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Episode 8
Quick Strategies for Holiday Advertising Success
About This Episode
Discussing strategies and tips that will supercharge your holiday advertising campaigns, driving the results you want.
John Carvalho | Director, Client Services, StackAdapt
Aarjav Thakore | Senior Product Manager, StackAdapt
Transcript
Episode Introduction (00:00:00)
Just trying to get people through the upper funnel is what’s really important here. As you kind of look at this time of the year, specifically, we’re trying to break through a lot of ads that are happening right now making things that are a little bit more tailored to the individual might catch their eye. And when you start taking into account weather data, when you look at having geo in there, look at time of day, the images that are being used copy that’s being used on all that getting tailored and highly focused on specific things is going to drive your end results and maybe get that click get someone to site that makes that purchase later on.
How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:27)
But then you think about the social landscape. The research and data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touch points, that long term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting and really is what’s going to set you apart. You’re tuning in, you’re tuning in, you’re tuning in to How Agencies Thrive podcast.
Sneha (00:00:54)
It’s a common misconception is that last-minute shoppers might be disorganized. But as it turns out, they’re just waiting on the best deals. With this in mind, now is the perfect time to reach prospective customers at this buying stage during the holiday season. As we all know, November and December are two of the biggest months in terms of sales volume, with January kind of trailing closely behind with post-holiday discounts. Producing yet another sales peak, now is the perfect time to ramp up your holiday campaigns and win more customers in the coming months. So how exactly are you going to do this? You have come to the right place. Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. I’m your host Sneha Suhas from StackAdapt. With me, I have programmatic experts John and Aarjav, welcome and thanks for being here, John and Aarjav. I’ll pass it over to the both of you for an introduction. Let’s start with you Aarjav. Tell us about your areas of expertise and your professional experience so far.
Aarjav (00:01:54)
Absolutely. Hey, everyone. My name is Aarjav. I’m the Senior Product Manager here at StackAdapt. I’ve been within the programmatic industry for about two and a half years, I’ve been working in different tech companies in Toronto and London, but recently with StackAdapt have been working around some of the reporting and targeting features. And most recently, and most important to this podcast weather targeting. So work with some of our engineers to bring out the first-ever weather-targeting feature for StackAdapt. We’ve seen a lot of success. We’ve seen a lot of great comments, and a lot of happy customers using this feature, and pretty grateful. And I’ll pass it on to my colleague, John.
John (00:02:33)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’ve been in the programmatic space for, I’m gonna say, almost 10 years now, which is crazy to say, joined StackAdapt, about five years ago. And since then I started as an account manager and worked my way through and now Director of Client Services here. So leading our account management team, and our Client Services team overall. Prior to this, I was in a owned and operated space, but still programmatic, spending a lot of time doing weather executions. So definitely was leaned on a little bit for that project, and really happy to be part of this podcast.
Sneha (00:03:07)
Awesome. That’s a lot of experience and expertise that we have on the show today. So thank you so much, both of you for joining us. And if I can start off with my first question, right, both of you mentioned the weather targeting, which I think is an intriguing tactic. And for someone who’s never heard of this, could you explain how exactly it works, and perhaps highlight a specific instance, where it made a significant impact, especially on a holiday campaign?
