In today’s ever-changing era of marketing, you’ll sometimes hear people claim that email marketing is a dying form of communication and although it has certainly evolved over the last few years, it is far from 'dead'. On one hand, we’re seeing the “death of the newsletter”, where companies would send general, broad-based email blasts to their entire database, but we are also seeing email marketing take on a whole new level of impact, when done correctly.
The new age of email marketing
The key to successful email marketing today is creating automated, targeted, behavioral emails. Companies can now combine the power of segmenting their audience with automation to create campaigns based on things they know about their customers or their actions (such as abandoning a browse on the website or purchasing a product). These types of campaigns typically have open rates around 60%, as opposed to traditional email blasts that see roughly 12%.
Most of these campaigns are aimed at customers who have recently purchased from you or have shown interest and will be engaged with the emails you’re sending — but only if the emails speak directly to the customer. This is why companies are relying on data-driven marketing, now more than ever.
How to put data-driven marketing into practice
At Ascent360, our platform is built to ingest all the customer data a company has (from their POS and eCommerce systems) and consolidate it for a detailed, holistic view of every customer and their behavioral patterns. It then allows marketers to segment those customers into different groups based on identifying factors such as age, gender, purchase history, interaction with the brand, and more.
Using those segments, companies can create highly personalized campaigns to meet the customers where they’re at. Let’s use a bike retailer as an example. One of the most common and impactful campaigns retailers use is a post-purchase automation. For instance, someone purchases a bike online or in store, then shortly after, they realize they don’t have the proper helmet, gloves, lights, bike rack, etc. Retailers can take advantage of that by setting up an automation that sends to anyone who has just purchased a bike, reading: “Accessories for your new bike!” or something similar, then featuring those recommended products within the email.
Sophistication made simple
One particularly useful feature within the Ascent360 marketing platform is the extensive library of pre-built, customizable templates. Instead of spending 5+ hours on building an email from scratch, these templates come fully assembled with the elements needed for any given email (such as hero images, product features, CTA buttons, and corresponding form builder).
This allows marketers to focus solely on customizing the content for each of their audience segments. Personalization starts with the reason for the automation (e.g., a post-purchase campaign for new bike purchases) and can then be further customized with dynamic content. Dynamic content means you know something about the customer you are sending to — for example, the email goes to anyone who purchased a bike, but sends a female-centric image to women and a male-centric image to men. The Ascent360 database assigns gender to approximately 80% of customers, so companies can build that rule into their audience segment.
Having the right tool makes a difference
The combination of segmentation and automation is the basis for a new generation of high-impact email marketing that drives incredible ROI, increases customer engagement and sales, and builds long-term brand loyalty. The Ascent360 data-driven platform is a tool built to replace the functionalities of your existing email marketing tool and provide a truly all-in-one solution that considers data first and makes sophisticated marketing, simple.
