RE-TARGET: Trigger Mails based on Individual Behavior

Overview

Creating a successful Customer Retention program is no easy task:

  • creating communication content takes a lot of resources and doesn’t always raise a lot of attention

  • typical trigger mails are often hard to setup and, with a few exceptions, don’t contribute much to the total sales

  • print is expensive and hard to track

  • etc.

Boxalino RE-TARGET is an attractive solution to help you in such a task in several ways:

  • Centralize and simplify the control and configuration of your marketing automation, here especially trigger mails and print from your BigQuery Data Warehouse

  • Unify the trigger and targeting logic with the dynamic content of the mail or print with Boxalino INDIVIDUALIZE supporting both with API and Dynamic Pictures integrations (compatible with any mail system)

  • Easy and customizable integration of audiences with main players like Mailchimp and with Boxalino Data Feeds

  • Go beyond E-mail and Print and create audience feeds for your Online Advertising with the same technical solution, configured in the same way

Technical solution

See the technical documentation how to configure RE-TARGET Triggers in BigQuery

What are the challenges?

What is wrong with typical approaches?

At Boxalino, we have the believe that too much focus is typically put on customer targeting and segmentation and not enough on relevance.

Don’t understand us wrong, targeting is very important. For example, to identify when you might lose a customer (customers at risk) is critical, but it’s not enough, knowing customer are at risk doesn’t magically gives something interesting to tell them.

 

As a result, your e-mail (or print) is likely going to be ignored and the prediction that the customer will be lost is not effectively avoided in most cases.

In that logic, knowing even more precisely when the customer is at risk might not change anything in the outcome (sending a message a few days before or later will not change anything if the customer is not interested in it).

What is the solution?

What can we do if customers don’t even open your mails?

Some improvement can help but only a little bit, like optimizing the time and day of the sending, the headline (and sub-headline appearing on the mobile phones before opening the e-mail) and avoiding overloading your customers with too many e-mails (making them ignore them by default).

What can make a bigger difference is to communicate not only by e-mail, but also by print, with online advertisement and, what is the most important, on the web-site itself.

Take the typical “newsletter subscription” invitation (often an overlay appearing on your web-site) and apply the same concept for what you wanted to communicate. If you consider a customer at risk and would like to offer him some incentives, make sure to show them this communication in case they do visit your web-site!

What makes the communication content relevant?

This brings us to the central opportunity which can be resumed like this:

Communicate to your customers when you have something of personal relevance to tell them

Which brings the key question of what are the triggers which make a content relevant for someone. We believe it is best answered by having a good answer to the following questions:

  • Why now?
    That’s the most important question. As a customer you can try to communicate anything at any time to me and many other e-shops already do so, so why should I pay attention to your message now?

  • Why me?
    That’s the second part of the solution. You might have a special deal which is only for today (which answers to the Why now?) but if I don’t care about it, then it doesn’t work for me.

    Depending on the case, the target might be more or less broad but the rule should be the narrower the better, because two offers might have the same value for the same customer but one might be addressing a target of 100 customers and the other of 10’000, the first one will often be perceived as more relevant.

You can even artificially reduce the target scope, for example, if you are ready to give a customer 10% on everything, but you know he mainly buys a specific category of product, then showing him that the 10% is only on that category might make him pay more attention even if the offer is actually smaller.

Our Top 10 Content Relevance Triggers

We provide here a list of Best Practices to consider to be relevant and develop your Omnichannel Communication with marketing automation:

Trigger

Why now?

Why me?

Comment

Trigger

Why now?

Why me?

Comment

1

A product you bought is in sales

It just started to be in sales and might not be for long

You already bought this product

Limit to only “re-buyable” products, extend to similar products

2

A product of your wish-list is in sales

It just started to be in sales and might not be for long

You added this product to your wish-list

Expand beyond wish-list (you positively rated, you pinned, …)

3

A product you bought is getting some love

this product just got it’s 100th positive review

You already bought this product

Limit to only “re-buyable” products, extend to similar products

Extend to other social proofs changes: number of sales in a month/day, became #1 in its category, …

4

A new product you might like just came up

It’s a new product that didn’t exist before

It’s something highly connected to your affinities

Play with different threshold of affinities

5

A new story you might like

It’s a new story we just published

It’s related to a topic you care about

Play with different threshold of affinities

6

You might be out of stock

we are predicting you are running out based on your last purchase

It’s a product you re-buy often

 

7

Nice for visiting us again

You recently visited the web-site (after a long absence)

You didn’t buy anything for a while, but your visit makes us hope it can change

Especially important in case of a visit without purchase

8

Today, we celebrate your [OCCASION]

It’s your day (logic depends, but it is today)

This occasion is all about you individually

Try with : birthday, first purchase birthday, nth year as one of our VIP customers, …

9

For you only, 10% on your favorite brand/category

we can’t give this all the time, but we he some limited stock now only for our best customers

It’s a brand/category you already bought several times

Indicate that you value repetitive business and you see they like a special brand/category to make it about them individually

Give a time limit (opens door for 10)
Combine with loyalty point if possible

10

Your time is running out

Something you earned is about to be lost

It’s an individual offer, so it’s running out only for you

Try different timing : 1 day before, 3 days before, several times, …

Combine with loyalty point if possible