Using Email Data To Improve Retail Results

New trends come and go, but email marketing continues
to be the top dog for retailers in the digital arena. It still does the best
job of pulling customers through the buying cycle. And you can learn a lot from
the data email provides. However, the abundance of data that can be gathered
from an email with analytical tools doesn’t mean anything unless you can
evaluate it properly and gather useful insights.

No matter how much you know, it’s always good to keep
learning in this ever-changing field. Last Friday we attended the Marketing
Prof’s Retail Webinar on retail email. Here are some of the tips on email
behavior segmentations from that webinar. Mike Hotz from Responsys provided the
top 3 behaviors to flag segments in email/digital marketing. They are:

1. Email
Behavior

• Where
within the email creative did the recipient click? Useful email metrics
you should look for are opens, clicks and conversions. These metrics provide insight
into customers’ motivations and intent. The customer raises their hand and says
I am interested in this specific product, by clicking on a specific link within
the email.  For example, the customer
might continuously click on handbags whenever you feature them in the email.
You can then retarget that customer and send them more emails or a coupon for
featured handbags and accessories.

• What
type of emails does the recipient tend to open? Do they open when coupons,
clearances or new products are mentioned? By tracking what specific email
content the customer is interested in, you can further retarget them with
similar content. The goal of segmentation is to personalize an email and to
serve up the most relevant products to the customer. 

2. Site
Browse Behavior

• Where are the recipients going on your Web site? Tracking the customer’s website journey
can also correspond to the set of barriers customers face when they buy or use
a product or service. If the layout of your website is confusing, the customer
can get lost and leave. This can turn into a larger problem when the issue is
with your online shopping cart. Think about it, they came to you with their
money in hand, but leave without buying anything, abandoning their online
shopping cart. Knowing that this is happening, you can work on improving your
shopping cart experience as well as serving the products that were in the
abandoned cart in the next email.

3. Past
Activity/Registration Behavior

• What types of activities has the subscriber recently
performed?

 If the customer has been inactive over a
certain period of time, maybe it’s time to be proactive and re-engage them by
sending them a nice coupon. Maybe your emails aren’t as relevant to them,
because they’re shopping in a new category. Imagine a household that just a new
baby. Priorities start to change as well as clothe sizes. It would be smart to
re-adjust your strategy based on their new behavior.

It’s not enough just to
have email data anymore. What makes data effective is successfully gathering
insights from it that can be applied to your business. Without a watchful human
eye, data is just data. If you are serious about reaching your customers online
you need to monitor and adjust your segmentation strategy based on the changing
consumer behavior.

Michael Morin, EVP, Director of Direct Marketing

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