaction, those visitors may purchase in the future, he said. And that sort of incremental value is not easy to measure.
Essence's Harrison agreed, saying that brands should avoid an over-focus on conversions, and exclude people that have a high likelihood to convert anyway when measuring mobility data.