When Small Data Becomes Integral To A Campaign’s Success

In this guest post, Engaging.io’s GM Fraser Gordon (pictured below), agrees data can make or break any campaign, but, he adds, it’s the small stuff and not the big that can make all the difference…

We hear a lot about big data these days and how it will change everything. But sometimes big data is not the solution, sometimes it is about getting granular with small data.

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A recent educational campaign we undertook for the Cancer Council to promote the correct application of sunscreen attracted one of the highest completion rates we’ve ever seen for a 55 second video. Why? It was all about the data. The small data.

By analysing the results of test campaigns and comparing them to external factors such as weather, we found a pattern that increased the likelihood of video completion by nearly 100%.

As it turns out, if you look hard enough, and you know what to look for, there are data patterns everywhere. In this instance, the patterns related very specifically to media platforms, channels and the weather.

Now, linking the weather to consumer spending is nothing new. You advertise ice creams when it’s hot and snow boots when it’s snowing. You don’t have to be a genius to work that out. Another Australian agency, Affinity, won several awards for its campaign for Narellan Pools with a campaign on those lines.

However, taking it a step further to identify how weather patterns affected engagement on specific media channels, is something different.

What we found was that, when the weather started to heat up, people were more engaged on some channels than others. When the weather was at its hottest, this changed again. It wasn’t just the devices being used that reflected these changes but also the platforms. Social on mobile worked better when it was hottest whilst paid ads on desktop worked better on the build up to peak temperatures. And these were just some of the examples we uncovered.

By identifying these patterns in consumer behaviour we were able to ramp up, down or even stop programmatic spend by region, demographic, device and channel, depending on climatic changes. The result was out of 2.3 million impressions, over one million viewed the clip to completion, which was unheard of on a 55 second video.

Taking the time to understand and analyse consumer behaviour is critical in the digital era to maximise ROI because after all,hitting people at the right time with the right message about the right product is every marketer’s and retailer’s dream.

The problem with data is there’s a lot of it. With over four billion internet users globally, spending an average of six hours a day connected and generating a combined 2.5 quintillion bytes of new data every day, it’s no wonder it can feel overwhelming. Big data is simply too big, but small data can be invaluable.

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