Many consumers frequently jump between channels – from email to SMS, in-app, and beyond – as they evaluate the products they want to purchase. Given all the channels for companies to market and for consumers to engage, marketing interactions can easily become disjointed or the data lost. Marketers have the important and lofty task of keeping up with the when, how, and why behind where consumers are interacting. Being able to trigger an action based on data—immediately—rather than waiting five days, is critical to staying top-of-mind with customers.

The competition to gain new customers and maintain their loyalty is at an all-time high. Companies can’t afford to sit on the sidelines—the time to level up your marketing game is now. But not all marketers have access to real-time customer data. Once marketers unlock data access, companies can reach new levels of personalization, relevance, and customer connection.

What are the pitfalls of delayed data?

Imagine a prospective customer is in the market for a new tent. As they research your website, they fill out a form for a discount, browsing information picks up on their activity, and your marketing platform starts sending promotional messages for tents. They purchase the tent and are eager to embark on their next adventure, but still might need additional equipment. This presents a prime upsell opportunity.

However, your purchase and browsing data are delayed, and you are still sending tent promotions days later, missing the chance to sell related items. This poor experience misclassifies the customer as a “prospective tent buyer” rather than a “committed buyer” ready for other camping gear. The issue lies in the data being days too late. Purchase, checkout, and browsing data are delayed too long post-purchase, due to a lack of data availability, portability, and flexibility.

You can seize major business and upsell opportunities by giving customers what they want, where they want it, and when they want it. In this case, you could achieve better conversion (and a better connection with the customer) through timely messaging promoting related camping gear. Having a deep customer profile updated in 5-minutes or less determines long-term wallet share, brand perception, and loyalty potential. You only have one chance to make a great first impression, so don’t mess it up by sending irrelevant or outdated messages.

How can retailers leverage real-time data effectively?

A retailer that excels at leveraging real-time data to provide hyper-relevant experiences is REVOLVE. Their marketing team uses Cordial’s platform to trigger personalized email, SMS, and app campaigns based on customer behaviors like cart and browse abandonment and events such as birthdays, weather data, and anniversaries. By combining complex business and customer data, REVOLVE deploys highly relevant marketing messages, such as low inventory alerts for favorite items or new arrivals from preferred designers. Through this data-driven approach, REVOLVE maintains an impressive average order value of $279, with 79% of merchandise sold at full price. They’re not regularly discounting to make the sale—they’re using data to create a custom experience for each customer. By acting on customer data in real-time, REVOLVE tailors each shopper’s online experience to their individual preferences and needs, fostering loyalty and driving revenue growth.

What does it take to leverage real-time data?

To fully leverage real-time customer data, you need a marketing platform with these key capabilities:

• Data transformations: Unify, transform, and enrich all of your data from any sources in real time.
• Segmentation: Create audience segments based on real-time data to ensure messages reflect recent customer behavior up to the time of send.
• Identity resolution: Leverage an identity graph to resolve anonymous users and engage more customers across channels.
• AI-powered insights: Optimize the custom journey by automating routine decision-making, bolstering creativity, and serving as a trusted advisor to make smarter decisions.

Using real-time data to connect with your customers is the ultimate key to growing your business. Choosing a marketing technology partner with a powerful data platform that integrates with your tech stack is the first step to creating the most personal and meaningful customer experiences.

The post 5 minutes vs. 5 days: Knowing the difference will make or break your conversion rates appeared first on Cordial.

But 71% of consumers today expect personalization and 76% are frustrated when their loyalty is not rewarded. Riding the wave up with this rise of D2C now means you need one thing — hyper-personalized campaigns.

With 1:1 personalization, you can customize messages that let you build trust with your consumers and ensure consistency even when times stay unpredictable. Let’s learn how to achieve that with D2C marketing, starting with the fundamentals.

What is direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing?

D2C marketing is a solution for brands to market to their consumers directly, without any middlemen or distribution platforms. You have direct access to all your consumers through communication channels like SMS, email, social media, and push notifications.

In 2022, D2C sales by established brands in the U.S. exceeded $117 billion, with predictions to reach $161 billion by 2024. This means, by surpassing the need for a retailer and dealing directly with consumers, you not only regain control over your brand image and can curate the entire brand experience, but are also able to bring in significantly more income year-on-year.

You can also better establish a personal relationship with the people buying your products or services and better manage the time, frequency, and clarity of all your messages. More and more brands are looking to invest in this strategy today and for good reason.

5 notable benefits of D2C marketing:

1. Optimize your supply chain management.

Understand the demand for your products and services year-round and optimize your supply chain and manufacturing processes significantly.

2. Adapt quickly to market needs.

Remain flexible and adapt to dynamic market conditions, and outperform the competitors by keeping up with your consumers’ preferences.

3. Measure your success strategically.

Prioritize the metrics that signify growth for your brand and prioritize the KPIs that quantify success for you in the short term and long term.

4. Lower costs while increasing profits.

Improve profit margins by selling directly to your consumers and cutting additional costs like retailers and distributors entirely.

5. Personalized marketing campaigns.

D2C marketing equips you to collect your consumers’ feedback with detailed data like their purchase history to create personalized campaigns and lead to higher loyalty.

What is the difference between D2C and B2C marketing strategy?

While both D2C and B2C marketing strategies have similarities like direct consumer targeting, there are some key differences between the two of them. While a B2C strategy relies on pushing sales through a distribution platform, a D2C strategy gives you total control over your marketing and advertising strategy to reach every consumer directly.

For example, Daily Insight Group partnered with businesses like Tarot.com and Numerology.com to give every consumer a daily personalized horoscope and astrology reading. The brand leveraged first-party data to create a sustainable advantage and programmatically personalized its emails to improve purchases by over 300%.

5 D2C marketing strategies you can employ:

1. Offer customized subscriptions.

Have every consumer choose their subscription and customize it to their liking. It’s effective because you can retain customers and improve their lifetime value by building a predictable revenue source and knowing exactly how much inventory you need to maintain.

2. Employ social media.

Enhance your customers’ overall brand experience using social media platforms. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram can all be great for building an online community to collect a ton of direct feedback and incorporate that to refine your marketing strategy, such as connecting social to email campaigns.

3. Turn marketing into a game.

Engage and retain every consumer by turning their experience with your brand into a game. Gamification is a great way to motivate your consumers through challenges and rewards, turning your brand into a thrilling, fun experience they want to return to and engage with regularly.

4. Craft targeted content.

Transform content into a way of leveraging first-hand consumer experiences to establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry. Content marketing both educates and entertains your target audience based on what they want to learn, helping you bond your brand with their interests successfully. For example, original content recommendations can go a long way to build loyalty and trust.

5. Influence your brand image.

Collaborate with influencers to reach a larger audience and market your products or services more effectively. Influencer marketing can transform a faceless brand into a personality-driven community of consumers who both understand and support your brand’s mission.

How automated 1:1 personalization can impact D2C campaigns

One common trait among all successful D2C marketing strategies is their ability to leverage precious first-party data. There is power in knowing the products and pages your consumers have interacted with, purchased, and disliked, and 1:1 personalization is the solution. Brands like Molson Coors have turned this data into hugely successful revenue charts even at the height of a global pandemic.

All elements of your brand, from product ideation to marketing to consumer service, can benefit from accessing and analyzing consumer data on an individual level. By personalizing every step of their purchase, you can curate your consumer’s brand experience to best reflect their needs.

5 reasons why 1:1 automation is vital for D2C brands:

1. Increase revenue with better targeting.

Turn the consumer’s likes and dislikes into hyper-target media across your channels, improving conversion rates and net revenue.

2. Tailor your messaging.

Dynamically personalize every consumer’s product recommendations as they shop, increasing your consumer lifetime value significantly.

3. Identify individual pain points.

Identify potential issues and resolve them with UX improvements or personalized ads to ensure a frictionless shopping experience for every consumer.

4. Build a loyal consumer base.

Make every customer feel special, inviting them to leave positive feedback, write reviews, and build brand loyalty.

5. Plan future scaling efforts.

Reach more consumers and scale your brand with better offerings without losing the touch of personalization.

How to boost ROI with automated 1:1 campaigns for D2C

Consumer relationships are one of the most important elements for any D2C brand. A staggering 80% of Sephora’s sales come from within their Beauty Insiders loyalty program, and they have over 25 million members.

