Connecting the Online World to the Offline World with Data: A Round-table Chat at #BIAKNEXT

About 90% of buying is offline, but it’s very influenced by online. Attribution, then, is more important than ever. BIA/Kelsey Managing Director Rick Ducey (@RDucey) moderates a round-table discussion with three professionals, each offering a different perspective on data and analytics:

• Grace Chan, VP Product at Wanderful Media
• Sherry Thomas-Zon (@sthomaszon), Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer at Retailigence
• Elliott Waldron (@ElliottWaldron), Director of Analytics at Placed, Inc.

Receipts vs. point of sale data — how does this inform campaign planning and the purchase journey?

Chan: Receipt data is a part of the input — you can quickly come up with profiles that you can infer from receipts. Look at a grocery data receipt and find out information about the household and demographics — are there diapers on the receipt, for example? We use this information to target user needs and create offers that will appeal to them.

Statistically meaningful data can come from whether or not coupons were used. So it’s important to get that data from receipts, as well. Did the consumer use the offers you thought they would? That tells you something.

Who are you working with and how?

Thomas-Zon: Historically, we’ve worked in the digital domain with advertisers. We’ve worked with Mars candy to help get product off the shelves. They come to Retailigence for a layer of inventory visibility in certain markets. We are able to provide regional targeting. As we move into 2016, we’re focusing on capturing inventory-level data over time and provide that back through analytics dashboards.

Part of what you do as a data scientist is to collect and torture insights out of data and then find ways to represent those insights. How do you do that when working with tons of data?

Waldron: That’s a really hard problem. As a data scientist, you want to be able to show that things aren’t that simple and provide different ways to look at the data. The challenge with any analytics product is letting the data tell its story in the simplest way. We provide a lot of metrics, but 90 percent of what people care about is sales lift and in-store visitation. The nature of the metrics should be actionable, then — for example, we need to reach more females, etc.

More and more, marketers are becoming data scientists. They know they can zero in on mounds of data and find what’s crucial.

Handle consumer expectation — if your ads are too specifically targeted, it can freak them out. Make sure to tone it down.

SMBs have different problems than national brands. Tell us what’s going on?

Thomas-Zon: National brands have some verticals that are highly dependent on local retailers, like home goods or appliances. While the national brands are creating national campaigns, there are third-party services emerging to help the SMB. These bring on local retailers to help the national brands. In the CPG area, those mechanisms exist to help those business. But in apparel, for example, they haven’t really had the tools.

What’s going to be significant when it comes to attribution in 2016?

Thomas-Zon: The in-store experience will improve — mobile will be able to get more personal, beacons aside. Mobile is the doorway to shake a hand in the store.

Waldron: Agencies are wanting to be able to put all their different channels under the same measurement regime. Companies like Placed are moving in the direction to support that.

Kristi Kellogg is a journalist, news hound, professional copywriter, and social (media) butterfly. Currently, she is a senior SEO content writer for Conde Nast. Her articles appear in newspapers, magazines, across the Internet and in books such as "Content Marketing Strategies for Professionals" and "The Media Relations Guidebook." Formerly, she was the social media editor at Bruce Clay Inc.

See Kristi's author page for links to connect on social media.