Zendesk increases brand impact with a programmatic omnichannel strategy

RAISING BRAND AWARENESS IN A COMPETITIVE SPACE

Zendesk, a leading customer experience software company, was looking to raise brand awareness among current and potential customers in Australia. The brand turned to its agency, Merkle B2B, to develop a digital strategy with the goal of reinforcing brand premium and competitive positioning without overexposing audiences to their ads.

SHIFTING TO AN OMNICHANNEL PROGRAMMATIC STRATEGY

Zendesk’s past campaigns have primarily been limited to direct display publisher buys and paid social. But the brand wanted to explore an omnichannel approach in order to reach more people at a massive scale while still being able to manage a frequency cap across the entire buy, thereby ensuring greater control over creating a positive ad experience throughout the entire customer journey.

Merkle B2B chose to collaborate with The Trade Desk to develop an omnichannel campaign across multiple programmatic channels — including digital out-of-home (DOOH), broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD), audio, display, native, and high impact — that could all be managed in a single platform. The agency then replicated Zendesk’s previous campaign buys in our platform to test the potential of programmatic advertising.

REACHING A WIDER AUDIENCE AND OPTIMIZING THE AD EXPERIENCE

Merkle B2B leveraged relevant third-party data segments from our platform to reach Zendesk’s target audience — customer service and support professionals, internal helpdesk and human resources departments, and CMOs. Not only did these segments help the agency reach a niche audience, they were also able to maintain targeting precision while continuing to scale their advertising efforts. Throughout the two-month period, the campaign achieved a frequency of four ad exposures per individual from an advertiser perspective, and an average frequency of two from a campaign perspective across multiple channels. Zendesk and Merkle B2B were impressed with how efficiently our platform was able to manage frequency across multiple campaigns and channels without overexposing ads to an audience, thereby delivering a better ad experience, limited wastage, and greater reach.

CONNECTING AD SPEND TO REAL-WORLD IMPACT

To measure the campaign impact on business results, the agency set up a brand lift study through our direct integration with Lucid. Through this study, they discovered that the frequency bucket of one delivered positive lift with statistical significance for ad recall — 11 percent — which meant users were able to recall the brand after seeing the ad once. The study also showed that BVOD is the most effective channel to help drive positive lift in brand awareness. Moreover, they found out that lift was higher among females than males across ad recall, awareness, consideration, and recommendation.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN AWARENESS AND CONSIDERATION

Additionally, the agency and brand teams wanted to see how the ads impacted audiences’ online browsing behavior. Merkle B2B activated Inferred Brand Intent – our mid-funnel measurement tool — to find out if target audiences were searching for content related to Zendesk immediately after they saw the ads. The team found that 749 consumers conducted online searches, 55 percent of which searched for customer service-related terms, while 35 percent searched for information about CRMs. This gave the agency new insight into the

customer journey, and helped them identify additional high-value audiences to retarget in subsequent campaigns.

ACHIEVING CAMPAIGN SUCCESS WITH PROGRAMMATIC OMNICHANNEL ADVERTISING

Zendesk’s first programmatic omnichannel campaign in Australia yielded impressive results, reaching more than 2 million unique persons and 1.9 million unique households. They also discovered that programmatic advertising delivered more cost-effective performance than direct buys, including a 54 percent lower CPM for DOOH inventory. Impressed with the results of their first programmatic strategy, Zendesk has decided to run their future omnichannel campaigns on The Trade Desk.