This is proof that added incentives like free samples and bonuses that are curated to fit the consumer’s purchasing patterns go a long way to boosting the brand’s performance. A tried-and-tested campaign invokes an emotional bond between the consumer and the brand and can immediately differentiate you from the competitors.

10 of the most effective campaign types for D2C brands to improve ROI:

1. Send special invitations.

Make your consumers feel valued by sending them special invitations to brand events, both online and offline. These interactions help consumers build trust with your brand and drive more sales in the long run.

2. Personalize your offers.

Turn one sale idea into thousands of personalized offers for each of your consumers by leveraging some aspect of their first-party data. Their favorite categories, purchasing patterns, and other behavior can help you understand the best approach for personalizing the offer and boosting revenue.

3. Reduce cart abandonment.

Notify consumers who have added products to their online shopping carts but haven’t completed the purchase yet. Each consumer with an abandoned cart is a high-intent buyer and a few reminders can significantly impact your conversion rate.

4. Push back-in-stock products.

Consumers if they wish to be notified if their product of choice is out of stock and send a message when you restock it. With this campaign, you also get better control over your inventory and easily ensure your consumers’ needs are always met.

5. Launch a rewards program.

Convert your current consumers into lifelong members by encouraging them to become a part of your exclusive rewards program and offering them incentives like birthday discounts and loyalty points. With automated messaging, every member also gets personalized notifications and is more likely to buy from you.

6. Share price drop alerts.

Maximize your inventory by strategically dropping specific products’ prices and notifying consumers who have browsed, wishlisted, or bought that product before. This sense of immediacy is a powerful tool to increase engagement and conversion and allows you to build a strong brand image in the consumers’ minds.

7. Celebrate their milestones.

Transform consumer-brand interactions into key milestones they get rewarded for crossing. So the frequency of purchasing, loyalty points, or the total amount spent in a year can get the consumer a bonus voucher or special discount code and solidify their relationship with your brand.

8. Make personalized recommendations.

Study your consumers’ shopping patterns to share logic-based product recommendations that they will likely buy from your brand. By showing the consumer that you know and care about their preferences, you can increase their cart value and bring in more profits while enhancing their brand confidence.

9. Reward them for referrals.

Improve your footfall massively by rewarding your consumers for every new consumer they can bring to the brand. Lucrative cash-backs and other incentives are good ways to improve engagement and push your existing consumers to promote your brand organically.

10. Win back lost consumers.

Track which consumers have recently stopped purchasing from your brand and reach out to them with personalized messages to make them feel valued and regain their trust. By attempting to make contact with past customers, you help boost sales and repeat buyers.

Examples of D2C brands winning with automated personalization

When stepping into the world of D2C, it’s a good idea to take inspiration from brands that have employed automated personalization strategies and campaigns to succeed in their industries and occupy a major chunk of the market share today.

Here are 10 D2C brands that stand out and what you can learn from each:

1. Adore Me

Adore Me is a D2C lingerie and swimwear brand that gives consumers a personalized shopping experience with 1:1 automation. Their tailored approach to marketing across all platforms is focused on the consumer’s style, which they learn using their first-party data and an online quiz about the shopper’s unique needs and preferences.

2. BarkBox

BarkBox is a subscription-based D2C brand that customizes a monthly delivery box to the consumer’s doorstep filled with treats, activities, and toys for their dog. Based on the dog’s breed, age, diet, allergies, and other needs, the brand offers several subscription options with 24/7 customer service and a happiness guarantee for their 2 million consumers.

3. Casper

Casper is a popular D2C sleep products brand that encourages consumers to take a free online sleep habits quiz and learn which pillows and other products would be best suited for them. By getting to know its consumers well, the brand can improve its offerings and ensure a seamless shopping experience from discovery to delivery at an affordable price point.

4. Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club is a subscription-based D2C brand for men’s grooming products personalized and delivered at a set frequency. Along with learning about the consumers’ needs with 1:1 automation to tailor their selection of products, the brand also shares shaving tips across its channels to establish itself as an expert in the industry.

5. Glossier

Glossier is a renowned skincare and cosmetics D2C brand that rose to fame with its marketing campaigns that employed a range of automated personalization techniques to attract and retain consumers. The brand leverages first-party data to personalize ads for its consumers and targets its 1:1 messaging with recommendations based on their purchasing behavior.

6. Lume

Lume Deodorant is a D2C brand for doctor-developed, aluminum-free deodorants driving business growth with their automation strategies to create dynamic content blocks and connect thousands of data points to personalize the consumer experience. Their use of Abandon Browse campaigns and personalized recommendations based on their online quiz helps them turn visitors into loyal consumers to quadruple revenue.

7. Mixtiles

Mixtiles is a D2C brand that turns consumer photos into wall art tailored to their decor preferences. The brand uses automation to understand its consumers’ needs and increase retention with retargeted ads. Their personalized messaging aligns with the consumer’s style and makes every browsing experience feel unique to their taste, helping the brand achieve high repeat customers and boosting conversion rates.

8. Saatva

Saatva is a D2C home and lifestyle brand for home furnishings and luxury mattresses that leverages its data platform to send automated emails to every consumer and visitor and stands out from its competitors with its unique offerings. With Cordial’s platform, they’ve improved their abandoned cart consumers by 80% and crafted a sustainable marketing strategy across email, SMS, and website.

9. Thinx

Thinx is a well-known D2C feminine hygiene products brand that helps consumers understand and navigate menstruation with their range of sustainable and personalized product experiences. The brand’s social mission combined with its 1:1 automation marketing strategy helped them amass a huge following and provide innovative solutions to every consumer’s unique needs.

10. Warby Parker

Warby Parker is an online D2C eyewear brand that employs its online quiz to understand every consumer’s face shape, and style, and needs to recommend a selection of glasses that are tailored to suit them. Through their website, social media, and email communications, they also maintain a 1:1 relationship with their consumers to keep up engagement and boost consumer retention.

Is your brand leveraging your customer data?

D2C brands leveraging the power of 1:1 automation exceed their projections and supplement their revenue with millions of dollars. Understanding your consumers’ needs, likes, and preferences is the key to driving success. By maintaining seamless cross-channel experiences with personalized marketing campaigns, your consumers will engage more and organically grow your brand with every purchase.

At Cordial, we work to help you realize this power. With our solutions team, discover how to leverage your consumers’ data to drive growth. Request a demo to learn more today.

The post How to use automated 1:1 personalization in direct-to-consumer (D2C) marketing  appeared first on Cordial.

Automated 1:1 marketing personalization enables you to customize your messages and content to specific customer segments in real time. It presents growth opportunities that weren’t possible even 10 years ago. By combining the 4 Ps of marketing with automated marketing personalization, you can create more effective, targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience for a major positive impact on your bottom line.

Let’s learn how to organize today’s Martech capabilities within this classic paradigm.

4 Ps of marketing

In marketing, what are the four Ps?

• Product — The product is the offer — what a business produces or provides to satisfy customer needs. Product, as it applies here, includes both tangible and intangible items such as goods, services, experiences, activities, events, digital products, ideas, knowledge, and information.
• Place — As the distribution channels used to get a product or service to the consumer, place includes physical and digital locations, such as retail stores, websites, and marketplaces. Place also involves activities that make the product or service available for use or consumption by the end user.
• Price — As the cost of the offer, price is one of the most important elements of the marketing mix and can have a significant impact on a company’s profitability. Price is determined by the cost of production, competitors’ pricing, and the target market’s ability to pay, paired with their desire for the offer.
• Promotion — As the communication strategy that a business uses to reach the target audience, usually via advertising, promotion is how the company informs, persuades, and reminds potential customers of the offer. It helps to think of promotion as an invitation, either to an actual sales event or to the desired outcome of an offer.

Today, the 4 Ps framework gives you another way to think about automated 1:1 personalization.

1. Product

First, how does automated 1:1 personalization impact the product? Product falls into the personalization pool many times. To personalize marketing in its most fundamental form, you can either offer your market the opportunity to customize a product or you can tailor an offer.

