Customer Rentention Articles - Personalics

The Evolution of Micro-Marketing

Ohad Shperling — Tue, 20 Mar 2018 12:52:58 +0000

Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” This applies to most marketing strategies, whereas much planning is put into keeping messages clear and concise, tailored to the needs and wants of target audiences. But who is your target audience? Who is your brand speaking to? With Micro-Marketing ever more present, how do you analyze and communicate to all of these subgroups?

Traditionally, the market was divided into four categories of geographic segmentation, demographic segmentation, psychographic segmentation and behavioural segmentation. Big groups, sharing mutual traits such as gender, age, income level etc. As time went by, and data became more available, a more detailed segmentation approach was developed, especially with B2B companies and customer intimate firms. One of the most popular tools, Google Analytics, gave marketers the ability to granularly their customers. This deep dive into customer’s subgroups allowed marketers to better understand nuances of needs&wants, meet and communicate them across different channels. Take the following messaging matrix as an example

Message	Customer Segment	Channel
Doritos Blaze are Very Cheap	Students	Facebook ads
Doritos Blaze are Rich in Proteins	Male Athletes, aged 22-26	Instagram Fitness Groups
Doritos Blaze Keeps you Up	Truck Drivers	Road Signs

First, during the segmentation process, marketers evaluate the brand’s biggest customer segments. Second, they target their most relevant audience, based on competition, size and expected growth. Third, they position their products, to appeal to their selected segments, and come up with different messages to communicate their offerings. Finally, they communicate them in the most relevant fashion.

Marketing Process

However, this segmentation level simply doesn’t suffice anymore, to keep up with the market’s expectations. Customers are presuming brands should already be able to speak to them “personally”. This is expected even from companies considered “operationally excellent firms”, who put their efforts on low costs, such as Walmart. And why not? after all, every single action the consumers take is monitored. Every click, every purchase, every post, location and like. A small price we’re apparently willing to pay, just as long (amongst other benefits) that the world around us “knows who we are”. They are right of course, to an extent at least. This expectation is asserted as several marketing automation tools such as browsing triggers (those little ads popping up everywhere showing you something you clicked on), reinforce the consumers perspective of “being followed”. Nevermind those are actually very simple marketing tools, the bottom line is – giving away so much information is met with a feeling of a called for relevance. And in the cruel world of e-commerce, there’s no more tolerance for a sub-par experience. After all, unlike a physical store, everything is just a click away.

This micro-marketing evolution is definitely within reach. The two main difficulties, of course, are making sense in all that data and executing upon it. Just because a certain company has access to its consumers’ clickstream, demographics, location etc, doesn’t mean it’s easy for it to develop insights, to give meaning to all these numbers. In addition, the sheer number and types of segments potentially generated would be overwhelming. Just Imagine a marketing agency having to segment, target, position and communicate thousands and thousands of different messages per brand. A few years back, such a task would sound completely impossible. Nowadays, using the help of data science, this is now possible. Because data science is an interdisciplinary field of scientific methods, such as statistics and computer science, it’s far quicker at extracting knowledge from huge amounts of data. The AI, based on statistical algorithms, automatically finds correlations between different elements of the network. For example, a user who looked at a product a few times is more likely to purchase it, given a coupon meeting a price point is sent. The Machine would also constantly A|B test and improve itself, based on selected KPIs.

They say knowledge is power… However, knowing it all doesn’t quite cut it. Because such knowledge needs to be converted into actions, actionable messages sent in real time to your customers. A great example of personalized execution using the most advanced form of micro-segmentation, “1:1” – is the email channel. Traditionally, email marketers would segment their channel based on the above mentioned, or based on “just subscribed”, “didn’t open their mail in the last 6 months” or “recently purchased”. Though still effective for large-scale campaigns, this technique is hardly suitable for ongoing daily newsletter updates. Big e-commerce companies, such as Groupon, are already executing personalized email campaigns, whereas all the user data is applied in order to generate a personalized experience. Such campaigns focus on showing the user, in addition to products left in the cart or looked at, new products from relevant categories. If the user likes consumer electronics – show him\her the latest gadget etc. These campaigns also try and predict upcoming trends, such as holiday purchase patterns.

This personalisation, this micro-marketing evolution, has a tremendous competitive value. Both in (1) customer lifetime value and in (2) market share growth. For existing customers, the better a brand is capable of microsegment, communicate and meet the needs of their individual customer, the more he or she is likely to develop a sustainable relationship with the brand. The process of micro-segmentation also enables the brand to target more groups, previously ignored, and largely increase the company’s reach.

Written by Itai Eshkar, Head of Personalised Marketing @ Personalics

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Facebook marketing for re-engaging non-email-openers

Ohad Shperling — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 12:14:19 +0000

Most of your email subscribers are not opening your newsletters.

30%, 50%, 70%, even as high as 90% of your subscribers are not reading your newsletters.

You are not alone.

Before we get into the Facebook marketing and cross channel solution. Let’s understand why email open rates are declining.

