How Universal Music used audience insights to keep the fans at the heart of its artists’ communication

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About Universal Music Group

With offices in more than 60 countries, Universal Music Group BV (“Universal Music Group” or “UMG”) is the world leader in music-based entertainment.

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The Challenge

Universal Music Group was searching for a profiling solution to identify and understand the different audience segments within an artist’s Twitter followers to complement their traditional market research. These insights would then feed into each artist’s communication strategy.

The Solution

Build & Analyse Audience Custom Segments

Everyone has a little bit of music fandom inside them. Some are super fans of a specific artist, some are fans of a specific genre and some simply have a love for music all around. Universal Music Group currently manages an array of artists from Justin Bieber and Sam Smith to upcoming artists like James Bay. It was the process of identifying and leveraging these segments that Universal Music Group found beneficial.

Through a combination of Twitter Public APIs, Gnip APIs and third party sources, Audiense maintains a database of over 1bn individuals. Taking this data and structuring it at scale (whether network/conversation graph, bios etc.), Audiense allows clients like Universal Music Group to harness hundreds of data points in building and understanding audiences.

These user segments were defined by their relationships, conversations, behaviors and other activities on Twitter. Tapping into Gnip’s Audience API and Full-Archive Search products allowed Audiense to develop a strong depth of segmentation functionality for their client. The Gnip Engagement API also allowed Audiense to measure and track the performance of organic content from managed artists’ Twitter accounts. This allowed Universal Music Group to track and evaluate Twitter content that was resonating with different artists’ audiences and optimise communication going forward.

Understand Each Segment

The data insights uncovered by Audiense also allowed Universal Music Group to profile their artists’ audiences on Twitter and gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of each segment. By combining demographic data like location, gender and language gleaned from the Audience API with how an individual described themselves on Twitter and how they engaged with their social world, Universal Music Group was able to paint a much clearer picture of each segment - all the while, integrating insight, from digital behaviours, times and days fans were online, to the type of media they consumed.

Audiense then leveraged the Audience API again to identify what these audiences “loved” based on their affinities to other interests on Twitter. This additional report identified trends between different artists, brands and interest types for Universal Music Group’s segments and the company was then able to feed this insight into various communication activities.

Meaningfully Connect with the Fans

Working with both the Twitter Ads API and their suite of Gnip enterprise data products, Audiense combined complex audience profiling with end-to-end organic and paid campaign execution. Universal Music Group applied insights from their segments for relevant campaigns. All artist campaigns were also supported by a set of Audiense workflows that focused on saving time in execution and analysis.

The Results

  • Through Audiense’s Audience Manager, Universal Music Group was able to identify various segments of musical fans across Twitter and drill down further into artist affinities.
  • Audiense data helped Universal Music Group ensure that fans continued to experience a relevant and personalised interaction with its artists.
  • Universal Music Group was able to identify the superfans of a particular artist and optimise communication to resonate positively.
  • The detailed enrichments in the Audiense platform allowed Universal Music Group to execute campaigns while maintaining a strong level of personalisation that kept the fans at the heart of each artist’s communication.
  • By identifying and understanding its artist’s audience, Universal Music Group was able to focus on optimising ongoing campaigns to the right audiences using the right messages.

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“Universal Music Group has found audience insights from Twitter data to be a great source of information for our artists to better connect with their fans in a more meaningful way.”

Jimmy Gatsos

Jimmy Gatsos
Social & Ad Manager | Universal Music Group

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