For example, Mixtiles lets customers upload their own images and customize sizing and framing for photo products. You can also customize product options — countless products across various brands come with size, color, and or material variations, giving customers the option to make something their own, and all of this is 1:1 personalization. You can personalize product recommendations based on a shopper’s browsing or purchase history, or brand affinity (the shopper’s favorite brands). In fact, one of Cordial’s email marketing clients delivered two automated campaigns with brand affinity scoring alongside new arrivals and low-in-stock messaging to earn an additional $14.9 million in one year; these campaigns generated an average order value of $290.

In this way, you can apply personalization to recommendations, new arrivals, back-in-stock, low-in-stock, and buy-again orders, all focused on the product as it falls under the 4 Ps. In its simplest form, to apply 1:1 personalization, you could just give your customer the option to get a notification when an offer they are interested in is available.

Patagonia allows shoppers to request availability updates on their “out of stock” product pages. Those who opt-in enter into a list segment on a per-product basis. When the item becomes available again, it triggers a new email campaign and sends a message to the relevant list segment.

[Image source]

You also could target “buy again” or “replenishment” campaigns to anyone who purchases an item or anyone who writes a 4 or 5-star review (depending on the technology available). These campaigns would either ask the customer to make a repeat purchase or buy a complementary item.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to product:

• Recommendations
• Brand affinity
• Back in stock
• Low in stock
• Buy again
• Review request
• Replenishment

2. Place

Next, automated personalization: How does it affect place as it applies to the 4 Ps? Really, you just have to think about where your customers receive their products. Let’s start with the fundamentals — delivery and shipping. After that, we’ll touch on a handful of others.

Personalized delivery automation is huge with offers like DoorDash. Modern delivery services involve personalized marketing 1:1 automation at several touch points. For one, the DoorDash app makes personalized recommendations based on the user’s location and establishments that offer the fastest delivery times. These touch points are most relevant to the place, but DoorDash also uses automation to deliver “buy it again” campaigns, coupons, and featured restaurants.

Where shipping is concerned, automated personalization can complete tasks like cost and service availability estimations based on the customers’ ZIP code. For example, the costs vary across shipping types such as standard, express, or overnight, and by the carrier. Today, a customer can enter their ZIP code in most online stores and instantly see which options are available, how much it will cost, and how many days it will take to receive their order for each option.

Customers can also opt to buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS) and buy online return in-store (BORIS); these are both examples of place options in automated marketing personalization. Personalization enters these similarly to shipping: The customer enters their location or ZIP code and immediately sees where they can pick up or return an item.

Brands like Uber fully personalize the travel experience. Primarily, they offer instant price estimates for a ride from one place to another, based on the user’s current location, travel time, and size of vehicle needed for the commute. The options shown to users are also based on which drivers are available in the area in real time.

Using similar technology, geolocation campaigns can target people in a certain location to receive an offer. Some retailers have used in-app coupons that are triggered when an app user enters one of their stores. Local businesses use geolocation targeting to send ads to people in their region, city, or neighborhood all the time.

You can also personalize weather-based and localized campaigns based on location. This is an inherent feature with iOS and Android smart devices (iPhones seem to believe all new owners are in Cupertino before they configure their permissions). You might employ this type of tech when you want to update customers about poor road conditions, inclement weather, or other hazardous conditions in their area.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to place:

• BOPIS – buy online pickup in store
• BORIS – buy online return in store
• Delivery 
• Shipping – Delivery dates/costs based on zip code and rate 
• Travel – customer journey steps during travel
• Geolocation 
• Weather-based campaigns
• Localized campaigns

3. Price

Then, what is the outcome of automated personalization on price? As a rule, you won’t use personalization to change your actual pricing strategy, but you can use it to enhance your audience’s perceived value of an offer based on price changes and available discounts.

Price drop alerts are one example of how this works. Millions of consumers use apps like Honey exclusively for this feature, so there’s no doubt price drops are a factor in purchase decisions. If you can integrate price drop alerts into your marketing strategy, you’ll be one step closer to higher earnings.

Personalization can also strengthen your marketing through limited-time, personal, and upsell offers. If you deliver these types of campaigns with an air of exclusivity and base them on previous purchases and behaviors, they will have more impact. For instance, New York Times’ free, personalized subscribers are twice as likely to become paying subscribers.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to price:

• Price drop alerts
• Limited time offers
• Personal offers
• Coupon codes
• Upsell campaigns

4. Promotion

Finally, how is promotion influenced by automated personalization? Email and social media are two of the best channels for promotion. So, let’s talk about how successful brands use them for this purpose.

Welcome messages come in all flavors but are best served with a dash of personalization. Of course, if you know the target’s name or location, you can include these details in your communications — but today’s automation can go far beyond that. Amplify your welcome experience by tapping into whatever behaviors you’ve already learned from the customer, whether recommendations based on browsing history or, if they’ve made a first purchase, a personalized offer to incentivize their second purchase.

Customer loyalty and referral programs are other types of promotion that are more successful when personalized for the referrer. Enhance the personalization aspect of your programs with unique referral codes for each customer, different rewards based on the referrer’s purchase history, and discounts or cash bonuses to use toward their favorite products or brands.

Next, you must personalize milestones and personal event markers for them to be effective. So, step one is to track and understand your customers’ behavior. With the information you gather, you can get creative and implement milestone marketing beyond simple happy birthday messages (or you could play on that as Reddit does with their users’ “cake day”).

At long last, consider your win-back campaigns — do they include enough personalization? A tailored approach is crucial when you want to re-engage a customer who hasn’t taken action in a while. Always present offers that are likely to be relevant and appealing if you want to win someone back.

Automated 1:1 campaign types often related to promotion:

• Welcome
• Customer loyalty
• Milestones
• Personal event markers
• Referral program
• Win-back

Takeaway

Recently, automated personalization has improved customer experience in major ways, which has had a positive impact on ROI for many brands. Modern technology makes it possible to implement marketing tactics that were inconceivable even a decade ago. Meanwhile, the 4 Ps framework has been around at least since the 1950s. When united, automated personalization and the 4 Ps are an unstoppable force that you can leverage to power your marketing results.

To see how you can use Cordial to level up your personalized 1:1 messaging campaigns, schedule a demo today.  

The post How to apply 1:1 personalization to the 4 Ps of marketing appeared first on Cordial.

So what’s the best trick? Think of every blog post as its own product.

By applying the same customer personalization tech and automation campaigns retail marketers leverage to increase their ROI, you can get the most bang for the buck out of your brand’s blog — whether you’re a publisher or offer products and services. And as content marketers everywhere repeat in their sleep, it’s all about how to: “Drive traffic. Drive revenue.”

3 ways automated 1:1 personalization can up the impact of your brand’s blog

1. Surface the right content based on brand interactions and behaviors.

When you think of a blog post as an individual product, you then can more easily think of ways to recommend it just like you would a product — by using similar, if not the same, data sets. If your brand uses content to drive traffic to your products and service offerings, you can serve up more relevant blog posts to each customer based on a variety of data points, including but not limited to:

• Order history
• Browsing history
• Brand affinity
• Weather data
• Geolocation
• Loyalty program status
• Buying time affinity

For example, if you’re a clothing retailer, you can automate recommendation emails with blog posts about winter fashion or snow gear if the weather data and geolocation associated with a customer indicate they just experienced the year’s first snowfall, or if the customer bought winter fashion items the previous season.

Or, if you’re a home goods retailer and your customer just bought a new loveseat — and changed their address for the order — then your automation could serve up blog posts tagged for home decorating or for those moving into a new home or city.

These types of recommendations can improve your brand’s authority in your industry and trust with your customer, which can translate into better customer retention.

2. Drive repeat visitors and retention with smart tracking.

Similar to using recommendations based on customer/reader behaviors, you can leverage browsing/reading behaviors to show readers fresh or more enticing content with every message. You can track any number of data points to test serving up content that drives repeat visits and traffic to your site — and keeps readers within your brand experience longer.

By owning the first-party data of your audience, you can gain content insights at the individual customer level you’ll never find in Google Analytics. Here are just several, for starters:

• Blog posts not yet recommended to reader
• Blog posts on topics reader previously engaged with
• Blog post titles reader saw but didn’t click on
• Blog posts reader spent the most time on
• Blog posts reader spent the least time on
• Blog posts reader shared
• Blog posts read during a purchase session
• All blog posts reader has viewed

3. Up engagement with exclusivity, ticking clocks, and other automated campaign tactics.

Beyond the nitty-gritty first-party data points, you also can spin tried-and-true growth marketing campaign tactics to content as well, with a little creativity.