This happens for a variety of reasons:

More brands are aware of the power of email subscriptions, and hence – incentivizing users to subscribe to their newsletter.
Therefore, there is higher competition for email visibility.
More emails get into the ‘Promotions’ tab and get somewhat less exposure in the clutter.
Overall – the ‘Promotions’ tab is getting more crowded with a larger number of competing offers.
Every brand is receiving, on average, less visibility to recipients.

And that’s a pity.

You probably invest quite a lot in your email marketing. Even though you are putting an effort into your regular newsletter promotions, subscribers are not seeing these offers and curated content.

Therefore, your brand perception is gradually declining and becoming less in your customers’ top-of-mind. Consequently those customers will be less likely to choose your brand as their ‘go to place’ for shopping.

So, what should you do about it? In this increasingly competitive environment, how can you capture your customers’ attention again?

Answer: Re-engage those customers in another non-email channel – such as Facebook.

By using Facebook marketing and Custom Audience, you can re-engage with those specific users who do not open your newsletters regularly. This is a very effective cross channel strategy if you implement it correctly.

Here are the steps you should be taking to do it effectively:

Segment your subscriber list to ‘openers’ and ‘non-openers’. ‘Openers’ are subscribers who regularly open your emails, at least once a month, or once a week, depending on how frequently you send newsletters. ‘Non openers’ are those that haven’t opened your emails for a month or more.
Segment the ‘non-openers’ to different engagement levels, as follows:
- ‘Dormant’ subscribers, who haven’t opened your emails for more than 4 months.
- ‘At Risk’ subscribers, who last opened one of your emails a couple of months ago.
- ‘Drifting’ subscribers, who haven’t opened an email for a few weeks.
- ‘Loyal’ subscribers, who are regularly opening your emails at least once a week.
Per each of these segments – create micro segmentation according to their expected life time value. In other words, for each segment, categorize your audience according to how cold or warm they are – this audience should be divided again according to their expected ‘worth’ (or life time value) to your store. To calculate this ‘expected worth’, take into account several attributes such as their previous overall spend, how much time has passed since their last engagement, their engagement frequency, and average order value.
Prioritize your Facebook budget – start with the ‘non-openers’ who are relatively warm and have the highest expected life time value, and target only this segment with Facebook Custom Audience first. You should serve this micro segment the recommended products that they are most likely to engage with.
Spend your Facebook budget gradually. Begin with the warmest, highest expected lifetime value segment and continue all the way to the coldest, lowest expected lifetime value segment, while testing the ROI of your Facebook Custom Audience campaign.
When calculating your Facebook campaigns ROI, take into account other channels those customers interact with. For instance, if a customer has clicked on (or viewed) your Facebook Custom Audience campaign, she may not purchase right away, but she may be back into engaging with your brand via newsletter or directly with your site. This level of re-engagement may be enough to consider the Facebook campaign a success, or ROI positive, for that user at that point in time – the campaign has successfully converted the disengaged customer back into engagement. This way, you can actually increase the effective ROI of Facebook campaigns, because you consider engaged users via other channels as users who may not require additional spending in Facebook. Taking this broader view means you can allocate your Facebook budget more effectively to other relevant segments who require additional exposure.
Keep testing whether users who became engaged continue to be engaged, or require additional cross channel promotion. Your ultimate goal is to optimize revenues, or customer life time value. For maximum results, you should run this exercise on a daily basis and treat each user separately according to their engagement level and funnel.

In summary, email open rates are declining. But there is a lot you can do to converse with your shoppers in a relevant way via Facebook.

Have you tried implementing cross channel marketing for email engagement?

The post Facebook marketing for re-engaging non-email-openers appeared first on Personalics.

5 Tips To Help Improve Customer Lifetime Value With Email Remarketing

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 16 May 2016 09:00:45 +0000

For many businesses and marketing professionals, the primary focus of their efforts is to generate leads and then turn those potential customers into conversions. But what happens after a customer or client has made a purchase? It’s just as important to turn that conversion into a lifetime customer, right?

But a surprising number of online marketers and business leaders don’t focus so much on this aspect of reaching customers, despite the fact that it is repeat business and customer loyalty that usually lead to a business’ success, not those flash in the pan sales that only have a short-term impact.

The Importance of Better Lifetime Value

Finding that lead and creating conversions is certainly important, but that’s just a single sale. When you improve lifetime customer value you end up reaping a wide number of benefits. Think about it – would you rather make a single $100 sale and never see the customer again, or create a relationship with a customer who will likely spend $20 or $40 a month for the next few years? Those sales can add up, and it’s a key reason that improving the lifetime value of your customers is so important. Consider some of the advantages that come from improving customer lifetime value.

Repeated sales to the customer over time.
Word of mouth thanks to referrals from the customers
More information on customer habits and spending that you can use for targeted marketing
The ability to interact and engage with customers in order to draw a greater understanding of their interests and desires.

The basic thing is this – when you build a relationship with your customers that improves lifetime value, you’ll be building your brand and generating loyalty to it. This in turn can mean that you’ll get improved profits and sales and become more visible in the overall online market.