Aarjav (00:03:34)
Absolutely. So weather plays, I would say, a huge role in the success of a campaign. So as we learn that it has a massive influence on consumers, it dictates like what they do, where they go, what they buy, what they eat even and how they feel. So it’s, I would say the second biggest influence on consumer behaviour. So after the first one being like the state of the economy, so it’s a pretty impactful tool to have on our hands powered by weather information, and have a platform like StackAdapt that provides our clients with the opportunity to use it further to improve your campaigns. So the goal at the time of like our team, on building this feature was to build a solution that allows our clients to show the right ads to the right people at the right time, using real-time weather data. So to put in simpler terms, like in the back end of this feature, we integrated with one of our weather partners called Open Weather, which is I would say a London, UK-based company who provides us with very granular level of weather data at a frequency of one hour, every day. So we get about 24 files of weather data for different countries, different regions, different cities on our platform, and we store them in a database. And on the platform we have built a very simple and intuitive UI for our clients where they can specify where the triggers such as conditions like clear clouds, rain, thunderstorms, snow, etc. And we also added some unique weather elements such as specification, UV index, air quality wind because the client list that we have is very tight diverse, they have lots of different types of businesses and products they want to sell. They want to use a lot of different weather tactics. And weather tactics, I would say conditions can be set up in three different steps. So the first one is you choose your geolocation. So what are the users you want to target? Like, where do they reside? Where do they want to like target to second is to choose your weather condition triggers. So for this example, you can set up a weather condition such as, when weather hits above 10 degrees Celsius, I want to start showing my ads. And then the last one is okay, you want to start showing ads, but which ads so our clients set up different types of weather ads that resonates to that particular client or the regional demographic, but they only want to show that when a temperature or a condition meets like the requirements. So that’s three simple steps that you can set that up. But once we receive like a bid request for that region, we will check in our database in real-time to see the last received weather data for that geo region. So for example, if the weather tactic is set up as if weather temperature in Toronto goes below zero degrees Celsius, then I want to show this ad promoting like a hot beverage, for example. So when that trigger, like you know, when the bid request comes, we check the weather data for Toronto. And if it matches the condition that set up on the UI, that is a success. So then the platform will in like microseconds will serve that specific act to that specific user, making sure that we’re reaching the right people and influencing their decisions. And that’s pretty much how like the whole weather conditions weather tactic feature is set up on the platform. And clients can use that in lots of different examples in showing like, you know, for a restaurant or for beverages, or for apparel, brands and stuff. But if there’s like an apparel brand, who only wants to show like, you know, summer dresses, but in hot conditions, but they also make jackets, they can show those jackets in a colder region, but using weather tactics. So when a certain colder part of the country hits, like a certain temperature, they will be shown jackets, but another hotter part can be shown, like in a summer dress, or T-shirts and stuff. So there are lots of different ways you can use that. But this is how StackAdapt is set up. But the weather conditions and weather factors on a platform. So it’s easy to use and very impactful.
Sneha (00:07:10)
And with the increasing emphasis on personalization in marketing, right, how can programmatic advertising be leveraged to create highly tailored and relevant holiday promotions for different customer segments?
John (00:07:25)
Yeah, I mean, other targeting is only one way you can get personalized. And I think, as you kind of look at this time of the year, specifically, and I think you called it out or earlier on it’s, you’re trying to break through a lot of ads that are happening right now, whether it’s in the digital out-of-home space, whether it’s on TV, and linear, CTV, through programmatic, like we’re offering, making things that are a little bit more tailored to the individual might catch their eye, that might be the one that breaks through the, you know, 5000 messages that they see a day. And doing those little things is what’s going to be really important. So, like Aarjav was saying earlier, being able to serve the right creative at the right time is so important. And when you start taking into account, things like weather data, that’s just one way you can be personalized. But when you look at having geo in there look at time of day. The other piece too, is just the content you’re putting out there. And then when you talk about a display or a native ad, the images that are being used, the copy that’s being used, all that getting tailored and highly focused on specific things is going to drive your end results and maybe get that click that gets someone to site that makes that purchase later on. You know, just trying to get people through the upper funnel is what’s really important here. And you know, different ways you can do that in your in your holiday promotions. And not just that. But beyond that, and you’re always on strategy is using some of these tactics. The other piece too, is just talking to better customer segments. So whether that’s using our page context AI to be directly on-page with relevant content, that’s one way to speak to it as well. I recently ran a study about a year ago. And the congruence effect is super important when it comes to ads being on-page and being able to see you know how much that recall is more when it’s on-page with relevant content versus not. So it’s just those little tiny tweaks you can make in your campaign and use kind of the tactics that we have built into our platform and make it really easy, that can tie it together and make your campaign more personalized for an individual.
