The goal is to reignite interest and recapture the attention of customers who are showing little-to-no engagement with your brand. When you understand customers as individuals, sales become easier and affinity grows. Lifecycle automation is the key to retention, referrals, and organic revenue growth over time.

We’ve compiled 6 proven lifecycle automation strategies into an actionable ebook designed to reactivate each customer. From seasonal campaigns to targeted win-back offers, read on for actionable tips to recapture attention and drive repeat purchases.

1. Remind customers to buy again

Similar to a replenishment campaign, this doesn’t require a product to be a consumable (e.g., food, cosmetics). Instead, you can suggest a customer repurchase a product based on numerous factors. For instance, if they bought one chair, you could suggest they buy another to complete a set. Repurchase reminders demonstrate you understand their tastes and nudge repeat buys.

2. Nudge customers to complete the set

Emails with personalized product recommendations have higher click-to-open rates versus generic messaging. Include a “complete the set” call-to-action with product recommendations that complement a previous purchase. For example, furnishings that match a customer’s new sofa, or winter accessories to go with their latest jacket purchase. Matching items keep customers engaged after initial purchases and inspires return visits.

3. Re-engage customers with exclusive offers

Re-engage customers who are lapsing— meaning they haven’t clicked or made a purchase over a predefined period of time. This could include a special offer, a contest to spark their interest, a loyalty rewards balance, or an exclusive experience to make them engage again. Limited-time exclusives add urgency to take action. Special deals and contests help re-engage subscribers who haven’t interacted with your brand in a while. Tailor the offers to customers’ interests based on past behaviors.

4. Send timely replenishment reminders

Triggered replenishment campaigns can earn some of the highest engagement. The key is sending timely reminders when a previously purchased consumable item is likely running low. Follow up based on past purchase history and product usage data. You can also use replenishment touchpoints to upsell the next purchase or provide complementary product recommendations. The reminders demonstrate you understand the customer’s needs and offer convenient re-ordering.

5. Deliver seasonal relevance

As seasons change, so do your customers’ needs and wants. Personalize product recommendations and offers based on the season, past purchases, customer location, and weather patterns. For example, promote warm weather apparel as temperatures rise in your customer’s geographic areas. Localized, seasonal relevance boosts interest and conversion.

6. Win back lost customers

Aimed at subscribers who are “lost” and are no longer considered active. There are several approaches including preference updates, a compelling offer, or something outside the box. Protect your deliverability reputation by automatically including a small portion of lost users back into daily send segments. Win-back outreach demonstrates your commitment to ongoing relationships beyond initial purchases.

With the right lifecycle automation strategies, you can reactivate customer relationships and inspire lasting loyalty. Download the full ebook for expanded tips, real brand examples, and stats on each customer reactivation technique. Investing in lifecycle automation now will pay through through retention, referrals, and repeat purchases. Read more about how to activate and convert customers.

The post 6 easy automation strategies to reactivate customers appeared first on Cordial.

We’ve compiled 11 proven lifecycle automation strategies into an actionable ebook designed to nurture each customer. From back-in-stock alerts to wishlist conversion campaigns, this guide connects data-driven automation tactics to customer loyalty.

The goal is to demonstrate value, build trust, and make it easy for shoppers to keep engaging. When you understand customers as individuals, sales become easier and affinity grows. Lifecycle automation is the key to retention, referrals, and organic revenue growth over time.

1. Back in stock campaigns

When a shopper browses or signs up for an alert about an out-of-stock item, let them know as soon as it’s available again via SMS or push notifications for immediacy and high open rates. Give them the option to purchase with one click right from the alert while excitement is high. Back in stock alerts show you care about availability of desired items. They demonstrate your commitment to inventory management and desire to satisfy customer needs.

2. Browse abandonment campaigns

Remind customers about products they’ve recently viewed but haven’t purchased by sending browse abandonment emails. Recommend complementary items based on their recent browsing behavior and categorized page visits. Send personalized product suggestions and special offers through their preferred channel based on past engagement. For example, if a customer viewed hiking boots, recommend matching wool socks, durable pants or walking sticks. Make it easy for them to pick up where they left off.