Improving Your Customer Lifetime Value

Boosting customer lifetime value involves two things – giving the customer a reason to stay loyal to your company, and helping them find the various products and services that will be of the most interest to them.
There are a lot of different things that you can do to succeed here, and using ecommerce email remarketing software is one of the secrets you’ll want to remember. With that in mind, we’ve taken a moment to put together a list of 5 tips that can help you improve the overall lifespan of your relationships with customers and improve the chances of generating repeat revenue from them.

Get Personal – This is one that is often overlooked, but something as simple as using a personal greeting can not only help you avoid spam filters, but can help recipients feel more important to your company. As a result, it can help them open up more of the emails they receive. Include their name in the subject line and in the header to help improve this feeling of familiarity, but go further and consider birthday greetings and specific product recommendations.
Targeting Matters – Don’t just send out the same emails to everyone in your mailing lists. Instead, use targeted emails with your ecommerce email remarketing software. Gather data to find out what each customer is into and craft three or four different emails based on the different interests of your users. If your software supports it, send out directly targeted emails that are specific to each person on the mailing list based on their shopping habits, past purchases, and wishlist items.
Don’t Ignore Anyone – Even if someone doesn’t make a purchase, it’s still worth pursuing remarketing efforts. Things like special deals or coupon codes if they give you another chance could push them over the edge from a visitor to a customer. One mistake that marketers make is treating only those who’ve spent money as someone who should be remarketed to. Instead, anyone who has interacted with a company or website should be the focus of your efforts. It will net you better results.
Offer Them More – When you really want to get improved business results, offer customers more for repeat business. Loyalty and rewards programs that make them feel special can have a big impact. Something like a “loyal customer coupon’ or a ‘refer a friend for 10 bucks off’ offer can help customers return to you. The more you offer to a customer, the more valuable they’ll feel. This doesn’t have to be something huge, but regular emails showing them why you’re worth their money can go a long way towards cementing their loyalty.
Show Them Their Value – You’re already aware of how important your customers are. But do they feel the same way? Whether you send out a birthday greeting, a holiday coupon, a special product recommendation, or just a thank you for their order, if you take the time to really show customers what they mean to you it can pay off in a big way. Think up unique ways to constantly improve the overall feeling of value that customers have, and send out messages that drive that point home.

All in all, you should be seeing a pattern here. The goal of remarketing shouldn’t be just to try to hard sale another product or service. Instead, it should be used to forge a bond with a customer and help them learn the various reasons that your company deserves their attention. Instead of the plain old cookie cutter spam messages, getting personal and using hard data combined with good email remarketing software could help drive up your profits in a significant way.

If you’ll keep these simple tips in mind you should be able to boost customer lifetime value through the use of ecommerce email remarketing software. Our program can make it even easier, and includes the various features needed to craft email remarketing campaigns that actually get you results for your business. If you’re ready to start getting better results from your online marketing, don’t hesitate to contact us today.

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Are You Making The Most Of Free When Trying To Gain Conversions?

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 09:00:17 +0000

Few words are more powerful in the English language than ‘Free’. In Conversion based marketing, it’s the foundation of most efforts. After all, offering something for free is a great way to make sure that clients or customers pay attention to your business and what you offer them. In fact, it’s so effective that people will choose free over a more cost-effective option.

For instance, in a study done recently, people were offered the choice between a $20 gift card that they purchased for $7 or a $10 card they bought for free. They chose the free one even though the other was a more valuable overall choice. The reason? Simple – it was free.

But are you really making ‘free’ work for you and your company? Or are you chasing down conversions by shouting out the word without really gaining the kind of business you could from it? In some cases, free can be a major drawback.

The Overlooked Problems With “Free”

There are a few key reasons that free isn’t always better, and taking a closer look at them can help you understand just why some approaches with it as the foundation will fail. Consider the following.

Quality assurance isn’t usually related to the word free in the minds of the consumer. In other words, they assume that when you say ‘free’, you’re really saying ‘junk’. You’ll have to build your brand identity to ensure that people know you’re offering quality along with something for free.
On the exact opposite side of that coin is the fact that people will often choose something for free instead of something of a higher value at a low cost. That gift card example above is what we’re talking about here, but the same book references a study involving chocolates, where a free Hershey Kiss was chosen 69% of the time compared to 31% of the time when offered a Lindor Truffle at a dramatically reduced cost. The truffle is a higher quality, and that’s a steep discount, but people still went with free.
The other issue that many marketers have with free promotions is that they don’t’ really offer anything that is indicative of their company or that customers would actually want. The point of conversion marketing is to gain the attention and trust of a customer, and if you’re giving them something they’re not interested in they aren’t going to pay attention to you.

So what works? We’ve found a few key things will stand out as good examples of getting the attention that your business needs to drive up sales.

Free Shipping

This is one of the most powerful conversion tools online. People love free shipping. In fact, companies have increased their AOV by as much as 7.32% by using free shipping. Want another surprising statistic? 28% of online shopping cart abandonment comes from one thing: unexpected shipping charges. There’s a reason Amazon’s Prime accounts are so popular – that free shipping that each member gets.

In short, if you want to really get the attention of shoppers, offer them free shipping. It doesn’t have to be company-wide, either. Using ecommerce email marketing software is a perfect way to offer free shipping codes or coupons to customers to get them to see what your company offers, or to attract a past customer back to your business.