For instance, it’s not uncommon for brands to license content or to engage with high-profile influencers or celebs for exclusive content — and these contracts often have clauses on specific timeframes the content can be used before having to be pulled down.

In these scenarios you can use countdowns to launch blog posts with exclusive content or perhaps require customers/readers to reach a certain loyalty program tier level or other threshold to access it. You know, up the excitement. And once the content is live, you can do a content spin on the classic “limited time offer” and message your audience about its expiration, perhaps like “Access the exclusive video for X more days!” or “Check out X’s exclusive recipe until Sunday!”

How Paper Mart uses Cordial to send personalized blog recommendations

Cordial client Paper Mart has a large segment of DIY customers looking for new craft ideas, and their blog is just the place for those customers to find them. So Paper Mart wanted a way to suggest relevant blog articles with craft ideas that pertain to the products customers have shown interest in to suggest even more ways for customers to use their products.

Their team had two primary goals:

• To recommend blog articles to their customers based on their order history and website browsing behaviors
• To drive traffic to their website and provide their customers with valuable and relevant content

Working with Cordial, Paper Mart automated their blog article recommendations to boost engagement and revenue:

• As the Paper Mart team plans and publishes their blog content, they update a CSV file that is referenced during a daily automation job.
• With this daily automation, Paper Mart feeds blog details (e.g., article titles, category, link, image, summary text) into a Cordial data supplement.
• Cordial then references the supplemental data to dynamically populate a content block of articles in emails based on a customer’s behavior and preferences.
• Paper Mart is able to use the same content block in both automated and batch campaigns to boost engagement and drive more traffic to their site.

Learn more in our webinar

See how Cordial can help you leverage personalized automations in real-time — for a wide variety of use cases — with our Architect technology that can unify your data from unlimited sources and transform it for marketing activation. Request a demo today.

The post How to drive blog traffic and revenue with automated 1:1 personalization appeared first on Cordial.

So from a purely logistical standpoint, constantly moving heavier and heavier data loads with traditional means isn’t sustainable — or affordable — because your data will only continue to grow and grow. And if your marketing organization hasn’t already invested in data sharing to accommodate this exponential shift, you’re already being left behind. The future of data is all about quick, easy access in real time.

Here are two key reasons why:

• Customers demand better experiences. A comprehensive view of your customer is the single most effective way to deliver a relevant and timely customer experience, but its value depends on high-quality data collection and real-time distribution and accessibility.
• Businesses are shifting to first-party data to optimize those experiences. For years, companies have used third-party cookies to track and understand buyer behavior online. Now, amidst privacy concerns, industry changes, and regulatory laws, marketers will have to lessen their reliance on third-party data and increase their collection and activation of first-party data to achieve better personalization.

So what is data sharing?

Put simply, true data sharing is about making your data accessible to others — without having to move or duplicate your data. 

On a broader organizational level, Lydia Clougherty Jones, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, touts data sharing as “the way to optimize higher-relevant data, generating more robust data and analytics to solve business challenges and meet enterprise goals.” And we couldn’t agree more, especially when it applies to activating your customer data — seamlessly and in the most cost-effective way.

That’s why Cordial has partnered with Snowflake, the Data Cloud Company,, to integrate Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing with our platform.

And what is Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing?

Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing is a proprietary way to allow businesses, like Cordial, to seamlessly grant and share data with clients who use the Snowflake Data Cloud. Unlike traditional data sharing, Snowflake Data Sharing is far easier to use because it provides immediate access to ready-to-query data, eliminating friction and unnecessary costs that come with typical extract, transform, and load (ETLs) data sharing solutions.

How does Secure Data Sharing work with Cordial?

With Secure Data Sharing, no actual data is copied, transferred, or exchanged between accounts — eliminating data movement. All sharing is accomplished through Snowflake’s unique multi-cluster shared data architecture.

And why is this important? Well, it means that sharing data from Cordial to your Snowflake account does not take up any storage in a client account, and therefore, does not contribute to your monthly Snowflake data storage cost. The only charges to you as the client are for the compute resources used to query on shared Cordial data.

What are the benefits of Secure Data Sharing with Cordial?

Gain instant access to valuable first-party customer data from Cordial directly within your Snowflake account. Seamlessly and securely join customer generated data from Cordial with other Snowflake data, to unlock new insights about your business faster and easier than ever before.

1. Unify your data and unlock its potential:

• Gain a comprehensive view of your business.
• Make your data accessible to everyone across your business ecosystem and partners.
• Analyze behavioral patterns and generate funnel reports to better understand your customer’s buying behavior and patterns.

2. Improve data agility and reduce cost:

• Immediately access your data in real-time, accelerating time to insights.
• Pay only for the compute charges you use on shared data from Cordial.
• Empower your business intelligence team by getting them the data they need without engineering.

3. Get immediate and secure access to your data:

• Spend more time leveraging and analyzing your data, not managing it.
• Secure your data with built-in permissions, revocable access, and governance controls.
• Leverage Cordial customer and event data alongside the rest of your Snowflake data to power feature sets within your application, such as dashboards, attribution models, user predictions and recommendations, data visualizations, and more to enrich business insights.

Ready to make the most of Snowflake and Cordial?

Our partnership with Snowflake already has made an impact, and we look forward to guiding your brand to success. 

“Cordial’s Snowflake Marketplace offering has given us a more seamless way of accessing and analyzing our data. Sharing data that used to take hours, now only takes a few minutes to complete,” said Hyrum Ward, Manager of Data Engineering at Purple. “All our valuable first-party data from Cordial is now instantly available and queryable alongside our hundreds of other data sources in Snowflake, so we can easily marry up a variety of data points to gain new insights about our business.”

In addition, data access can be extended bi-directionally, allowing clients to easily ingest and leverage data from Snowflake in the Cordial platform for improved message personalization, segmentation, and business outcomes.

Get in touch to schedule a demo or to learn more about Snowflake’s Secure Data Sharing integration and how we can put our insights to work for you.

The post Why data sharing is important for real-time personalization appeared first on Cordial.

Come January, the holidays are a memory for most businesses, but not for the floral industry. As winter blows in and snowbirds start flying toward warmer climes, the major flower-powerhouses are amping up for their annual floral trifecta of holidays: Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Mother’s Day. So let’s stop and take in a few whiffs of what we can learn from this ever-blooming sector.

I love you. I’m sorry. Happy anniversary… There’s almost no time that flowers are a bad idea. In fact, while some other industries slowed down during the COVID-19 pandemic, the global flower market boomed — and is continuing to do so. Global Industry analysts StrategyR tracked the flower market and offered some impressive growth predictions. Cut flowers sales were estimated at $30.7 Billion for 2020 and are projected to reach a whopping $43.8 Billion by 2027. That’s a lot of petals.

So what exactly is the floral industry doing that keeps people buying, holiday after holiday, year after year?

For one thing, marketers in the floral industry continue to innovate on their approach more than on their actual products. At the dawn of internet marketing, it seemed as if everyone’s inboxes would overflow with exhortations to buy something new for every holiday. But over the past few years, brands seem more in tune and sensitive to their customer’s life cycles — including loss or complicated situations. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were once considered universal times for florists to inundate inboxes with marketing messages, but most brands now have clear (if temporary) opt-out options.

Beyond sensitivity to loss or other life situations, the current levels of personalization go way beyond a thoughtful detail. A lot of targeted brand outreach is more about relationship continuity and education. “In general, it’s important to us that not all our customer outreach is aimed at sales, but that we’re actually providing some value for people who buy flowers, take care of their living plant pals, and are interested in learning about different varieties,” said Juan Palacio, Founder and CEO, BloomsyBox.com.

But that excellent approach isn’t limited to the flower industry. Not to brag, but at Cordial we make a point of highlighting intentional outreach over the random sales push. We use real-time data to deliver personalized messaging via email, SMS, MMS, web, mobile app, or automated direct mail.

In the same way floral marketers evolve along with their customers, we constantly update the way we help you connect with your own target demographic. Attracting customers and keeping their loyalty are two completely different challenges, especially around multiple holidays that inspire gift-giving.

With apologies to Shakespeare, while a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it might not sell as well. Floral marketers understand that their consumers want to feel something when purchasing a bouquet or arrangement. And that involves significant personalization efforts.

