Steve Lomax, Driving business online: email innovation across leading brands

Is it necessary to personalise your email marketing campaigns?

It has been proven by many practitioners and academics that if you receive an email that has your name on it you feel more valued by the sender than if it is just a generic email. If potential customers feel as if they are part of a group (a factor of the loyalty ladder for retailers) then they are most likely to view an email marketing campaign in positive light and hence take the time to read the message.


Boden (case study) www.boden.co.uk

Boden is a UK base retailer which was founded in 1991 and. It has over 800 and was originally a mail order catalogue store, however now over 75% of its sales are made online. It now sells across the UK and US and ships over 5500 orders every day.

The problem was that Boden had many data challenges. Boden however now tailors its offers and content which changes based on the customer due to efficient segmentation of the market. Now they have effectively drilled down into their 1.2 million subscribers through integrating on and offline data to drive targeted email campaigns and create dynamic content.

Some other examples of personalisation/segmentation and the level of customisation that sophisticated email marketing can allow are:

1. Allowing user comments/reviews - consumers have a high level of trust in what other users think about products as they are viewed as impartial to the companies’ views. This is done by Bath & Body works effectively, Steve Lomax suggests.

2. HMV change their plain text 'order confirmation' emails into transactional messages as an opportunity to up sell other related products or products that the consumer may also be interested in. Why don’t you buy something and see what they think you would also be interested in?

3. Sharing offers to friends via social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example Pizza Express and ASK do this in their email marketing campaigns to subscribers. Another use of social networking is through getting customers to ‘like’ products.

If a company uses personalisation correctly then there is improved chance of a company being able to augment their relationships with customers and sustain them for a longer period of time. Therefore, there is the potential possibility of a customer being able to form an emotional connection to the brand (the highest goal for any brand manager).  However, it must be kept in mind by marketers that it is important to ensure that personalisation is done correctly there is a risk of losing a potential customer forever if it is used inappropriately. Therefore before companies personalise their campaigns they must understand personalisation to make sure they get it right.

There is one concern with personalisation however. This is that if the customer experience becomes too customised and personalised for the individual it will mean that customers will only see products that they knew they wanted already, therefore leading to a decreased opportunity for impulse purchases.

Source:

Presenter: Steve Lomax

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