Starting 2020 off right: 4 strategic directions

Welcome 2020:we have 12 months of work ahead of us to improve upon last year’s endeavors.This year’s first post is about activities which, in our opinion, will bedecisive in raisingthe bar for strategies, E-mail Marketing, and beyond.

We have identified fourdevelopment guidelines that will be fundamental inboosting your campaign performance.

More and more, E-mail Marketing keeps emerging from a massivedimension. It’s becoming an increasingly self-referential and recipient-orientedchannel modeled on an individual customer profile.

Supportive segmentation tools will be key in 2020. Certain functions like advanced filters can divide recipients by linking up to 20 conditions to get the job done.

This powerful segmentation tool allows companies to fine-tune campaign targets andraise the internal content’s quality and relevance.

Segmentation does not stop at group A or B selection. Thecriteria and levels of segmentation are practically infinite. In fact,segmentation is only limited by available data.

Just to give you an idea, here are basic segmentation types thatcan be developed:

• Demographic
  This is the simplest segmentation. Generally, data are readily available and often given by the user during the registration process: age, gender, income, turnover (for B2B), education level, employment, corporate role, and family position.
• Geographic
  This segmentation takes the recipient’s geolocation parameters into account. Segmentation by city is the most classic type. For many companies, this is key in selecting recipients that are geographically interested in the offer. Yet there are many others: nation, city, region, language, climate, and market. Here’s a good example of a geographically segmented Chicago campaign by Uber:

• Psychographic
  This is “a qualitative method” segmentation, meaning consumers can be described and segmented based on psychological attributes, such as values, behavioral preferences, personalities, opinions, interests, habits/lifestyles, and attitudes.
• Behavioral
  Also known as “digital body language”, this segmentation divides an audience into small homogeneous groups based on purchasing behaviors. It considers a customer’s needs and desires based on their behavior. Technically, it’s conducted based on parameters like purchase frequency, brand loyalty, purchase habits, occasionality, first purchase, and level of engagement.
• Cross-referenced
  So far, each segmentation type hasn’t excluded the other. Different segmentation can be crossed-referenced in order to develop even more articulate and precise segmentations.
  Let’s take an example: a large-scale distributor can cross-reference behavioral and geographic segmentation to send a discount voucher based on the customer’s average expenditure (a less expensive coupon within a certain threshold, a more expensive coupon beyond that threshold) that can be redeemed within a certain timeframe.

Today, consumers’ attention span is dropping. They actually scan content, regardless of its platform, for hints and key elements to understand if it’s worth spending more time on or not.

Here, competition among companies lies in the ability to attract and involve the user. Essentially, engagement must be cultivated in each phase of the customer journey.

Obviously, engagement must also be cultivated within eache-mail. How can that be done? By raising content relevance. This is how personalization toolscan play an increasingly decisive role. We highlight two:

• Conditional display
  This function enables display rules to automatically fill lines or entire sections of an e-mail with the content that best fits each recipient. It involves sending e-mails with images and texts that are aligned to the characteristics, preferences, and needs of each individual recipient. Here’s an e-mail example that differentiates content based on male or female recipients:

• Personalization engine
  This is very useful for updating and personalizing your communication with recipients without manual recovery from the site or blog. By using the markup language Liquid, the Personalization Engine allows for retrieving your e-mail content from a site or external page (i.e., a site, blog, or online store) that’s customizable for each recipient in real-time.

There’s also another wider personalization level that investsthe customerjourney in a broad sense. Here comes artificial intelligence.This isn’t something futuristic but within reach for all companies. It alsoeasily fits into a strategy.

In technical terms, this is Predictive Marketing. This set of strategies leverages data and information regarding the behavior and habits of each customer to anticipate and predict individual needs. Its estimated turnover increases between 10 and 15%.

Conductive Predictive Marketing is simple.For example, just rely on MailUp and Datatricsintegration, which doesn’t need specific technical or statistical skills. The integration aggregates internal (CRM, E-mail, Social Networks, E-commerce, Web Analytics, etc.) and external (demographic data, weather conditions, traffic intensity, etc.) source data to build complete customer profiles.

Datatrics’ Intelligence algorithm makes it possible to predict the interests ofcustomers who interact with websites, e-mails, andcampaigns on Google, Facebook, Display Advertising, and other channels tocreate dedicatedcustomer journeys and stimulate the purchase.

Today’s average customer dares more in seeking information. Theyactively request to getin touch with the brand, they ask questions, and find out moreinformation on services and products—anywhere, anytime.

Messaging apps created this condition to facilitate and stimulate contact. That’s why companies need to be ready in using messaging apps for conversation. They also need to be receptive to customers and chatbots will be a differentiating strategic element.

Also, in this case, Conversational Marketing tools exist and can be used right away. Rely on Messaging Apps to create Facebook Messenger and Telegram messages whose incisiveness is the same as an SMS but with the fullness of an e-mail. Create a structure by choosing from a wide range of content modules: text, button, image, video, audio, and file.

So far, e-mail interaction has been limited to entertainment (as in this example). Interactivity will also be functional in the coming years.

Let’s be even more clear. In the months ahead, brands will beable to launch interactive campaigns where the recipient can browse catalogs, book trips, andmuch more fromwithin the e-mail. Here are some e-mail elements that will beaffected by interactivity:

• Animated buttons and calls to action
• Rollover effects to show products
• Galleries of images and products
• Interactive, surveys.

Let’s look at an interactive survey by Expedia:

Or think about the e-commerce potential that interactivity opens. Recipients can browse a product gallery directly within the e-mail. Here’s an example:

What 2020 has in store for us is just waiting to be discovered.Even without a crystal ball, we know that in the next few months companies willface the engagementchallenge of turning e-mail into a full 1-to-1 channel.

For this, continuous knowledge, functionality, and technology updates are needed. This is why we recommend a free MailUp trial request. For 30 days, use the platform yourself and experience a new way of doing E-mail Marketing.