3. Buying time affinity campaigns

Match products and offers to time periods when customers are most likely to buy. Connect seasonal items to relevant weather data and leverage historical purchase patterns. For instance, when the first snowfall is forecasted, suggest snow shovels, salt and cold weather accessories proactively. Remind customers of yearly needs around the same time, like school supplies in late summer. Timely outreach shows you understand their purchase behaviors.

4. Cart abandonment campaigns

Notify customers who’ve left items sitting in their online carts by sending cart abandonment emails. Include personalized offers like percentage discounts or free shipping to nudge them towards completing their purchase. Add social proof with reviews and testimonials for context. Let them know their business matters by offering an incentive to close the sale. Send timely reminders before their cart expires.

5. Low stock alerts

Prompt action by letting customers know via real-time channels like SMS when products they’ve viewed or added to their cart are running low in stock. Create a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Low stock alerts demonstrate your inventory is turning over quickly, implying positive demand. They also show your organization wants to help customers get coveted items before they sell out. Limited quantity scarcity tactics can effectively nudge conversions.

6. Milestone campaigns

Surprise and delight customers on their birthday or when they reach a loyalty status milestone. Offer an exclusive discount code or small gift as a token of appreciation. Customers will feel valued when you remember special occasions and achievements. Personalized milestone messaging fosters deeper brand connections, boosts satisfaction and encourages loyalty.

7. Post-purchase campaigns

Follow up after a purchase with order confirmations, delivery updates, product education, recommendations for complementary products, and more. Thank customers for their business and keep the relationship thriving through excellent service. Share unboxing tips, style guides and suggestions for items from the same collection that complement their purchases. Post-purchase touchpoints show you care about providing a positive experience even after the sale.

8. Price drop alerts

Urgency and value prompt action. When prices fall on items customers have shown interest in, notify them in real-time through mobile push notifications or SMS. Give them first access to deals on desired products. Price drop alerts demonstrate your commitment to offering competitive value and appreciation for their business. Timely notifications empower customers to get items they want at the best prices.

9. Product affinity campaigns

Drive highly personalized product recommendations by analyzing customers’ favorite brands, browsing history, past purchases and more. Create tailored dynamic product carousels based on their brand affinities. Help them easily discover relevant items from your inventory that align with their preferences. When customers feel understood, it builds trust and sales become easier.

10. Upsell campaigns

Entice customers to upgrade their purchase during checkout or after their initial transaction. For instance, suggest add-ons that perfectly complement items already in their cart. Offer perks for extending a subscription or upgrading to the next tier. Appropriate upsells provide value through personalized recommendations relevant to their needs. When executed consistently over time, small upsells add up.

11. Wishlist conversion campaigns

Notify customers when favorited items go on sale, have new options added, or become available after being out of stock. Give them early access to releases and special offers tied to their wishlists. When the products customers want most become attainable, they’ll be thrilled you let them know right away. Wishlist alerts demonstrate thoughtful attention and build anticipation.

The key to lifelong loyalty is understanding your customers as individuals. With the right automation platform in place, you can deliver unique value every step of their journey. Want the full guide? Download the free ebook to unlock more examples, data and tips for each strategy and start connecting with customers in new ways.

The post 11 ways to convert casual shoppers into loyal customers appeared first on Cordial.

But how can you effectively activate customers at each stage to drive repeat purchases and lifetime value? Personalized, automated campaigns targeted to each lifecycle stage are key. When you personalize messaging around customers’ preferences and behaviors, engagement and conversion skyrocket.

Our new ebook, Activate: 9 Lifecycle Automation Strategies for Retailers, provides a blueprint for captivating customers from sign-up and beyond. Here’s a preview of the nine activation strategies covered:

1. Brand Affinity

Send highly personalized product recommendations by analyzing customers’ favorite brands, browsing history, past purchases, and more. If a customer frequently buys athleisure from a brand, suggest relevant items like new leggings in their size and colors, or sports bras with features they tend to prefer. Tailor dynamic product carousels and browse abandonment emails around their brand affinity. This helps customers discover relevant new items easily.

