However, after all these hurdles are addressed, if there’s still an organizational mandate for measurement and attribution, it should include a path to inform optimization of the active campaigns, rather than weeks, if not months, after the fact.
In service of marketing to more accurate audience members
The inconvenient reality of digital advertising is that most brands have to settle for reaching some, but not all, users in their target audience. This reality may serve as a drag on the performance of some national new customer acquisition campaigns, but it is often overcome (or masked) by enough impressions and spend.
Member marketing is a different animal. The compelling part of digital outreach to members is that a contact may only cost the marketer one-tenth of one cent. Contacting a member by direct mail can cost $2 or more. So it’s no wonder that large and medium-sized member organizations like health insurers, telco companies, regional banks, as well as auto and home insurance firms line up to figure out a way to deploy digital in service of their members.
The challenge of member marketing is reach and measurement. When onboarding member files, marketers are blind to who they can reach online and who they can’t—that’s a problem. If they are blind to who they can reach on one platform versus another—that’s a problem. After spending time and money to reach members, they are still blind to who was reached and who was not—that’s a problem. Taken together, without a coherent identity strategy, the backbone of institutional business becomes dramatically less efficient for categories in consumer retail, finance, insurance, energy and businesses with their membership.
If the beauty of the digital advertising business model is that it provides cover for a lot of mismatches and inefficiencies in the customer acquisition process, the favorable economics can really turbocharge member marketing results because brand familiarity assures engagement. Consider the margin gains for acquisition and cross-sell programs that can be realized if a member outreach campaign can be properly executed and deterministically confirmed across the entire member file by channel and tactic.
A digital member marketing example
Health insurance providers must regularly communicate with their customers. Whether through direct mail, email or digital, they advertise to a finite universe of insured members.
Communicating with members digitally is dramatically more cost-effective, allowing more frequent and effective outreach. Through onboarding, members can be segmented into three to four distinct groups: highly engaged across multiple digital media platforms, preferred social platform engagement, email only and members not available online. The highly engaged can be segmented by platform preference or higher platform impact channels such as CTV. Social members can be allocated to Meta. The members who have no digital footprint can be designated to receive a postcard.
The point is, if this health insurer only has to spend 10% of their budget on email, they can reach the 90% as many as 10-15 times over a longer period and still save over 70%, compared to what they would have had to spend going strictly with direct mail.
