Top 5 campaigns retail

1Top 5 Retail Campaigns for 2015

TOP 5

Retail CampaignsFOR 2015

Presented by:

http://boomtrain.com/

http://www.liveclicker.com/corp/

http://www.justuno.com/

http://www.windsorcircle.com/


Campaign 1

Build Your Customer Database 4Grant Thomas • Justuno

Campaign 2

Leverage Past-Purchase Data 12Polly Flinch • Windsor Circle

Campaign 3

Personalize Content 21Neej Gore • Boomtrain

Campaign 4

Use Real-Time Content in Email 31Sam Moser • Liveclicker

Campaign 5

Implement Lifecycle Campaigns 37Joy Ugi • WhatCounts

Table of Contents


Retail marketers: We know what you want to hear. You’re looking for the answer to the ever-persistent question, “What is the email marketing campaign I need to conduct this year to increase my subscribers, boost engagement, and maximize sales?”

Let’s cut to the chase. Marketers want to make money for their brands. This requires knowing what sort of campaigns can lead customers and prospective customers to the proverbial watering hole that is a company’s product. Marketers in the eCommerce and retail industry are especially interested in how they can acquire more customers, upsell and cross-sell to existing consumers and most importantly, retain customers and turn them into brand evangelists.

Solving these key problems requires a robust email program hitting all stages of a customer’s lifecycle with your brand. You’ll want to employ email marketing tactics that will drive record-breaking brand engagement and purchasing.

Fear not – with the help of some of our partners, we’ve outlined not one, but the top five revenue- driving campaigns for the retail industry in 2015.

Once you’ve finished reading this guide, and have added the five strategies outlined below to your email marketing arsenal, you’ll be firing on all cylin-ders and reaping the rewards of an email marketing program that boosts engagement, encourages sales, and keeps customers coming back for more.

Introduction



CAMPAIGN

1Build Your Email DatabaseGrant Thomas • Justuno

The first item to address in your program is how you’re acquiring your customers and the state of your database. Where are subscribers coming from and how are they ending up on your email list? This section walks you through ideas to consider and ways you can build a healthy and engaged database.


For online retailers, email still remains the most effective marketing channel. Sales conversion rates from email are three times higher than that of social media channels and result in a 17 percent increase in average order size. You may have the best marketing emails out there but, in order to maximize their effectiveness, you must market to the right leads.

How are you acquiring your lead information? Are you asking for too much information? How do you know if the information and contacts you’re collecting are valuable? This section will answer these questions and provide in-sight on how to build an email database resulting in sales conversions and successful email marketing campaigns.



Your most valuable leads are the visitors already on your website.

These are the individuals who know what your company offers

and already have an interest in your products, services, and con-

tent. These are the leads that are important to acquire because they

are more likely to return to your site and to complete a purchase.

Leads acquired on site have an open rate of 30-40 percent

compared to a general industry average of 17.35 percent. When

you acquire on-site email leads, you can be confident you’re

reaching the right people with your retargeting campaigns.

Capitalize on Your Most Valuable Leads



Present your email opt-in forms in highly accessible and

visible places on your website. An effective way to reach

visitors is a popup opt-in form. Popups display an opt-in

form on the center of the page and can be controlled via

targeting rules to reach visitors in the right place at the

right time.

The key to success with website popups is to simplify

forms so visitors can opt-in quickly without it being a

hassle. If you ask for too much information, visitors may

question why this information is needed and could dismiss

opting-in altogether. If you’d like to request more information

from subscribers, you can always leverage a welcome email

or email series.

The best way to entice people to opt-in for emails is to pro-

vide them with an incentive. Typically, people join a mailing

list because they see value in what you provide. For exam-

ple, you regularly see email opt-in forms advertise exclusive

email deals or industry-leading news and updates.

A more effective strategy is to offer an incentive to visitors

that they can receive in real time. When a consumer

knows something of value will be presented immediately, he

or she is much more inclined to subscribe to your emails.

Make it Easy to Join



What are some examples of specific value propositions you can

offer website visitors via your popup? A few are outlined below.

Use the Right Incentives


Coupons

Online retailers offer coupons regularly. Take the coupons displayed on your

website for any visitor and make them accessible through exchange of an

email address.

Coupon incentives could be anything, such as a percentage discount,

free shipping, or a gift with purchase. Using coupons as an incentive can

also influence a visitor to complete a purchase and increase the ticket value

of a purchase.

Retailer of 100 percent recyclable shoes, Okabashi, uses a promotional

tab and popup through Justuno to run all of its coupon promotions.

By implementing incentivized promotions, Okabashi saw a 371 percent

increase in email sign ups and a 128 percent increase in Facebook fans,

while seeing 47 percent in coupon redemption rate and a 15 percent

higher ticket value on orders.


Gift with Purchase

Offer to throw in a small gift with purchase for visitors who provide their

email address. A gift provides a strong incentive for visitors to opt in to

your mailing list. It’s also an effective promotion to increase sales conver-

sions because visitors must check out to receive the item.

