A lot of our clients only use us for OTT or social ads. We’re not complaining, but we are leaving a lot of capability on the table.
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This is something we notice a lot. A client comes to us for targeted video or OTT advertising, maybe some YouTube or social video ads, we run a great campaign, they get good numbers, everybody’s happy. Then they go run their direct mail somewhere else. Their email drips somewhere else. Their SMS somewhere else.
Four vendors. Four dashboards. Four different definitions of “reached.” And nobody, including the client, can actually tell you how many times a single household saw the message across all of it.
That’s the part that bugs us, because we should be running it all from one place. At the very least, running it in concert with each other.
Same 1st party data, more marketing channels
The whole reason OTT, YouTube, and social video ads work so well through us is the 1st party data behind them. You already know who your best customers and prospects are. We take that same audience and instead of only pushing it out through video, we can also push it through:
- Direct mail, timed to line up with when the ads are hitting
- Email drips that follow up on the same message, to the same people
- SMS drips for the stuff that needs eyes fast
- Social Ads, layered right into the same 1st party audience
Same list. Same targeting logic. Just more channels to actually get in front of somebody.
Why combined reach and frequency measurement matters
Running everything separately is wasteful. If five different vendors are all targeting the same household and nobody’s talking to each other, you’ve got no idea if someone got hit 12 times this week or zero times. You’re either burning budget oversaturating people or leaving money on the table barely reaching them at all.
When it’s all running through one system on one 1st party data set, we can actually tell you real combined reach and frequency across every channel. Not “reach” per channel added up.
Why this matters even more with 1st party data specifically
It matters more when you’re running on 1st party data, because that data is the whole point. You’re not renting some generic audience segment and hoping it’s close enough. You’ve got actual people. Actual customers, donors, leads, whoever they are. Splitting that up across five vendors who can’t talk to each other means you’re wasting the best asset you’ve got.
Here’s what 1st party data actually looks like depending on who you are:
Automotive. Service records, past purchasers due for an upgrade, people who got a quote but never bought, warranty expiration dates, lease end dates coming up. That’s a goldmine, and it’s a shame to only hit those people with a CTV ad and call it a day when you know almost exactly when they’re back in the market.
Casino. Player club data. Concert ticket buyers. Most often, these people are already opted in, making them CAN SPAM compliant for email and SMS.
Election. Both parties have robust voter data they supply to candidates at local and national levels. In most areas, it’s as specific of key voting issues by household, the voter turnout likelihood and specific census data acquired at that address. There are so many factors to custom messaging to, with a little creativity it can and should feel almost like a personalized individual outreach.
Fundraising. Past donors, lapsed donors, event attendees, volunteers, people who opened last year’s year end appeal but didn’t give. You already know their history and their capacity.
B2B. CRM contacts, people who won’t take your sales reps’ calls, people who downloaded a whitepaper, attended a webinar, visited pricing pages, current customers who are candidates for upsell. Long sales cycles live and die on repeated touches over time.
In every one of those cases, the 1st party data is the valuable part. The channel is just how you show up. Wasting that data by only running it through one channel is like buying a great mailing list and only ever sending one postcard.
How channel sequencing works across OTT, email, direct mail and SMS
Because it’s all running off the same data in the same place, we’re not just blasting five channels at once and hoping for the best. We can actually build a sequence, where each step only fires because of what happened in the last one.
For example, someone’s getting hit with OTT and targeted video for awareness. Once they’ve seen it 7 times within a month, that’s your cue they’re familiar with you, so now email kicks in, and direct mail gets timed to land right after that. No more email and mail just running on their own schedule hoping it happens to line up.
Then say they open that email but don’t click, don’t call, don’t do anything. That’s the signal to trigger an SMS follow up, because clearly the message landed but they need one more nudge to actually act.
That’s the whole point of tying these channels together. Everything talks to everything else. Nothing’s just running on its own timer disconnected from what the prospect actually did.
It’s not about replacing what you’re doing
Nobody’s saying ditch your mail house or your email platform if you love them. The point is you don’t have to run this stuff in silos anymore. If you’re already trusting us with your 1st party data for video, there’s no reason that the same data shouldn’t be working overtime across every channel that makes sense for the campaign.
Somebody who saw your CTV ad, then got a postcard three days later, then got a follow up email, then a text reminder, is a very different prospect than somebody who saw one ad one time and never heard from you again. You already know this. We’re just saying we can help you actually execute it instead of stitching it together with five logins and a prayer.
FAQ: 1st party data and multichannel programmatic campaigns
What is 1st party data in marketing? It’s data you already own about your own customers, donors, or leads. Things like purchase history, service records, donation history, or CRM activity. It’s different from data you rent or buy from a third party, which is why it targets so much better.
Can direct mail, email and SMS really work with OTT and programmatic video? Yes. When all four run off the same 1st party audience in one system, each channel can be timed based on what happened in the others, instead of running on separate schedules with no coordination.
Why does combined reach and frequency matter for a campaign? Without it, you can’t tell if a household saw your message twice or twenty times across all your channels combined. Combined reach and frequency numbers tell you the real story so you’re not overspending on saturation or underspending on reach.
One vendor is the ideal. It’s not always realistic, and that’s fine.
We’d be lying if we said the cleanest setup isn’t running everything through one vendor. It is. Less friction, one data set.
But we get it. Sometimes one vendor isn’t in the cards. Maybe you’ve got a mail house you’ve used for 15 years and the relationship matters. Maybe procurement has opinions. Maybe your email platform is tied into ten other things and ripping it out isn’t worth the headache. Relationships matter, and we’re not here to tell you to blow up ones that are working.
Just make sure there’s an actual process in place so those vendors aren’t operating blind from each other. That can look like sharing audience data across platforms so everyone’s targeting the same people, or it can look like an actual team approach, where your vendors are talking to each other and coordinating timing instead of each one assuming they’re the only one in the room.
Either way works. We’re not precious about being the only vendor in your stack. We play well with others.
The short version
We’re set up to run direct mail, email, SMS, and social alongside your video, all off the same 1st party data, all measured together as one combined reach and frequency number. If you’re only using us for one piece of what we can do, you’re leaving reach, frequency data, and honestly probably a budget on the table.
Ask us about it. Worst case, we tell you it’s not a fit for your campaign. Best case, you stop paying four vendors to tell you four different, slightly made up versions of the same story.