2. Contest/Sweepstakes

Contests and sweepstakes are proven to boost engagement and grow your active subscriber list. Offer compelling prizes like experiences related to your brand or your latest products. Promote the contest across channels like email, SMS, mobile push notifications and your website to maximize reach. Adapt the contest style and prizes to align with your brand. Collect opt-ins during the entry process to build your subscriber base. Contest prize data can also provide insights into your audience’s preferences.

3. Cross-Channel Acquisition

Reduce churn and strengthen engagement by connecting with customers across multiple channels. Offer email subscribers exclusive discounts or early access to sales if they opt-in for SMS alerts from your brand as well. Or provide a special coupon code to loyalty members who enable mobile push notifications about new collections or events. Coordinating messaging across different channels makes customers more likely to engage and reinforces the value of being subscribed.

4. Location-Based Messaging

Location-based triggers enable sending timely, personalized messages tied to physical locations. When customers enter a brick-and-mortar store location, you could send an SMS coupon for $10 off a $50+ purchase valid for that day only. For customers near a store, geofencing could promote new in-store exclusive products. Location-based messaging adds convenience and relevance. Keep copy and design consistent with your brand while taking advantage of the timely, geotargeted nature of location-triggered messages.

5. Loyalty Campaigns

Loyalty programs encourage repeat purchases from your best customers. Segment your members by loyalty tier and cater rewards and experiences to each level. For example, high-tier members could get surprise upgrades like free expedited shipping or early access to new arrivals. During loyalty members’ birthdays, offer a complimentary gift or discounted order based on their tier’s perks. Tailoring exclusive perks and offers to each tier makes the VIP experience more personalized and meaningful.  Leverage loyalty data to deepen emotional connections with your brand.

6. Referral Programs

Referrals from existing customers can be one of the most effective acquisition channels due to established trust and peer influence. Offer existing customers incentives for successful referrals of their friends and family. For example, provide $20 off for both the existing customer and the new referral once the referral makes their first purchase. To encourage sharing, make it easy to access referral codes and links from account dashboards and post-purchase thank you pages. Sweeten the deal with extra rewards when milestones like 5 or 10 successful referrals are hit. Referral rewards help turn your satisfied customers into brand ambassadors.

7. Review Collection

Product reviews and customer testimonials provide social validation that builds trust and credibility for your brand. Prompt customers to leave ratings or reviews after a purchase by sending a simple email or post-checkout survey. To incentivize quality responses, offer a discount code usable on their next order when they leave a review. Curate and display the best reviews prominently across your online store, website pages, emails, and other channels. The impact of reviews demonstrates the influence of peer opinions on purchasing decisions.

8. Surveys and Quizzes

Inject fun while gaining valuable customer insights using short interactive polls and quizzes. Add a quick qualifying quiz during your sign-up flow to gauge customers’ needs and interests before they hit your website. For example, an outdoor apparel brand could ask “What is your adventure style?” or “Which activities do you participate in?” Fashion retailers might poll preferred colors, styles, and shopping habits. Keep surveys short and personalized based on existing data like past purchases or browsing behavior. Surveys also provide first-party data to inform future personalization and product development.

9. Welcome Campaigns

The first impression you deliver to new subscribers sets the tone for the entire future relationship. Welcome new email or SMS subscribers with fun, branded creative that reflects your style. Include personalized content catered to their interests, like top products based on their quiz answers during sign-up. Offer an exclusive discount code as a ‘thank you’ for joining to incentivize first purchases. Send new loyalty members a branded welcome kit with their status perks. A thoughtful welcome experience gets customers excited to engage further. Make new subscribers feel special right off the bat.

Ready to learn more?

Start activating customers from the very first interaction. This ebook packs nine proven automation strategies to help you grab your audience’s attention and keep them hooked throughout the customer lifecycle. You’ll discover the best channels, key data points, real stats, and tips for these strategies.

Ready to create lifelong customer connections? Download the ebook now for actionable insights on engaging customers across the entire journey with tailored, automated campaigns.

The post The retailer’s guide to activating customers appeared first on Cordial.

