[MUSIC] So we are back live with Elizabeth Distel, the manager of Display advertising at Grainger. So welcome back to the Hangout with our learners in the Digital Marketing Capstone. And thank you for posing such an engaging problem for our learners and all the forums in the course. A lot of the feedback they've given is that they're really enjoying the real world problem that Grainger and Marshall put to them. And they put up some questions, and I've shared some of those with you. We'll try and go through as many of those, and we might even have some questions that we can take live in the chat as well. So, over to you Beth. Tell us a little bit about what this experience has been and then I'll probably lead you in with some questions. >> Yeah, absolutely. So good morning everyone, happy Monday. Thanks for having me. Really glad that the learners are enjoying the real-life challenge that we've thrown out to them. We're really looking forward to hearing some of their fresh thinking on the problem. I can tell you from experience, our relationship with Bosch has been very interesting, and it's actually one that our leadership has taken a real interest in. Because it's unique in that we are capturing data from Bosch, a supplier, and we're able to use it to drive their sales and also to make Grainger's data smarter. So we're using our data management platform, our DMP, to collect the data that we're getting from our tags on Bosch's website. So overall it's making our overall retargeting program smarter in addition to the benefits that we're driving for Bosch. So it's been a win-win. It's been a really cool project to be involved in. If you want, I can jump into some of the questions that you sent me over the weekend, so thank you for the advance read on that. And also I can see some live questions popping through the Google Hangout. But if we'd like, I can start with the questions that you provided over the weekend. >> Sure, we can start with that. And I think we had a few other live questions on the previous link, so I'll try and pull from that and post it up. But we have to enough to go through, so please go ahead. >> Yep, absolutely. So before we jump into that, I just wanted to share a little real life results. Because as I mentioned, as you know, this is a real business challenge that we're currently managing. And we actually went live with a campaign, a co-op campaign if you will, with Bosch, the beginning of November. And we're seeing really great success with that. It is a retargeting display effort as you know. We're seeing click through rates that are close to what we see for our overall retargeting efforts. Some were in the range of 0.05, which actually is pretty strong these days. Interestingly, what we're seeing is the amount of time that visitors are spending on our site is much greater than we see for the average user. So we're seeing visitors from Bosch.com spending about ten minutes on GCOM as opposed to usually we see stickiness, first average visitor, under six minutes. So that's been really encouraging. Meaning that we're driving really engaged, qualified traffic. And one thing that we're particularly excited about is that we've seen our sales of Bosch items increase about 40% week over week since we've gone live with the campaign. So, it's proving to be very effective and just wanted to share some of our real life results with the students. So jumping into the questions now. First question being around the budget and the timeline for the campaign. So the campaign scope, is it global or restricted to the US? Is the first part of this question. And, are we targeting customers enterprise with contracts who purchase above a certain quality or other types? And are there other resources from marketing teams, any limitations, legal or others, or specific stakeholders that need to be taken into consideration? Okay. So I'll try to dissect that question a little bit. So, in regards to the geographic restrictions, there really are none. People can visit us from outside the US. But we do have business units in other countries. So we have Grainger Acklands Canada, AGI, that services all of our business in Canada. We also have a business unit in Mexico. GMX we call it, Granger Mexico. So obviously it's beneficial to our customers in those markets to be serviced because the shipping costs are so much lower. But we are able to service international efforts if that answers that portion of the question. And then resources. So in regards to enterprise with contracts, we target both, yes. We have our highest value customers that have contracts that make them eligible to purchase certain categories at certain discounts. But we also service non-registered customers. Obviously Grainger's business is structured such that those with contracts get a much greater economy of scale and better pricing, so we tend to focus on those large customers. However, midsize customers that aren't in contracts is a real area of focus for the company moving forward. And I think Bosch is helping us reach some of those new prospects that weren't currently under contracts with specific pricing. In regards to any limitations, concerns, legal or otherwise that you need to take into consideration. Part of the arrangement with Bosch is that they're sharing their data with us and we have ability to leverage that data in other ways besides just driving your campaign. So nothing that is outside of the SOW that the learners would need to be concerned of with this. I'll jump onto another question here about the characteristics of the email database. Specifically, is it possible to segment according to the type of activity, geographical area, or other criteria? This is a little bit outside of the portion of digital marketing that I manage for Grainger. We do have a dedicated email team. However we work in concert with them, so I'm happy to speak to this. We have a very robust email database, and we have our registered opt-in email customers of which we know the account, we