6 personalization ideas from the floral industry:

1. Add a human side to your story.

Your customers want to feel like they’re supporting actual people and not just a faceless corporation. Palacio said that BloomsyBox is about to launch a storytelling campaign about the farms that grow and harvest their flowers. He said “because we personally find those human stories and perspectives interesting and know that our customers will, too.”

2. Share your customer’s ethos.

If your company is dedicated to less waste, you should highlight that part of your brand story to attract like-minded consumers. The Million Roses is a brand that creates preserved roses and flowers. That might be off-putting to some, but the company highlights the fact that these somewhat pricey blooms last longer and are more sustainable.

Their products are all handmade by floral artists and last up to three years. The company prides itself on providing a sustainable solution to the large-spanning carbon footprint issue of the floral industry. In press materials, they also share information on how their approach is a more desired option for combating climate change without giving up quality and the natural beauty of flowers.

3. Consider your customer’s intention.

Palacio said it isn’t just flowers that are personal, but also the “gifting intentions behind them” when crafting your messaging,

4. Be more inclusive.

BloomsyBox offers opt-outs for Mother’s Day for people who may have lost, don’t know, or don’t get along with their mom. Palacio said their Valentine’s messaging “is more LGBTQ-aware than it used to be,” too.

5. Share your history.

Some people don’t really care about the provenance of their posies but are more concerned about who else is buying them. Family-owned, female-run Pomp Flowers proudly shares details of their floral pedigree including their hand-raised sustainably grown arrangements. Pomp also has a strong legacy and a 30-year history of cultivating flowers on their family-owned farms in Ecuador and Columbia with expertise in over 600 flower varieties, all hand-raised and sustainably grown.

And they don’t shy away from letting people know about the experts who create “the optimal growing conditions from fertilization and irrigation to climate-controlled greenhouses.” But in a celebrity-driven culture, some people might be most impressed with the fact that Pomp is the go-to flower provider for major events like the Rose Bowl and the Tony Awards.

6. Make it easy.

In addition to selling flowers through their website, Pomp also has an Amazon Storefront which allows consumers to buy easily and without a ton of effort.

Read more about how Cordial creates highly personalized multi-approach campaigns

Some brands are already taking notice of the ways the floral industry markets in a way that feels incredibly individualized.

Floral inspiration

Some companies that are floral industry adjacent manage to evoke the beauty and timelessness of a gorgeous arrangement. And with that comes the urgency to gift the scent to someone else.

A great example of marketing inspired by the floral industry is Arquiste Parfumeur, who in some materials describe their scents as being better than a bouquet. In other marketing materials, they use descriptors like products that are “liquid florals” or “time traveling scents,” where the heady aroma of their flower combos can transport you mentally if not physically.

Arquiste’s floral fragrances have catchy floral names like Boutonnière, Ella, Fleur de Louis, Infanta en Flor and Flor y Canto, but it’s their St. Regis Caroline’s Four Hundred Candle that is a marvel of marketing. In naming the scented candle after the over-the-top balls by New York Gilded Age socialite Caroline Astor, the brand also elevates their product and makes the consumer feel more worldly and chic.

As described on the company website, “The scent captures at once the actual flowers used around her residence, the exotic woods of the ballroom, the potted palms and apple blossoms that lined the hallways, and the light crisp essence of champagne wafting through the crowds. With notes of rich American Beauty roses with green stems, white lilies and the delicate sweetness of quince, apple and cherry blossom.”

Use your channels wisely

Since the floral industry has multiple busy seasons, they have to approach their direct-to-consumer marketing in a way that is fresh and feels intuitive. Palacio said that at BloomsyBox they spend a lot of time and resources segmenting their databases to personalize emails as much as possible. An example of this is sending their customers emails based on past purchasing behavior so the company is serving products and content they can safely assume is of value to them.

“The last thing we want is to send marketing that doesn’t resonate or is a piece of communication that is immediately deleted or archived by our customers in their inbox.” BloomsyBox also values their customers’ trust. So in their SMS efforts, they offer repeat customers early access to new collections, special discounts, and promotions.

Many in the floral industry are experts at relating to their customer experience. We all celebrate many of the same milestones, which can make it easier to market them. Before crafting your next campaign or message, challenge yourself to:

• Provide value in each message.
• Aim for authenticity.
• State who you are. For example, Central Florida’s Love is Love florist describe themselves as being “not your typical florist for not so typical couple.” But they don’t even have to do that since their name alone explains their outlook.

Challenge expectation

Want to ensure your customers are reading your targeted content? Don’t give them what everyone else is. Palacio offered a fantastic example of the way BloomsyBox is shattering Valentine’s Day expectations. He cites consumer boredom with cliched red roses for Valentine’s Day.

“This year we’re launching a Valentine’s Day collection that has absolutely no red roses, with corresponding marketing messaging that talks about why we’re leaving them out.” In this way the brand is creating a fun experience, but one that also challenges customers to think beyond the expected experience.

Palacio said the company’s hope is to not only help educate customers about what the people in their lives really want, but also put out messages that are real and relatable. “It’s all in the service of supporting our community in creating memorable experiences with their loved ones. That’s all any of us are really after, right?”

The post Amp up your personalization efforts with tips from the floral industry appeared first on Cordial.

Direct mail marketing has proven to be as effective as it is persistent. Research suggests that it garners impressive open rates between 57.5% and 85%, response rates as high as 4.4%, and an average 320% return on investment. With stats like that, it’s no wonder that direct mail marketing remains popular: In 2021, U.S. companies sent over 66.2 billion pieces of direct mail marketing.

If impersonal mail marketing campaigns are effective, just imagine if they were personalized. Modern martech offers advanced customer data collection and analysis that lets you supercharge your direct mail campaigns with personalization at scale. The potential benefits for sales and brand loyalty are enormous.

So how do you actually do personalization for direct mail at scale? Good question — let us explain.

Why direct mail still wins in the digital age

Direct mail continues to be relevant because it works. The main benefits of direct mail include:

• We like getting mail. Most people read — or at least scan — each piece of mail they receive.
• It’s creative, versatile, and tangible. There’s a tactile element that online ads, banners, or even email can’t replicate.
• It’s simple to execute. With a mailing list and a reliable delivery partner, you can quickly and easily design and send a campaign.
• It’s trackable. You can set up custom landing pages, URLs, QR codes, coupon codes, phone numbers, and even promotions to measure direct mail performance.
• It’s personal. You can personalize your mail — from design elements to copy — based on your first-party customer data.

Personalization is the key to making direct mail effective in the digital age. You can use personalized direct mail at all stages in the customer life cycle to boost customer engagement.

• Activation: Get your customers’ attention, make them aware of your brand, and show them your products and services. Use information about their demographics or interests to target the message and copy in welcome letter campaigns.
• Consideration: Prompt customers to make a purchase. Use direct mail campaigns that present product recommendations or offer promotions on items selected using customer data.
• Retention: Use direct mail campaigns to build customer loyalty. For example, send letters with invitations to join your cross-channel customer loyalty program, information about earned rewards, or exclusive invitations to brand events.

More on Cordial:

• Article: How to personalize your life cycle marketing
• Article: How to leverage customer data for referrals
• Webinar recording: What marketers can do to meet customer expectations in 2023

Direct mail marketing stats

Still not sure whether direct mail marketing is worth it? Here is the evidence you need to be sure it’s a good investment.

• 73% of consumers prefer direct mail: Almost three-quarters (73%) of American consumers report that they prefer receiving marketing messages as direct mail because they can read them at their convenience.
• 4.4% of direct mail recipients respond: Response rate is the proportion of mail recipients that engage in some way — by visiting a website, making a purchase, and so on. The average response rate for direct mail can be as high as 4.4%.
• 57% of Millennials act on direct mail offers: Millennials have shown a particular certain affinity for physical media, and that’s reflected in their engagement in direct mail: According to a United States Postal Service survey, 57% of Millennials have acted on direct mail offers.
• The ROI for direct mail is 320%: For every $1 you spend on direct mail, research suggests you can expect to earn an average of $3.22 return. And the ROI can vary by industry and season. Think about home renovations and repairs: Targeting customers who have just bought a house can see ROI soar for home-related businesses.
• 66% of marketers report good ROI from direct mail: In one survey of 589 marketers, 66% reported that their ROI from direct mail campaigns was either good (59%) or very good (7%).
• Direct mail paired with email can boost sales by 15%: In a large-scale field study, researchers found that a physical catalog created a 15% lift in sales and a 27% lift in inquiries when sent together with weekly email marketing, compared to email marketing only. In other words, direct mail is especially effective when part of a multichannel marketing strategy.

