Email Marketing Automation & Personalization
Customers are constantly bombarded with daily marketing emails from dozens of brands, so how do you stand out? Research consistently demonstrates that personalizing emails and texts results in higher open and click-through rates than standard email blast techniques.
Why Personalized Marketing?
One key indicator of small business success is the ability to connect with its customer base via marketing messages, providing the right message at the right time to forge better relationships.
“Personalized marketing gives customers a sense of identity. They cease to be one of the masses, and instead become an individual with unique wants and needs. Consumers tune out mass marketing because they are bombarded by it everywhere. A personalized message that is relevant is much more likely to attract their attention and to seem more credible.” ~Susan Solovic, American entrepreneur
In a study completed by Experian, personalized emails deliver 6Xs higher transaction rates than non-personalized emails. Most companies collect customer data upon customer sign-up but fail to utilize that information to personalize email and text communications. If you’re running a loyalty program, you’re already gathering valuable customer data through signups—so why not leverage it to enhance your customer outreach?
Automated and Personalized Promotions
Delivering the right message and promotion at the right time is paramount in increasing customer lifetime value. Customers want promotions and communications relevant to their purchase history and customer journey. With simple data analysis, you can pinpoint critical milestones to reward and communicate with your customers accordingly.
Upselling existing customers is an excellent way to lower your customer acquisition cost rather than focusing on obtaining new ones.
Post-transaction emails are a great opportunity to suggest related products. Would they be interested in a product within the same brand? Is there another product that pairs well with the item they just purchased? These suggestions can often be powerful enough to increase revenue without offering a promotion or coupon. Who knows, maybe you’re even saving the customer some time by offering an item they would need to purchase anyway. A paddle with their kayak? A cheese platter with their red wine? A sleeping bag with their tent?
Customer Macros
Incorporate your customers’ first and last names into your email and text communications. It could be as simple as using their first or last name in the greeting instead of “Dear Customer.” This will move you out of the introductory phase and one step closer to a personal relationship.
You can also use customer macros to let your customers know where they are in their shopping rewards. Are they close to their next rewards? Do they have rewards just sitting in their account waiting for use?
bLoyal believes customer macros are a crucial first step in adding a personal touch to customer communications and has worked to make it as easy as possible for you to use.
Incentivize Customers to Complete Their Demographic Profile
Not everyone readily volunteers information, so make it worth their time. A birthday program is a great way to incentivize and reward your customer for signing up with their information. You can inform them during or after their first purchase that signing up for your loyalty program will result in special birthday or birth month rewards. The more customers you have signed up with their information, the better you can understand their spending and customize your customer outreach.
Use Data Tools to Analyze Consumers’ Behavior and Preferences
Enhance customer understanding by using data tools that analyze consumers’ behavior and preferences. Segment your customers based on demographics and purchase history to determine their spending trends. Which customers are more likely to buy which products?
Analyze customer engagement by looking at email or text communications’ open/click-through rates. How many times was a promotion used?
You must continue refining your approach as you see how the customer base reacts. Promotions and offers get stale over time, and it is important to remain relevant. Tracking the engagement in your marketing strategy will enable you to determine when it is time to change course.
Single Customer Record
To fully utilize personalized communications, you must have your customer records in one place. When a customer purchases online, the purchase data should be stored in the same customer profile as their in-store purchases. All information related to that individual customer needs to be stored together in an easily accessible single customer record so you can accurately segment your customers based on both demographics and purchase history.
With bLoyal centralizing all your customer data, you can seamlessly personalize every customer interaction.
Upgrading to an omnichannel loyalty program unlocks the ability to analyze spending trends based on different demographics. The seamless customer record can also help understand how each channel compares to the next.
How Can bLoyal Help?
bLoyal makes accessing your data and automating marketing and promotions around key milestones simple. You can streamline the process with minimal effort to maximize customer lifetime value and save time.