know the contact information. We know what their last order was, the AOV, we know everything there is about them. We have all of the demographic traits, all of their behavioral data, so we can segment them down to A state, a city, a zip code. Really any characteristics that you would wanna know about those customers, we know. In regards to the non-registered, so we're able to actually message people who have opted out of email, to welcome them back to the program. We know less about those customers. And then we have guests, which we really know nothing about the customers, because they haven't shared that information with us. I don't know if we wanna open up the floor and maybe take a question, a real time question at this point. >> Sure, we have a question from Halger. Let me, can you see that or should I? Let me select that question and so, the question is, what is the main selling point of power tools at Grainger.com? As an example, in terms of availability and lifetime of the product. Is that question clear enough or do we need more details? >> Thank you for that question Halger. So Grainger's really our customer value proposition is not the product lifetime, for instance. We're a supply chain, and our job is getting the right solutions, the right products, in the hands of our customers as quickly as possible. And so really, our CVP, our customer value proposition, if you will, is the breadth of our offering. Customers think of Grainger as the place where they know they can get whatever they need for their business issue. So it's really that breadth of product selection that differentiates us from our competitors. >> Unmute. We always forget the unmute part. [LAUGH] So Halger had some questions listed in the document as well. Let's get a question again in the document from Mr. Gopan Anthony. He's pretty active in the forums as well. So that's question number six in your document. He's talking about the current response rates, if you have any suggestions on that, on the display and email campaigns. >> Yeah, so I can see here focus is displaying email, correct. And the objective of 10% increase in sales. So I think I spoke to that at the beginning, that we are actually seeing a 39, almost a 40% lift week over week in our actual sales, and I refer to that on a skew level. So the number of units that we're moving, as opposed to revenue in total. So we are seeing triple what the initial objective was. >> Oh, nice. >> Yes, in regards to specific metrics around click-through rate, conversion rate, average order volume. So, let me try to provide some more specifics around that. >> Okay. >> So, our conversion rate, which is measured based on the percent, it's based on orders as a percent of the total impressions that we serve. And right now we're seeing that average at a 0.003. So I know that might sound low, but actually that's in line with what we typically see for retargeting. On a AOV basis, we're seeing that right about at an average with what we see for Grainger overall. We're actually seeing it a little bit higher at about $400, when typically an average order value is about 350. So, pretty strong in terms of AOV, which is a little bit surprising to us because power tools tend to have a lower total cost than some of our higher end goods, like motors for instance. And then I think response rate is essentially the same as conversion rate, right? Open rate, email open rate, I'd have to get back to you. I don't have the email metrics right at my fingertips. But overall, I would assume that we generally see a corresponding, or parallel impact in the email channel to display. So I would expect the email seeing similar metrics, but I'm happy to provide those as kind of a follow up. >> So let's take, I know Renjii has given a seven or eight part question in the document I sent you, if you could take a few of those, then I'll pull up some questions from our earlier Hangout link. Please go through and take a couple of those and then we'll move back to some of the ones that were posted on the Hangout link. >> Yep, absolutely. Now, Renjii is asking some really great questions, and his first one in particular, does the engagement include data sharing from Bosch Tools' website? Yes, [LAUGH] and that was, as I mentioned at the beginning of the Hangout, that was one of the things about this project that really intrigued our leadership and our teams. Is the ability to take that data from Bosch and use it to inform, it's important to our data management platform so that we can make our own retargeting efforts for total power tools as those total Gcom even better. So yes, it included data sharing and that was a pretty cool, unique, and different thing we've done with Bosch so far. Broadly speaking, in regards to the split of sales between single channel and multi-channel business, we see our best customers engage with us across multiple channels. And we kind of have a classic business dynamic, as you see in many categories, where about 20% of our customers represent 80% of our business. And so, we do see about 80% of our business coming from multi-channels, as opposed to 20% or less that would come from a single channel. In terms of display advertising, CPM in particular can range dramatically. For this particular campaign, the cost per thousands that we're seeing. Here let me, I want to make sure that I'm quoting a good number for you here. We're seeing our CPMs in about the $5 range. We see CPMs for Grainger overall from our retargeting efforts range anywhere from $2 up to $12. So we're kind of in the middle on that in regards to Bosch, specifically. And then DMP capabilities. Are we able to identify an end user who is searching for a product whose company already has an account without him or her logging in? In order, I mean, that's part of the requirement of the DMP, is in order to match users, is it requires them to be logged in, so We are not able to get all of that data for our unknown or our unmatched population, so that's really critical. And the