Personalization and the human touch

Even in our technology-driven age, people appreciate a personal touch in interactions – that’s why personalization remains a vital marketing tool. Human-to-human (H2H) marketing strategies focus on creating individual experiences, like personalized videos or understanding prospects’ interests through social media. These tailored approaches attract quality leads and boost conversion rates.

Why not level up your workflow by blending personalization with marketing automation? Trust us, it’s a game changer, making your marketing feel even more genuine and engaging to your audience.

How to personalize with marketing automation

When done right, marketing automation adds a human touch by catering to each contact’s unique needs and preferences. It teams up with personalization effortlessly, helping you deliver tailor-made experiences at scale. Here are four ways to achieve that:

1. Segment your audience

When it comes to reaching your audience effectively, segmentation is key. Dotdigital offers powerful tools that allow you to create segments based on various criteria, such as age, location, and RFM score. This means you can tailor your marketing efforts to specific groups within your audience.

By utilizing automation programs, Dotdigital makes it easy for you to create segments and deliver targeted messages. This not only saves you time but also ensures that your audience receives personalized content that resonates with them.

2. Use dynamic content

Dynamic content is a game-changer when it comes to email marketing. It enables you to provide personalized and targeted content to your recipients in one email. Achieving this is possible by tapping into your customer analytics and creating engaging content, which can be delivered at scale using dynamic content blocks and smart program logic.

Imagine being able to display images of local stores to recipients based on their location, making them feel like you’re right there with them. Or recommending products based on their recently viewed or purchased items, giving them that extra nudge toward making a purchase.

With dynamic content, you can create highly relevant and engaging emails that cater to each recipient’s unique preferences and behaviors. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows exactly what your customers want, delivering the right message at the right time.

3. Customer-driven journeys

Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all approach to automation programs. In today’s customer-centric world, it’s all about giving your contacts control over their journey. Instead of bombarding your customers with generic content, why not offer multiple paths based on their actions and preferences?

But it doesn’t stop there. Don’t be afraid to experiment with different approaches like remails to find what truly resonates with your audience. Keep testing and refining your strategies until you discover what works best for each segment of your contacts.

4. Leverage behavior data

Tapping into behavioral data is the key to understanding your audience by tracking their actions and responding in a way that resonates with them. With Dotdigital, crafting automation programs that respond to your contacts’ behavior as it happens becomes a piece of cake, paving the way for timely and relevant communication.

Imagine noticing a shopper leaving items in their cart, and effortlessly sending them a gentle trigger to encourage the completion of their purchase. Or, picture welcoming a new subscriber to your newsletter by guiding them through your brand’s journey, all the while showcasing meaningful offers, using marketing automation.

By harnessing the potential of behavioral data, you’ll never miss an opportunity to connect with your audience when it matters most, leading to stronger relationships and increased satisfaction.

Combine marketing automation and personalization for maximized results

Both personalization and marketing automation have their merits, but combining the two can help you unlock your full marketing potential. With tools like Dotdigital, you can provide personalized experiences at scale, catering to each contact’s unique interests and preferences, without sacrificing the efficiency and reach of automation.

Are you curious to learn more about Sarah’s data-driven approach and vision for customer loyalty’s future? Read on and explore her expertise in this compelling conversation that you won’t want to miss.

Q: Can you give us an overview of Spektrix and your role there?

At Spektrix, we’re a team of just over 200 people, providing cloud-based technology for ticketing, marketing, and fundraising to the arts & cultural sector. We partnered with Dotdigital to provide a comprehensive integration that enables our clients to deliver digital communications via Dotdigital. To ensure our users get the most out of our platform we also offer comprehensive and all-inclusive support, training, and consultancy services.

I originally have a background in arts marketing, and I brought that experience and my love of using data to Spektrix eight years ago. In my time at Spektrix, I have worked with numerous arts and entertainment organizations, consulting on loyalty strategy and best practices amongst other things. I co-authored the Spektrix Insights Report in 2019, leading the analysis of sector benchmarks across multiple areas such as loyalty, fundraising, and online purchasing trends. And I continue to lead initiatives to share data learnings, such as the Spektrix Ticket Sales Dashboard, with the sector.

Q: Have you attended the Dotdigital Summit before, what are you particularly looking forward to this year?

I’ve not attended before, so I’m really looking forward to experiencing it for the first time. The breadth of organizations attending and the variety of content being presented looks super interesting. 

At Spektrix we’re always interested in exploring digital communications best practices from other sectors, so we can share that learning with our users. Also, discovering how other experts are using tools like AI, automation, and incentives will be a great opportunity for me, and for our community.

Q: Your talk is focusing on loyalty in 2023, do you think loyalty is harder for brands to come by these days?

I think certain types of loyalty are harder for brands these days – people are much more likely to question their loyalty and look for alternatives rather than just remaining loyal to a brand as default. You can really see that shift in particular with things like switching banks or mobile phone networks. Or the ability to swap and change streaming services on the regular. 

The research also indicates that younger consumers are much more likely to be in tune with the values of a brand and really assess their credentials in terms of value for money, customer service, and bigger mission-driven values such as environmental impact or the way their staff is treated. As a certified B Corp, it’s certainly something that comes up increasingly often from organizations interested in working or partnering with Spektrix.

