Resumen de resultados

Zend Technologies

At Zend Technologies, which makes tools to help streamline the software development process, Sam Adler, the company’s senior director of demand generation, uses many forms of data-driven display advertising. In particular, he uses a combination of targeted display and sophisticated retargeting that nurtures prospects just like e-mail does.

In what he terms reach advertising, Adler targets information technology managers, which are Zend’s primary customers for its enterprise-level product. Zend uses ad technology companies, such as Bizo, which was recently acquired in August 2014 by LinkedIn for $175 million, to identify IT managers and serve targeted display ads virtually wherever they travel on the Internet. The initial performance of this advertising has been strong, Adler said, with a cost per action (e.g., a website formfill or a purchase in the Zend Store) of around $15, and a CPC of around $11.

Adler also uses Bizo Multi-Channel Nurturing (BMN) to con- tinue conversations with prospects who have visited the Zend corporate website. BMN enables marketers to nurture prospects by serving them targeted and sequenced display and social ads based on what portion of the website they visited and their job title, size of company they work for, industry, or other business demo- graphics which are contained in their cookie.

BMN is designed to expand nurturing beyond the e-mail inbox. Nurturing via e-mail, while effective, has drawbacks, because fewer than 5 percent of website visitors typically subscribe to a company’s e-mails. And of those who do subscribe, only 20 percent of them actually open e-mails. So nurturing with display via BMN gives marketers like Adler and Zend the opportunity to nurture prospects with targeted messages via display and social advertising.

Nurturing is crucial for Zend. Once Adler gets a conversation going with a prospect, hewantsto keepit going. That’swhy,when a prospect

fills out a form to download a white paper, for instance, Zend serves a bonus thank-you page to the prospect, which presents another bonus piece of content, such as a webinar or a YouTube video. This content is gated with a short form asking a couple of prospect profiling questions that are engaging to the user.“While they’re in the store, you want to keep their attention,”explained Adler, who said that the thank-you pages can see conversion rates into the 60 percent to 70 percent range, when the average form conversion is usually between 10 percent to 20 percent.

Nurturing via display and social advertising also works to keep a prospect’s attention and to keep the conversation going. In serving targeted and sequenced display advertising to prospects who have already visited the company website, Zend is seeing strong results, with cost per action at $8—an excellent number.“The ROI that I see is hard to beat,” Adler said.

Zuora

Zuora, which makes software for automating subscription renew- als, has used display to great effect, relying on data for insight on customers, for audience targeting, and for measurement of its results.

Based on analysis of its database, Zuora uncovered the insight that its key audience is C-suite and other top executives from the

finance, information technology, software, and media sectors.

an executive-led decision in most enterprises,” said Brian Bell, CMO of Zuora.“We needed tofind a way to reach that audience.”

Using these insights, Zuora targeted its executive audience with display advertising, an effort that relies on the Bizo audience platform. At the top of the funnel, the company’s display ads targeted Internet users whose profiles indicated they were exec- utives in relevant sectors. Zuora wanted to build awareness within the largest possible relevant target audience.

In the mid-funnel, the company used display and social media advertising to engage and educate users. The display and social ads promoted tools such as an e-book that highlights the challenges and opportunities in running a subscription business model. In the lower funnel, the company used retargeted display advertising to offer a free trial of its service.

The measurement data proved the effectiveness in each part of the funnel. In the top funnel, branding efforts delivered a 28 percent increase in traffic from the target audience to the company website.

Using a combination of display ads aimed at Zuora’s target audience of executives in a particular industry and BMN ads nurturing visitors to Zuora’s website, the company generated a remarkable 705 total conversions in just three months’time—July, August, and September of 2014. The cost per lead was $20—

incredibly low for a business where a conversion can lead to contracts worth millions of dollars.

The LiveAds

A key part of display advertising’s power is the ability to optimize ads or adjust them on thefly. For instance, if an ad is delivering better results on a specific kind of website, marketers can increase their bid on that website and take money away from lesser- performing sites. Or if a certain area of the country is responding better to an ad, marketers can focus their display efforts on that region.

There’s also A/B testing, where marketers will test two versions of a display ad and use the one that performs better. Dynamic display advertising takes this concept of A/B testing and super- charges it by orders of magnitude. Dynamic display advertising tests thousands of ad variations so that only the strong survive. It’s like digital display Darwinism.

Here’s an example of how it worked for The LiveAds, an agency that specializes in dynamic display, and one of its clients, an online retailer. For this retailer, The LiveAds developed simple creative variations. In one version, there were eight potential design templates, four different ad sizes, eight headlines, 14 photos, six offers, and two calls to action. These variations were all interchangeable, so that there were ultimately 43,008 potential combinations.

As the ads ran, analytics tools determined the best performers. The combinations that performed best were used more often, while the combinations that didn’t drive conversions were quickly dropped from the rotation.

The online retailer’s results with dynamic ads were impressive. The dynamic ads drove a 461 percent return on investment (ROI) during the fall and holiday season of 2012 and the Easter and Mother’s Day holidays of 2013 versus the 109 percent ROI delivered by static display ads. The dynamic ads also drove a 15 percent higher-order value when compared with static ads.

“Most of the focus when you talk about big data and advertising is on media and targeting and measurement,” said Sam Karow of The LiveAds.“But the same data feeds that enable all of that also enables dynamic creative.”

Zendesk

Zendesk is another data-driven marketing firm. The company offers cloud-based customer service and uses data to derive cus- tomer insights, to target its audience with display advertising, and to gauge marketing results.

Zendesk’s global customer base consists mainly of C-suite executives and customer service managers in the technology, retail, e-commerce, education, and professional services industries. Zendesk uses display advertising and Bizo’s audience platform to target executives in its key industries.“We are targeting the right people at scale at the right time,”said Michelle Carranza, Zendesk’s senior manager, global advertising.

With its top-funnel display ads, Zendesk’s goal is to drive brand awareness. Carranza measured the impact of its display ads in website visits from the target market. While display ads were being used, website visitors from extra large and Fortune 500 compa- nies—a key target—climbed. Overall, more than 31,000 additional website visitors were driven to the Zendesk website while display ads were running.

In the midfunnel, Zendesk display ads that pushed educational content pieces resulted in more than 1,000 white paper downloads and webinar registrations. And in the lower funnel, display ads helped drive more than 2,000 free trials, Carranza said.

She added that Zendesk doesn’t rely on a last-click attribution model to determine the contribution that various digital tactics make to top-line revenue. The last-click attribution model tends to assign inordinate value to lower-funnel tactics, such as search, because that is where the last ad before a conversion gets served—

hence the term “last-click.”

Instead, Zendesk uses an algorithm model that is designed to assign value not only to lower-funnel tactics but also to tactics that

fill the funnel in thefirst place, such as display. Carranza pointed to a typical example of how a Zendesk prospect moves through the company’s marketing-sales funnel. In this case, the prospect was exposed to seven display ads and clicked on one before ultimately clicking on a Google search result and then converting.

A last-click model would assign the entire value of that conver- sion to the Google search click. But Carranza knows better and understands the role that display played in driving that prospect through the funnel.

“This was a great example of how this algorithmic attribution model works,” she said.

Online advertising has come an almost unfathomably long way in the short 20 years since the first banner ad. But the next step, powered by true understanding of the customer’s buying journey and the ability to model exactly where revenue comes from, is still to come.

C H A P T E R

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