This is also a great way to distribute swag. Give away branded items such

as lanyards, stickers, or bottle openers to help with brand awareness. You

know what your customers like, so get creative and provide them with

something they’d be excited to receive.

Sweepstakes

Present an offer allowing your visitors to give an email in exchange for

entry into a sweepstakes for a desirable big-ticket item. This is a perfect

incentive for retailers who are trying to build an email list, but don’t have the

margins or flexibility to offer a discount or free shipping. It’s imperative the

big-ticket item is something that compels your target visitors and

customers to give you an email address. For example, if you’re an

outdoor apparel retailer, a state-of-the-art tent is perfect.

While quantity is important, it all comes down to building an email data-

base of leads that are interested in your product offerings. Take for

instance Isle Surf Boards, which ran a sweepstakes using a promotional

popup offer. Visitors were presented with the opportunity to win an

inflatable standup paddleboard by entering their email.

One out of four visitors presented with the promotion popup entered an

email address. Over the course of 80 days, the sweepstakes produced an

average of 40 newly acquired emails per day and a total of 3,321 emails.


Targeting

The placement of email opt-in forms is important in order to maximize the

amount of addresses captured. Targeting and segmentation allows you

to reach specific visitors in the right place at the right time. You have the

ability to pinpoint specific pages that convert visitors. Your cart page and

highly-trafficked landing pages will be your best bet. Remember, the power

of an incentive at the right time can significantly boost email acquisition,

as well as sales conversions.

Another form of targeting that has taken the web by storm is exit intent

popups. This enables marketers to target visitors who have the intent to

leave the website and present them with a unique popup offer. Exit intent

targeting, when used properly, keeps visitors on your website. Implement

exit intent offers on your top three exit pages for best results. Having an

incentivized exit intent offer active on your cart page reduces cart

abandonment rates and increases sales conversions, all while

adding to your email database.


Email continues to be the most effective way to directly reach your customers, making it a staple in any business’s marketing efforts, and especially those in the retail industry.

Building your email database by focusing on current website visitors allows you to acquire valuable contact information from individuals who are already interested in what you offer.

By providing incentives, you can drastically increase the amount of new email subscribers, influence visitors to complete a purchase, and keep customers coming back for more.



CAMPAIGN

2Leverage Past-Purchase DataPolly Flinch • Windsor Circle

You’ve acquired subscribers, and have a healthy database of people to market to. The next step to email marketing success is to consult your data and leverage past-purchase behavior. You have the infor-mation – now learn how to best harness it.


Number two of the top five retail campaigns for 2015 is leveraging past-purchase data. With access to purchase data comes the ability to start sending personalized, relevant, and timely emails to your current customers.

Beyond segmenting weekly promotional emails, retailers with access to purchase data can create triggered auto-mated emails. Here are our picks for top automated emails that leverage past-purchase data.



1Post Purchase Thank You SeriesYou know it, I know it, and customers

know it – they didn’t have to spend their

money with you. Acknowledging this and

saying thank you to your new customers

is the first step on the way to creating a

mutually beneficial relationship. A multi-

email, post-purchase thank you series

is a great way to make your customers feel

special and introduce them to your brand.

A post-purchase thank-you series is

integral for first-time purchasers, but don’t

discount creating a post-purchase thank-

you series for two-time and three-time

purchasers, as well.

Complete a cost acquisition analysis to

understand how many purchases your

new customers need to make before they

start producing profits for your business.

Your goal is to drive them towards that

purchase number while cultivating these

new customers to become lifelong,

loyal purchasers.

GolfEtail uses a two-part welcome series for first-time purchasers.

The first email thanks customers for their purchase, pulling in the

specific product the customer bought.

The second email in the series invites customers to review the

products they purchased and offers a 10 percent discount as an

incentive for their review. This is genius for two reasons:

1. GolfEtail is boosting its reviews; and

2. GolfEtail is encouraging its one-time purchasers to buy a

second time.


2Reward Your Best CustomersBest customers are generally a small subset of a retailer’s cus-

tomer base that account for a large percentage of revenue.

With access to past purchase data, you can complete an

RFM analysis to pinpoint your best customer segment – any

customer who falls into Quartile 1 for Recency (how often),

Frequency (how many), and Monetary (how much) – and

thank them accordingly.

While best customers are usually considered retained, (they’ve

purchased from you three or more times), retailers need to

ensure this group remains loyal to the brand, with the goal of

turning best customers into evangelists.

A best customer email such as the one created by Sabon is just

the ticket. This email explicitly tells the recipient they are a best

customer, and as a thank you, will receive 20 percent off and

free shipping on his or her next order.

15


In order to stand out in the email space, retailers need to prove their worth

and value. If you have access to the products your customers are purchasing,

you can send emails with personalized product recommendations. Automated

product recommendations help create a relationship where your customers

value your opinion. This means you don’t end up in the promotions tab, or

worse, in the spam folder.

When designing a product recommendation email, pull in images of the

recommended products, such as Case-Mate did. Using language such as

“just for you”, “hand-picked for you”, “if you liked [previously purchased

product], we think you’ll love this” will make your customers feel special and

keep them coming back.