So although transaction-driven campaigns are often the stars of marketing automation, focusing on more efficient customer service can improve your net gains and ultimately promote your customer loyalty at the same time. And the key is to tap into self-service automations.

Why automate more of your customer service?

By leveraging real-time customer and business data for self-service strategies, you can unburden your customer service department and/or onsite staff from many of the manual processes and one-on-one customer interactions that otherwise may drain your resources.

For instance, let’s say you’ve encountered an unexpected supply-chain issue on a high-demand product that will cause serious delays, and it affects existing orders. To fend off a wave of customer complaints, you could set up a series of data-driven automations to notify customers of the issue, give them a choice to wait or to request a refund, offer credits on recommended products as alternatives, or suggest other actions specific to a customer’s profile.

That’s only one example, but the benefits are clear whether you’re on the brand or customer side of self-service automation.

Benefits of self-service automation for brands:

• Reduce costs by improving efficiency.
• Lower call volume to customer service.
• Save time by mitigating issues to avoid escalation.
• Collect data or feedback that could flag new issues or inform strategy.
• Focus customer service more on issues that really require a human being to address.
• Avoid customer complaints with proactive resolutions.
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Prevent customers from turning to your competitors.

Benefits of self-service automation for customers:

• Save time by resolving issues more quickly on your own.
• Avoid articulating and repeating problems to a customer service rep.
• Encounter a shorter average time on hold (ATH) if you must call customer service.
• Enjoy more convenience and satisfaction.
• Feel more empowered.

Popular methods of customer self-service automation

Although there are limitless use cases for self-service automations, these general four areas cover a lot.

Deep links

Instead of providing general calls-to-action to your main website or app, use deep links in emails and texts that go to specific relevant information about customers’ orders and actions they can take for any issues.

And let’s face it, people always can change their minds. For instance, include deep links so customers can update details about their order, whether a change in shipping address, rescheduling of service or delivery, a modification to products/services ordered, or a clear process for returns/exchanges if products delivered were not as expected.

And as one Cordial client notes, this approach can yield significant savings:

“With Cordial, we built up a series of emails that would let customers know when their delayed items were ready for delivery, and in all of our messaging we offered ‘reschedule buttons’ so they could quickly reschedule their deliveries. We believe we have saved $3 million in operating costs a year from people clicking on those messages and completing a self-service transaction.” — Sr. VP of digital transformation at a household goods retailer¹

Chatbots

With all the buzz about artificial intelligence (AI), chatbots will only get more sophisticated. But no chatbot will ever have to pass the Turing Test in order to provide significant value to your customer service. According to Tidio research, 62% of consumers would use a chatbot if it can help them instead of waiting for customer service to take their call.

And the 24/7 always-on nature of chatbots cannot be denied as a powerful tool to help customers. You can script self-service chatbots to help answer common customer questions, show appropriate calls-to-action, or provide links to other information/solutions specific to customers’ queries, order/interaction history, and data profile.

Mobile apps

Whether it’s self-check-in at a hotel or for a flight, scheduling/changing an appointment, or depositing checks, mobile apps can offer plenty of self-service conveniences to your engaged, savvy customers. Since your mobile app customers also provide you with more zero- and first-party data through their app usage, you can leverage that data to offer more personalized self-service options.

Kiosks

Of course, IRL (in real life) still matters. Although mobile apps can facilitate countless use cases, physical kiosks still have their place, especially when customers have to deal with tangible items in person. Consider self-checkout at grocery stores, in-restaurant self-ordering, or checking bags at the airport. All these still thrive on data and automation.

Learn how Cordial can impact your customer service efficiency and more

Cordial commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact study based on a composite organization of clients to examine the potential return on investment for enterprise businesses moving to Cordial. The study found Cordial not only eased the pain of managing multiple solutions but also enabled marketers to be more productive and effective in orchestrating messaging campaigns for high levels of customer engagement.

The TEI study’s quantitative findings include:

• Increased revenue from email, SMS and mobile app marketing valued at $5 million.
• Reduced costs from retiring prior solutions valued at $1.7 million.
• Improved efficiencies from automating customer service valued at $980,400.
• Cost savings preparing data for decision-making valued at $626,400.
• Reduced time producing campaigns valued at $365,800.
• Cost savings creating customer segments valued at $101,600.

