Email blasts are so 2010… but are they really?

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Online marketing was kicked off back in the ‘90’s with ads & pop up campaigns and huge email blasts. -Did you know that the first SPAM/commercial email was sent on May 3th 1978?!-
These online campaigns were easy to set up and actually carried a nice ROI.

Unfortunately for marketeers of the past, consumers have significantly evolved. They are no longer excited by every new product or service we throw at them. Nowadays, we are confronted with so-called ‘digital natives’. People who are born and raised with the internet and are very conscious and sceptical about online (commercial) communications. They really scrutinise your message to find the added value. What’s in it for them?

Does this mean that mass marketing is dead?

Not per se. Consumers are expecting to be contacted with relevant ads at the right time. Plain generic email blasts and pop ups aren’t as effective as they used to be. Nowadays, most consumers perceive them as annoying. People want to feel a personal connection with your brand. They want to know you care about them and that you respond to their needs. When you’re able to convey this feeling, you’ll find that mass marketing is still very viable today, you just need to make sure that it’s mass personalised!

How can you achieve ‘mass personalised mass marketing’?

Mass personalised mass marketing (MPMK) is quite a challenge. How can you really get in touch with your customers through MPMK? Isn’t it hard to know everything about every single client?

Honestly, perfection doesn’t exist and will probably never be achieved. It’s virtually impossible to know everything about everyone and tie that information to the correct product or service at the exact point in time they need it. Luckily we don’t have to! There is a workaround. You don’t need to target everybody individually, you just have to make it appear that way. The solution to the challenge? Combining the power of marketing automation tools and statistical modeling.

Sign up to our MPMK webinar on Thursday September 13th —-> Click here to find out more

Let’s put MPMK in practice

Information, information, information

First of all you need dig into customer interests and behavior. What kind of product/services are they interested in? Do they interact most with your website, your banner ads on third party websites or your emails? This intel will help you engage with them through the right media channel.

Marketing automation tools like Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud enable you to capture this data. They have mechanics which allow you to track the online behavior of your clients. Even more so, it builds up a history of all past interactions. All this data is securely stored in your database where it’s ready for statistical interpretation.

Power to the data scientists!

Once you’ve acquired a sufficient amount of data, you can start with the exciting part of MPMK; the statistical analysis. I know, I know… I’m not really selling it yet, am I? For most marketers, statistical analysis is the dull and boring part where geeks mix up some numbers and produce ‘conclusions’ and a bunch of meaningless graphs. It looks nice on paper, but not in practice, right?

However, you couldn’t be more wrong, it’s actually the part where the real magic happens! Data scientists provide you with actionable insights which you can use to your advantage.

A great example is Persona Design, which comes very, very close to the real deal. By analysing your clients, you’ll be able to define different personae for each customer segment. E.g. men in their 20’s who still live at home and engage mainly with your website. Or women in their 30’s with a management position who interact mostly with your emails on the go. Once your personae are set up, you can treat them as individual people and contact each with the same message through the same channel. From your customer’s point of view it feels like a very personalised message, while in fact it’s more or less generic.

Persona Design is just one example of a big suite of statistical techniques you could use to your advantage. Whether you already have a marketing automation tool in place, or you still need to start from scratch. MPMK offers you some serious advantages that are worth the effort.

What do you need to remember?

• Consumers expect personalised communication for the right product, at the right time via the preferred communication channel.
• Marketing automation tools like Pardot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud provide you with the necessary tools to capture your clients’ interests and preferences.
• Data scientists can help you gather actionable insights from your data, so you can contact the right people with the right message.
• MPMK really isn’t dead, it’s alive and kicking!

If you want to take advantage of your data and the capabilities of statistical analyses or if you wish to have a quick chat and find out what’s in it for you and your customers, feel free to reach out. We’re always happy to have a chat!