Source: ReturnPath
At the end of last year, the Direct Marketing Association announced the winners of the DMA Awards in London. The awards—touted as “rewardingly hard to win”—celebrate the best and brightest talent in the direct marketing industry.
We were delighted to see Return Path’s customer easyJet picked up a Gold award for best use of email marketing. After going up against numerous other applicants, and being examined by more than 200 judges, easyJet earned the award for its expert use of contextualization and personalization in its ‘How 20 years have flown’ email campaign. The campaign—launched in honor of the company’s 20th anniversary—delivered easyJet an impressive second Gold award in just four years.
The DMA particularly liked this latest campaign for its expertly tailored customer personalisation. Taking the focus off the brand and removing the self-celebratory stance, easyJet turned the mirror onto its customers, using their data to display how long the customer had flown with easyJet in a summary of their air miles. easyJet then used this location data to suggest other places the customer might want to visit.
Combining graphic devices, imagery, and emotive copy, the personal approach worked for easyJet, with email data indicating that engagement was stronger with customers who received personalized destination recommendations. In fact, these emails attracted three times as many clicks as the emails that did not contain recommended places to visit. Open rates also improved tremendously, at 163 percent higher than the average easyJet newsletter.
Personalized and contextualized emails are just one recommendation for an engaging and interesting email campaign strategy. In this case, easyJet has shown us that when we tap into our email data, we can gain insight into each customer’s wants, needs, and preferences. With 2017 fast approaching, if you aren’t doing so already, now is the perfect time to take a leaf out of easyJet’s book and make this a key component of your email strategy.
Here are eight “do’s and don’ts” for email personalization:
– Do segment your audience and demographic data
– Do insert names into emails
– Do ensure your content is a real-time reflection of the customer data
– Do pull content from custom feeds, social networks, and websites
– Don’t be afraid to target customers with their own preferences
– Don’t blast customers with blanket emails
– Don’t miss opportunities for feedback
Contextualized targeting is becoming an increasingly important pillar of brand communications. Customer data provides significant insights into their preferences; harnessing this data can boost email deliverability rates and interaction profoundly. By taking advantage of individual activities and preferences throughout the funnel, marketers can appeal to customers on a completely personal level.
Once again, all of us at Return Path congratulate easyJet on its second gold win! Even the smartest email programs need to be underpinned by robust tools and data that help these great emails get into their customers’ inboxes in the first place.