Download the full study.

¹ Source: 2023 Forrester Study: The Total Economic Impact of Cordial

The post Why you should prioritize customer self-service automations appeared first on Cordial.

But as marketers, we know these codes are part of intentional strategies to:

• Drive orders and revenue,
• Drive traffic back to the store,
• Offload overstocked inventory,
• Incentivize first-time purchases,
• Or retain customers and build loyalty.

And although coupon codes are excellent conversion tools, your strategy can fall flat if you don’t anticipate common challenges. So when it comes to creating effective campaigns that leverage coupon codes, we’ve rounded up three of the top hurdles marketers face — with actionable tips to overcome them.

3 common challenges with coupon codes in marketing

1. Coupon sites share ineligible codes.

Unfortunately, coupon sites aggregate and often share coupon codes with consumers you might not otherwise target — and it can be a mixed bag. Although they might send traffic to your site, they could share ineligible or outdated codes that might only serve to create a bad user experience for your customer — and potentially give them a bad impression of your brand.

Also, from a purely practical standpoint, you don’t want customers wasting their time and yours (with unnecessary queries) entering bad codes that only will return error messages, cause friction, and (likely) cause cart abandonment.

How to circumvent code sharing

Deliver unique coupon codes that are specific to each individual customer, whether via online messaging or personalized direct mail automation. By creating a unique code (and offer) personalized to a customer, you not only circumvent the problem of the code being shared but also improve the chances of the customer making a purchase.

But, of course, you need an advanced customer data platform that can make it happen. Scroll down further to learn how sneaker retailer SNIPES uses Cordial to deliver unique codes.

2. Consumers forget they have a coupon code.

According to Statista research, about half (46%) of customers don’t use a coupon code because they forget they have a coupon code in the first place. Of course, you can determine with your first-party data which customers are more likely to respond to coupon code incentives, but you don’t want to let an opportunity for conversion just fade away.

How to remind customers effectively

Retarget with personalized trigger automations — online or via direct mail. When reminding customers of offers (i.e., their unique coupon codes), you can set up time-based messaging via their most engaged channels, such as in a standard three-part email follow-up series:

• Send an email after 24 hours of issuing code with a content block of “new arrivals.”
• Send an email three days before the code expires and include personalized product recommendations.
• Send a final email on the last day the code is valid that plays up FOMO with a content block of bestsellers.

In the process, you can leverage personalized content to make the customer feel like they are the only one receiving the offer — beyond just the code, but with content based on previous brand engagements.

3. Consumers can’t find what they want.

Also according to Statista research, about half (46%) of consumers as well don’t use coupon codes because they say they don’t find anything they like in the respective store, whether online or in-person. So if you’re not recommending products your customer might not be aware of (or might have forgotten you carry),  you’re leaving potential revenue on the table.

How to make recommendations

Don’t waste time with generic batch messages. Instead, use predictive intelligence to serve up personalized product recommendations via the channels your customers engage most. By leveraging your first-party data on a customer, you can complement the coupon code with recommendations based on the customers’s brand affinity (Do they tend to browse/buy some brands more than others?), category affinity (Do they tend to browse some categories more than others?), or other browsing and purchasing behaviors.

Plus, you can serve up “new arrivals” in your inventory based on when the customer last engaged with your brand — and new arrivals might not only include new products but perhaps new sizes, colors, and styles of existing products as well. And to add that extra sense of FOMO, you also can include bestsellers, or especially favorited/saved items, that have “only X left in stock!”

How SNIPES uses Cordial to send unique coupon codes

Cordial client SNIPES is a sneaker retailer in the e-commerce space that sends out unique coupon codes as part of their marketing campaigns. They have three primary goals for their coupon codes:

• Drive orders and revenue.
• Provide customers with a unique coupon code that would persist through the entire Welcome series journey.
• Prevent coupon aggregating software and sites from providing discount codes to ineligible customers.