While automated, dynamic emails are a successful way to handle product

recommendations, retailers can also sort and segment their lists based on

category. For example, GolfEtail realized it stores a wealth of data about

customers who were not receiving certain promotions – this segment was

its left-handed golfers. For apparel, (shirts, shoes, pants, etc.), this wasn’t a

problem; however, it became an issue when GolfEtail sent promotions about

golf clubs and gloves.

Left-handed golfers weren’t receiving promotions about right-handed golf

clubs because they were part of a suppression list, but they also weren’t

receiving promotions for left-handed golf clubs and gloves. Using purchase

history data, GolfEtail sent two promotional emails to their “lefties” that

resulted in increased customer engagement and triple the conversions. The

first email was a special offer for lefties who were automatically excluded from

the regular daily email. The second was a Callaway driver offer that used

identical creative but substituted a left-handed image of the driver and tailored

copy to the lefties.

3Product Recommendations

16


4Win Back Churning CustomersA churning customer is a consumer who at one point had a

high lifetime value, but has since dropped off the map. If you

use RFM analysis to segment your customer list, this would be

anyone who falls into the following group: R4,F1,M1. Churning

customers can be fickle, so it’s up to the retailer to make these

customers feel special and sought after in order to per-

suade them to return.

In case you have any doubts about winning back customer ver-

sus simply acquiring new ones remember, it can take anywhere

between three to five purchases before new customers have

“paid back” their cost of acquisition. ShoppersChoice

understands this and deploys a win-back email to its customers.

This particular email makes customers feel as though they have

been missed, which they have; that ShoppersChoice is invested

in them, which they are; and then ties the whole experience up

with a nice bow - $15 off the next order.

17


When creating a win-back campaign to deploy to your churning

customers, it’s important to use a discount big enough to entice

wayward shoppers back to the fold, while not teaching them to

keep shopping with you until they get a discount.

While ShoppersChoice uses this one email for its win-back

campaign, a three-part email series is usually the path many

eCommerce companies take:

• Email 1 – 60 days after last-purchase date. “We miss you”

(no discount)

• Email 2 – 90 days after last-purchase date. “Was it something

we said?” (5-10 percent discount depending on your margins)

• Email 3 – 120 days after last-purchase date. “Is this goodbye?”

(15 percent discount)

This approach allows you to check in with your churning custom-

er base without hitting them over the head with emails, while also

ramping up the incentive and the language as they get closer to

the last email.

You know your business, so create a win-back that works for you.

For ShoppersChoice, one email does the trick. For other companies,

two emails make up their win-back campaigns.

If you’re in doubt, look at engagement rates with your win-back

emails. If you discover the first two emails have high engagement,

and email three has low engagement, this is an indication to get rid

of the last email and stick with a two-part win-back series.


Asking customers for product reviews and feedback is a simple,

efficient - and frankly - helpful way to make your customers feel as

though they’re a part of your company. It’s a win-win – you get

product reviews that can be posted to your site to create the

feeling of community and customers get to share their opinions,

(who doesn’t love to do that), while feeling a strong connection to

the product and the brand.

The key to product reviews is to make sure the subject line and

copy are personalized. Using product and purchase data, pull

product information for each individual customer. Instead of an email

with the subject line, “Joe, please review the product you bought,” it

says, “Joe, tell us how you liked the 6500 Xtreme Rollerblade Set.”

As a customer, which one would you be more inclined to open?

5Reviews

This review email from ShoppersChoice is an example

of a personalized review email. This message automati-

cally pulls in first name, product image, and product name

with a clear call-to-action to review the item.


Email marketing has received a bad rap over the past couple years, but it shouldn’t have. With access to data comes the ability to personalize the customer experience for each individual customer automatically.

From an automated welcome series to a win-back campaign to asking for reviews of specific products, access to product, purchase, and customer data allows retailers to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time.



CAMPAIGN

3Personalize ContentNeej Gore • Boomtrain

Whether captivating new customers, retaining your consistent fans, or winning back lapsed consumers, inserting cutting-edge behavioral elements promises a positive response. This section details the available methods from fairly rudimentary all the way to advanced behavioral personalization tactics and why you need to insert some form of this into your email program this year.


Behavioral Personalization is one of the five email marketing campaigns that those in the retail industry need to implement in 2015. It’s fundamentally shifting the landscape of customer communication.

It’s giving marketers an unprecedented level of control over the levers that drive The Big 4: user acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization. And the retail sector is one of the biggest beneficiaries of this new technology.

Behavioral PersonalizationMakes Sense Money



Gaps in traditional targeting rules

Dynamic Markers: Small code snippets that pull in specific

pieces of rationalized data to customize an email or online notifica-

tion, e.g. “Dear %insert-customer-name-here%...” The most rudi-

mentary form of personalization, which is not to say it’s ineffective.

Gap: Static data only adds a small degree of contextual rele-

vance, and let’s be honest, most people can spot a form letter

at this point.