Free Samples

This is another major source of conversions if you know what you’re doing. A recent study found that in some cases retailers can boost their sales by using samples by as much as 2,000%. That’s not a typo – it’s a clear sign that samples can work. But how do they work? The key to remember here is that samples are best used to help people decide to buy something they wouldn’t have normally purchased.

For instance, if someone is visiting your store for a specific product, you could help them see or gain an interest in something else by offering them a sample. Offering them a sample of the product they’re already visiting for isn’t going to make an impact – but showing them something else they might like could boost your sales almost instantly.

The Visibility Factor

Are you ready for a big surprise? Many sites that actually offer something for free don’t always make it obvious. Online copy alone can be a big issue. For example – a buy now button isn’t as effective as a ‘free trial’ button. In fact, making that one change boosting trial signups by 158% for an online company. Changing a copy from ‘shop online’ to ‘buy tax free’ boosted click through rates by nearly 50% for another business.

What does that mean? Essentially, that you always need to make it obvious that you’re offering something for free, and that you make sure they know it.

Strategizing Your Email Efforts With “Free”

So how can you really generate better conversions in your email marketing efforts? In a nutshell, it just comes down to offering something for free that customers will really want. Using email marketing personalization software to send out targeted emails has always been part of effective marketing, and you can go beyond targeted messages or personalized product recommendations.

Start by making sure you showcase the ‘free’ in the subject line. Something as simple as “Free Shipping for You for 24 Hours” can capture a sense of immediacy and get their attention.
Offer free products they’ll care about. Good email marketing personalization software lets you send out emails based on past shopping habits, so know what your customers might be interested in when you send them any messages. This way you can showcase new products that could translate into more sales.

All in all, free will likely always remain one of the most important conversion tools in your wheelhouse. But knowing how to use it effectively and understanding how to get the most from it is something that more people need to master. We can help, and our team can show you how to add ‘free’ into your email marketing plan to get even better results. Contact us now to find out more.

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Top Keys For A Successful Customer Journey

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 09:00:29 +0000

The customer journey. It’s something that not enough companies really pay attention to, and that becomes apparent when you start thinking about just how many positive and how many negative overall experiences you yourself have had with other businesses over the last few years. Sure, it’s likely that you can name a few positives from your last interaction with a business – but did they really guide you through every step of the process in the way that you really deserved? 45% of customers in a recent survey said that they can’t remember even having a recent positive customer experience.

With the rise of the internet, this is something that is even more important – and something that you can master for your own business’ bottom line. The key is understanding just what it takes to create a successful customer journey. Here are some of the primary keys to keep in mind. Remember them, and you could be charting a path for better success with your interactions with your customers.

Key 1: Map Out The Journey Early On – The first step is simply understanding what you need to accomplish and have a clear plan to get there. The steps we’re going to touch on next will get into the specifics of what you need to consider, but it’s well worth remembering that the first step you need to keep in mind is simply to devise a solid plan with a goal and a strategy for reaching it. Once you do this, you’ll be able to start moving towards the right results.

Key 2: Unify Your Channels – Want to help ensure that your customers’ expectations are always met and that you are able to provide them with the best possible level of service? Unification is the secret. When you think about customer interaction, you’ll realize that most of it occurs across multiple channels – at least from the customer’s perspective. Different departments, getting transferred around, and reaching someone who can’t answer their questions can lead to frustration. Create a unified experience and you’ll be able to get better results for them.

Key 3: Make It Easy – Nothing frustrates a customer more than struggling to figure out how to reach the information or the service that they’re looking for. From your website design to your call center to your physical location, you need to ensure that you make it easy for customers to find whatever they’re looking for. Think about your customer checkout page. How complex is it? Ideally you’ll have something that involves a single username/password system and nothing else. The more steps they have to take to complete an order, the more likely it is that you’ll lose them before that order is placed.

Key 4: The Customer Focus – Simply put, if you make sure that your website and your entire customer journey is focused on them, not on you, you’ll get better results anyway. A customer service-oriented experience means. In fact, according to a new study about 76% of consumers view customer service as the primary sign that a company values them. That value is important to them, and will ensure that they stick with you.

Key 5: Personalization – There’s no way to individually interact with every customer, every day. But you can create a more personalized experience for them. This can include a number of things including:

Social media interaction on your pages
Personalized email headings and emails based on customer data
Special offers based on interests, as gauged by feedback from users

In short, you can create targeted marketing experiences to help customers feel like you really value them. Even an automated email greeting sent out on a customer’s birthday can do a lot to personalize their experience and is just one example of what you can be doing in this area. Behavior based email marketing software can simplify the process even further.

Key 6: Data – You’ll probably notice something when you go through this list, and that’s that knowledge is power. The more information you have about customers, the more you can serve them. Everything from their birthday to their income to their gender can impact the way you interact and engage with them, so be sure to use different tools to get info you can apply to the customer journey. That info can help you create personalized product recommendations in an email, automated Facebook ads, and more.

