Customer acquisition at scale that performs is hard to do.
Research shows the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) increased 222% between 2013 and 2022, from $9 to more than $29. This makes sense, with digital advertising spending forecast to grow to beyond $870 billion by 2027. The more brands that advertise via digital media, the more costs are driven up.
There is a smarter, faster, and more cost-effective way to acquire customers. It all depends on data.
I’m a model, you know what I mean
Many customer acquisition strategies fail because they do not target the prospects most likely to be in the market for your brand’s products or services.
That’s because targeting on the internet has gotten a lot harder in recent years, primarily due to a lack of data availability or the use of subpar data. Apple’s iOS 14.5 introduction of “Ask App Not to Track” and increasing privacy regulations have made it infinitely harder to glean the data necessary to target specific segments of customers. Many customer acquisition strategies also rely on third-party data, which isn’t accurate. These factors have reduced digital advertising performance while increasing customer acquisition costs. It’s a lose-lose game if there ever was one.
However, there is a way to get the data necessary to zoom in on the prospects with actual recent intent to purchase: the lookalikes model.
These models tap into online intent and customer data to find prospects that look and act like your best customers. These modeled prospects become a lookalike audience, a group of people who share similar characteristics, such as demographics, interests, and behaviors, to your existing customers and are, therefore, more likely to convert. To create a lookalike audience, you first need a “seed” audience, a list of your top customers, that you feed through machine learning algorithms to find other users with similar behaviors and characteristics.
But you can’t just stop there. First-party data only gives you a sliver of the whole pie. You need a fully-baked view of your potential customers to spend your acquisition dollars on the right ones.
Turning lookalikes into buy-alikes
That’s where shared first-party data comes in.
This approach connects your first-party data to billions of online and offline browsing and buying behaviors to determine what your best customers buy, what they’re interested in, and what they shop for across hundreds of brands. Then, if you have the right partner, an AI-driven machine learning model can identify and engage high-lifetime value prospects who share the attributes of your most valued customers and are in the consideration stage. And then, presto, offer conversion!
PebblePost has significantly enhanced our Lookalikes product to make it easier, more efficient, and more performant to acquire new customers at scale. Combining always-on modeling with direct mail enables brands to prospect just like in digital.
Underpinned by a privacy-by-design framework, PebblePost already connects billions of first-party identity, intent, and transaction signals across 500+ brands and nearly 100% of U.S. households to identify, model, and optimize a decision-ready lookalike audience. Now, we’ve beefed up four components of the product, which is helping brands like Blue Nile, BBQGuys, and Virgin Voyages that are leveraging Lookalikes see an average 8x return on advertising spend (ROAS), beating our prior version of Lookalikes with 40% higher reach and 30% better conversion rates.
4 Advantages of PebblePost’s Enhanced Lookalikes
- It uses predictive data to give you a full-consumer view
PebblePost is the only Programmatic Direct Mail solution that combines three of the most predictive data types—transaction, intent, and customer—across more than 500 brands. This gives you a more holistic view of consumers for modeling, yielding higher conversion rates vs. other solutions that rely on third-party data. Our Lookalikes feeds this proprietary data into our AI engine to pinpoint prospects most likely to buy from your brand.
- It lets you continuously optimize
Our AI scores almost 100% of U.S. households daily using billions of online and offline signals connected to your brand’s first-party data. This makes audience pools fresh and relevant so you can engage more prospects with active purchase intent quicker than before. Because our models are always getting smarter with an ongoing feedback loop, there’s no more waiting weeks or months for campaign results. Brands can optimize in real-time.
- It gives you incrementality and advanced performance analytics
Incrementality is central to PebblePost’s Lookalikes. We include automated hold-out groups for each campaign so your brand can gauge prospecting performance based on transparent, statistically significant results. Our real-time dashboard offers topline and incremental data, and we integrate with leading marketing measurement providers so brands can verify results via trusted third-party partners and other marketing investments.
- It gives you a partnership
You don’t want a vendor. You want a partner focused on unlocking success through a comprehensive, outcomes-based approach. PebblePost does the heavy lifting of coordinating across program management, custom analytics and insights, and strategic testing so brands can easily integrate PebblePost PDM into their always-on marketing mix. Gone are the days of spending weeks or months coordinating with data providers, printers, and platforms to launch campaigns.
It’s time to make your prospecting shine with PebblePost
The shining star of the customer acquisition catwalk is the PebblePost Lookalikes. We’ve enhanced it just in time for your holiday advertising campaigns. Contact us today to learn how to start prospecting better than you thought possible.