Segmentation: Use the data you have about a large, diverse

population to create smaller, more homogeneous groups with

similar traits, (age, gender, ethnicity, income, location), and tailor

your message to better engage them. This is why Coke and Nike

run different TV spots during the X-Games than they do during

the PGA Tour. The thinner you slice your segments, the more

“targeted” your message is, (and the more messages you have to

produce).

Gap: You’re still using data about a group to make assump-

tions about what an individual recipient will find relevant.

What is Behavioral Personalization, and how is it radically different?

Your amazon.com homepage looks different than any other

amazon.com homepage in the world. What you see on your

unique version of amazon.com is driven by everything that

company knows – right this second – about what makes you

and people like you buy more stuff.

That is Behavioral Personalization in one sentence, and pretty

strong evidence that it works. What makes it work is some pretty

sophisticated technology. The good news is that you don’t need

the engineering talent and operating budget of the world’s largest

eTailer to put those same concepts to work for you.

Behavioral Personalization is actually a mash-up of two concepts

stemming from two basic assumptions about marketing:

1. Content Personalization (Assumption: The more a mes-

sage is tailored to a specific audience, the more effective it

will be at converting that audience.)

2. Behavioral Targeting (Assumption: The most effective

way to tailor the content of a message is by using insights

gleaned from observing actual customer behavior.)

Neither concept is new to the world of customer communication,

nor is either bad as a standalone strategy. However, there are

gaps in traditional targeting rules that the practical application of

Behavioral Personalization technology fill and complement.



1. Semantic analysisRelying on a website’s indexes

or metadata can lead to poor

recommendations because many

websites are tagged in inconsistent

and generic ways. Semantic

analysis means the algorithms read

the content or products and gene-

rate an inferential understanding of

what they’re about. This is the key in

successfully clustering users around

topics areas.

2. Content velocityGiven our emphasis on social media

today, it’s important to understand

which content has the likelihood

to trend and put it in front of the

customers who want it.

3. Amazon quotientIdentifying users and their similarities

to other users can generate see-

mingly serendipitous recommenda-

tions that are effective. This helps

to increase lifetime value and gener-

ally broaden a customer’s affinity.

4. Business rulesA news site may want breaking

news to be featured first and fore-

most. A video site may place

emphasis on pages that generate

more revenue. A food site may

want to omit forums from recom-

mendations. Understanding unique

business needs is critical to making

quality recommendations.

The secret to 1:1 personalization at scale

Algorithms. Really powerful algorithms.

Behavioral Personalization platforms are a form of Artificial

Intelligence, and like any AI, they use what machines are

good at: digesting vast amounts of data, seeing patterns,

and performing simple computations at incredible speeds

to approximate something machines are not good at: a

complex and nuanced understanding of human behavior.

Behavior is the leading indicator of intent and thus, most

algorithms start by measuring a customer’s on-site and

in-app behavior. Effective solutions go well beyond measur-

ing behavior. They introduce many of the following concepts:

When combined in the appropriate way, the result of these

inputs is human communication at machine scale:

Customer experiences that are personalized with content

based on an infinitely complex and ever-evolving picture of

each individual, and sent at the time and through the

medium that is most likely to elicit the desired engagement.



Real time Insights

Most segmentation is retroactive: using last month’s analytics to

predict next month’s behavior. The problem is, today’s media

landscape changes minute-to-minute. Users have an abun-

dance of choice, and their shifting preferences are a reflection of

that environment. Behavioral Personalization Engines can ingest,

analyze, and act on data in minutes, not weeks. They instanta-

neously create user segments for a campaign or add individually

customized content to an email or push notification.

Outcome Driven

Because these platforms track behaviors, they can also optimize

for behaviors. If you’re trying to drive purchases, Facebook likes,

or any other KPI, the AI can identify the segment of your

audience that’s most likely to engage in the way you’re looking for

and auto-optimize around that metric. And, your campaign will

automatically get smarter over time.

Plug-and-Play Operation

Solutions vary in terms of operation and integration, but the

industry trend is toward ease of use. The marketer interacts

with an intuitive interface or dashboard, inputting targets and

uploading creative, and all the complexity of targeting, retargeting

and optimization happens inside a black box.

Huge Results

Marketing is often a game of incremental optimization, but

Behavioral Personalization can bring the sea of change you’ve

been looking for. It’s not uncommon to see case studies reporting

100-150 percent increases in click-through rate, 10-20 percent

decreases in churn, and two to three times the increase in

average revenue per customer.

Why are businesses choosing behavioral personalization solutions?



The costs of not using it are getting high:

We need to start seeing failed customer communications as

negative not neutral events. Every irrelevant or unwanted

communication you send to a customer erodes the value of your

brand, contributing to decreased revenue and increased churn.

It’s accessible:

You no longer need to hire machine learning PhDs to write

algorithms, or developers to integrate your different databases, or

specially trained analysts to run reports... There’s literally an app

for that.

It’s affordable:

As the technology matures, behavioral personalization is becoming

more accessible. Competition in the space is driving vendors to

offer lower prices and more flexible payment models.