Key 7: Follow Up – Once you’ve handled the initial interaction with a customer, don’t ignore them. Follow up with them in some way – usually through an email. Ask them how you did, see if there’s something that they feel you could improve, or just send a thank you or a coupon for their next purchase. The key is making them feel as though you really, truly value their business. If you can do this, you’ll get even better results from your experiences.

Key 8: Review and Revise – One thing that many companies fail to do is admit problems or identify shortcomings. The reality is that there’s a very good chance you’ll have plenty of room to improve different parts of your strategy. The secret here? Getting customer feedback. There is a good reason that major companies send follow up emails or make follow up calls for surveys – to get the info they need to improve their current customer experience. Doing the same can give you the info you need to identify weak areas in your plan and change it properly.

Simply put, making sure that your customers have the best customer journey possible is a must for any business. From your initial targeted marketing efforts through to the follow up emails and beyond, creating a solid customer journey allows you to spread the word about your business, build a solid brand identity, and ensure that customer satisfaction remains high.

Our team can help you craft a better experience. Whether you need better behavior based email marketing software or a way to directly market to users on Facebook, we have a solution that can help. Contact us today to find out more about what we can do for you.

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Email Marketing: 5 Rules You Should Question

Ohad Shperling — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 00:21:53 +0000

Email messages. Every day each of us receives an average of 122 of them, according to a 2015 study by market research firm Radicati Group.

It’s harder than ever to get people’s attention, so you pay careful attention to email marketing experts and follow the best practices for email marketing that they recommend. In fact, we tend to accept conventional wisdom uncritically – with so many experts telling us this or that, how could it be wrong?

But as with most things, conventional wisdom about email marketing isn’t always right. That’s because while the email marketing environment is evolving, conventional wisdom isn’t. Best practices are what worked in the past – in a world where email was confined to a PC and work hours. And because they worked they’re now everyone’s practices.

But much has changed. First there’s that growing avalanche of email, and we become ever-more sophisticated in filtering out what we don’t want. Second, email now comes to us on an increasing variety of mobile devices. Some rules no longer hold true. Breaking them, in fact, can sometimes give you an edge.

5 conventional rules about email marketing to think about breaking.

1. The bigger your list, the better. Not necessarily. Of course a bigger list of qualified contacts is better than a small one. But an untargeted, big list may not achieve your business goals. A small list with qualified contacts, people who have made a positive indication that they’re interested in what you’re offering and hearing from you, will deliver better returns on your email marketing efforts. A well-qualified mailing list also reduces the likelihood of annoying recipients and ending up in the spam folder.

And it should go without saying, don’t buy email lists. Email from businesses you don’t know and have no interest in are as unwelcome as those “Russian women want to date you” spam-mails. Good lists grow slowly because businesses that have them aren’t trading or selling them. For instance, Hubspot.com offers some straightforward ways to build your email list without leaving a trail of ‘unsubscribes’ – or worse, an entry on TheSpamDiaries blog.

2. Lots of offers drives engagement. No. Offers that match the recipient’s interest, drive engagement. For example, if a customer looked at an out-of-stock item on a recent visit, alert them when it’s in stock. Wish or preference lists are ideal for letting customers tell you what they’re interested in (and it will probably reduce the number of abandoned carts, too).

Build relationships with new customers by only emailing them promotions for products they’re predicted to like. But use common sense. If someone bought an electronic device yesterday, they’re probably not buying an identical one today. You can occasionally expose existing customers to products they haven’t bought before, but this shouldn’t be random.

3. Use a person’s name. Not if you don’t know them and they’ve never done business with you. Personalizing by name is a double-edged sword. That’s because people are increasingly worried about who has information about them and how it’s being used. A Temple University Fox School of business study reported people respond positively to personalization that’s not easily discernable, but negatively when personalization is obvious. Ninety-five percent of customers responded negatively to an email addressed to them by name; possibly because it makes people feel like strangers are watching them as in the following cold-call email example:

This example doubles down on the inappropriately personal tone with phony compliments. It’s manipulative, and what’s more, would make some recipients feel like they’re being stalked. If Joe does reply, perhaps thinking this is someone he met at a conference or meeting, once he realizes that it’s all a come-on to get a chance to make a sales pitch, the chances of Mr. Smith making a sale are probably less than zero. While psychologists tell us that we like the sound of own names and unconsciously respond to flattery, empirical experience teaches us that most people have an equally predictable reaction when they realize they’ve been tricked and manipulated – anger and retaliation, in this case an entry on the “block” list.

Do personalize by products. The Temple study I referenced earlier showed that a personalized product offering based on past purchases was favorably received by 98 percent of its recipients. But also use common sense, and avoid repetitive product recommendations. Dynamic content can tailor each email to each recipient. This is where personalization software can make your email campaigns smarter.

In the following example, audio e-book retailer Audible keeps in contact with subscribers who have unused subscription credits by offering them a bonus – something that will keep them engaged with the service and more likely to remain subscribers.

4. Tuesday through Thursday mornings is the best time to send email. Not Anymore. Consumers are increasingly active on mobile devices, especially outside of standard 9-5 working hours. Tablets and smartphones enable a lot of engagement at other times throughout the workday as well as nights and weekends – and while they’re doing something else. Sending your campaigns when no one else is – say, Saturday morning at 10 a.m. – can be to your advantage.