Sneha (00:09:26)
Amazing. Thanks for that. And in terms of marketing technology, what tools or platforms do you believe will be instrumental in driving holiday sales for this year in particular in 2023, and how do you think businesses can effectively integrate these technologies into their strategies?
John (00:09:46)
Yeah, I think going back to what I was talking about a little bit earlier, there’s a lot of messaging that’s happening right now. So I think any good marketer is going to sit there and want to look at a full funnel approach. You have to have your upper funnel, you have to have your lower funnel but it goes beyond just that it’s, you know, how do I make sure that my programmatic, my social, my TV, my CTV, my digital out-of-home are all speaking to each other? And how can I make it that that one message is going out? And then on top of that, how else can I start driving results? You know, it’s really easy to look at sales data, it’s probably going to be up for most retailers during the holiday season, that’s natural, you know, are we up year over year? That’s one way you can look at it. But you know, is there offline attribution models that you can use, such as foot traffic attribution? Are people going to store? Are they making their way there? Is my message really pushing them? And then on top of that, too, you know, looking at things, if you’re using, you know, Google Analytics, for example, site traffic, is it up? What’s the bounce rate look like? Am I seeing more conversions coming in? And even going one step beyond that, and looking at is there assisted channels that are really driving those conversions, because it’s not just that one touch that last touch that’s important. It’s, how’s this whole funnel working together? You take a really basic approach to this. It’s like, okay, maybe I saw a Facebook ad, a couple of days later, I got targeted through a programmatic ad, I saw it, I clicked through this site, then I got retargeted, by that programmatic DSP. And then from there, you know, what I finally realized, oh, yeah, I did want to buy that jacket that I saw four or five times beforehand. I then go in and I use my search query, I go through, I click on a pay for social ad, or sorry, pay for a search ad. And I go in and make that conversion. It’s not just that last touch on that paid search ad. But it’s that whole funnel that goes through. And that’s where those assisted conversions are super important. If a channel is placing itself on a high-assisted piece, it means it’s really driving as part of that funnel. So just making sure you’re leveraging all your tools you have available. And then on top of that incorporating a couple of new ones, like foot traffic, maybe even weather triggering, when it comes to it, maybe not so much from an aspect of being able to see conversion data, but from trying to test out different messaging to see if it’ll drive different regions. You can’t use a blanket approach when you’re looking at Canada or the United States, or even anywhere in the world. Just because you know, there’s such a vast difference in between southern and northern climates.
Sneha (00:12:16)
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Thank you. And lots of holiday campaigns have already taken off. So what are some of those last minute additions or changes one can look to make to go that extra mile in terms of reach and conversion?
John (00:12:32)
Yeah, I can definitely take that one too. You know, I think a lot of them are probably taken off. And they’re and they’re in sound judgment of things they’ve done in the past. But I think what you can do is start to look, if there’s any of like audience expansion analysis that we have in platform, is there certain audiences that are more likely to be clickers on your ads? Is there certain audiences that you could potentially test out to see, if you can get net new users to site, it’s really easy to in this time, especially around this, this area, where it’s, you know, the end of the year, you’re trying to get the last bit of sales, when it comes to your e-commerce brand or any size of that it’s, it’s really easy to just default back into the norms. But if you can drive more net new users to site, that’s where you’re really going to see the return. You know, one of our clients has always said, you know, if you’re not prospecting, you’re not going to get retargeting and you’re not going to get conversions. And trying to drive as many net new users to site is definitely one way to do it. And you can do it really simply, you can put a pixel on site, gather those users and actually use them as an exclusion audience. So once a user gets the site, I no longer want to serve them my prospecting ad, they can be part of my retargeting campaign, but then you’re just driving net new users. If you have a CRM list, for example, we have an integration where you can add it right into the platform, it’ll be matched within a couple of hours. And you can go live same-day with a campaign. And with that, you can actually target the CRM list, negatively target the CRM list and add audience look alike expansion. So essentially saying, Here’s my list of customers that I already have, go find people that have the same browsing and internet behaviours, and target them so I can drive more net new users to site. And then the other one that I mentioned is foot traffic. You know, maybe you’re not able to show all the online sales. I don’t know about you guys. I like to shop in person for my holiday gifts, it’s a little bit easier, sometimes. Maybe something catches your eyes. So you know, being able to track that person that’s going to the mall or going to a store or going to some of the big box retailers. It’s definitely a really good way to be able to see you know, is my ad driving people to store and then from there, you can actually see a lot of cool things inside the platform in terms of reporting. Is there a lift in that performance? Am I driving more people to store because of this? That’s kind of just a couple of cool things you can see when you add something like foot traffic into your campaign.