2

3

1

Why now?



Behavioral Personalization in Action

Behavioral personalization starts with machine-

learning based recommendations, for each and

every user that is engaging with your brand.


It’s incredibly important to understand the impact

behavioral personalization is making on overall

customer engagement. In this example, customers

are engaging 8.8 times more when they’re sent

behavioral content and products as opposed to

popular and editor curated picks.

28Top 5 Retail Campaigns for 2015 28Top 5 Retail Campaigns for 2015

Behavioral personalization can be

utilized in email, onsite, and in apps.

The following email is 100 percent dy-

namic, individualized for each recipient,

and purpose-built to drive engagement.

And behavioral personalization doesn’t

stop with email.

It can be used in apps and on websites

to drive recirculation, as demonstrated

in the section “More San Francisco”.


Let’s say you have 1 million email subscribers, 15 percent

of which are repeat buyers spending $70 annually. Let’s

also assume the average cost to acquire and annually

service a repeat buyer through paid and organic channels

is $15. Your Average Customer Value (ACV) is $55 for

the first year. That’s the return you get on your investment

from one customer.

The short term consequence of a bad email is it creates a

lack of interest. A customer won’t disown you because

you sent one irrelevant communication, but it decreases the

relevance of your brand.

Now imagine you sent five emails over the course of a

month, and four of them aren’t relevant or timely to the

user and the user finally unsubscribes. According to industry

standards, a good unsubscribe rate is less than 0.5

percent, so let’s say 0.25 percent of total unsubscribes

were attributed to this vicious cycle. After the course of the

year, you have churned over 29,591 subscribers, of which

4,438 (15 percent) were repeat buyers:

• You spent $66,679 to acquire those 4,438 users.

• Over the course of 12 months, with an attributable

0.25 percent churning each month, you just lost an

additional $112,497 in repeat buyer revenue.

• We’re not even considering the cost of acquiring and

not activating the 25,152 users who weren’t classified

as repeat buyers.

Back of napkin calculation: Cost to acquire could

reasonably be $20,000 and opportunity cost of not

activating could be in excess of $1,000,000.

You’ve lost hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least

$179,077) of investment and revenue. You’ve also lost

access to a key channel through which you could have

fostered strong relationships. Customers have lots of

options online, and we know there will be other brands

waiting to claim the consumer mindshare you’ve forfeited.

Let’s explore a real-world example



A recent industry survey recently asked 1,400 consumers why they unsubscribed from emails. The top three rea-sons were:

1. “Too many emails from the business / organization.” (69 percent)

2. “The content is no longer relevant.” (56 percent)3. “The content wasn’t what I expected.” (51 percent)

We don’t need to accept poor email performance as the baseline anymore. Marketers today have access to incredibly powerful behavioral analytics that come in off-the-shelf, plug-and-play packages. The power to deliver better customer experiences and truly transformational performance is truly within your grasp.



CAMPAIGN

4Use Real-Time Content in EmailSam Moser • Liveclicker

Real-time content in email is the hook to keep people coming back for more. Real-time content also helps elicit a desire to purchase as it connects the right information at the right time. Don’t miss out on implementing real-time content in your email.


Climb the Real-Time Email Value Ladder to Squeeze More Profits from Your Programs

A consumer’s context is constantly changing, with a whopping three-quarter using their mobile phones to access email, according to a recent survey from The Relevancy Group and Liveclicker.

These users are more apt to open and engage with email messages if they’re targeted, relevant and personalized. So not only is it crucial for marketers to ensure emails render properly on mobile phones, it’s also vital to customize the content to a recipi-ent’s situation to create a powerful experience and drive engagement – no matter what device they use for email, but particularly for multi-tasking consumers on the go.

Leveraging someone’s context at the moment of open can provide immediate revenue and efficiency gains, while pairing it with existing customer data

can send those numbers through the roof. Real-time targeting tactics will improve the productivity of email campaigns for the long term, even after the send button is pressed.

Your emails will stay relevant in consumers’ inboxes longer to boost response rates, and you’ll optimize campaign ROI so you can squeeze more profits out of your programs. That’s why real-time email is one of the top five campaign strategies retailers need to implement in 2015.

Let’s look at how email marketers can adopt a strategy that includes real-time personalization, from some of the simplest tactics to implement, such as countdown timers or live social feeds, to some of the more advanced, such as live web content, inventory status or account balances.

http://relevancygroup.com/


Utilize Countdown Timers and Live Social Feeds to Quickly Implement Real-Time Email

One of the first and easiest tactics is to put countdown timers in an

email to create a sense of urgency.

Testing has shown a 15 percent to near 70 percent increase in

click-through rates when comparing emails that included a count-

down timer to those that didn’t. Additionally, marketers utilizing count-

down timers have seen an increase in revenue and orders, with some

reporting as much as a 13 percent increase in the number of orders.

A best practice when using countdown timers is to feature them front

and center, above the fold in the email marketing message.

They are great for time-based sales, new product launches,

webinars and events.