Effective direct mail campaign examples using first-party data

Just like online campaigns, you can use first-party customer data to automate and personalize direct mail campaigns. Here are some examples of how you can do it.

Welcome

When is the best time to build a strong relationship with a customer? Right after an opt-in. Use customer location, past purchases, and browsing data to send a personalized welcome letter (and consider offering a personalized discount while you’re at it).

Newsletter

Direct mail newsletters provide customers with details on new arrivals or product trends. The more relevant the content to your customer, the better. Use what you know from your first-party data to customize your newsletter content to your customer interests, hobbies, or product preferences.

Recommendations

Create a customized list of product recommendations for your customer using what you know about them: their location, the season, their previous purchases, and their browsing behavior in your app/on your site. Then send those recommendations in a beautifully crafted printed product.

Personal offers

Discounts and deals are key tactics for driving sales. And — no surprise here — the more customers are interested in the promotion, the more likely they are to make a purchase. Use your customer data to personalize direct mail promotions and highlight relevant products for each customer.

Brand affinity score

Use customer data, like browsing history and previous purchases, to develop brand affinity scores — scores that reflect the extent to which a customer likes a given brand. Then, use those scores to automate direct mail campaigns when customers’ favorite brands release new products or put products on sale.

Milestones

Use automated direct mail campaigns to celebrate customer milestones: reaching a new tier in your customer rewards program, earning a certain number of points, posting a certain number of reviews, and so on. For example, consider offering special discounts in the mail to customers after making their tenth purchase.

Personalize event marker

Similar to celebrating milestones, you can also celebrate special moments in your customers’ life. For example, send a customized birthday card with a thoughtful message or send a welcome gift when they buy a new home. Other personal events could include anniversaries, special holidays, or even a wedding.

Replenishment

Encourage customers to replenish their favorite products when they’re about to run out. Use customer and replenishment data to identify products that could run out, and then use time triggers to automatically send direct mail materials to encourage re-stocking in a time frame before an expected run-out or expiration.

Loyalty program

Loyalty programs reward customers who frequently consume your products or services. Personalized direct mail materials can include current point balances along with customized recommendations for spending points. Well-designed direct mail that “pops” from a stack of envelopes also can elevate your brand’s appeal.

BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store)

BOPIS makes the customer experience more flexible. Customers love it because it helps them avoid shipping costs and gives them an opportunity to visit your store. For example, use customer data to send personalized direct mail when a favorited or new hot, trendy product will be in stock and available “in store only” for a limited time, together with customized directions to the store for pickup — and possibly create a “velvet rope” type of VIP experience.

Wishlist conversion

Wishlists provide a goldmine for data on a customer’s needs and preferences. Trigger personalized direct mail campaigns to remind customers about the product at various moments in time; for example, when a wishlist product goes on sale, is low on stock, or comes back in stock after being sold out.

More on Cordial:

• Article: 30 growth marketing campaigns that leverage first-party data
• Article: How to evolve relationship marketing and customer retention
• Webinar recording: Maximize 2023 marketing efforts with cross-channel personalization

How to scale personalized direct mail marketing

Direct mail has proven to be a resilient marketing strategy, delivering consistent results even as online channels have exploded. Like any marketing strategy, the more targeted the message in a direct mail campaign, the higher the impact.

Direct mail can be personalized just like any other marketing channel. And with the right tools, it can be extremely simple to do. Cordial offers personalized direct mail automation through our partnership with Poplar, a direct mail campaign platform. Just set up the integration, and then use your customer data from Cordial to execute direct mail campaigns through Poplar.

You’ll be delivering personalized direct mail that converts in no time.

The post How to personalize direct mail marketing campaigns at scale appeared first on Cordial.

For example, let’s assume that you want to send out a daily newsletter or promotional message showing your brand’s products or content. Also, assume the message uses a common design each time and takes from few days to a week of lead time to produce.

To add personalization at scale, you can create message templates with custom sections that are designed to conditionally appear (or not) based on the data for each customer. These sections can pull in contextual content from both internal and external data sources based on any combination of data you are collecting or have access to. Once these sections or blocks are created, they can be reused across other batch messages, triggered messages, or time-based automations, and even the website itself.

Let’s explore seven of the most common reusable components that deliver the biggest bang for the buck:

1. Previously browsed products

This component pulls in past products viewed or products that have been recently left in the customer’s shopping cart. Think of how well cart and browse abandonment messages convert. Adding this same functionality to your standard messages can bring a sizable boost to your current message with little to no added effort. Taking that a step further, you can follow that up with a similar custom module that can be sent via a push notification.

Learn more: Strategies and examples for abandoned cart emails

2. Contextual offers

This component incorporates intelligent offers based on a variety of criteria such as time since last purchased, previous abandonment, or new to the brand and never purchased. Go one step further and include machine learning and automated recommendations to optimize response for each offer to further maximize response.

Learn more: Automated campaign ideas for growth marketing

3. Locations and upcoming events

Use this component to pull in localized data such as regional event information and store locations data based on a customer’s location. Load the data and let the template do all of the heavy lifting.

4. Relevant articles and content

Display articles automatically based on a list of stored content matched to recently viewed or inferred interest in a topic, category, author, or any other attribute or property. Extend this method to fully automate an entire message and remove the need for all human intervention. Some of Cordial’s clients have developed fully automated, highly effective, data-driven email that send themselves.

5. Product recommendations

Show relevant products or other content using a recommendations engine, synthesizing all past browse and purchase behavior for that customer (and similar customers). Cordial provides the ability to quickly create recommendations with your own criteria and with little to no coding. Thanks to Cordial’s Sculpt email editor, you can insert dynamic recommendations based on your custom criteria using the drag-and-drop interface.

Learn more: Strategies and examples for automated recommendations

6.  External content

Create a component to pull in local weather and other external data feeds to embellish each message with value added content that is readily available and requires no effort to curate. Examples of this may be weather feeds, news feeds, social content, and more.

7. Win-back campaigns

Incorporate a conditionally displayed win-back or re-engagement component to display based on customer inactivity — well before you move them to the unengaged bucket and lose the ability to message them. This tactic has proven very effective in letting customers know they are at risk of losing their opportunity to receive messages.

Our research looked at the Internet Retailer’s Top 100 list and found that 33 brands were employing win-back campaigns. The inbox placement rates for companies employing win-back campaigns stood at 92% — a high number that shows that most inactive subscribers are receiving the win-back campaign in their inboxes. These win-back campaigns also had a 12% read (or open) rate, again a respectable number considering how many of these subscribers have not interacted with emails from these brands.

Learn more: Win-back email strategies and examples

Ready to accelerate customer-centric marketing?

With the power of Cordial combined with the creativity of your team, there’s a lot of possibility. Every step of the way, our team will help bring your cross-channel messaging strategies to life.

Our solutions team advises clients through simple implementations or complex custom integrations. We can help with everything from website tagging and connecting real-time data feeds to best practices for activating data and implementing personalized content. We help clients build larger lists, generate higher revenue per message, drive customer loyalty, and maximize lifetime value.  Request a demo today.

The post 7 customer personalization components to implement now  appeared first on Cordial.

It’s built around the customer lifecycle. First, a person becomes aware of your product. Then they consider and evaluate it, and — if you’re lucky — they decide to buy it. If your customers are happy with your product, they’ll keep buying it or maintain your subscription. And if you’re really fortunate, they might even refer their friends.

Each stage of the customer lifecycle can be targeted with specific messages designed to draw customers through the lifecycle. And if you want to supercharge those messages, personalize them with customer data.

What is lifecycle marketing?

Lifecycle marketing is an approach to marketing that targets marketing messages at customers in their specific stage of the customer lifecycle—awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, or advocacy. The goal of lifecycle marketing is to bring customers through the customer lifecycle, one stage at a time.

Different messages land with your customers at different times. Customer lifecycle marketing aims to target messages so that your customers get the information, reminder, or prompt they need when they need it. Real-time customer data gives you the power to personalize your marketing messages and nail your timing.