Working together, Cordial and SNIPES created a process to achieve all their goals with simple recurring automations to deliver unique coupon codes to their customers:

• SNIPES imports a file of unique promo codes into a data supplement in Cordial.
• They use a special Smarty method to reserve a unique code from that supplement so it can be populated into a content block in their Welcome series.
• Cordial taps into a coupon bank to retrieve a unique code for each customer and delivers it by putting into the content of the customer’s message.
• When the coupon code bank needs to be replenished, a preset data automation sends the SNIPES team an email alerting them when they need to import an additional pool of unique promo codes into the coupon bank, and then a recurring automation drops a new file of coupon codes.

Learn more in our webinar

See how Cordial can help you leverage personalized trigger 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 overcome top challenges of coupon codes as marketers 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.

Marketing teams have long recognized the power of FOMO for motivating purchases. We often use it unconsciously by creating a sense of urgency, scarcity, and exclusivity in marketing campaigns to drive sales.

In this article, we present a number of campaign ideas that help marketers thoughtfully draw on elements of FOMO to help customers see the value of your product and services.

Deconstructing mental blocks

FOMO works in marketing because it helps break down the mental blocks that make potential customers hesitant to complete a purchase. These blocks can come in the form of doubts, fears, or indecisiveness. Some common mental blocks that consumers may experience when making a purchase include:

• Fear of regret: Will I regret this purchase later? What if I make the wrong decision?
• Fear of waste: Is this purchase worth it? Will I get enough use out of it?
• Limited time or resources: Do I have enough time or money for this purchase?
• Decision fatigue: There are so many options, how do I choose the right one?
• Lack of trust: Will this product work? Am I being scammed?

Some of these are easier for marketers to overcome. For example, marketers can engage in referral marketing — soliciting referrals from happy customers — to encourage trust in a product. FOMO is just another tool that marketers can use to overcome these mental blocks.

FOMO basics: urgency vs. scarcity vs. exclusivity

At its core, the fear of missing out has three core factors: urgency, scarcity, and exclusivity.

• Urgency is a sense of limited time. A sense of urgency makes consumers feel like they need to act fast before the time runs out on an opportunity.
• Scarcity is a sense of limited quantity. Emphasizing a limited quantity of a product can also drive a sense of urgency and make the consumer feel like they need to act fast before there are no more products left.
• Exclusivity is a sense of limited access. Exclusivity can appeal to the consumer’s desire to be a part of a select group or to own something that not everyone else has.

Each of these factors can be targeted by specific marketing campaigns.

Urgency campaigns

An urgency campaign is a marketing strategy that creates a sense of urgency in the minds of consumers, encouraging them to take immediate action. The goal of an urgency campaign is to persuade the consumer to make a purchase or take some other desired action before the opportunity expires.

Here are some campaigns you can use to create a sense of urgency:

• Get it while you can: Include statements in your marketing materials encouraging the consumer to act fast. You can accomplish this with language like “limited-time offer” or “offer ends soon.”
• Limited introductory offer: Offer customers an introductory promotion that is only available for a limited time after they join your subscription or mailing list.
• Order by ___ for next-day free delivery: Offer customers the benefit of free delivery if they make a purchase before a deadline that you set.
• Seasonal product offerings: Offer a product or service to customers only during a specific season. For example, Starbucks makes pumpkin spice lattes available only during the fall.
• Pricing tiers based on registration date: Create urgency to purchase a product by making the price lower for earlier purchases — a practice that’s ubiquitous among conferences and trade show events.
• Countdown timers: Display a visual countdown of the remaining time until an event or offer ends.
• Your X will be held Y amount of time before being released: Limit the time customers can hold an item in their cart before it’s released to other customers to create an urgency to complete the transaction.

Scarcity campaigns

A scarcity campaign is a marketing strategy that uses tactics to create a sense of scarcity or limited availability in the minds of consumers. The goal of a scarcity campaign is to encourage the consumer to take action and make a purchase before the opportunity runs out or there are no products left.