reason why we've actually launched a lot of campaigns that focus on encouraging user registration. So we actually are offering incentives to customers to register. It's beneficial for both customers, as well as for Grainger. And then in regards to programmatic ad buys, do you compete for retail customers with Home Depot, Amazon, Lowes? So, we do compete somewhat with those big-box retailers. Amazon in particular has Amazon Supply now, which is focusing on providing e-commerce solutions to B-to-B customers for industrial supplies. So they are becoming an increasing threat, or definitely a lead competitor in the e-comm space in particular. In regards to Amazon and Lowes, they do have significant online presence, but focus more on the brick and mortar of the in store sales. We do compete somewhat there, but not for our largest customers. Our largest customers tend to have procurement departments who are placing large orders online or over the phone with our customer service reps. So, Home Depot, Lowes, somewhat considered competitors, but for the small customers, midsize customers to a certain extent. But not as big of a concern as Amazon. And then the question is, let's see if the program is the DMP able to identify demand satisfied meaning if customer has searched? Yes we're able to link in the actual conversion for what has been browsed to what has actually been purchased. But there's a fair amount of analysis that needs to go into that. In general the conversions and the revenue that we see for display are what we call participatory. So we will see the total value for a cart, but in order to know what's in the cart we actually have to use another statistical program called business objects to go in and break the cart apart. So, it is possible to get that level of detail, but it does require analytic support and we have an analyst assigned to the account to help us get that level of detail. And I think that addresses a number of his questions. Great questions. If it would be appropriate, I'd be happy to open up the floor to any other real-time questions coming in. >> Yeah, I have one here I'm selecting from Marcello. If you can see that, it's talking about there's no mention specifically of the Granger and Bosch partnership. He is saying could it be possible to display ads and campaigns for this partnership on both websites? I'm not sure that's really going to impact the result of these campaigns because advertizing this partnership may not be central to the campaign itself. Do correct me if I'm wrong. You need to unmute yourself. >> Yes. So a great question Marcello. So, first of all as a point of clarification, we're not advertising on the website. We do on our site, we do have I think a banner that coincides with the off site advertising that we're doing. We call that online merchandising. Bosch isn't promoting it on their site. There's really not a benefit to them to do that. What we're trying to do is to convert users that might not have converted on Bosch but may convert on Granger because they're familiar with Granger, and they've purchased from Granger before. But that's really the low hanging group in what we're trying to go for here. I think that addresses the question, but let me know if I'm not interpreting it to its full extent. >> No, I think that sounds good. So I had a few questions from the previous link that I copied over into the chat. Can you see the chat, as well? So there's a link on the top left of the screen which will bring up the chart panel for you on the right. >> Sure. >> Well I'll read all the question for the viewers. So this is from Jenny, she's saying, she wants to understand if Granger has an understanding of how mid to large company consumers make their power tool buying decisions? >> Yep, sure, yeah. Good morning, and thanks for the question, Jennie. It's complex because understanding the customer decision journey at Grainger is probably one of the greatest challenges that we have as a company because we serve so many verticals and so many different types of customers. And within that you have, and this is a simplification of our customer base, but I think it helps to illustrate. We have what we call our Al's, customer A, or our Betty's, customer B. And think of Al as someone who is actually on the plant floor. He could be a supervisor, or he could be someone who's the end user of a power tool, and then we have someone like Betty, [LAUGH] customer B, who actually is tethered to a desk and she works in procurement, so she's not using the products herself. And she relies on the Al's of the world to tell her what to buy. So it's important for us to influence both and stay top of mind awareness for both customers. So we've been doing a lot of actually right now proprietary research actually. Doing focus groups, going to our customers in the plants and the offices where they work. And asking them about how they make their purchase decisions to try to understand that better. And I don't know maybe that's something that we can share the read out at some point with the students. That might be very interesting and informative. But it has been a gap for the company, honestly, trying to have that level of understanding of how our customers make the decision. But large customers are very different from small. Small tend to make more impulsive decisions and more on the spot when something breaks and they need to replace it and fix it quickly as opposed to our larger customers that are placing bulk order far in advance on kind of a regular schedule, so very different than. >> Thank you for that and I'm sure we can add any resources that you think will inform the discussion. Because in the forums as well I know you don't have access to that but a lot of the students, whatever resources their finding, they share with each other. So it's not unlike a typical project where you're sort of competing with each other to find solutions. It's almost like a shared community coming together to find the best solution, and we