A 2014 Salesforce.com report on mobile behavior found that 91% of those surveyed read email at least once a day on a mobile device, and 65% reported using their tablet while watching TV at least once per day. That’s supported by data showing that tablet usage peaks between 9 p.m. and 12 a.m., shown in the following chart:

(Source: Salesforce.com)

Salesforce’s data also showed higher tablet use Saturday and Sunday.

Experian’s 2012 email benchmark study reinforces this, reporting that email sent between 8 p.m. and 12 a.m. got the highest response rate, shown in the next chart:Although less email is sent on weekends than during the work week, email sent on Saturdays and Sundays gets the most opens, clicks, transaction rates and revenue per email, as this chart shows:

(Source: Experian Marketing Services)

Marketing Sherpa found similar results, reporting that 38% of email is opened on Saturday – compared with 25 percent on Tuesday.

5. Fancy templates are more likely to get your email noticed. Another ‘not necessarily.‘ Logos, and a lot of graphics don’t increase likelihood of being opened. It can even increase just the likelihood of going straight to Gmail’s new “promotions” file. In a world of smarter Gmail, plainer can be better.

The problem with over-designed templates and graphics is that they are advertising themselves first. Personal and important emails look pretty plain. Although tools like Constant Contact and Mailchimp make it possible to do a lot of things visually with your email, keep it simple and use design to focus on the message, as Adaptive Media does in this example:

Adaptive clearly communicates its message, except for one important piece. Since the company is actively targeting LiveRail users, that message should be in the subject line, or at least at the top.

The real message here is that you always need to test and understand what’s working best for your specific audience. For each best practice you read about, or each hypothesis you have, split test your audience and look at the results. Remember that your brand is unique. And your audience is buying from you, partly because of that uniqueness. Do you think a fancy template will help reinforce that uniqueness? If so, split your group. Send half an email in the new template and the other half an email with simple format. Measure what gets results. Do You think that using customers’ names will drive higher engagement? Test with a subset of customers and see what the results are.

Certainly, your own taste comes into the equation, but that can may lead you to the wrong conclusions about what your audience is actually responding to — remember that you’re not marketing to yourself. The best marketers don’t jump to conclusions. They’re constantly developing new hypotheses, testing them and measuring to see what works best.

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Mastering The Art Of Personalized Email Marketing

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 28 Mar 2016 09:00:57 +0000

Your company relies on a lot of different things to succeed, and one that you can’t overlook is your marketing efforts. Today, the use of email marketing personalization software can help businesses develop the best strategies and reach the best possible results with their marketing – but understanding why and how to get the most from it is something that’s often overlooked.

Getting real results from your email marketing is about more than just generating a list of names and addresses and sending out email blasts. Understanding how to get the most from your efforts will help ensure that you are able to really generate leads that turn into conversions – and that remain customers for some time.

Data, Not Lists

One of the most important things you can start by understanding is simple – when you are pushing towards getting the most from your email marketing personalization software you have to know the difference between lists and data.

Lists are nothing but a long list of names with email addresses beside them. That’s great – each one is a potential lead that could become a valued customer. But when you get right down to it, what can you do to personalize emails to those on that list? Not much.

Data, however, can be your best friend. Gathering information related to those names makes a huge impact on your ability to personalize messages and marketing. For example, you could take simple steps to get information like:

Age
Income level
Location
Interests
And more

If there are specific things that related directly to your business, you can try to obtain that info as well. Then, once you have the info you need, you can start tailoring emails that directly target those who fit the right criteria.

So how do you go about getting that data? There are a lot of different approaches to doing so. You could ask for some additional info when requesting that users sign up for your email – an email address as well as age and interests, for instance. Or you could send out a short survey after they sign up that allows them to give you info that you can use later.

The key is not to make consumers feel as though you’re prying for info that they don’t want to give. Make your sign up lists invasive and simple, but give them the option to give you more info. If you want, you could even offer a discount code or freebie for completing your survey. Don’t overdo it, but do what you can to get the right info for your emails.

Using The Data You Have

No matter how much data and info you gather, the next step is putting it to work for your company. This begins by knowing your company’s target market for different products and services and then segmenting your shopper lists. You could group shoppers based on age, gender, interests, and more. Even if you are not asking for those pieces of information explicitly, you could still cluster audiences according to their behavioral data and then target them accordingly.

This is where the targeting comes into play – there’s no point sending an email about mascara to a man interested in camping supplies, right? Segmenting lists lets you create three or four different email promotions based on which will likely be the most effective for each group. You don’t have to write an individualized email for each person on your list, but automating the process of personalization makes a big difference.

Review all the info you have and compare it to each area of your business, then structure your email marketing pushes based accordingly. Doing so will help you generate interaction with shoppers that actually turn into conversions instead of just unread emails.

Getting Personal

But there’s more to effective, personalized email marketing than just segmenting your leads and sending out the right emails. Specifically, you need to get personal. Customers love to feel like they’re special and as though a company really values them and their business, and you can show them this through email if you take just a few simple steps.