Some scarcity campaign tactics include:

• Limited bonus: Offer customers a bonus item or service when they make a purchase, but only while supplies last.
• Low in stock: Include a statement indicating that there is a low quantity of a product available. For example, display that there are only four seats left on a flight.
• Back in stock, but not for long: Include a statement indicating that a previously sold-out product is now available again, but that quantities are limited.
• Limited edition: Offer customers a version of a product or service that is a one-time or limited release. For example, limited edition collectibles or a limited quantity of books signed by the author.

Exclusivity campaigns

Exclusivity campaigns in marketing are strategies that use tactics to create a sense of exclusivity to a select group of people. The goal of an exclusivity campaign is to persuade the consumer to take immediate action, such as making a purchase, because they feel like they will be part of an exclusive or elite group if they do. Exclusivity campaigns can be effective because they tap into the consumer’s desire to feel special.

Some examples of exclusivity campaigns include:

• Members only: Provide a promotion or offer that is only available to subscribers, members of a loyalty program, or another exclusive group.
• Exclusive pre-sale: Organize a pre-sale event that is only available to a select group of people. Use language like “exclusive access” or “for members only.”
• VIP experience: Offer a promotion or sale that includes special perks or benefits, like sales or events, reserved for select members.
• Offer based on loyalty tier status: Provide discounts or promotions to customers based on their tier in your customer loyalty program, such as gold, silver, or platinum level members.
• Exclusive offers for a particular channel: Offer promotions only to consumers who access the offer through a specific channel, such as a mobile app, or who are on your email list.

FOMO campaigns with blended tactics

Finally, you can power up your campaigns and better overcome psychological blocks by creating campaigns that are targeted at more than one FOMO factor. Some examples of such blended tactics include:

• X people have placed Y in their shopping cart: Include a statement on your website that indicates how many others are looking at purchasing a limited product. This taps into both urgency and scarcity (and also provides social proof).
• Black Friday sales: Black Fridays sales create a limited-time sale where customers also know that there will be an overwhelming demand for products. These create both urgency and scarcity.
• Amazon’s Prime Day: Amazon’s Prime Day is a time-limited event that offers exclusive deals and discounts to Amazon Prime members. The sale generates both feelings of urgency and exclusivity because it’s just for members.
• Online auctions: Online auction websites, like eBay, offer unique items for auction, which creates scarcity. They also include a time limit to offer bids, which creates urgency.
• Exclusive ticket presale: Many ticket vendors offer a limited set of tickets in a presale to fan club members for a limited time (think Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour tickets presale). This strategy generates urgency, scarcity, and exclusivity.

How to scale FOMO campaigns with real-time, personalized messaging

FOMO campaigns can be extremely effective, but they typically only work when the consumer is already interested in the product or service and just needs a little extra push to make the purchase. On the other hand, if the campaign is perceived as overly aggressive or manipulative, it may backfire and turn off potential customers.

That’s why personalization can give FOMO campaigns an added boost — it can help you ensure that the right message is aimed at the right customer at the right time. Here are some ways you can embed personalization into your campaigns:

1. Target favorite items: Use your customers’ purchase history to identify favorite items, and make those items the subject of your FOMO campaigns. For example, send a trigger message alerting customers when their favorite item is low in stock.
2. Target browse abandonment: Use customer browsing history to send trigger messages when prices drop on items they were browsing.
3. Target locations: Use location data to invite customers to exclusive local events or limited-time sales at stores close to them.
4. Target churned customers: Send a win-back trigger email reminding previous customers what they are missing by having canceled a subscription.
5. Leverage contextual data: Use external data, like the season or weather, to send customers exclusive deals or highlight products that may be especially high in demand.
6. Target loyal customers: Use customer loyalty program data to invite your most engaged customers to exclusive local events, pre-sales, or new product launches.

More on Cordial:

• Article: Top 30 growth marketing campaigns
• Article: Intro to personalization: top stats and examples
• Ebook: Best practices for mobile app messaging
• Ebook: Migration Acceleration Guide

Cordial helps you leverage your data to send personalized messages that fuel engagement. It can help you maximize the effectiveness of your FOMO campaigns and help your customers get over the mental blocks to make a purchase.

Want to see how it works? Request a demo.

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