Back in 1895, Italian philosopher and economist Vilfredo Pareto noted that 20% of Italy’s population controlled 80% of its wealth. That ratio lives on today in business; the overwhelming majority of a brand’s sales come from their top customers. One way retailers can cement that loyalty is with post-purchase emails.
Reaching out to consumers at the point of purchase offers a powerful opportunity to make a mark. Still, many retailers miss it. Research from Support.com found that 40% of consumers believe post-purchase experiences are the most memorable aspect of the overall brand experience.
Given this consumer state of mind, a purchase is not just a purchase. It’s also an opportune moment for a trigger that helps brands increase revenue from email. Post-purchase, the brand knows something new about the customer, and should incorporate that information into their subsequent messaging strategy. Here are five tactics:
The first post-purchase emails generally arrive within minutes of a sale: order confirmations. There are also shipping updates and confirmations, as well as messaging around in-store pick-up and returns. Confirmation emails generally have far higher open rates than the average marketing email so why not capitalize on this valuable real estate with personalized product recommendations? By the time someone has made a purchase, you have an idea of what they like… and what would complement that first purchase. With advanced personalization, you can do even more with post-purchase emails, recommending products based on the customer’s local weather.
Start with a thank you. Make someone feel even better about their purchase and they may be more inclined to engage further. That could mean leaving a review, downloading your app or joining your loyalty program. Once someone is a member, there are ample opportunities for personalized messaging. With moment-of-open technology, Ulta ensures that Ultamate Rewards members receive the most accurate, up-to-date loyalty information when they open the emails.
Ten days after a sale, for example, an email could contain a personalized product recommendation that complements the item previously purchased. A month after a sale, the customer could be offered a discount. And then on day 45, he or she could be offered a more substantial discount — but only if the purchase is completed that day.
Data feeds provide endless opportunity to personalize post-purchase emails. Connect email with your social media channels to feature user-generated content, giving the customer inspiration for their next purchase. You can also include live maps, which include helpful information about the customer’s nearest store such as hours and location. People frequently return online purchases in brick-and-mortar stores, so this little bit of personalization can go a long way.
Post-purchase messages are inherently reactive — but they don’t have to be. With predictive technology, marketers can look beyond what a customer did and tap into what they’re likely to do. Predictive technology identifies the likelihood that someone will make a purchase, including when and how much. Recommend products accordingly.
Now you know that using advanced personalization can deliver upwards of $20 in added revenue for every $1 you spend on the technology – and that’s on top of the $44 in average ROI your email program could already be earning.
We’re excited to finally see that benefit quantified for the first time. But maybe your initial reaction to The Relevancy Group’s new report, The Value of Personalization Optimization for Retailers, isn’t “Wow! How can I get in on that?”
But many marketers are understandably skeptical about claims such as this. Maybe you’re thinking, “Yeah, right. You’re going to have to show me.”
If you’re the kind of marketer that needs to see to believe, Tactics Matter: Real Results from Advanced Personalization, shows how two well-known brands capitalized on advanced email personalization techniques and ended up not just meeting the higher revenues and conversions from advanced personalization, but smashing past them.
You’ll have to download the report to learn which brands claimed the spotlight. But here’s a quick look at six of the needle-moving tactics they used to push past the usual gains and to solve some nagging email issues.
The Relevancy Group’s report found the basic personalization (personalizing the subject line or adding the customer’s name to the email content) has little to no effect on added revenue. Purchase-based personalization performs better. But the tactics that have the greatest potential for increasing sales are:
What’s the true value of advanced personalization? It uses real-time data to deliver superior email experiences tailored to each individual customer. See what innovative brands are doing to level up their relevance, and test their tactics to improve your own KPIs.
A digital television entertainment service with customers throughout the United States and Latin America used real-time email to make buying subscriptions to its premium sports programming package easier and also to build brand awareness in a hotly contested field.
The brand used a one-click tap-to-text function that automatically updated an email message opened on a mobile device with a tap-to-text link. Customers could tap that link to buy or upgrade their entertainment packages.
Result: This one-click tactic helped the brand double sales in just about five weeks. Download the report to get the brand name and see sales numbers.
One tactic can be enough to generate sizable results, like those for our first brand. But, when you combine five tactics to carry out a strategy, the results can be nothing short of amazing.
An international entertainment company that operates theme parks around the world uses real-time data in email to build awareness, increase interactivity to prompt immediate responses and smooth the pathway to ticket sales.