Send out emails to them on their birthdays. This can be just a short birthday greeting, but giving them a coupon or similar offer that is for their birthday only can make them feel truly special and help instill a sense of urgency in them as well.
Follow up after a purchase. Sending an email that thanks them for their business is all it takes to help them feel special, but you can also send out emails asking them about their experience to let them know that you value their input and opinions.
Thank you emails based solely on past purchases can help as well. Just a simple ‘Thanks for your business in the past, here’s a 10% off discount code just for you” message can bring lapsed leads back into the game.
Pay attention to customer shopping habits, too. When you know what consumers are interested in you can send them targeted emails when a product that they’re interested in goes on sale, is introduced to market, or is running low in stock.
Connect with them on social media. Including links in your emails can help them find you on Facebook or Twitter. From there, you can create meaningful interactions and engage in dialogues with your customers that can lead to stronger conversion rates and better loyalty.

The key here is to connect with your customers and show them that you value them. Form email blasts can make it seem like they’re just another number to you – getting personal can really make a difference in building loyalty and in improving your overall level of customer satisfaction.

Conclusion

Making the most of your email campaign is important, and while standard emails have their place it’s also important that you pay attention to personalization. Doing so can take some extra time, but it leads to big rewards that can help your business grow.

We can help you master the art of personalized targeted email marketing. Contact our team to find out more about what we can offer to you and how we can help you find the success you deserve.

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Is Your Free Based Marketing Push Really Converting For Your Company?

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 09:00:53 +0000

When it comes to attracting customers or clients and then keeping them for years, there are a lot of different tricks that can be used in a marketing push. One of the big ones over the last decade or two has been the utilization of a ‘free’ marketing push.

What are we talking about here? The idea that by giving customers something for free, you’ll attract and keep them for years to come. Setting up a great marketing plan often hinges around offering freebies in order to get leads to see what you can provide.

But are you turning those leads into conversions, or are you just giving something away for free and never seeing any of those potential customers again? Taking a closer look at this subject can help ensure that you’re getting the absolute most from your marketing efforts and from your efforts at personalized email marketing for ecommerce.

The Psychology Behind “Free”

Free is a word that Americans love. In fact, they love it so much that entire books have been written about it and studies have been done into the term and its impact on shoppers. Here are two examples of those studies.

In one study, two offers were made to consumers – a $20 gift card for $7 or a $10 gift card for free. Most people took the free card despite the larger value of the other.
Another study found that a high quality candy offered at half its normal cost compared to a cheaper candy that was sold for one penny was chosen more frequently But remove that penny cost, and suddenly the number of people taking the cheap candy jumped from 27% up to 69%.

What does that show, exactly? That no matter the quality of a product, consumers will usually gravitate towards free items first.

The Most Powerful Free Marketing Pushes

In the real world, there are plenty of examples of when free marketing pushes can pay off. For example, free samples are a driving force behind the Costco model of operations. In some cases, free samples can lead to an increase of as much as 500% in sales – consumers can try a new product without risk and find out whether or not they like it.

Free shipping makes a huge difference as well, with big jumps in online sales coming just from adding free shipping. In fact, it’s one of the most successful ways to turn free into steady conversions in most cases.

But not everything works like that. Sometimes, free doesn’t lead to conversions.

The Power Of A Single Word

Even the word ‘free’ can increase attention in your company. Gregory Ciotti listed it as one of the most persuasive words in the entire English language, and we can’t disagree – it can help make customers pay attention to you for sure.

On your website and in your personalize ecommerce email marketing for commerce, you need to design copy and campaigns that make the word free work for you. Some things to think about include:

Using the words ‘Free Demo” instead of “Get A Demo” lead to an increase in click through rates by about 99%
Adding the word free to a sub-headline can increase lead generation by as much as 69%
Changing add copy from ‘Shop Online” to “Buy Tax Free” increased click through rates by nearly 50%.
Placing “Free Trial” beside a “Buy Now” button boosts signups by 158%.

See what we’re getting at here? The word free is a big motivator for huge numbers of consumers. But there are times when it doesn’t really work that well.

Free CAN Fail You

In fact, there are some cases where versions of ad copy without the word free actually perform better than those with the word. There are some reasons that experts think this is the case including things like:

Some consumers are ‘free hounds’ who just snatch up the freebies around the net without ever intending to make a purchase
In some cases, consumers already know that you offer something for free, so adding the text doesn’t matter.
There’s an assumption that ‘free’ means ‘give me all of your personal info so I can bombard you with useless and annoying emails’

Making free work for you is important, and there are some ways that you can go about doing it. But the first step is simply understanding that despite its power, it’s not always a magic bullet that will instantly net you big results.

Making Free Work For You

So how do you really get the best results from offering something for free? We’ve found a few things that can have a big impact in this.

