Increased Sales Through Personalized Marketing

In the 20^th century, marketing efforts had only a few traditional, expensive channels. You could reach out to customers by using a considerable budget to create marketing material, then using more of that budget to distribute the marketing material. This usually meant expensive marketing campaigns using broader media like radio, television and film, or print-based media that could be used as posters, billboards, or direct mail that was sent to the individual mailboxes of residents.

These techniques, while effective and still in use today, suffered from some real drawbacks. One of the biggest was an inability to measure the actual effectiveness of these marketing efforts. Once a billboard, poster, radio ad, television commercial, or direct mail pamphlet was sent out, marketing teams had no way to know who was looking at the marketing, or whether they were even moved to respond to the marketing material.

Another disadvantage was the extremely limited amount of interactivity this kind of traditional marketing afforded. The efforts were strictly one way, where a consumer could view a television commercial, or listen to a radio ad, or open up an envelope and read the letter inside. However, aside from a few very basic ways to reach out, such as providing a phone number to place orders, or including a form to be filled out and mailed back, there was little in the way of an easy method to gauge an actual consumer response.

But probably the biggest disadvantage of this kind of mass market campaign was the necessarily generic nature of the content. Because this kind of marketing had to reach the broadest market possible, it had to be crafted in such a way that potentially any male or female of any age, or any ethnicity, or other consumer demographic could consume the content.

In the 21^st century, things have changed dramatically, and one of the key elements in this new, much more effective marketing strategy is email marketing personalization software.

The Personal Touch

Email marketing personalization software is unlike any other form of traditional marketing. Because of the digital, email based nature of this type of marketing, it can be consumed potentially anywhere; at home on a laptop or desktop computer, or on the go, in a bus, car, park or shopping mall, viewed on a mobile device like a smartphone or tablet. This already greatly increases its reach but what really sets email marketing personalization software apart from other types of marketing is the ability of the software to track the online behavior of customers while they are at your online store, and record their shopping activities, shopping interests and preferences, which can then be compiled into an individual profile for that shopper.

That information is then included in a unique email that caters to the shopper’s tastes and preferences, providing relevant suggestions and content of personal interest to that shopper. In other words, email marketing personalization software remembers what every single shopper likes and has bought, and then takes that into consideration when creating a marketing email for that shopper.

Targeted Marketing

Email marketing personalization software is a powerful tool that, when used properly, allows you to take advantage of customer shopping behavior to further refine your marketing. If you have a sale on female fashion, but some customers neither browse nor make purchases in that area of your online shop, you save effort on a pointless marketing campaign to them. More importantly, however, you don’t provide a sense of inappropriateness or interference because you are not sending “junk” email.

Conversely, when email marketing personalization software has correctly tracked the spending habits of customers that avidly shop in your female fashion section, sending a promotional email informing these shoppers of a sale is going to have a much higher rate of interest and response. If you include links within the email that takes shoppers directly to the sale, you can even see which shoppers are positively being reached.

Useful Metrics

Email marketing personalization software has the ability to give you much more detailed information about how effective your marketing efforts actually are, allowing you to take that data and refine your strategies further. When customers respond to behavior based email marketing, you can now see when the email has brought them to the website.

If you include special offers, such as discount codes or other promotional tools, these can also be tracked, providing more information on what your promotions are doing, which customers are taking advantage of them, and, thanks to the interactive nature of email, it’s possible to receive comments from customers on what they like or don’t like about your marketing.

Form Relationships

One of the things that email marketing personalization software makes far easier is forming bonds with customers that strengthen customer loyalty. The software can not only track shopping behavior, it can send thank you mails, reminders, and even special occasion or milestone emails, such as being a member for a full year, recognition of a birthday, and even special emails for “shopping cart abandonment,” when a customer has stopped completing a transaction at the last moment.

All of these activities make it possible to maintain regular contact with shoppers, without needing to handcraft and manually manage every occasion and email. Scoped out over hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of customers, this saves enormous amounts of time and labor on what is an essential and very effective means of marketing; treating each customer like an individual, with specific preferences and interests.

If you’d like to know more about how you can improve your sales through the use of email marketing personalization software, contact us at Personalics today. We’re eager to talk with you and help you to make your business more profitable, productive and personal.