Sneha (00:14:53)
Amazing. Thank you. And on that note, we’ll pause here and take a short break, but don’t go Anywhere we will be right back. When we are back on the other side, we’re talking about lessons from 2023 and programmatic beyond the holiday season. So stay tuned.
Welcome back, you’re still listening to the How Agencies Thrive Podcast. I’m Sneha. With me, I have Aarjav and John, programmatic experts. And we are talking about holiday marketing and Aarjav and John, could you share a case study or a specific example of a holiday marketing campaign that stood out due to its innovative use of programmatic tactics? And what lessons can other marketers draw from its success?
Aarjav (00:15:43)
Absolutely. I can take this one. So when we first launched weather targeting there were a lot of exciting clients who wanted to use this functionality, first off, and one of them was a Miami-based holiday travel company who owns like a few resorts and wanted to do some holiday marketing, asking people to visit their locations, what they wanted to try out where the targeting is that they wanted to try, they wanted to reach to people who are in colder regions, and trying to like entice them to visit like a nice warm location, like Florida, which is not so cold that time of the year. So what like we work with that client and trying out different techniques, and one that set out was, they tried to reach out to users in four different cities. It was New York, Boston, Toronto, and Montreal, relatively cold regions, as opposed to like Miami at the time of the year. So were the tactics that we set up on the platform, were pretty straightforward, very intuitive, where they used a combination of weather conditions and temperature to target people in that region at the right time, and showing very personalized message. So they set up a few different creatives, which had a personal touch for New Yorkers, for like know, people in Montreal people in Toronto, and they had some general ads that can be shown to everybody in that region. And they set up some weather conditions in that if Toronto temperature range is between, like, you know, five degrees Celsius to minus 10 degrees Celsius, which is very cold. And when it started snowing, I want to show this ads of like promoting this nice Miami Beach sort of resort, which is much warmer at that time of the year, as opposed to what the users is currently feeling at their home base. And that’s pretty much the like, I would say the goal was and then set up these kind of tactics for people in Montreal, people in New York and Boston. And they’ve seen really good results in I would say, impressions, conversions, and people actively booking the results with it. Because if you think about it in the users like an end user situation, if you pull up the curtains at six o’clock in the morning, and it’s snowing, gloomy dark outside, and then you pull up your phone and see this nice looking ad from like Miami resort, where it’s 30 degrees Celsius, nice and warm, you are more enticed to click on that ad as opposed to like, you know, seeing at a random time of the day or something. So, like we said before, timing is everything and trying to reach out to right users is also a really good tactic. So we did use those kinds of conditions with that particular client. And using one of our reports, which is called Audience Insights, mid-campaign or after the campaign, they tried to look into who are actually engaging with their ads, because our report allows you to actually drill down into your audiences, and see from those four cities, who are the users will actually I would say, engaging, if New York is engaging more or Montreal’s not engaging. So we might want to pivot some of the strategies there. And they saw that people were also interested who engaged with the ads, were also interested in NFL, were also interested in soccer and stuff like that. So this kind of cross targeting, I would say efforts that some of our teams driven saying that, hey, the people who are actually like, you know, reacting to your weather ads can also be found on web pages that contain like, you know, soccer and NFL content, so might want to show ads over there too. So this kind of way, we combine like, you know, smart weather tactics with our Audience Insights report, trying to know your audience better and trying to find more users who are like more willing to engage with your ads, and that those few campaigns are really good results in what they wanted to achieve. And with using lots of different techniques and technologies on our platform, we can actually drive more results. And that’s a pretty good example of using weather tactics for like a lot of holiday campaigns.
