Overview
Targeting the right households is a crucial factor in every campaign. We're here to help ensure your audience strategy aligns with our best practices.
Marketing Objective
Thanks to MNTN's Audience tool, creating a precise audience profile for targeting has never been easier. The Audience tool consolidates all third-party and first-party data into one convenient place, including MNTN Matched, Site Visitor, Interest, CRM, and Location segments. As a result, you can effortlessly build audiences for your targeting needs.
However, before building your audience, you will need to define your campaign's marketing objective. This decision intricately shapes the segments you leverage, in turn, the composition of your audience.
📝 Note: Any segments can be layered in as an inclusion or exclusion into your audience composition, regardless of marketing objective.
Prospecting
The MNTN Prospecting Objective allows you to reach top-of-funnel customers who haven't purchased from your brand before.
If your marketing objective is prospecting, ensure your audience segments are predominantly including:
MNTN Matched
Interests
CRM
Location
Retargeting
The MNTN Retargeting Objective empowers you to re-engage users who have previously explored your website.
This is where the MNTN Tracking Pixel steps in, enabling us to identify visited individuals and discern how they interacted with your site, allowing for purposeful targeting.
If your marketing objective is retargeting, ensure your audience segments are predominantly including:
Site Visitors: time spent on site, number of page views, cart abandoners, etc.
Location
CRM
📝 Note: If launching a retargeting campaign, the audience composition size must be at least 1,000 unique households.
Audience Building
With your campaign's marketing objective established, it's time to build your audience. Explore the following best practices and considerations as you craft your audience profile.
💡 Pro Tip: Consider an audience profile you've seen perform well on other channels to begin.
Definitions:
Term | Definition |
OR (Expands your reach) |
An “OR” statement is how all households are targeted within a group of categories. A household in ANY single category will be targeted
|
AND (Narrows your reach) |
An “AND” statement occurs when narrowing an audience. The household must be present in both categories or category groups to be included in the overall audience
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INCLUDE |
"Inclusions" are the households you want to target.
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EXCLUDE |
"Exclusions" are the households you do NOT want to target.
Exclusions always take priority, so when a household is present in an included and excluded category, the household will always be excluded.
|
Segment inclusions:
Topic | Consider | Recommendation |
Total Audience Composition Size | Consider prioritizing accuracy and precision over total audience composition size. | It's generally better to lean towards smaller audiences vs. larger audiences. However, there is no right size as long as you target the right households.
Instead:
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Including an Audience Segment in an OR Statement
(households within any of the appended audience segments are eligible for targeting) | Consider whether you would you target the audience segment on its own. | When considering an audience segment for targeting, only include it if you would target this segment on its own (ignoring segment size as a factor).
Make sure that each category is relevant before adding to your audience. |
Narrow Your Audience in a AND Statement
(households must be present in the first "group" of segments and in the second "group" of segments to be eligible for targeting) | Consider being precise with your audience targeting. | Leverage an AND statement.
We recommend putting the broader audience profile as the first "group" of segments, and the more precise segments within the second "group" (AND statement).
|
MNTN Matched | Consider using MNTN Matched for your Prospecting campaigns to engage consumers based on their recent shopping behavior, meaningful life events, and most relevant interest and other intent signals. | We recommend including MNTN Matched as a standalone audience or when narrowed with other Interests segments
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Interests (Offered from Various Third-Party Providers)
| Consider utilizing the interest segment's description to decide which interest segments best align with your audience profile. | Be picky when selecting audience categories:
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Location | Consider whether your business operates nationally. | We recommend a nationwide approach to reach households interested in your product offering regardless of location.
Leverage our Location segments:
💡 Pro Tip: If your campaign targets a smaller geographic region, you'll likely want to layer in additional audience segments to expand reach. |
Demographic Targeting | Consider whether you can better target interest segments that align with your product offering (MNTN-pixeled conversion point) or if using an AND statement to refine demographic targeting would be more effective.
| Avoid leveraging demographic data when unnecessary.
We are targeting households, not people, so it’s not recommended to include gender or age categories.
If you do need to target demographics:
|
Site Visitors
| When retargeting your site traffic, consider building a site visitor segment of users who have viewed at least 2 pages of your site. | Targeting a site visitor segment of users who have viewed at least 2 pages of your site ensures:
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Segment exclusions:
Topic | Consider | Recommendation |
Customer Block (Site Visitor Segment, CRM Segment) | Consider whether it is effective to continue targeting specific portions of your customer pool. | If not, consider:
⚠️ Warning: This recommendation is dependent on your team's goals and initiatives. |
Interests | Is it dire you don't target a specific user profile? | Yes: If it is absolutely necessary you exclude an interest segment from your targeting (i.e. legal reasons), exclude all relevant interest segments from your campaign's efforts.
No (recommended): No further steps are needed! Our tech will optimize towards the best-performing households amongst your included audience segments. |
Location
| Consider whether your business operates nationally.
| Yes: We recommend a nationwide approach to reach households interested in your product offering regardless of location.
No: Leverage our Location segments:
|
⚠️ Warning: If tracking multiple conversion points, you cannot block one type of converter. You can only block all converted users, no matter which conversion point that user converted on.
Test and Iterate
Identify opportunities to test audience profiles against each other to arrive at the most defined audience profile for your brand.
Topic | Consideration | Recommendation |
Audience Segment Report
| How will I know what is and isn't working within my audience composition?
| If analyzing your Prospecting campaign's CRM and interest segments, leverage your reporting dashboard's Audience Segment report for valuable insights.
If making any adjustments or changes to the audience composition, it's recommended to revisit the report after 72 hours to gain valuable directional insights. The longer these changes are in the market, the more precise your analysis will become.
**Please see the below. |
Audience Reach Tool
| Consider the relationship between your budget allocation and your campaign's total audience reach. | Leverage the Available Reach tool to understand how increasing your budget can reach more households within your audience composition.
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⚠️ Warning: While narrowed audiences are a powerful targeting tool, it’s important to note that it limits your ability to compare the results generated by individual segments within the Audience Segment Report.
Holiday Recommendations
Prospecting audiences:
Consider this your prospecting third-party interest segment cheat sheet, with some ready-pulled audience recommendations. We’ve also provided the search terms so you can easily find them when it comes time to set up your campaign.
Topic | Importance | Third-Party Interest Segment |
Holiday Catchall
| This will ensure you're hitting all relevant shoppers this holiday season | Search keywords:
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Gift-Card Shoppers
| Target gift card users looking to make the most of their holiday shopping | Search keyword:
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Brick and Mortar
| There is an in-flux of foot traffic in Q4 as consumers head to local stores for their holiday shopping and deals | Search keyword:
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Mobile Commerce (MCommerce)
| During the holiday season, people tend to use their mobile devices more frequently for shopping, making it a prime opportunity to target mCommerce | Search keyword:
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