Weve preps push to put CRM at the heart of mobile campaigns
Weve, the joint venture company between the UK’s biggest mobile operators, is poised to give advertisers the ability to connect their own CRM offering to its anonymised data as part of a raft of updates being prepped to support the launch of its display ad service.
The features aim to capitalise on what Weve claims is the ”better than expected” performance a beta version of the service has delivered. Some 15 brands including Lynx, Volvo and Tesco have taken part in the trial since it began in February.
Weve is launching the display ad service today (1 July) for advertisers to target campaigns based on its own verified first-party data in the hope of pushing more traditional metrics, beyond impressions, such as purchase intent and awareness.
It plans on bolstering the platform with a tool, dubbed “Weve Synch”, over the next month that lets brands implement a mobile CRM strategy. Siloed mobile information, a complex ecosystem and a lack of scale have prevented companies from moving into the space but Weve says the upcoming offering will start to address these issues.
The tool was first touted at the display ad service’s beta launch and Weve has recently started matching Domino’s CRM databases with an anonymised lists of its audiences phone numbers. While the initial selling point for advertisers is to deliver relevant, target content to consumers, the tool will ultimately form profiles that can be used to reach new audiences beyond the matched data sets.
Sean O’Connell, product director for Weve, says: “What we’re offering will build out from CRM to look at people who are more likely to engage with the brand based on the profile already established using our data and the advertisers.”
Other updates are being prepped to reinforce what the brand claims are the “material uplifts” in awareness and purchase intent it has seen over the last five months from the display ad service. Awareness was up to nearly 40 per cent following some campaigns, while one delivered a 64 per cent increase in purchase intent, Weve adds.
More audience segments are being developed to offer better targeting alongside efforts to improve the amount behavioural, interest-based data for brands targeting sport, travel and entertainment products and services. The moves build on changes Weve developed during the trial, including a system for measuring how users engage with mobile ads and an opt-out service.
Weve says the initial changes mean it is now “delivering levels of certainty that haven’t previously been possible”, adding brands are increasingly willing to “experiment” in the mobile arena when previously they would have stuck with search and social media campaigns.
O’Connell adds: “With [the display ad service] we’re able to move the needle in terms of the measurement analytics, like purchase intent and awareness, that we can offer advertisers. It means that they can now deliver high-quality creative not just the same banners as everyone else that have been overlaid with more sophisticated data. While data is important, for people to engage with campaigns there needs to be that engagement across the whole value chain.”
