Yesmail white paper: using email behavioural data to engage and reactivate your customers
Andrea HarperThis paper addresses why activation programmes are important and how a marketer should approach developing them.
This paper addresses why activation programmes are important and how a marketer should approach developing them.
More than $500bn (£300bn) is spent globally in advertising and nearly 40 per cent of it is mistimed, misplaced and mis-messaged. While some may argue alarming statistics can be found to highlight almost any point, few if any would argue that consumers won’t be more brand loyal to more personalised communications or that big data does not represent a huge opportunity and challenge for marketers and businesses.
Today’s marketers benefit from an unprecedented amount of data about their prospects and customers, and seemingly unlimited ways to reach out to them. The evolution and sophistication of online channels such as search, social and mobile present new opportunities to target and engage audiences in ways marketers only dreamed of 10 years ago.
Businesses began to use email marketing in the mid-90s. Today, it is one of the most powerful tools in any B2B marketer’s toolbox. Compared with traditional marketing strategies such as direct mail, print advertising, or trade shows, email marketing costs less and drives a higher return. It is also easier to measure success than with offline strategies, so the return can be easily tracked.
The digital experiences that companies present to their customers have become, in most cases, the face of the brand. Consumers often make choices and regularly share their opinions based on the quality of the digital experience, specifically the website. This is how they choose what to buy, where to bank and where to go on vacation. Today’s online experience is the product.
In 2013, display ad spend grew by 23 per cent globally. Over the past few years, we’ve seen advertisers increasingly shifting ad dollars over to display because it allows them to reach customers where they spend an astounding 96 per cent of their time online — on content sites such as email, news sites, video sites and social networks. While talking to our clients, it became apparent that there is a hunger to learn more about the value of display advertising and how to measure their campaigns.
The UK has one of the largest and most advanced e-commerce markets in the world. As online retail continues to grow in popularity and becomes a fundamental part of the online shopping journey, many retailers have been able to reap the benefits of growth in recent years.
The UK Census has come a long way since its inception in 1801; however, the future of this once-a-decade exercise is still uncertain. The UK population has become more difficult to count due, for example, to mobility and migration. A number of proposals are being considered, including the introduction of a primarily online version and one based on existing government data with compulsory annual surveys. In the meantime, the most recent Census has confirmed some significant changes to the structure of society in the UK since the previous assessment in 2001.
The digital world isn’t changing. It’s already changed. Google gave the desktop three years to live in 2010, predicting smartphones and tablets would replace it. Bang on target, IDC reports that ‘in the fourth quarter of this year, more tablets will be shipped than desktop and laptop computers combined’.
As one of the most established online marketing channels, email marketing has racked up a longer track record of success than any other digital channel.
It’s a simple formula: increase customer loyalty and increase profits. Easy adage, but how can a company effectively put this idea into practice? Increasing loyalty is really all about the ‘value‐add’. Are you giving customers something they didn’t expect, or perhaps didn’t realise they wanted? There are many critical aspects of getting customer loyalty right, but part of the solution is finding the best way to take care of your customers. This could be best‐in‐class service or providing incentives as a way of saying ‘thank you’. Developing a successful customer loyalty scheme could help your company increase retention, and in turn help to increase your bottom line.
Today in Europe, the mobile revolution is well under way, and with smartphone penetration surpassing 50 per cent it is no wonder more and more international brands are integrating mobile as a key part in their communications planning and are reaping the rewards.
As the on-site experience becomes more and more of a differentiator and consumers become increasingly demanding, forward-thinking companies seek to provide the perfect customer experience — not just to attract and retain customers, but also to generate a measurable financial return.
Famously coined as a rallying cry by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, “mobile first” has evolved into a book, a design philosophy and, among today’s digital marketing professionals, a topic of spirited debate. While the mobile channel is indeed the most popular for reading emails and accessing Facebook, should “mobile first” translate into “tablet and desktop a distant second and third”?
“Digital marketing is dead,” claimed Procter and Gamble’s global brand-building officer Marc Pritchard this September.