Countdown timers can be deployed in five to 10 minutes simply by

adding an HTML embed code to the email template. Marketers do

not need to change ESPs to implement this technology; it works with

any sender system.

Additionally, implementing live social feeds takes a bit more time,

but is still easy to do. This adds a Twitter or Facebook feed to an email

marketing campaign, which - regardless of the time it’s opened - will

add context to address consumer-time shift behavior.



Use Location, A/B Testing and Embedded Video to

Improve Content Relevance

The next rung in the Real-Time Value

Ladder delivers real-time individual

personalization based on an open-

er’s location, weather or device

type. This requires the marketer to

use multiple sets of creative.

For example, marketers can auto-

matically change content based on

temperature and weather.

Another example of creating personal

context is by inserting local content

into a message based on the sub-

scriber’s location at the time of open.

Inserting local offers or maps for

stores in that subscriber’s area is an

effective way to personalize email.

This concept also applies to the ability

to leverage real-time A/B testing and

automate the winning version to the

rest of the marketer’s list.

Often, testing is difficult because it

implies rework. With real-time A/B

testing, the two tests are deployed

and once the predefined winning

metric is reached, the better perform-

ing version of the test automatically

deploys to the recipients who have yet

to open the email.

Last but not least is embedded

video. On average, embedded video

in email generates 35-45 percent

more plays because of mobile.

Mobile devices will render the video

and play it with one tap, whereas

linked video thumbnails require two

taps to play. This isn’t without its

limitations, as some email clients

still don’t render video; however, on

average, a B2C sender reaches 60

percent of its audience with inline or

full-screen video, delivering high value

for marketers.

This is great for retailers, as you have

high-value or complicated products

to sell. Cases have shown up to a

66 percent increase in revenue per

email delivered versus more traditional

video inclusion methods.



This approach involves taking ever-changing live content from

the website and dynamically formatting it in real time to insert it

into the email.

This allows you to perform a web scrape and apply a style guide

to format the content to match your template. If you publish

inventory status to your website, this could be a way to provide

live inventory updates and create a sense of urgency or simply

expire items that are no longer available.

The ability to scrape live content off a website works well to en-

sure the latest content being published to a website is also being

pushed in email marketing messages. When the email is opened,

it will insert the latest content from the website into the email.

Dynamically Insert Live Web Content and Personalized

Deadlines into Email

Update Pricing, Inventory and

Specific User Infor-mation in Real Time

This approach is at the expert stage of the Real-Time Value

Ladder, as it requires you to tap into disparate data sources.

Leveraging custom feeds allows marketers to look up data, such

as fare data, in real time based on the user’s location or subscriber

input. These feeds allow live, real-time look up of inventory infor-

mation, which is ideal for retailers and particularly flash sale sites.

This feature can be used for a number of value-added

personalized techniques, such as swapping out product images

based on the attributes of the email or product inventory status.

These real-time data feeds can also be used to insert personal-

ized information for loyalty program statements or even finan-

cial data such as billing statements.

This approach is perfect for any marketer that has a loyalty

program and wants to deliver personalized loyalty statements

within the body of the email.



You should deploy these tactics based on how quickly they can be implemented and value that they deliver to your business. Deploying emails based on device context, embedded video, weather, and live A/B testing is straight-forward. These tactics deliver the highest value, too.

While easy to implement, countdown timers and social feeds deliver some value, but not as much as some of the other items in the advanced category. As always, marketers should implement and test these tactics incrementally, then continue to climb the Real-Time Email Value Ladder.

Deploy Based Upon Ease of Implementation

and Value to the Business



CAMPAIGN

5Implement Lifecycle CampaignsJoy Ugi • WhatCounts

Tie all your new campaign ideas together by utilizing a lifecycle strategy and creating a lifecycle campaign. Lifecycle campaigns allow you to automatically hit the right person at the right time. All previous campaign ideas can function on their own, but you pack a punch when you couple them with your lifecycle campaign.


Why is lifecycle marketing one of the top five retail campaigns for 2015? Email is the world’s preferred communications channel, email produces the highest ROI of any other channel, and email is the digital glue for all other marketing channels.

When done right, email marketing is about growing a relationship between you and your customers. And at the pinnacle of this relationship, people become loyal customers and brand evangelists, purchasing from you again and again and urging their circles of influence to do the same.

Instead of viewing customers as one-and-done purchasers, the lifecycle philosophy supports the idea of an ongoing relationship with your customers to drive revenue time and time again. This relationship starts when a person first comes into contact with your brand to the final touch, and everything in between.

This whitepaper has already touched on the various stages of lifecycle marketing. Now it’s time to define the lifecycle marketing philosophy and discuss the strategies and specific campaigns that support it.


ACQUIRE

Suspects

CONVERT

Prospects

GROW

Customers

RETAIN

Active Customers

WIN-BACK

Inactive Customers

Lifecycle email marketing goes by many different names,

including nurture campaigns and auto-response

campaigns. In the broadest sense, lifecycle email marketing

is about providing value to current and prospective

customers from the moment they become aware of your

brand and start interacting with it until the moment they

cease to be customers.

