“We were expecting to deliver incremental return of one-to-four, one-to-five, but the test came to an independently verified one-in-ten... It blew our minds!"
BUSINESS BACKGROUND
THE CHALLENGE
“The issue is that in the last three years, the market has completely exploded with delivery aggregators and other quick-service restaurants (QSRs) moving into delivery. There are so many businesses fighting for that pizza or takeaway occasion, and they have deep pockets.
“The new generation of consumers importantly have choice. Unlike the Simpsons days. Traditional channels like TV, sponsorship or even video-on-demand are becoming more expensive to purchase, and other channels are too fragmented.
“We believe we still have the best product and delivery proposition, but we need to be on the front foot when it comes to driving efficiency through data - using our data architecture and understanding of our customers to outsmart competitors. All the while, measuring effectively using a mix of econometrics, last click and revenue incrementality.
Domino’s were recommended to activate their first-party data in an additional way, harnessing Conversant’s transaction-driven ID map of real consumers in the UK. This meant efficiently identifying and reaching the right consumers at scale while optimising media buying to measurable incremental return.
“That’s our mantra - to make sure we’re one step ahead of the QSRs and aggregators, to outsmart rather than outspend.
“While we’re able to use our customer view to be a first mover with new channels such as social platforms, Spotify, or specific publishers, Domino’s, like others, has always had a problem justifying return on investment across some digital display channels.“For many years, we have stayed clear from traditional programmatic display.
“I think a lot of the issues with traditional digital display are common knowledge - how display was delivered, executed, and reported. You could argue it lent itself to fraud in certain areas, reach but not necessarily conversion, and certainly the targeting around that was misrepresented. Because of this, the return on investment just wasn’t there.”
CONVERSANT’S SOLUTION
Domino’s were recommended to activate their first-party data in an additional way, harnessing Conversant’s transaction-driven ID map of real consumers in the UK. This meant efficiently identifying and reaching the right consumers at scale while optimising media buying to measurable incremental return.
By utilising its CRM dataset, Domino’s would be able to protect and increase their frequency of purchase – by driving increased profitable incremental purchases across their customer base. “Because of the changes to the market we had to refocus our efforts not just on acquisition, but also retention,” continues Boyce. “Data is so integral to that.”
“First and foremost, the thing that attracted us to Conversant’s model was the commitment to ensuring that we were utilising our first-party data and were able to track the full process accurately against our internal data - literally from media delivery through to order.
“Because we were re-introducing display into our media mix, there was a lot of nervousness across the business in what we were doing. Conversant’s commitment to incremental measurement was incredibly important to solving that.”
PERFORMANCE
Because of the brand’s prior negative experiences with display, it was vital to get everything right for Domino’s before launching a proof of concept.
“Conversant took the time to get under the skin of the business incredibly well. They started by trying to understand what our operational and business challenges were, which I thought was very unique.
“The GDPR element was a crucial part of this. Conversant were committed to helping us get over that hurdle to make sure this worked. They were very transparent and very engaged with all stakeholders like data security and legal - a perfect partner in that sense.
“Crucially, performance was significantly different from any other test of digital display.
“From my own experience, it’s entirely different for other display partners. It’s chalk and cheese.
“We’re able to identify customers down to a single customer contact ID and track that right through to purchase. We’re delivering automated messaging to drive customer lifetime value, and Conversant is wholly committed to proving the incrementality. They paid for the control set too, which in itself showed they believe in the service and the platform.
“We were expecting to deliver incremental return of one-to-four, one-to-five, but the test came to an independently verified one-in-ten.
“It blew our minds – we didn’t believe it, but our independent business analyst and insight teams verified all of it. We took Conversant to task – we thought they’d over-promised, but in reality, they over-delivered. We were thrilled!”
THE RESULTS
In the three-month trial period:
"If you have a business such as retail or QSR with a reasonable portion of income generated online, or indeed a reasonable volume of customers for whom you’ve got good data on user behaviour and history, this is the channel that you can’t afford not to be testing on."
- Karl Boyce, Head of Digital and CRM at Domino's
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