Positive discrimination of newsletter recipients

Within email marketing, the discipline of sending newsletters, it is the future to treat the recipients differently. It is also called intelligent segmentation.

 

The value of a newsletter recipient largely depends on the possibilities of segmenting the sendings. Many international studies show that the segmented sendings do 4-10 times better than one-size-fits-all newsletters. This article offers some very concrete suggestions on how an unknown new recipient becomes an enriched valuable dialogue partner. Through dialogue, the English word engage covers better, the value and the loyalty increase significantly for both customers and newsletter recipients.

 

by Kim Østergaard, founder of MarketingPlatform (posted as a press release)

 

In order to understand the process, it is important to understand the different types of recipients.

Each recipient type must be treated differently both communication-wise and system wise.

 

There are 4 different types:

• New recipients
• Active recipients
• Inactive recipients
• Customers and enriched recipients

 

Each of these can again be divided into several subgroups:

 

New recipients

• unconfirmed
• confirmed

 

Active recipients

• Open over X frequency
• Open below X frequency
• Click over X frequency
• Click below X frequency

 

It is important to check what messages trigger the recipient to do the desired action. With MarketingPlatform, the recipient’s actions can automatically define an extended profile in the database. The profile can be used for segmentation in later automated or manual sendings.

 

Inactive recipients

• Bounced recipients, that is, the address is temporarily or permanently down
• Have not opened in X time
• Have marked email as SPAM or unwanted mail

 

MarketingPlatform automatically removes bounced recipients. In case of permanent error, it happens immediately, while we wait for a short time for an email account to become active again on a temporary error.

 

Customers and enriched recipients

• Have bought one time
• Have bought repeatedly
• Have bought under X days ago
• Have bought over X days ago
• Have always bought/reacted only to a specific type of message that leads to purchase

 

In general, far better bottom line can be achieved by optimally using purchase data. For example, it may be inappropriate to send discount coupons to customers who always buy promotional items with a regular frequency. However, it can be extremely relevant if the date of normal repurchase frequency is exceeded by X days, to seek the customer reactivated.

By integrating MarketingPlatform with your online shop, trigger mails can be easily defined, automated rule and timed emails that contain precise data from the shop system. “We make several standard integrations available for free,” says Kim Østergaard, who founded MarketingPlatform. There are integrations for PrestaShop, Dandomain, SmartWeb, ScanNet, Magento, Drupal and many others.

 

The balance between the different types of sendings

“How do I balance all this in practice”? – Many customers ask us. The answers depend definitely on the target group and the “agreement” with the recipients, he explains. It is basically about being trustworthy and delivering a dialogue. That said, the connection between the general content and the customer-specific needs to be reconciled.

“A typical pitfall is the cultural”, adds Kim Østergaard who has been running local eCommerce in more than 22 countries in Europe. There is a big difference in how a German and a Dane see themselves as under surveillance. It is important to be aware of this difference. In addition, current legislation must of course also be observed, where special tracking through cookies has attracted a lot of attention in recent years.

 

When it comes to the actual content of the newsletters, there are some great indicators

There must be a reasonable balance between text and graphics. A fashion company will naturally have numerous graphic elements, but only graphic emails will perform worse on a number of points.

The email must be in question. This is achieved by learning from the recipients’ behavior and what they directly tell us through profile updates. Segmented content must be used taking into account the recipients’ wish for personalization.

There must be correspondence between the sender, the subject and the true content of the email. Recipients remember if you tricked them to open an email with a subject line that was too creative or perhaps not realistic.

Nevertheless, most important is a clear goal with the email – what should the email do for my company. Without a clear message, clear call-to-action, the probability of failure will be quite big.

 

Delivering a dynamically sent email

The dynamic emails are perhaps the hardest to bring to life. They are issued automatically and the requirement for completion is therefore enormous.

It requires some reliable tools that allow a high level of dynamic content, content from other systems (webshop, finance system or the like) in combination with filters that can clearly delimit the target audience before the email is automatically sent.

“This is what we call trigger-based emails, and is quite achievable for even smaller companies – both in terms of time and money”, says Kim Østergaard. At MarketingPlatform, they have this advanced functionality for free in all packages. Functionality that many places are either not available or costs a lot.

One of the companies that uses the advanced functionality with trigger emails is the leather business NEYE known from the street scene. NEYE sends emails based on a date, here the recipient’s birthday, and sends a personalized email with special benefits.