Sneha (00:19:15)
Perfect. Thank you. You know, now that we’ve covered off holiday campaigns, is there a way you can use weather triggering, in an always on campaign as we move into 2024?
John (00:19:28)
Yeah, I mean, besides some of the examples that we use, I think weather triggering can really offer unique opportunity for clients to be able to speak to their end users. One example that I have was from a QSR restaurant kind of specializes more in like the coffee’s of the world. And when you start looking at that, obviously there’s different types of drinks and beverages that people want at different times of the year based on what it is outside. You know, you have your diehard coffee drinkers that are obviously going to have that all year round, but I know for me when it gets a little bit warmer out I’m more of an iced coffee or a cold brew. So what they did was they actually set up a kind of a creative web when it comes to their weather triggering, in which case, it’s like, you know, when it’s between a certain temperature, we want to serve certain beverages. So when it’s colder, we want to serve our warm beverages. Maybe when it’s kind of in the mid-temperature, we kind of serve maybe our frappuccinos or something like that. And when it gets hotter, we start serving our iced coffees and cold brews. So looking at that, and putting it all together, they’re able to speak to their customer, not only from a month-to-month standpoint of the different drinks that they want to drive. But then on top of that, you can also set it up that every single day, it’s serving based on those weather triggering. So maybe when it comes to a fall season, you wake up in the morning, it’s a little bit cooler, I’m going to get something that’s like, oh, come and get you, your warm coffee. But as the day kind of goes on, maybe it gets a little bit warmer, it’s you know, changing what it’s actually serving and showing me something different. The other piece you can use too is dayparting along with the weather triggering. And what they did is they know that like most people want to have their caffeine in the morning, typically, that’s kind of the way that they wake up. And in the afternoon, it’s you know what we got to serve different beverages. So kind of becomes a two-prong attack, you have your morning serving where it’s really pushing caffeinated beverages, along with the weather-triggering tactics. And then in the afternoon, it’s pushing, you know, refreshers, or, you know, ice teas or different things like that, that they can serve from their earpiece. And you can even take it one step further and serve food if you wanted to. As part of that. The other example that I have is from more of a sit-down restaurant location, the way that they use it is, you can imagine if you have a beautiful patio overlooking water, you probably want to serve like, hey, come to the patio. But nothing’s worse than seeing that on a rainy day. And you’re like, well, I’m not gonna go today, and then you forget about it. But they also have the takeout options. So it’s putting in there where if it’s raining or gloomy, I want to make sure that I’m serving my takeout option. Hey, you know what, have dinner on us tonight, or you have to pay but have dinner from us tonight. And then on the other side of it, it’s you know, if it’s beautiful and sunny, showcase that patio and say hey, why don’t you come out, enjoy the night out on the patio, compound dinner. So it’s just kind of taking a very simple tactic, but changing your message. And there’s a lot of research that actually comes behind that where if it’s, you know, rainy, if it’s not great weather, if it’s snowing, people tend to order in more, so why not take advantage of your weather triggering and be able to change your messaging, instead of just having a blanket message that covers everything at one point in time.
Aarjav (00:22:40)
And just to add on top of what John mentioned, that’s another exciting example. And what our UI on the platform really allows you to do is you can mix and match a lot of other conditions with other targeting. So you can add like, time of the day, or you can mention like a sequence and stuff. But what you can also do is select the device type. So it could be mobiles, tablets, and I would say desktops. And for the situation where like you have a restaurant like what John mentioned, and you have a beautiful patio, you want to show like ads inviting people to come and sit in on a sunny day. So if the day is sunny, pretty warm, you can use those conditions on the weather metrics, and you expect that people are going to be out and about on a you know, they’re not going to be at home. So they might be using more of their mobile and tablet devices. So you can select like, hey, show ads more on mobile and tablet devices that might reach out more users as opposed to, if it’s a rainy day, if it’s snowing people might be in might be using the computers more. So you might also want to divert ads to that device. So you can mix and match and do a lot of things to make sure you get the best out of it.