Customer lifecycle stages

There are many ways to chop up the customer lifecycle, but our favorite model has the following five marketing lifestyle stages:

• Awareness — At this stage, customers become aware of your company and products. It’s the top of the funnel, and your marketing goal is to generate interest and knowledge about what you’re selling.
• Consideration — Once a potential customer knows your product exists, they can evaluate whether it’s a good fit for them. Here, your marketing goal is to describe the benefits of your product, show its value, and encourage them to make the purchase.
• Conversion — Once they decide to buy, your job is to facilitate the transaction. Here, you want to send messages that remind them to complete the transaction and remove any barriers that might obstruct a sale.
• Retention — Ultimately, you want customers to stick around for the long haul. Retention is about creating repeat purchases or ensuring that customers continue to subscribe. Marketing messages for this stage nurture engagement and demonstrate the value of your products.
• Advocacy — Finally, some of your customers may fall in love with your products and brand. Your goal is to find those potential ambassadors and encourage them to provide positive reviews or give you referrals.

How can first-party data personalize your lifecycle marketing stages?

The trick to sending targeted messages to customers at the right lifecycle stage is data and personalization. Do that by collecting zero- or first-party data, and then using it to send relevant messages for the stage a customer is in. Here are some ways first-party data is crucial to modern marketing personalization:

• Understanding preferences. Zero- and first-party data, like purchase history, helps you understand what your customers like so you can serve them product selections that align with their tastes.
• Providing context. Some data, like geographic location, helps you understand environmental factors that could be relevant to a purchase decision — things like weather, season, or local holidays.
• Recognizing purchase barriers. Some data, like in-app user behavior, helps you understand barriers to making a purchase. It can help you identify cart abandonment so you can nudge customers back and complete a transaction.
• Identifying advocates. Zero-party data from surveys or feedback tools can help you find your most loyal customers and ask them to provide reviews or referrals.

These are just some of the kinds of data you can use creatively to accomplish your marketing goals throughout the customer lifecycle.

Lifecycle marketing campaign examples for each stage

When used appropriately, first-party data fuels marketing personalization, increases engagement, and boosts revenue. The data can come from a number of sources, including:

• Browsing behaviors
• Chatbots
• Customer feedback
• Customer profiles
• Customer support
• Geolocation data
• Interactive wizards
• Loyalty programs
• Mobile app interactions
• Preference data
• Purchase data
• Push notification interactions
• Registration forms
• SMS/MMS interactions
• Surveys
• Website interactions

The potential campaigns you build off these data sources are essentially endless. But here are some campaigns that our clients have found especially effective.

Awareness

Personalized, real-time data gives you the power to show customers new products that they’re likely to buy — or put your brand in front of new audiences.

1. Use opt-in data to send unique welcome emails.

Make a great first impression by sending personalized welcome emails using the information you collect on sign-up or registration. For example, mattress company Purple captured emails via opt-in forms on third-party vendor sites and then sent welcome email series personalized with variables from their database. This method increased their email subscriber list by 238%.

2. Use purchase history to drive new product recommendations.

A customer’s previous purchases can tell you the types of products they are willing to buy. Use that data to send awareness messages targeted at relevant new product arrivals. For example, fashion retailer Revolve used purchase history to identify customers’ favorite clothing items and brands. Then, they sent targeted emails when those brands had new arrivals. Those emails created a projected $11.7 million in revenue.

More on Cordial:

• Article: Best practices for email welcomes series in retail
• Article: How to overcome top challenges for customer-centric personalization

Consideration

Consideration campaigns are all about maximizing the perceived value of your products to your potential customers. That means highlighting benefits and reducing costs. Personalization can help you optimally highlight the value of your products for each individual customer.

1. Personalize newsletter content based on customer needs.

Email newsletters nurture customer relationships and show the value of your products. You can magnify their effectiveness by customizing content based on audience characteristics. For example, rather than sending a blanket newsletter, personalize the content based on customer web browsing, purchase history, or real-time events.

2. Personalize sales and promotions.

Use customer data to personalize sales and promotions. For example, Eddie Bauer isolated audience segments most sensitive to discounts and then issued single-use promo codes to those customers for select items. This strategy boosted conversions as well as the average order value.

3. Send price-drop emails or alerts of previously viewed products.

Price plays a critical role in customers’ evaluation of a product, so let customers know when their favorite items go on sale. Paper Mart used this strategy to send trigger emails that displayed different sale items to customers, depending on what they had previously viewed. The strategy helped them secure an 8% increase in average order value.

4. Send personalized event markers.

Desire for a product changes over time, so message timing is critical. Send personalized email or SMS messages with relevant products celebrating events, like birthdays, anniversaries, or local holidays. Or, consider customized celebratory messages with relevant product suggestions after major life events like having a child, getting married, or moving homes.

More on Cordial:

• Article: Examples of recommendations email to keep customers coming back
• Article: Intro to growth marketing: 30 campaigns to win

Conversion

Your customer decides they’re willing to buy your product — now, your goal is to make sure you facilitate that process and remove any barriers. Here are some campaigns you can use to do that.

1. Leverage cart abandonment messages.

One barrier to purchase is distraction — online shoppers get sidetracked before checking out. Use web store or app browsing history to trigger messages that nudge customers to complete a purchase transaction. For example, 360training designed an automated email series triggered in the event of an abandoned cart. These triggers increased email revenue by 45% and generated $200,000 to $250,000 in revenue every month.

2. Send low-in-stock alerts for viewed products.

Sometimes customers wait for the right time to buy. Low-in-stock emails can nudge shoppers to take the plunge now before they miss out. Set email triggers for inventory thresholds, and direct them to your customers that have viewed a product, added it to their cart, or marked it as a favorite.

3. Send back-in-stock emails for favorited items.

Help ensure customers don’t miss an opportunity to buy a product that they wanted but wasn’t available previously. Set back-in-stock message triggers for customers who have recently favorited items that have been sold out or unavailable.

4. Direct returns to the nearest physical store.

Ease customer hesitation about item returns by offering them an option to return items in-store. You can use their geolocation to provide directions to the brick-and-mortar store nearest them. Upgrade this tactic with product recommendation messages when they are physically in the store to maximize cross-selling opportunities.

More on Cordial:

• Article: Best practices to convert abandoned carts into sales
• Article: 5 popular email drip campaigns to activate customers

Retention

Congrats, you got a purchase. Now what? Keep your customers engaged with customized marketing messages to ensure that customers are making the most of their new items and have the opportunity to purchase again.

1. Optimize buy-again campaigns using review data.

Know that a customer loves your product? Encourage them to buy it again. Use online review data to identify satisfied customers, and then thank them for their review with a coupon to buy the product again.

2. Invite customers to special brand events.

Customers that feel connected to your brand are more likely to continue to buy your products. Make them feel special by inviting them to exclusive brand events — either in person or virtually. You can use data from your loyalty program to create thresholds and invite the most engaged customers.

3. Analyze app use data to identify churn risks.

Customer use data can provide behavioral signals that help you identify when customers are getting value out of your product — and when they’re not. For example, send trigger messages to customers who have unused coupons or discounts to make sure they enjoy all the offers that they’re entitled to. Or, send targeted blog content to help users access features of your product that they haven’t yet.

4. Offer deals  at subscription cancellation.

Preventing churn is critical for subscription services. Block cancellations with special offers or deals that encourage customers to stick around. Pair the discounts with customized messages of what they’ll lose if they cancel.

More on Cordial:

• Ebook: Best practices for mobile app that drive loyalty
• Article: Empathy for the holidays: Why personalization matters in marketing
• Article: How to evolve relationship marketing and better customer retention

Advocacy

If you deliver a great product, you’re bound to attract a following of loyal customers — and potential brand advocates. The following campaigns can help you activate your biggest fans and leverage their devotion to your products.

1. Customized referral programs

Referrals are one of the most effective marketing techniques — but they can be tough to obtain. Use customer purchase data and online reviews to pinpoint the individuals that love your product, and then approach them with a referral request.

2. Personalize discounts to encourage product reviews

Great online reviews can generate massive returns. Promote reviews by offering customized deals or rewards to customers after a purchase. If a review is poor, use customer behavior data to follow up with a personalized win-back campaign.