have the good fortune of having users from across the globe, particularly in this capstone as well. So I think we'll find some Interesting suggestions and as we go along the Capstone we'll share some innovative solutions with you as well. Moving on to the next question, this is from Beatty Prado. Her question, is on average, how many brands of power tools have your medium and large business clients purchased? And some sense of brand loyalty from Bosch purchases? >> Yeah, that's a great question. And actually interestingly, we have seen that power tools is one category where we do see a lot of brand loyalty. It's not like air filters or something that's not visible to customers. Power tools are something that they're using themselves. And we do see that Bosch, Milwaukee, DEWALT, or some of the different brands that we provide to our customers, we do see a high level of repeat purchase for the same brand. So very sticky brand loyalty for power tools, absolutely. So once we are able to get someone into the Bosch family so to speak, we know that their lifetime value will be significant. So that's why using a power tools as kind of an acquisition play is really a smart one. >> Thank you for that. I have one question, again from Hogger that I know he's posted earlier as well, posted in the chat. He's wondering about the policy of pricing for power tools and any constraints that you think of in terms of brand image, volumes, promotions, contracts. Any information on that? >> So pricing policy is really no different then our other categories. It's all contingent on, is it a government client? Is it a university? We have different pricing structures based on the nature of an account or a client. I can't get into all of the nuisances of that right now, but it is different depending on, like I said, if you're in education or if you're in government versus manufacturing. Very different pricing structures. And it's all essentially built based on volume. So again, that 20% of our customers are representing 80% of our volume. Constraints? That's a great question. We've, as part of the propriety research that we've done, we've learned that actually Grainger has very high brand awareness among our largest customers. But against midsized customers, we really lack brand awareness and consideration. And that's something that Grainger is going to be focusing on very heavily in 2016, is more of that upper funnel support. So doing specific, almost traditional advertising efforts to really drive awareness, top of mind awareness, unaided awareness, so that our digital marketing efforts can be more effective. So that is a little bit of a soft spot, specifically for midsize customers, of which power tools is a big category for. So that is something that the company will be focusing on for next year. I believe you really need to be doing the upper funnel work in conjunction with the lower funnel. Putting more people in the top of the funnel to make those retargeting efforts more effective and efficient. And I think that addresses most of the parts of that question. But thank you for that question. Angie had asked a follow-up question. On that Bosch owns dremel and skill brands, does the partnership extend to those brands as well? >> It does not. >> Okay, okay. So- >> It could in the future, but right now we're trying to be single-minded and very focused on the Bosch Grainger piece of it. >> Okay, okay. There is a question from Deepak. He talks about how to, this is specifically talking about module one. He's saying that how to address the question on demographics and purchase behavior of businesses purchasing power tools, because display ads need to be tailored very well in order to be effective. And of course we don't have full data on this in module one. Any thoughts on that question? Apologies, I'm not intimately familiar with what was discussed in the first module. But now that we have the tags on Bosch and we're reporting that data back to our DNP, we're able to match that back to unique ID. So over time we collect more and more traits on that ID. So we can tell you, we can pull from the DMP just about any trait that you would want to look at. So we know a great deal about the demographics, age, income, geography, business type, if they're procurement or if they're an end user. We know the average order, the number of purchases, just about anything you could want to know. We're building that data over time. >> Okay. I think we don't have any more live questions. We have some more time. Ranjeet had some questions on the fact that non US learners, some of the students wanted to access the apps that Grainger has to look at deep-linking inside the apps triggered display advertising. But I don't think that's a constraint that we can overcome. Or can we? >> Yes. So that's an interesting aspect of our display program that we tested last year, and we'll be expanding it this year. So in order to do effective advertising off of your apps or off of your mobile site, you need to have a connected ID. Which means you're able to match, either through probabilistic or deterministic methodology, a user that has engaged with you on a desktop as well as gone to the mobile site, for instance. Currently, the partners that we're working with don't have a connected ID solution. It's a pretty complex methodology. We have worked with partners in the past that did have that methodology, and so we were able to target users across platform. But currently, we don't have our mobile solution. Our mobile inventory is not live because we're not able to match the IDs. But in first quarter of next year, we should be live with mobile again. So that's why the students wouldn't be seeing any advertising triggered from a visit to mDot or any of our apps. >> Okay, thank you. Let me just take one more look. I think we have answered most of our questions that we had collected earlier, and we've gone through all the questions on our handout. Now we give them maybe a minute to look at if somebody posts.