In a more practical description, lifecycle marketing is a series

of strategic email campaigns set up to automatically send

when customers reach different points in their relationship

with your brand.

These stops on the lifecycle roadmap are:

1. Acquiring subscribers

2. Converting subscribers to customers

3. Captivating customers and growing your relationship

with them

4. Retaining active customers

5. Winning back inactive subscribers

As you move forward in 2015 with lifecycle marketing

campaigns, it’s important to understand both the strategy

supporting each stage, as well as the practical

implications for your retail email program.

What is Lifecycle Marketing?



Before you can begin the process of selling your products

and services, it’s essential you find out if you have anyone

who wants them. In this first stage of the lifecycle,

acquiring subscribers starts with identifying your audience

and their needs.

Once you’ve done this, you can successfully capture their

attention by providing educational, helpful content,

discounts, and offers that will entice their interest in your

products and services. Do this through every channel

available to you, including social media, search, referral

campaigns and email signups.

One of the most effective ways to build a database of

opted-in, engaged subscribers is through a strategic

website popup. The metrics prove it – beautiful, targeted

website popups convert more than any other email-

gathering technique. The best part is, people have actively

opted in to receive messages from you, which means they

are more than likely ready to engage with your emails.

Here’s an example to whet your whistle: When WhatCounts

reinstated its website popup, it received a little over 1,300

new subscribers. In the year before the popup went live on

the website, WhatCounts received just 2,058 new

subscribers via the website.

The acquiring stage is all about being there before the sale

and grabbing your audiences’ attention however and

wherever you can.

You Have to Give Before You Receive

Here’s an example to whet your whistle: When

WhatCounts reinstated its website popup, it received a

little over 1,300 new subscribers. In the year before the

popup went live on the website, WhatCounts received just

2,058 new subscribers via the website.



Convert to People Who BuyOnce people are on your email list, it’s important to convert

those subscribers into customers. The process of converting

prospects to customers is the process of taking someone

whose attention you’ve received and asking him or her to make

a small commitment. This next stage of lifecycle marketing is

where welcome emails and establishing incentives to

purchase are most important.

Another way to persuade someone to convert is by showing

them only what they’re interested in seeing. This idea of

dynamic content is talked about a lot, but few email marketers

are pulling it off. However, by embedding a single tracking pixel

on your website, you can follow customers’ website browsing

activities and then automatically send them emails based

on their specific areas of interest. A typical email newsletter

with this dynamic content (via Boomtrain technology) might look

something like this.

Personalizing the content of your emails based on web-

browsing behavior will ensure subscribers see only what

they’re interested in purchasing.



It’s not enough to gain new customers; you must keep these

customers engaged with your brand. Staying top of mind with

customers is the next stage of lifecycle marketing. Once a lead

has gone cold, you fight an uphill battle in your efforts to get his or

her attention back. There are many ways to keep a customer from

slipping, including creating loyalty programs, providing educational

content, and upselling and cross-selling.

One of the best ways to stay top-of-mind is by using tools such as

geotargeting, weather, and device type to show subscribers you are

akin to where, when and how they ingest their content. By

automatically triggering emails based on customer behavior,

time of day, and other factors, automated lifecycle marketing cam-

paigns reach current customers with the right message at the right

time – every time.

Getting To Know You



The next stage in lifecycle marketing is retaining and lever-

aging delighted, active customers. Smart email marketers

use anniversary emails to create a sense of loyalty and send

consistent newsletter emails to offer helpful information to

current customers. It’s also important at this point to recog-

nize and reward your brand evangelists – people who are

already repeat buyers and who support your brand publicly.

Even with these email campaigns, it can be a daunting task

to retain happy customers. But one of the most successful

ways to use email in this stage of the lifecycle is to leverage

past-purchase data to upsell and cross-sell products and

services customers are sure to be interested in.

You can automatically pull this information into lifecycle email

marketing campaigns via any eCommerce platform. Use the

data you have gathered about your customers to form

segments. These segments then power the lifecycle drip

campaigns with dynamic data content: Entice customers

to buy similar or complementary items to what they have

purchased. Online retailers can also use the data they have

about shopping cart abandonment to push out real-time,

automated campaigns to customers.

These are just a few examples of how plugging your email

marketing into your eCommerce system makes your

behavioral messaging pipe dreams a reality.

Come Again!



Even though marketers hope to create brand evangelists

out of every customer, it just doesn’t happen. Many pros-

pects fall off the bandwagon, and it could be for a variety of

reasons. Perhaps they only purchase from you seasonally,

or maybe they just don’t have a need for your products and

services anymore.

Winning these lost customers back is where lifecycle

marketing campaigns take center stage.

Lifecycle marketing campaigns employ automation to win

back as many of these prodigal customers as possible.

Pushing your inactive customers through a re-engagement

campaign series is a sure-fire way to verify if they’re still

interested in your brand. As a person takes or doesn’t take

actions, he or she drips down into separate campaigns.

