November 17 , 2009

Not all digital campaigns are created equal
Delvinia offers insight into digital segments

While the past year has meant many changes for Canadians in terms of their disposable income, careers, and the housing market, digital technology and how Canadians interact with it has continued to evolve at a rapid pace.  With the increasing prevalence of real-time communication, social media, and smart phones, it seems that truly understanding how to effectively market to Canadians has become as challenging as anticipating the financial markets. 

“Better understanding the relative ‘digital sophistication’ of their customers allows marketers to create digital experiences designed specifically for them, resulting in a better user experience that successfully achieve business objectives,” said Adam Froman, president and CEO of Delvinia.

With this in mind and as pioneers in the digital space, Delvinia combined their proprietary online research panel, AskingCanadians, and the mathematical methodologies of Generation 5 to create the Delvinia Digital MOSAIC (DDM). The DDM is a segmentation of Canadian residential postal codes based on social usage of, ownership of and attitudes towards technology, combined with demographic, geographic, financial and expenditure data. Along with its other applications, the DDM allows companies to design the most appropriate digital experiences for its specific customer base.   

“The DDM is such a powerful tool because it provides much needed insight into the relative digital sophistication of Canadians,” added Froman.  “Not everyone is ready for Facebook and Twitter, but those audiences definitely do exist.  The point is, we strive to create the right digital experience for the right customer at the right time – and the MOSAIC enables us to do that better than any other tool”

For example, despite pre-conceived notions, Delvinia discovered that the Canadian Opera Company had two very different, but very digital key customer groups. The first was City Clickers – a younger, urban audience open to a deeper, community-based, interactive online experience. The other core audience, Loaded and Overloaded Families, own the latest technology but use it to save time and required direct navigation and functionality to be able to get what they want quickly and intuitively.

Similarly, when redesigning Manulife’s Cover Me site, Delvinia realized that their audience was comprised of a large percentage of Dot Conservative Families – who are average in their ownership and usage of technology – so the site needed to be straight forward and easy to use. They learned that if they were to incorporate new functionality it should be with gradual sophistication, so the customers weren’t discouraged by a perceived ‘digital overload’.

DDM Overview of the Four Largest Digital Segments in Canada