Last week, Sailthru held it’s annual Lift 2015 conference, where it debuted new product releases and enhancements, and delved into the strategies and tactics that leading digital marketers have employed with success to increase retention, decrease churn, and create lasting profitability. One-to-one personalization was a resounding theme throughout the conference, that hit on three critical components marketers should keep in mind:

 

  • Content. Creating relationships with your consumers through the content you send is essential to your email marketing strategy in the age of the customer. This means, that not every email needs to be a promotional one. For example, when consumers aren’t exhibiting buying signals, send them a content-focused email to provoke brand engagement. Patagonia stays true to it's outdoorsy brand image and recently sent me a story about an event for advocates of British Columbia's grizzly bears – something I found quite interesting!

  • Cadence. Don't automatically default to a once-a-day email send frequency. Some customer interactions might mean that you can gain more value out of more — or less — frequent mailing. Specifically, triggering emails based on a customer's interaction with your site creates an in-context communication with them which improves relevance (For more information, check out our email marketing playbook for 2015).

  • Channel. Your website is a key point of interaction for brands and consumers. But, no two consumers use the same channels in the same way. Tools like Sailthru’s personalization engine allow you to coordinate recommendations across channels based on customer preferences.

I find this extremely interesting, and marketers need to strive for this maturity. However, recent research I conducted on the best and worst of email for 2015, found that 94% of email campaigns fail. Marketers need to focus on hitting the basics before striving to incorporate more nuanced and advanced email strategies. If you haven’t done so already, take a look at our updated Email Marketing Review and benchmark your campaign!

 
What are some of the best practices you use to succeed with your email marketing campaigns?