2013
Autospeak-Straight Talk contains articles covering digital and social media marketing social communities and events marketing
What you did five or 10 years ago is probably more important than your 30-second visit to some e-commerce site that’s now bombarding you with cookie-fueled retargeted ads.That’s why looking to the past – not to the future – is the key to success in the world of data.
Here’s a quiz: What’s the most meaningful piece of digital data about you?
1)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â One of the 100-plus third-party cookies dropped on you today.
2)Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Your 2004 @gmail.com address or 1997 @AOL.com email address.
While you may not think of it this way, the oldest piece of useful digital data about ‘you’ is probably your personal email address. Your email address is the Internet equivalent of a combination birth certificate, driver’s license and passport. As a digital person, you are virtually born the day you get your own email address.
What’s so valuable about something that everyone has?
Uniqueness. Email addresses are personal by design – no one’s been able to devise a better “openID†– and they establish a persona that is very descriptive. AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail – your email tribe membership card is like a geologic sedimentary layer.
Longevity. Unlike short-lived cookies, email addresses have half-lives that are growing every year – since people tend to keep their personal addresses forever. How long have you had your personal email address? Why would you ever get rid of it? Probably not. It’s become your digital name.
Portability. Email works in mobile as well as it works on desktop. You carry your email addresses along with you on every device, unlike the device/browser-dependent cookie. The first thing you do when you get a new device, to make it useful, is setup your email address (and for many, your Apple ID, which is an email address, of course). Services like “Last Pass†are the closest cookies come to portability are services.
Access. Email addresses have become your de facto login for every site and app you visit and use. It’s now practically impossible to use the Internet without an email address – even if you don’t subscribe to a single email newsletter.  Try it. I dare you.
With the third-party cookie under attack from Do Not Track, marketers have been looking for the next big thing. That’e email, thanks to the MD5 hash,  privacy-friendly 32-character one-way encryption of the email address. This simple process has allowed Facebook, for example, to create a “custom audience†targeting product that allows retailers to upload hashed customer data segments to target their subscribers who are spending time on Facebook – and show them an ad consistent with their customer status.
And when paired with a cookie downloaded at the time an email is sent and opened, email-address hashing works for display retargeting too.
In the coming months, you’ll start seeing so-called “custom audience†capabilities arrive from Twitter, PayPal, Amazon, you name it. Any site that requires an email address as an account login can get into this game. As marketers realize the superiority of the email hash, they will be bringing long-tail CRM data online, and we’ll all be better off for it. After all, who wants to spend for a prospecting campaign to their best customers?
Take another look at your old email address. You’re looking at the future.
Wriiten by Dave Hendricks
DealerNet Services
Closed Loop Analytics Can Improve Your Automotive Marketing
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(Posted on Jul 13, 2013 at 10:04AM )
One of the most important elements of any marketing plan is the ability to track the effectiveness of new initiatives.  The ability to compare conversions prior to and following changes in an email or direct mail campaign can indicate whether you are receiving an adequate return on your marketing investment. One of the most valuable methods for determining ROI is closed loop analytics, which provides key metrics of marketing initiatives.Â
In most inbound marketing strategies, analytics play a critical role. However in an email or direct mail campaign, automotive closed loop analytics can provide insights that can springboard your marketing to new levels of success. Â
The metrics of automotive closed loop analytics can measure a variety of results including website visits, showroom visits and purchases.  Depending on the granularity of your metrics, you may also be able to determine specific characteristics of these interactions like age group, income, or level of enthusiasm.Â
Comparing the results from before and after an email or direct mail campaign can help you identify the most important components of your new initiatives and expand them, including:
-
Long-term results—Automotive closed loop analytics can provide
 results throughout the lifetime of your company. Once you have
implemented an analytics system that integrates your email or direct mail
campaigns with your CRM system, you can
continuously receive insights. As your needs or objectives evolve, you
 can modify the resolution of your analytics to help identify the most lucrative
 consumer markets. -
Agile system—Most closed loop systems are easily modified to allowÂ
virtually immediate results from an email campaign. If you would like to
know how many people clicked on a Call-to-Action (CTA) in the latest batch of
emails, then you only need to click a button. This type of responsiveness
may require additional investment up front, but the data available can help
make your dealership a success for years to come. -
Identify key marketing ideas—One of the most elusive objectives in
 any marketing strategy is identifying the marketing message that is most
 effective. Automotive closed loop analytics can instantly identify those
 components and help you understand why they are so successful. For
example you may find lifetime service options are a key to maintaining customer
 relationships which bolster sales. -
Unique metrics—Measuring ROI on direct mail has been difficult in the
 past, but with the use of new techniques like showroom controls or dedicated
 phone lines, you can accurately measure how effective your new initiative
is.  Using a phone number exclusively for direct mail responses and
coupons with RFIDÂ tags can indicate the precise number of reactions with a
relatively low cost.
Inbound marketing strategies are designed to coax consumers who are already interested in purchasing a car find your business and make a purchase.  With the aid of automotive closed loop analytics, you can refine your marketing strategy to identify those consumers who are most likely to lead to a sale. Â
If you would like some more tips on how to integrate automotive closed loop analytics into your email and direct mail initiatives, download our Automotive Marketing eBook:
If you would like some more tips on how to integrate automotive closed loop analytics into your email and direct mail initiatives, download our Automotive Marketing eBook:Â
http://info.palmeradagency.com/get-more-car-buyers?hsCtaTracking=890b950d-728f-49b4-8203-bf891fa354c9%7C0a330377-b367-4e68-86bb-b1c733f5e9fc
http://dealernetservicesonline.biz