Sneha (00:23:44)
Awesome. And if we can talk a little bit about attribution, how can brands leverage a full online and offline attribution in programmatic beyond just the holiday season?
John (00:23:56)
You know, one of the biggest things that I think a lot of brands are facing right now is trying to prove what their media is actually doing from a, whether it be sales perspective, or driving in-store traffic, whatever it might be from that piece. And I think, you know, one of the big things that you can really do that sets you up for success is making sure that those things are turned on when it comes to your attribution. So if we’re looking at this, it’s, you know, do I have the pixels in place where I need to track things, you know, more tracking is always great, the more pieces that our platform can get in, the better the machine learning algorithm is going to be. So if we’re checking form fills and we’re tracking, email submits if we’re tracking purchases, making sure that we’re passing back you know, any add to carts, things like that. Really understanding where the funnel and where it’s being dropped off. You know, that’s just one part of the online strategy, but being able to see like, you know, if that’s not working, can we pivot and see a good story when it comes to foot traffic, you know, maybe it’s just that retailers want to go buy this in store. One of the big things that I can use for this is, you know, if you’re an auto dealership, I don’t know many people at this point in time that are buying their cars over the Internet, it’s still something that people want to go in, they want to it’s tactile, you want to drive, and being able to see like, you know, if someone’s, you can still book a test drive online, they can still maybe book their service appointment online, that side of things is always going to happen with those users that actually go into the dealership and the next little bit, that’s kind of the one piece that you really want to see. And then from there, it’s, you know, how long was that person inside the dealership? Well, we know service appointments take a little bit longer. So if their dwell times longer than chances are, they went in for their service. And if it’s a little bit shorter, and maybe they had, you know, multiple visits in the same day, they probably went in talk to one of the salespeople, then went out went for a test drive came back. So you can tell a really good full funnel story when it comes to both online and offline attribution, when you kind of partner them together. That’s kind of the nice little benefit when it comes to adding FTA for offline attributions. And then on top of that, too, you know, just being able to see if there’s anything else that’s coming from it, are you driving Lyft? Are you being able to see any success from certain ads? Is there anything that’s really kind of driving that just different key data points that you can get is going to make an overall strategy. And then from our side on the StackAdapt, Client Services, we’re really looking at all of those touch points to try and give you a full story. So when we look at it, and we’re actually looking at those online object attributions, if we have every step of the way covered, we can tell you where your users are dropping off, maybe that conversion journey might be a little bit too long. And we can see, you know what they’re getting to step two, and then they’re falling off, maybe we can try and tighten that up and help your team on that side. And same when we look at offline attributions, we can also say like, hey, maybe we’re not getting the online piece, or driving a lot of in-store traffic, you know, what are you seeing from an agency on your side, when it comes to point of sales when it comes to that side of things. And when you kind of marry the data together, you really get this multi-touch attribution model that everyone’s after. There’s no perfect solution when it comes to multi-touch. But I think the more data that you can gather, the better informed you can be from a growth marketing perspective.
Sneha (00:27:26)
Awesome. That brings us to the end of this episode, John, and Aarjav thank you so much for joining us, loved learning about why the targeting those were some really solid examples and insights you shared. And thanks to you, the one listening to this whoever you are marketer, brand, agency, I’m sure you had a lot to take away today. Again, great to have the both of you here and to you, the one who stuck around till the very end listening to this, make sure you subscribe to the podcast to listen to the new episodes right when they drop. And if you like the podcast, share it with your teammates. It could be a cool resource to post on your work chat as a recommendation. So go ahead and do that. And if you want to get in touch Write to us at academy@stackadapt.com That is academy@stackadapt.com. We have episodes releasing every alternate Wednesday. So stay tuned. Until then, this has been the how agencies type podcast. See you in the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast.
Episode Outro (00:28:22)
Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at StackAapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
