| Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions 203-838-8138 | |||||||||||
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| Reggie's Articles appearing in Target Marketing Magazine Email on Steroids Make your efforts relevant and powerful with triggered messaging and dynamic personalization October 2007 Do you monitor your competitors’ email programs? If so, you may note some appear to be addicted to frequency and often send several messages a week. Under most circumstances, this is a misguided attempt to keep in front of their email list. Relevance always trumps frequency. Right-time marketing Triggered messaging and dynamic personalization give you the ability to serve the right message to the right person at the right time. The beauty of these techniques is that they’re automated. You create the “rules” for which emails or content will be delivered based on certain customer actions or information. You create the specific messages or content clips and load them into your email deployment system. Then the appropriate email or content is sent automatically. Your customer receives a timely communication, and the speed of your responsiveness can drive instant customer response.Think of dynamic personalization and triggered messaging as two powerful marketing tools that can react to each person on your email list in real time. You can take advantage of them to nurture the relationship and actively persuade prospects to become customers. Dynamic Personalization in action With dynamic personalization, messages are customized to a customer’s specific needs and interests by automatically inserting appropriate content in real time into an email message. This sophisticated technology allows marketers to deliver hundreds or thousands of offer or segment combinations where the messages can be managed and assembled “on the fly.”Typically, this technique is employed as part of a marketer’s regular messaging program. A portion of the message may be customized by including a particular item of interest to a segment of the list or a special announcement for certain groups of customers. Think about the last time you visited an auto dealership to purchase a car. The salesperson probed to find your hot buttons. He or she first wanted to understand whether you were interested in a luxury, sport or utility vehicle. You then were asked about factors important to you, such as fuel economy, legroom, performance and reliability. Then the sales pitch was tailored to your wants and needs. With online marketing, you can use similar intelligence gathering to craft your messaging. Demographics, prior purchase history, email clickthrough information and online browsing behavior all can play a part in your decision process. For example:
Campaigns are set up with the standard content that will be sent to all email recipients. The variable content is loaded in a staging area or library, and then rules are established for the best possible choice for each person on the list. For example, if state equals Michigan, then insert content clip X; if no state is listed, insert content clip Y. Messages are generated dynamically based on these rules. Triggered Messages With triggered messages, you can create messages that are sent to individual users based on an event (the trigger) occurring. Sequenced messages allow the delivery of highly personalized, timely emails. Messages can be triggered based on customer actions or a change in requested information. Some examples: A series of welcome or notification messages delivered over a specified time period to introduce a new customer to various aspects of a product or service.
Each of the methods listed above help generate more sales. Abandoned shopping cart reminder emails are very effective, particularly since half of all shopping carts are abandoned before checkout. People use carts as a convenient tool to hold items while they search other sites for comparable products and deals. When executed correctly, you might recapture as much as 25 percent of lost sales with these emails. You should test to find the optimal timing for these messages. A popular approach is to wait until you know the person has received his or her order. At this point, the individual is a happy and satisfied customer—a perfect time to capitalize on the sale.
With dynamic personalization and triggered messaging you create a focused and rich experience for your customers and prospects. If you customize and personalize your relationships, you should see big dividends. Be mindful of the customer’s right to privacy. Your messages should be crafted so that the individual doesn’t feel that you are watching every action they take. I’ve received many emails that do this well. For example, I was searching for airfares to Chicago on a travel site and later received an email with four headlines in the table of contents. One of the headlines promoted hotels in Chicago. This was subtle, but homed in on a topic the marketer thought would be of interest to me. Think about integrating dynamic personalization and email triggers into your marketing strategy. You’ll deliver product offerings and timely content when it is most relevant to the customer. Regina Brady is president of Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions, a direct and email marketing consultancy. She can be reached at (203) 838-8138 or reginabrady@att.net. | |||||||||||
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sell after a purchase. If you have a good Web analytics package in place, you know that people who buy one particular item are likely to purchase other related products. Marketers selectively use this technique. They set up rules based on the most popular purchases and then develop cross-sell promotions for those purchases that may consist of one or more additional items. 