More on Cordial:

Article: How to leverage customer data for referrals

Five mantras to follow when striving for better messaging

Whenever possible, try to send a better message — not just another message. So put yourself in the mindset and space of your customer. Here are five important mantras to consider whenever you’re crafting messaging for your brand, no matter the stage in the customer lifecycle. Follow the links to listen to curated inspirational talks for each:

• Show empathy. Feel with people and listen.
• Elevate language. Think about how you think.
• Energize design. Keep in mind what makes us human.
• Innovate experience. Practice, test, and learn.
• Inspire action. Start with why — always.

The post How to personalize your lifecycle marketing appeared first on Cordial.

Bypassing customer-centric personalization is not simply a matter of missing out on an advantage: It is actually putting your organization at a disadvantage.

Steve Jobs once wisely observed, “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” So marketers shouldn’t be surprised that consumers recognize that personalization provides them with more enjoyable and relevant experiences — prompting them to demand personalized services from the companies they engage with. In fact, 81% of consumers report that personalization plays a role in their purchasing decisions.

So, how do you accomplish personalization on a sustainable and consistent basis?

The concept is simple: Identify and curate a blend of content that your customer will find irresistible — or at the very least, interesting — and will feel compelled to act on within a given period of time. Of course, understanding the concept of personalization and recognizing its potential is the easy part. Actually putting it into practice… Well, that’s the holy grail.

To fully achieve the new standard of personalization, there are five key challenges that every modern marketer and organization will have to overcome:

1. Dismantle technology roadblocks.

Are you running into technology roadblocks? If so, you’re not alone. According to Gartner, 63% of digital marketing leaders still struggle with personalization. Most legacy platforms were not built with advanced personalization, following the traditional segmentation model, and thus require the manual creation of multiple versions of a message. Without a modern personalization platform, complex personalization logic must be personally implemented, or you are forced to rely on integrations that can be difficult to execute.

Personalization began as a simple mail merge where basic attributes about a contact were added to the message. Although largely static and somewhat novel, this step-up in communication served to distinguish legitimate messages from spam. For example, “Dear Eric, your points balance of 52 entitles you to two free meals,” extracted and utilized a first name, points data, and number of free meals from source data.

This process necessitated that the data be loaded as part of the contact record before sending. In this example, the first name is static and is rather straightforward in its implementation. However, the points balance and number of free meals is dynamic and could change right up until message send time. The real-time nature of the points and meals data requires a coordinated effort to update the current state of information before the send, or you risk sending outdated data values in the message. This forced synchronization of timing with backend IT processes grossly limits creativity around sending personalized triggered messages and alerts.

How to move forward

Streamlining this process, Cordial enables direct connections and integrations with external data sources for the message template to access up-to-date data at the time of the send. Your brand no longer has to be held back by the limitations of legacy ESPs.

2. Relieve production bottlenecks.

The data supporting the effectiveness of personalization in modern marketing is absolutely conclusive. What is inconclusive is the ability of organizations to take advantage of these opportunities. Because personalization increases the need for more content, quality assurance testing, and approval cycles, all of which can add time to an already time-constrained workflow, slow creation and adoption can be partly attributed to the traditional production bottleneck.

Marketers have been institutionally trained that nothing should be released — digitally or physically — unless every aspect has been thoroughly vetted and reviewed. Generally speaking, a thorough review is a good idea, but can quickly impose limits on creativity, testing, and most certainly any advanced personalization.

A typical review process takes into consideration reviews for content copy, layout, design, offer, product availability, and brand/legal compliance, to name a few. This process can often go on for days or weeks, as it is common to have the review process for one group result in a re-review for another. Each change or modification may require the process to start again from the beginning. The added burden and need to review and approve all variations oftentimes results in the avoidance of personalization altogether.

How to move forward

Sculpt, Cordial’s drag-and-drop message builder, helps solve lengthy campaign creation and review processes by operationalizing message creation. Instead of treating each message like a separate static entity, Sculpt enables brands to build a library of content blocks that can be reused over and over. Each content block is a standalone piece of code which makes it easy to add advanced personalization features and custom branding. This turns the campaign creation process on its head, enabling marketers to quickly create branded messages without the need for multiple approvals and QA reviews.

Having access to pre-approved message templates and code blocks also helps to democratize the design process, enabling other departments to create their own messages without relying on development and IT resources. Ultimately, this shift in thinking enables technology to serve a powerful role in enforcing governance and quality control. Most importantly, it enables personalization at scale.

Marketers who have switched to modern platforms like Cordial experience a dramatic increase in efficiency. For instance, Virgin Voyages achieved an 80% reduction in campaign production time after switching from a legacy ESP.

3. Achieve more with less.

Marketing and IT departments are increasingly becoming the focus for generating company growth. Digital channels such as email, push, SMS, and IoT are quickly displacing traditional offline channels in how they generate value for the business. Simultaneously, there are more disruptive digital-only businesses forming every day that are built with lean organizational models.

As a result, marketing and IT resources are stretched thin, and any innovation that takes more time away from their compulsory duties often falls from the list of business priorities. Short of hiring more staff, next-generation technology solutions are the only tangible option to empower you to accomplish more. Unfortunately, in this fast-paced world, stepping out of the day-to-day routine to explore better solutions is not always easy or even feasible.

How to move forward

Cordial recognizes this dilemma and has developed a new approach to empower you to do more with less. Our powerful tools increase efficiency and the ability to implement personalization without extensive staff additions. Our advanced multi-channel messaging technology incorporates machine learning at scale, which in turn injects your team with added productivity.

4. Facilitate innovation.

As a marketer today, it’s important to take control and innovate. Although facilitating operational changes might feel like a struggle, beware of being too busy to innovate or too time constrained to seek productivity improvements. In most cases, marketers typically fall into three groups:

• Those that know they need to innovate but struggle to find the time
• Those that just do their job and feel they can’t step outside of the box
• Those that constantly look for newer and better ways

This latter group tends to be the early adopters of new ideas and technologies and the ones that seek to discover and attempt what has not yet been done. The other two groups may emerge at some point, but need to be led, coerced or given the opportunity to advance.

How to move forward

Be a leader of change and innovation. Gather information and testimonials to build a case that innovation, such as personalization at scale, is happening now. Show how it can be a catalyst to evolve and grow the business. You can count on Cordial to prioritize transformational speed-to-market and transparency. The typical Cordial client streams data on day one, sends their first production message in less than 14 days, and fully migrates in less than 60 days.

Related content on Cordial:

• Article: How to evolve relationship marketing
• Article: Top 30 growth marketing campaigns leveraging customer data
• Article with videos: Inspirational talks on how to show empathy and innovate
• Webinar: What marketers can do to meet customer expectations

5. Win executive support.

Senior management support is essential for any transformation to succeed. Every CMO and VP of Marketing has the goal to grow the business, so making a case for implementing advanced personalization needs to be done with goals and ROI as its emphasis.

According to a research report from Forrester and IBM, 90% of business leaders recognize that personalization is critical to their business strategy. Although that’s a fairly high percentage, many CMOs may not respond with much enthusiasm unless presented with compelling proof. Merely touting a new technology because it is new will not necessarily gain support. Instead, do your research and present a solid and irrefutable business case.

Garnering support and enablement is a two-part process.

• The first part is getting the correct technologies in place to fully empower the marketing team to perform personalization at scale.
• The second part is to win the support of management to change and challenge the status quo.

To succeed, you must pursue a top-down initiative that includes communication with any supporting departments, such as IT and other executive sponsors. Both the marketing team and the executives overseeing the effort must come together to understand the process and set realistic expectations. Daily routines and processes must be reviewed, as well as all messaging streams and production planning processes. Understand that multi-channel messaging is a paradigm of communications and personalization across many dimensions — channel, device, time, triggered messages, and content.

How to move forward

Cordial was founded with the desire to create better experiences both for consumers and for the businesses with whom we work. Our professional services approach is unique in SaaS and was designed for enterprise businesses. Every client is assigned a Client Success Manager dedicated to partnering to drive digital transformation and growth, and our number one goal as an organization is creating advocates.

From implementation and training to strategy and deliverability, Cordial prioritizes customer success and helping clients make the most out of their technology investment. Reach out to learn more from our team or request a demo today.

The post How to overcome top challenges for customer-centric personalization appeared first on Cordial.