As creating a relevant, personalised experience for your customers becomes more important, there is an increasing gap in the market for technology that can identify and activate audiences based on their most recent online activity. This is what Rockerbox have been working on. In this Q&A, Ron Jacobson, co-founder and CEO, Rockerbox (pictured below) talks about the new technology and the role analytics can play in driving a retailers' bottom line. 

RetailTechNews: What’s the purpose of Rockerbox’s new Recency Marketing Platform, and how does it work?

Ron Jacobson: Rockerbox’s Recency Marketing Platform leverages recent user behaviours to help marketers better understand their audience, effectively target their best prospects, and attribute which marketing touchpoints are having the most impact.

Rockerbox focuses on the last 60 minutes of a prospect’s online activity across all channels and devices, helping marketers to optimise their media spend and increase conversions. We’re providing businesses with a complete solution to efficiently acquire new customers at scale.

Our underlying technology analyses a user’s online browsing behaviour, both on- and off-site, in order to build a detailed profile of their intent at any given time. This data not only allows companies to build better marketing plans, but also to build detailed attribution models that track the impact of each marketing touchpoint before a conversion. We also provide automated recommendations for improving user targeting and optimising media spend.

How does the platform help improve customer engagement across different touchpoints?

By surfacing the websites and topics users view just before and after coming on your site, we enable marketers to align their efforts more closely with what their customers want.

When customers are contemplating a purchase, they aren’t visiting a single website – they’re often researching multiple options, reading articles, or looking for offers. These are all touchpoints typically hidden to marketers that Rockerbox brings to light. By understanding how various off-site behaviours can affect a user’s on-site engagement (and eventual conversion), businesses can start targeting the right users and serve them the appropriate content.

Ron Jacobson, co-founder and CEO, Rockerbox

How can marketing analytics help increase customer acquisition rates for retailers and brands?

Retailers and brands are looking to understand their audience – specifically what they care about, what they’re looking for, and how to best give it to them. But, customer behaviour is constantly evolving. Understanding how customers research your and your competitor’s brand is essential to building an effective customer-acquisition strategy.

The last 60 minutes of online activity are more indicative of intent to purchase than other forms of information. By tapping into this, marketers can stop targeting audiences based on broad generalisations and stale intent in order to acquire new customers at scale.

How can retailers and brands be better using marketing analytics to invest in the best performing channels and drive their bottom line?

By understanding their audience, retailers and brands can identify how different channels play a part in the customer journey. As a result, retailers and brands can adjust assets in each of their channels to ensure the best performance. They can create new content for a certain channel or redistribute more resources into particular parts of the customer journey in order to drive better results.

What are the main benefits for brands that can develop a single customer view across multiple touchpoints?

Brands that want to benefit from today’s online consumer habits need to develop a unified view of their customer. Each interaction a user has with a brand can be analysed and optimised to improve performance.

For retailers selling a wide variety of products, a single customer view helps them identify someone looking for clothing versus appliances. This enables marketers to understand the unique conversion path for each product, and uncover opportunities for potential cross-sells of related products.This content was originally published in RetailTechNews.