The re-engagement campaign ends with one of two

actions: The person has re-opted in to your messages, or

they haven’t done anything with your emails. In the latter

case, it’s time to remove them from your list, since at this

point the person is only hurting your deliverability.

Re-Engage with a Single Click



If you want to get a feel for what a re-engagement email campaign might look like, check out the series True Citrus

put together.

The first part of this re-engagement

campaign acknowledges that True

Citrus has noticed the subscriber has

not been engaging lately, explains the

benefits of each of True Citrus’ email

campaigns, invites subscribers to

update their email preferences, and

features a special offer.

The second part of this re-engagement

campaign includes obvious calls-to-

action and a headline that is intended

to grab a subscriber’s attention.

The third part of this re-engagement

series gives subscribers one last chance

to renew their subscriptions.

The main call-to-action is to update

the subscriber’s email preferences, and

it links to the True Citrus Preference

Center. The special offer is still up for

grabs and True Citrus still wants the

subscriber as a friend on Facebook.


Why should marketers care about creating and

maintaining lifecycle marketing campaigns to develop

relationships with their customers? You may be thinking

your job is to drive revenue, not make friends. In turns out,

you can’t have one without the other.

Email marketing is the top ROI-producing channel for

marketers. Moreover, lifecycle email marketing campaigns

generate as much as nine times greater results than other

types of marketing campaigns (JupiterResearch).

The only approach to email is through a lifecycle marketing

strategy because developing relationships with customers

directly impacts the bottom line. The more you get to know

your customers, the more you can automatically send them

messages personalized to what they care about, and coinci-

dentally, what they actually might want to buy from you.

Although it’s important to use every channel at your dispo-

sal to support the customer lifecycle, the most important

channel to leverage is email marketing. With the highest

return-on-investment, email marketing is a no-brainer.

Targeted email marketing campaigns sent at the right

stage of the funnel lead to more engagement, and ultimately,

more dollars in a company’s pocket. These messages

help you acquire the attention of your audience and convert

prospects into customers. It also helps marketers captivate,

grow, and retain active customers, as well as win back

slipping ones.

The Big Picture



Over the last 46 pages, we’ve detailed the five email cam-paigns we consider a must for those in the retail industry.

Are you inspired to stop settling for mediocre emails and start viewing your marketing program as a holistic, lifecycle approach – hitting your thriving database of customers at every phase in their relationship with your brand – utilizing data analysis, personalization, behavioral targeting, and real-time emails to grab their attention?

It doesn’t have to end there. Once you’ve found a place for these five campaigns in your email marketing program, and you’ve answered your original question of how to increase subscribers, boost engagement, and maximize sales, you can test and refine the process until you’ve far exceeded your goals.

Last But Not Least…



Justuno is the premier on site sales and marketing tool for

e-commerce that converts your websites traffic into email

subscribers, social fans, and sales through the use of incentivized

pop up promotions. Visitors must subscribe to your mailing list

or perform a social action in exchange for an instant promo code

presented on site.

Justuno easily installs on any website and integrates with

WhatCounts to automatically sync newly acquired contacts to

your mailing lists. Forever free accounts are available and paid

plans start at $8/month.

Check out the Companies That Contributed:

Windsor Circle’s customer retention software integrates your

eCommerce platform with WhatCounts, providing automated,

continuous analysis of your customer, product, and purchase

data.

Windsor Circle powers abandoned cart recovery emails,

sophisticated personalization, and email marketing automation by

updating real, targeted customer segments, product data, and

purchase history directly in your WhatCounts account.


http://www.justuno.com/

http://www.windsorcircle.com/


Boomtrain powers the 1:1 economy. We help content and

commerce companies deliver engaging, addictive experiences to

each and every user. Our technology is built around advanced

machine learning and complex predictive algorithms, but our

platform is designed to make sending 1 million different,

individually personalized notifications just as easy and automatic

as sending one email to those same people.

Visit us at Boomtrain.com to find out why brands like CBS, Sky,

and Travelzoo trust us to increase clicks, engagement and

revenue.

Liveclicker delivers rich customer experiences for leading brands

across email and the web. Its RealTime Email solution brings static

emails to life with content updated dynamically at the moment

of open. Liveclicker’s video commerce solutions help today’s top

brands – from production through conversion – generate the most

ROI from video.

Founded in 2008, the company helps clients such as Costco,

Bed Bath and Beyond, Petco, eBags, Canadian Tire, Best Buy,

1-800-Flowers, Under Armour, OnlineShoes.com and many others

drive higher consumer engagement and conversion.

WhatCounts is a B2C email service provider (ESP) and email marketing agency. Every day we work with hundreds

of online retailers to help them increase the Lifetime Value (LTV) of their customers.

With the ability to directly integrate with over 20 eCommerce platforms, we build high-converting retail campaigns

based on past purchase data and RFM analysis. Our technology includes a relational database structure, a

drag-and-drop lifecycle campaign builder, and behavioral marketing tools. We support our technology with a world

class full-service agency.


http://boomtrain.com

http://boomtrain.com/

http://www.liveclicker.com/corp/

http://www.whatcounts.com/

Documents

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