DART: Four Key Steps to Streamlining Your Time to Market

Streamline Your Time to Market

Picture this: you’ve just thought of a new way to captivate your customers with an innovative campaign. But now what? Without a concrete plan or the tools you need to quickly bring that idea to life, it will only ever be a figment of your imagination.

If realizing your marketing dreams is a challenge, you’re not alone. 62% of marketers state that their biggest barrier to success is having enough time to create content that stands out in the inbox.

The good news is, you can beat those stats. With the right approach, you can streamline your content production, bring new use cases to market at lightning speed, and keep pace with both the competition and your customers’ ever-changing needs. 

Allow me to introduce DART. DART stands for Data, Assets, Rules, and Test. It’s a proven framework that will help you launch new content quickly and gain the bandwidth to take on even more.

Data

Providing the experiences your customers crave starts with data. To be able to provide these data-driven experiences, there are three critical questions you must first answer.

What Data Points Are Needed and What Will They Be Used for?

While a seemingly simple question, this is perhaps the most critical to get right. As you start to develop your answer, keep in mind that you’ll need data for these two related situations:

• Increased relevance by transforming data into personalized content. 

  • A key example here is adding data points to your composite images. Think of customer information such as their name and loyalty status, or product information such as descriptions, prices, or ratings and reviews.

• Improved accuracy and specificity of your targeting logic.

  • We will explore this further when we discuss Rules. However, some examples could include using a customer’s abandoned cart to alter the items shown within a product grid, leveraging search history to highlight a preferred category, or using recent purchases for product recommendations.

Where Does the Data Live?

Once you’ve determined what data elements you’ll need, the next item on your to-do list is identifying where those data points live. Perhaps they’re in your ESP, MSP, or marketing automation tool. Maybe they’re in your CRM, CDP, eCommerce platform, or even in a homegrown solution. Knowing exactly which data points are in each platform is critical as it directly impacts your answer to the following question.

How Will Data be Transferred?

Now that you know what data you need, how you’re going to use it, and where it lives, the next question is how you can send that data to Movable Ink. Thanks to Universal Data Activation capabilities, the choice is yours. 

For most use cases, Movable Ink clients can transfer data via a CSV, the Customer Data API, any public or private API, or use one of the numerous pre-built integrations with industry-leading vendors.

And if you don't have all of the data you need, or simply prefer Movable Ink to capture it for you, we can do that as well. Using Movable Ink’s Behavioral Tracking Script or our Mobile SDK, we can natively capture customers’ behavioral data and immediately make it available for use within Studio. 

Assets

With your data strategy defined, the next area of focus is assets. Things to consider here include:

• What content will be included in Movable Ink’s dynamic composite image?

  • The options are endless. Background images can use product pictures or on-brand stock photography. Interactive elements such as scratch-offs or polls can be included as sure-fire engagement drivers, and social feeds can be used to drive home your brand’s proven value.

• How will it be accessed?

  • You have a variety of options at your fingertips here: marketers can provide it via PSD, web-crop it from their website, or even use an out-of-the-box Movable Ink app.

• What will branding look like?

  • Be sure to choose brand fonts, colors, and preferred text sizes that are cohesive and suit the vision of your company.

• What production details do I need to be aware of?

  • Take the fine details into account, such as output requirements, image dimensions, and spacing between content blocks.

Rules

Now that you’ve identified both the data and creative elements your use case will need, the third step in streamlining your time-to-market is defining business rules. These will help shape your targeting strategy and determine which creative variation is shown to each customer. There are two types to consider:

• Contextual Targeting allows you to adapt which content variation is shown based on factors that are not directly tied to customer behaviors. Examples include any combination of date, time, geolocation, or weather.

• Behavioral Targeting will use each customer’s activity with your brand to vary which content is shown. Clicks on email or mobile content, such as items and categories searched, purchased, or added to favorites are common examples. 

When these targeting rules are used in tandem with one another, the results are powerful. Take My Jewellery’s implementation of targeting rules, for instance. Using geolocation, different images were automatically displayed so that customers could see products that matched their weather and surroundings.

Test

The last step to complete your launch plan is defining your testing strategy. To prove that the use case is adding sufficient value to your business, consider: 

• Define the KPIs you are looking to impact. Is the primary goal to increase acquisition or cross-sell/up-sell? Or is the focus on enhancing loyalty by reducing churn and improving customer engagement? 

• Set your average benchmarks. How much lift, and in what category, would actually be significant?

• Organize the systems you will utilize to A/B test.  Set a regular cadence to review results and adjust strategies when comparing Movable Ink with business-as-usual.

Dart Ahead

With your DART framework complete, you’re ready to bring new and innovative use cases to market faster than ever before.

Need more inspiration on which use cases to build? Check out our Campaign Inspiration Resources to see how our clients are bringing real-time content personalization to life across their businesses.