IgnitionOne’s proprietary Engagement Score models values based on each website visitor’s level of involvement on Danone Belgium’s website and propensity to convert.

Through the Engagement Score, as well as a range of supporting metrics, marketers are able to utilise Engagement Optimisation as an advanced tactic to make more efficient media spend decisions.

Challenges

Danone faced a number of key challenges and partnered with IgnitionOne in order to increase the return of investment (ROI) of their brand marketing spend. A key element that was missing in order to optimise Danone’s brand digital marketing spend was an understanding of the engagement and contribution each campaign made across the entire click path, to maximise ROI in real time.

Fragmented tracking technology

Danone’s digital marketing campaigns were being tracked, managed and optimised in silos, as it was using various technologies: search engine tools, Facebook solution, ad server and web analytics software to analyse the onsite performance of each channel’s traffic.

The siloed technologies meant analysts struggled to get an accurate depiction of the contribution of each channel in the click path and it was a difficult process to identify Danone’s real marketing ROI.

Making decisions solely based on conversion data

The decisions to optimise Danone’s brand digital marketing campaigns were based solely on conversion data and failed to take into account the engagement level of each site user and their effect on the final conversion figures. The decisions were mostly done post campaign and were usually too late to significantly increase ROI.

Last-click attribution

Danone, like most online marketers, was optimising media spend based on the analysis of the final touch point before a conversion rather than analysing the engagement of all the touch points that led to the conversion.

Four step approach to optimising campaigns efficiently

1. Centralise online brand marketing under one platform

The IgnitionOne Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) is a unified solution to using fragmented technology systems. IgnitionOne has set up an environment under a single platform for Danone capable of tracking, managing & optimising their search, social and display campaigns in real-time in an accurate and efficient way.

2. Define the right KPI

It is very difficult to choose the right KPI to optimise brand campaigns. Danone was using a set of site-centric metrics to optimise their campaigns which included time on site, bounce rate to page views and % new visitors.

IgnitionOne’s audience profiling engine analyses a wide range of proprietary data in real-time—from browsing behaviour to demographics and more—to determine what a user is interested in and how likely they are to convert.

Based on this data, the technology builds individual True Interest profiles and gives to each visit an Engagement Score change (exit score minus entry score), which was defined as the key metric to optimise brand digital campaigns.

3. Optimise campaigns in real-time using engagement metrics

In order to optimise brand campaigns in real-time, IgnitionOne has integrated eight unique engagement metrics defined by the IgnitionOne proprietary onsite algorithm into the media management interface: number of sessions, average session time, average pageviews, total new and returning users, and average engagement score change, final engagement score and interest categories.

This integration is a unique feature combining IgnitionOne’s audience scoring and user engagement technology with paid media, and helps Danone make marketing decisions based on how their users interact with their sites and products once they come from a paid media channel.

4. Use site Engagement Scores to attribute conversion data

IgnitionOne recommended a unique attribution profile to reattribute conversions in real-time across all exposures based on the engagement score of each visit. As a result Danone moved away from the last-click attribution approach and attributed conversions based on the engagement each brand marketing click generated.

Results

From IgnitionOne’s initial analysis, Danone was empowered to reallocate spend to optimise budget in the right channels. The unique findings from IgnitionOne’s engagement metrics are below:

  • Social media drove the highest engagement to users on site, 29% higher than the average.
  • Display drove 16% more engagement than Paid Search.
  • Paid search drove the lowest engagement (-14% compared to the average) but the highest conversion rate.

“​Thanks to IgnitionOne, we are now able to track, report, buy and optimise our digital media not only based on classic media KPI’s (i.e. CTR, CPC, CPA) but also based on the level of engagement each visitor has generated onsite.” – Jeremy Depauw, digital manager, nv Danone sa.  ​