By enriching the recipient’s profile, e.g. based on their behavior in previously sent emails, much more sophisticated sendings can be achieved. Simply because the database will be more nuanced.

 

Example of a sign-up flow with enrichment of data

You run a business that sells shoes online. The web shop is aimed at both men and women. The shop sells with shoes for children (smaller children, where it is primarily the woman who buys), men and women.

Therefore, we have to deal with 3 target groups. Men, women with children in the target group and women without children in the target group. In addition, of course, all the derived target groups, but we will not relate to this here.

On the front page of the webshop there is a sign up form for the company’s newsletter. The form takes the name and email address. After the visitor has completed the form, the email marketing platform sends out a confirmation email. This way, the shoe store assures that the registered recipients are all valid addresses, no spam traps, no recipients who do not want to receive the newsletters themselves. MarketingPlatform highly recommends this kind of sign up process and we only allow B2B companies single-opt-in.

After the recipient is confirmed, a so-called autoresponder is sent. An autoresponder is an automatic email that is sent X time after a recipient is confirmed in the database. We recommend 2 autoresponders, the first being sent 1-2 hours after confirmed registration, and the other 2-3 days after confirmed registration. If the recipient does not confirm subscription to your newsletter immediately after registration, we recommend sending a recover autoresponder 2 days later. This autoresponder has the sole purpose of making the recipient confirmed by example, offering a discount coupon, or simply pointing out the lack of confirmation or the like.

If the recipient does NOT open the first autoresponder, systems with advanced automated mailflows, such as MarketingPlatform, can be set up to follow up with a trigger email or advanced trigger email. In this case, it could be a new email the day after the first autoresponder on confirmed recipients who present a good deal in a better way, perhaps combined with a special offer. “It is about activating the recipient base as soon as possible. By doing so, the value will be 2-3x higher over a longer period. An activation can be multiple forms of call-to-action related actions, for example, an enrichment of the recipient’s profile or of course a transaction – a purchase”, says Kim Østergaard.

After the recipient has signed up, data collection can be started. A good idea might be to include a contest in autoresponder no. 2, where the contest itself is made as an updated profile functionality. The recipient’s profile is automatically enriched on the basis of the answers from the contest and the winners can easily be extracted by making a segment. MarketingPlatform handles an “unlimited” number of its own fields, and therefore can questions and answers from the contest easily be included in the data model. Subsequently, the answers can be used for increased segmentation. The vast majority will have stated their gender, whether they have children or not. The questions must, of course, be designed in an intelligent way, and at the same time, allow a detailed segmentation and dynamic content.

There are many ways to use the collected data. Data can be used for segmented sendings, where a newsletter is prepared for each of the 3 main target groups, or the data from the profile can be used to dynamically include content in a single newsletter. With MarketingPlatform’s drag-and-drop editor, blocks of modules can be dynamically inserted depending on the recipient’s collected profile.

By defining the newsletter’s links with an automatically updated functionality, the behavior will gradually build up the recipient’s profile in the database. Let us give an example of this. The shoe store makes an email containing 3 blocks. First block is a combined text and image block; second block is a row of three products and last block is an article with 3 defined links – a link to each primary target group (man, woman without children and women with children).

The first block is not segmented, but contains links with update functionality which purpose is to improve the segments in the database. It contains 3 different links about children’s shoes, where each link is divided by age – see children’s shoes for the 0-2 year old … etc. Therefore will the recipient’s profile learn from the potential click that will happen. In the next email about children’s shoes, the shoe store will of course make 3 product blocks, where profiles with registered age segment will only receive the relevant block. Other profiles will receive all blocks.

In the current email, the range of products will include a men’s shoe and two different women’s shoes. The largest volume is on women’s shoes, so one wants a further stylistic division.

After this email, the shoe store will have enriched all recipients who have clicked on a link with update functionality. The value of the company’s recipient base therefore increases by 4-10x an unsegmented list.

This is just an example of a flow that will not only increase the value significantly by a mailing list, but will also have a positive side effect where the recipients will be much more loyal and have a higher buying rate. Segmented emails also have a much higher open and click rate than unsegmented sendings.

Contact MarketingPlatform on telephone +45 72 44 44 44 or support@marketingplatform.com to hear more about your possibilities.

MarketingPlatform is used by companies such as Blockbuster, BoConcept, GAD, Guldbageren, Kop & Kande, NEYE, Skoringen and TravelMarket.