Target the right people. With targeted marketing you’re focusing on getting the attention of people who will actually be interested in what you offer. A big problem with ‘free’ is that people who aren’t even interested in your goods or services will often grab the free item just because it’s free. They’ll never come back and never even try the sample. So be sure that you send out free promos to those who actually matter – your target consumer base.
Make the free item stand out. Whether it’s free shipping, a free month of service for buying a year’s subscription, or just a free sample, give them something you can be proud of that represents your company. Don’t just mass order a bunch of cheap stress balls and offer them for free – give them something that will capture their attention and actually convert.
Free can often work better when it’s attached to something else – free shipping on orders over a certain threshold or a free item with every purchase of a new product. This doesn’t capture as much attention as outright free products, but it can ensure instant conversions when it does.
Showcase your company, your products, and your quality first. Don’t rely on free to get their attention or they could just think that you’re spamming them or that what you offer isn’t of that much value.

Making free work for you matters in a big way, and we can help you turn a ‘free’ concept into big conversion numbers. Contact our team to learn more about how.

The post Is Your Free Based Marketing Push Really Converting For Your Company? appeared first on Personalics.

7 Secrets To Increase Your Customer Lifetime Value With Email Remarketing

Ohad Shperling — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 09:00:42 +0000

Your email marketing campaign is incredibly important to your business. Email remains one of the single most effective types of digital marketing, and today the majority of businesses still report that their email campaigns are vital for their overall marketing success.

But are you getting everything you should in terms of customer lifetime value? Are your customers ‘one purchase wonders’ who will never make another purchase with you again, despite being satisfied with their initial experience?

Setting up the right email remarketing campaign could have a tremendously positive impact on your business, and we’ve put together 7 secrets that can help you do just that.

Create Some Form Of Urgency

Sometimes you simply need to get into the mindset and psychology of marketing. One of the biggest motivators out there? Urgency. When a customer or client feels like what you’re offering isn’t always going to be there or like they need something right now, sales can rise.

For example, offering special sales on items is a great way to motivate for more business. A 24-hour sale or even alerting a customer that their wish listed item is running low in stock could be enough to motivate them to buy. These urgency-based product recommendation email marketing campaigns can make a big difference in your bottom line, and every email you send out has the chance to get their attention.

Show Them Why They Need You

You already know that you need your customers and clients in order to thrive in the market. But do they know that they need you? If not, you need to change this. There are a few different ways that you can do this.

One of the best ways? Charts, graphs, statistics, and other hard numbers. For example, showing your customers in a weekly email how much your product or service has saved users or providing regular examples of how you’ve helped improve the lives of your customers can often help you remind customers why you’re the company to trust. It’s an offshoot of any product recommendation email marketing, and while you’re offering products be sure to tell them why you matter.

This is even true if you’re offering a service or product that customers don’t pay for. Things like a free app or service that draws income from ads and other sources of revenue may not directly make you money from the person you’re sending the email from, but making sure that they see why you’re important to them will help keep them as clients and ensure you get the best overall attention from your actual revenue sources.

Make Each Customer Feel Special

Loyal customers like to know that they’re appreciated and that you value them. So how can you do this? There are a few great examples:

Send a birthday greeting and even a special discount code for a deeper discount on their birthday
Send them a thank you note a few days after a purchase
Send an email checking in after a purchase to ensure they’re satisfied
Send out emails when a new product, service, or feature is offered

Seeing a pattern? Great email marketing means taking the time to send out personalized emails from time to time, not just the mass emails you send regularly. This helps customers feel like you really do appreciate them, and it can make a huge difference in how they regard your company.

Give Them Some Discounts

What do customers love? Discounts! One of the fundamentals of email marketing is to send out digital vouchers, coupons, and discount codes. This can be specially targeted based on their interests, a store or site-wide coupon code, or anything else. The key is to regularly offer some kind of discounts through email. It will keep customers connected to you and your email system and also help ensure that you retain their business throughout the future. Discounts work, so don’t ignore them.

Pay Attention To Lifecycles

Are you selling items that will be needed again in a few months? If so, pay attention to when your customer makes a purchase of that item. Have detailed algorhytms in place that allow you to send out a targeted email down the road as the average lifespan of that product ends – if you know that the majority of customers buying jeans from you end up buying another pair 6 months later on average, sending out that email at the 6 month mark could make a difference.

The key is to identify shopping patterns and product lifecycles and plan out your email strategy accordingly. It can take some effort, but is well worth it in the end.

Set Up Effective Recurring Payments

With revenue streams that are recurring like monthly subscription services or other similar systems, designing your stream the right way is important. In particular, having a system that allows you to ask customers to pay over a longer period of time can decrease your workload, increase the amount of time that they stay with you, and help you build a stronger relationship with them.

For instance, offering a free month of service if they sign up for an annual plan instead of a monthly or quarterly plan ensures that they’re your customer for a year. That month is a small price to pay for the big benefit you can get from the long term relationship you create.

Segment Users And Target Appropriately

Different customers want or need different things. Targeted marketing succeed when you know which customers want what, and when you target the right ones with your emails. Don’t just send out blanket emails to everyone on your list. Instead, create two or three email lists and develop marketing strategies for each one based on the information you have available. This can help you get a much larger ROI than you would with mass marketing email blasts.

If you’ll keep these 7 secretes in mind you’ll be able to start getting even more from your email marketing efforts. Our team can help with software solutions, strategies, and more. Contact us today to find out what we can do for you.

The post 7 Secrets To Increase Your Customer Lifetime Value With Email Remarketing appeared first on Personalics.