Here’s what this brand used in its emails:
Results: The brand saw a significant increase in the click-to-open rate, which is a more specific measure of customer engagement than a basic open or click rate, and a double-digit increase in conversions. Download the report to learn the brand name and see the results in detail.
Bonus: Using the countdown timer module cut the campaign production time for countdown emails!
Two caveats about using these tactics: The brands chose them strategically to achieve specific marketing goals, not just at random because they’re cool tools. Each brand also measured success with metrics that were tied to those goals. Both steps are essential to achieve success with advanced email personalization.
Want to learn more? Download Tactics Matter: Real Results from Advanced Personalization to get more background information about using real-time data in personalizing emails.
We know that advanced personalization techniques can earn upwards of $20 – or more – for every $1 invested in it. But coming up with that initial investment can be a challenge for many marketers.
You’ll increase your chances of getting a “Yes” from your boss or executives if you present a request that shows the clear benefits of advanced personalization. A new report from Liveclicker, Driving Value with Advanced Personalization, can help you do the legwork that’s required to build a successful case.
The new report highlights Chico’s, a high-end women’s clothing retailer with 600 boutiques around the U.S., who used live inventory updates to promote its new collections. The result: higher revenue generated from larger average order values.
The full report provides in-depth analysis and details such as the actual percentages of revenue growth and the kinds of advanced tactics each retailer used to generate its gains. Download it here.
How to make your case
Driving Value with Advanced Personalization builds on the groundbreaking findings from The Relevancy Group’s study, The Value of Personalization Optimization for Retailers, produced for Liveclicker, which first quantified the potential $20 ROI from using advanced personalization.
Note: That’s on top of the ROI you earn now from email, estimated at an average $44 on every $1 invested in email.
Although 22% of marketers surveyed for the report said lack of budget was their biggest challenge, the report found marketers spend an average $900,000 or more annually on personalization and recommendation technology.
That’s an appropriate budget amount for advanced personalization, The Relevancy Group reported. If it sounds daunting, consider that the report also found 69% of marketers said they spend $850,000 or less annually.
The report suggests three ways marketers can shave some dollars off the cost of adding advanced personalized technology such as recommendation engines:
Finally, many of today’s cloud-based platforms that use real-time data to drive advanced personalization tactics integrate easily with databases and CRM systems and require less IT support and intervention, the report says. That’s another source of cost-saving and a point that can help you build a successful case for investment.
Adding video to an email can be a game-changing event for marketers. While many email professionals shy away from the technical complications that video in email can bring to a marketing program, they lose sight of the messaging influence that video delivers to consumers. A recent Forrester report says that including a video in an email can boost click-through rates 200-300%; combine this engagement increase with the fact that over 55% of people online watch video daily and it’s evident that people are happy to interact with video consistently.
Historically, video content has had a hard time fitting in with the email industry due to technical constraints. In the last few years that has changed; email has embraced video as inbox and device technology catch up with media demand. Mobile devices have played an enormous role in online media consumption, also paving the way for increased amounts of video in the inbox. Today, email has evolved even further; real-time targeting is possible, tailoring content display at the moment the email opens.
At Liveclicker, our RealTime Email platform uses pre-existing (CRM) and real-time (moment-of-open) data to render hyper-personalized content for each email recipient. Sending one video file to an entire list is email suicide; there are too many clients to get it 100% right with one file. To prevent any issues with video delivery, RealTime Email automatically detects the client the email is opened in and delivers the best possible media file type. Additional targeting can be configured to display a variety of different video options contingent on the openers:
Keep in mind; this list isn’t a comprehensive summary of video targeting by any means. There are unique LiveVideo applications for every business using email today. Real-time video personalization can be done with or without CRM/ESP data and deployed at 100% scale using Liveclicker’s forward-facing segmentation. These examples are to show some ready-to-go scenarios that incorporate video targeting into everyday campaigns.
Using Liveclicker, emailing video is far less complicated and stressful than most know. The basics of delivering video to each email client are automated; one video upload equals all email clients covered, the leading image for the video can be customized before the send, multilingual subtitles can be added for the hearing impaired, GIFs are delivered to non-video email clients, and all this is before we add any LiveVideo targeting rules. The benefits of real-time video targeting start with:
Video in email is not only here to stay – it’s ready to make bigger waves. Our clients have done studies to validate the power and saw dramatic changes in their own campaigns. Don’t hesitate to begin your exploration; we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.