Maximising marketing dollars

EditorQ+A, News Make a Comment

Since taking up the NZ manager role at Asia/Europe analytics company Datalicious in April last year, Kasmira Sewpershad (ex OMD, Contagion, MediaWorks) has seen the business grow as she guides her team of smart, passionate and caring data nerds working to deliver innovative marketing solutions for brands. Today, she brings M+AD readers up to speed.

There seems to be a lot of noise around data and making use of it in the last couple of years. Can you explain why? And how should marketers be maximising their first party data.
Yes there certainly has been.  Digital channels provide a lot more accurate insight into performance, and so this has placed greater accountability on ATL/offline channels that have traditionally been difficult to tie accurately to conversions or sales.

So it’s no wonder the focus on return on marketing investment and return on advertising spend has become more important in the last few years. This want and need by marketers to have transparent and accountable relationships with advertisers and media agencies has fuelled the growth of independent marketing technologists and analytics agencies that help marketers find out what is and isn’t working, as well as when and where marketing spends needs to be shifted to meet their marketing and business objectives.

One data-driven decision can affect an organisation’s entire bottom line.

The digital channels I mentioned earlier provide a great deal of data points for analysis, and marketers can often find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer volume of customer and marketing data. There’s a lot of research that shows data complexity has a detrimental effect on the success of marketing programmes, including performance analytics programmes such as marketing attribution.  That’s why it’s so important for marketers to have the confidence to delve into this complex data landscape and generate insights that can be acted on.

We’re at the point where we not only have the capability to capture and analyse online behaviour and accurately classify media spends to the right channel, but to also tie them to the offline media world and justify these insights in a more easily understandable way. It’s a very cool time to be playing in this space.

How is NZ adopting attribution techniques?
In my time it’s been a huge area of growth. From a business standpoint, we’ve seen strong growth and interest in NZ over the last two years. It started with the biggest brands and moved into medium sized ones and eventually all businesses will be on board; businesses not doing attribution will soon fall behind those that are.

Marketers here are faced with a number of challenges when trying to implement effective marketing attribution programmes, these include barriers around technology, data and skills and defining the online customer journey.  Receiving impartial advice and support from third parties and ensuring that the insights are not biased in any way is another key requirement when undergoing a marketing attribution programme.

What brought Datalicious to NZ? Was it the need to service existing clients or grow the global business?
Datalicious have always had a great relationship with NZ brands and having a local presence on the ground means we can focus on service delivery as well as work on opportunities to expand the business further.

NZ is a key Datalicious market, and a great  story for us considering our size in comparison to Australia and other global markets that we have a presence in.

I’m often asked what it is we actually do – here’s a short summary of what we are currently doing for our clients:

  • custom media attribution modelling and media mix modelling (via our marketing and customer analytics platform, OptimaHub)
  • full service tag management (on any tag management platform, including our own enterprise tag management system, SuperTag)
  • Google Analytics Premium – we are the #1 reseller of GAP in the APAC region
  • Web analytics audit / data audit & best practice implementation

Are you enjoying the work?
I joined Datalicious in April 2015. I love it. My role is so varied, I get to work with some of the brightest people both internally and on client teams. We get to use cutting edge technology to solve real business problems on a daily basis for some of the biggest brands in this country and that’s something I wake up looking forward to everyday.

What past experience is relevant for your role?
I spent 10 years working in advertising and media agencies, moving into client servicing roles over the years and then into digital media on the publisher side.

In that time I have gained a strong understanding of the NZ media landscape, a strong understanding of digital marketing and the unique challenges and barriers we face in digital marketing here in NZ, and I have built up an abundance of local agency and marketing contacts at the highest levels, which always helps when it comes to speaking to the right people about making very important investment decisions.

Who are Datalicious’ main NZ clients?
Spark, Vodafone, Xero, Genesis Energy and Realestate.co.nz are our foundation NZ clients and we hope to secure a few more inconic NZ brands in the near future.

Do you have an office, where are you based?
Yes. Datalicious NZ offices are in the Auckland CBD on Fanshawe Street. It’s a great new office with harbour views, coffee machine and standing desks (the new frontier for healthy office working).

Share this Post