Delivering a ‘Human Touch’ in Email Marketing Means Topline Customer Engagement, Profitability for Retailers — But How Can They Achieve It?

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Access the Report: Available August 2020

Content is key to successful email strategies—but in the crowded email marketing space, retailers struggle to keep emails relevant and supportive of long-term customer relationships. Email remains a top profit generator across industries, and has the potential to function like a “precision-guided missile capable of delivering the right content to the right device at the right time,” according to Forbes. But in 2020, modern email strategies are only as effective as those emails are personalized, dynamic, and compelling.

Increasingly, retailers who rely strictly on data for their email campaigns fail to take into account the “person behind the email address,” which drives down relevancy and retention. Just as consistent optimization of customers’ experiences with email campaigns drives loyalty, consistent “misses” with email content can turns customers as way; and retailers can’t always tell when the latter is happening.

“Retailers are having a harder time than ever finding ways to break through the deluge of daily email messages in order to reach customers and get them re-engaged with their brands,” Total Retail reports. But “one-to-one relevant messages can be the catalyst that brands need to start driving meaningful new revenue from their email program, and to get their customers to make purchases again and again.”

Total Retail also notes how luxury jewelry brand Alexis Bittar aligned insights from customer behavior with inventory dynamics like price drops, low stock, and back-in-stock events to automate relevant email content and discounts, effectively finding more ways to “literally give the consumer what they want.”

But reduced pricing needn’t be the only tool in retailers’ email marketing tool belt. Retailers are identifying new methods for building empathy, individualization, and delight into their email programs with internal initiatives centered on ‘human intelligence.’ These retailers are bridging the gap between data-driven content that, although it leverages data that reflects customer behavior, often doesn’t reflect the real-world priorities or values of customers. (A price discount on a product a customer looked at but had little interest in appearing in that customers’ email inbox is a total miss, for example; perhaps even a nuisance.) Instead, leading retailers will use relatability and empathy to delight customers to connect with their customers—and invest in the technologies that support them—not just drive one-off sales via low-cost, low-yield email campaigns.

Q3 2020 eTail Report: ‘Defining Human Intelligence in Email Marketing for Retailers’

In this 2020 eTail special report, we identify leading strategies for personalizing and connecting with customers via email campaigns relevant to prospective customers. We uncover the “Why” in leading retailers’ marketing strategies, and hone in on the KPIs that make a difference in their modern day retention and loyalty efforts. Finally, we identify the smart technologies supporting these initiatives, and establish the maturity of their adoption and implementation among leading retailers today.

Access the Report: Available August 2020