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.
In this article, learn how to align your marketing goals with your audience strategy for maximum campaign effectiveness.
Consider Your Marketing Objective
Thanks to MNTN's Universal Audiences feature, creating a precise audience profile for targeting has never been easier. The Universal Audience tool consolidates all third-party and first-party data into one convenient place, including 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 block into your audience composition, regardless of marketing objective.
MNTN's Prospecting Marketing Objective
The MNTN Prospecting Objective allows you to identify new customers likely to be interested in your product offering.
If your marketing objective is prospecting, ensure your audience segments are predominantly inclusive of the following:
⭐️ Third-party interest segments
⭐️ Location segment(s) (if applicable)
⭐️ CRM segment(s) (if applicable)
💡Note: If running a standalone CRM campaign, select the Prospecting marketing objective during campaign setup.
MNTN's Retargeting Marketing Objective
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 inclusive of the following:
⭐️ First-party site visitor segments
⭐️ Location segment(s) (if applicable)
⭐️ CRM segment(s) (if applicable)
Audience Best Practices and Considerations
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.
Before we dive in, let's define a few things:
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
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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.
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💡Note: To better understand how to leverage the Universal Audience tool, check out the Building Universal Audiences article.
Segment Inclusions
Topic | Consider | Recommendation |
Total Audience Composition Size |
Consider prioritizing accuracy and precision over total audience composition size. |
✅ Generally speaking, it's better to lean towards smaller audiences vs. larger audiences. However, there is no right size as long as you target the right households. **See below note.
Instead:
1️⃣ Prioritize accuracy and precision 2️⃣ Take interest segment size into consideration
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Including an Audience Segment in an OR Statement
(households within any of the appended audience segments are eligible for targeting)
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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).
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Interest Segment Offered from Various Third-Party Providers
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Consider utilizing the interest segment's description to decide which interest segments best align with your audience profile. |
✅ Be picky when selecting audience categories.
1️⃣ Consider the audience description carefully.
2️⃣ Imagine how a data provider might have identified the households within that category.
3️⃣ Decide if those actions would make that household a valuable potential customer for your business.
|
Geographic 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:
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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.
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❌ 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:
1️⃣ Leverage an AND statement to hone in on users who could be in your offering.
2️⃣ Leverage household-level demographic categories such as: household income level, family composition (parents of high schoolers), etc.
3️⃣ We recommend using demographic segments provided by Equifax, IXI and TransUnion, as those are two of the largest consumer credit bureaus and have the most accurate demographic data
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Site Visitor Segments
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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:
1️⃣ You are targeting users who are more engaged on your site.
2️⃣ You are negating any user who found themselves on your site and immediately bounced off.
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🚩 **Important: If launching a retargeting campaign, the audience composition size must be at least 1,000 unique households.
🧠 Pro Tip: If your campaign targets a smaller geographic region, you'll likely want to layer in additional audience segments to expand reach.
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: 1️⃣ Consider building a site visitor segment of converted users (those who have converted 1-50 times) to exclude from your audience. **Please also see the below note.
2️⃣ Consider uploading a CRM list of current customers/past purchasers to exclude from your audience.
**This recommendation is dependent on your team's goals and initiatives.
|
Interest Segment Exclusions |
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.
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Geo Exclusions
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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:
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🚩**Important: 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
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How will I know what is and isn't working within my audience composition?
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✅ 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.
Details on how to read this report are seen here.
**Please see the below.
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Audience Reach Tool
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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.
Further details on Campaign Audience Reach are outlined here.
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🚩 **Important: 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 Considerations: Prospecting Audience
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.
💡Note: For more holiday-specific recommendations, check out our 2023 Holiday Guide.
Topic | Importance | Third-Party Interest Segment |
Holiday Catchall
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This will ensure you're hitting all relevant shoppers this holiday season |
Search keyword: November, Holiday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday
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Gift-Card Shoppers
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Target gift card users looking to make the most of their holiday shopping |
Search keyword: Gift Cards
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Brick and Mortar
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There is an in-flux of foot traffic in Q4 as consumers head to local stores for their holiday shopping and deals |
Search keyword: Brick and Mortar
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Mobile Commerce (MCommerce)
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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: Mobile
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