How Dr. Martens is using personalisation to move away from ‘batch and blast’ marketing

The footwear brand has teamed up with technology company Sailthru to change how it engages with its consumers, starting with more personalised email newsletters which will include suggested products based on browser behaviour.

Brogan Savage, global digital marketing manager for Dr. Martens, told Marketing Week: “Previously we had very little flexibility when it came to personalisation. These limitations meant we could only really segment by gender and region.”

She added that the brand’s customers widely vary, and that “batch and blast just doesn’t cut it any more”.

“This is much too broad an approach to marketing, especially in 2015,” she said. “Now we’ll use behavioural data (as well as certain demographic data such as gender and location) to serve up much more relevant email marketing to our customers.”

The partnership will allow the brand to see how consumers are interacting with the Dr. Martens website and apply these insights to its email communications.

“If someone is always looking at brogues, we could serve them a dynamic slice in their next email which shows just brogues plus a time-sensitive discount on that range if we want to convert them,” Savage said, adding that the brand can also push “brand education” by showing different shoe styles in the same material or colour.

She added that it also opens up an opportunity to include personalisation and behavioural predictions on the website in the future.

“Thanks to the internet most people now have the power to be as individual as they like,” she said. “Just because I’m a white woman in her 30s living in London, it’s not a given that I like most of the same things as all other white women in their 30s living in London.”