Now a Publicis company, Epsilon’s vision is to put data at the core of everything the advertising group does.
Stacey Hawes, president of Epsilon’s data practice, is responsible for curating and monetizing third-party data assets at Epsilon. Her role now extends to the broader Publicis Groupe, which acquired Epsilon in July for $4.4 billion, rendering it Publicis’ sole data-tech platform. It’s still early days, but Epsilon’s goal is to connect first-party and third-party customer data to drive “superior outcomes,” according to Hawes.
In a conversation with BeetTV at Advertising Week, Hawes explained the need for brands and agencies to integrate first-party and third-party data to get a 360-degree view of customers and their preferences.
“The demand for data is higher than ever across every brand. What we are seeing is a resurgence of folks trying to understand who their customers are, so they know how to talk to them more effectively,” says Hawes, who adds that customer data also increases relevancy, personalization and conversions.
To Hawes, there are two pieces to every data strategy:
- Creative. Having an understanding of who the customer is takes the “guesswork” out of the creative process, because brands start with a profile of customers to work from.
- Attribution. Knowing the customers who the creative resonated with enough to lead them to convert is an equally important incentive for marketers. “We’re bringing to bear a lot of unique transactional data to help with that closed-loop measurement across all channels,” says Hawes.
Attribution is not a simple task, and it’s one that Hawes and her team will be focusing on in the future.
“Attribution is still a work in progress,” she says. The end goal is to be able to help clients understand, channel by channel, which customers convert, across digital advertisements, social media platforms, email marketing – “even good old direct mail.”
This video is part of a series of interviews conducted during Advertising Week New York, 2019. This series is co-production of Beet.TV and Advertising Week. The series is sponsored by Roundel, a Target company. Please see more videos from Advertising Week right here.