All this information is much easier to come by these days, rather than relying on the ‘polished’ brand that gets portrayed, you really have to ‘live’ your brand, or you’ll get called out. But I think this also opens up a world of possibilities in terms of loyalty, where you can build genuine loyalty to your brand, rather than repeatedly selling an individual product or service. This is arguably more complex, as you need to understand that your customers’ motivations are variable and ‘messy’.

Q: What will people learn from your talk at the Dotdigital Summit?

Hopefully, people will take away some learnings from specific examples from the Spektrix user community, and how this translates into a process for assessing the variable motivations of your customers. And therefore how you can communicate with them in a much more tailored way, and incentivize them to engage with you, using a more complex, less hierarchical model to the traditional customer loyalty ladder. I’ll be talking about examples from theatre and the performing arts, but the stories will apply to everyone – after all, theatre audiences are the same people who book holidays, buy clothes, or support charities.

Q: What are your top tips for brands who struggle with customer retention?

Try not to do everything. Delve into your data, measure some baselines, experiment, try to get under the skin of your customers and potential customers’ motivations, align your messaging to appeal to them, try things out, and refine it. Ditch anything that’s not working.

Q: What’s your favorite loyalty scheme you’re personally part of as a customer and why?

I’ve become much more aware over the last few years about where I spend my money/who I spend my money with. Often the loyalty scheme itself is not the deciding factor, but if a brand I engage with happens to have one then that is obviously a bonus and encourages me to continue shopping with them.

I’ve hit that time of my life where I have signed up to be a member of the RHS. They have just opened a new public garden on the outskirts of Manchester and I’ve deliberately bought a membership to incentivize me to attend more regularly. There are then the added perks of an excellent app where I can track the plants in my garden, and get regular personalized updates via email.

Q: How do you foresee the loyalty landscape changing in the future?

AI is going to be an interesting one to watch – those one-to-many communications are likely to be able to become hyper-tailored. And profiling to find similar, or lookalike, audiences is becoming much more sophisticated.

Q: You say you’re a self-confessed data nerd, what are your tips for getting the most out of your data?

Make sure you’re measuring what you’re doing – then you can use this to set baselines, compare with industry benchmarks, and test anything new you try. Also, come at your data with an actual question you want to answer. Time and again I see organizations measuring KPIs, but then they aren’t sure what to do with them. If you approach the data with an inquisitive mind and a question you want to find the answer to, you’re much more likely to find something useful.

If you’ve not got your tickets for this year’s Summit yet, grab them here.

Read on to get a sneak peek into their Summit talk, where they’ll discuss the Stroke Association’s innovative creative messaging techniques and the art of developing impeccably crafted welcome journeys.

Q: Lily and Emma, could you introduce yourself and your roles at the Stroke Association?

Lily: Hello. I’m Lily, one of the Digital Marketing Managers at the Stroke Association. I work as the email and SMS lead for the charity to develop and deliver campaigns and online journeys. I’m responsible for delivering digital marketing activity to drive digital income and ensure the retention of our database.

Emma: And I’m Emma, I’m the Supporter Experience Manager at the Stroke Association. My role is responsible for making sure our donors receive a great experience after their first donation. I work really closely with Lily and her team to make sure all our activity is engaging and is working across multiple channels.

Q: We’re excited for your talk at this year’s Dotdigital Summit. What are you looking forward to sharing most in this session?

Lily: I’m most looking forward to sharing our testing over the years and how far we’ve come as an organization. There’s loads to share, from copy to creative and audience segmentation to journey optimizations.

Emma: I joined Stroke Association four years ago and we’ve all worked so hard to completely transform the program. Before we used to celebrate if we got a handful of gifts – now we feel disappointed if we don’t go over our targets. There’s been a lot of learning in that time, and it’s been great to work alongside Lily, means a lot of our recommendations from activity to activity get implemented.

Q: How significant do you think customer journeys are for successful donor engagement?

Lily: Incredibly significant. It’s so important to thank donors, tell them about the huge impact they’re making, and bring them on your journey to further deepen their connection to the charity. Beyond welcome journeys, it’s vital to keep donors engaged through evergreen activity, for example, appeals, newsletters, and asking for feedback, so you can continually improve their experience.

Emma: Making sure you have the right journeys is crucial. People don’t fit in the nice little boxes you might want them to – they take up multiple actions, have lots of different interests, and give to us for all sorts of reasons. Many people give because they themselves have needed our support in the past. That’s why we’re also measuring donor engagement further down the line with our beneficiary audience after offering stroke support. We want to see if people engage further, for example, fundraising, volunteering, or helping us to campaign for change.

Q: Can you give us a sneak peek into the innovative messaging tactics that Stroke Association uses for deepening donor connections?

Lily: We started pretty much at the beginning with developing our email channel. Over the years we’ve focused on specific audiences, for example, cash donors, regular givers, supporters gifting in memory of someone, Legacy pledgers, and people receiving our stroke support services, and then tailored messaging to those individuals.

This has been done using personalization, segmentation, investigating previous donor history and behavior to tailor our copy accordingly, scheduling messages to send at the right time, and acknowledging the wider environment we find ourselves living in today.

Emma: I completely agree with Lily, we’ve been learning and building on what we had over the years. We’ve tried to make sure the program focuses on how amazing the donors are (not how great we are), make sure we’re always signposting to support they can access, and being as human as possible in the way we write to them. I do really long for the day when we can stop writing ‘It’s been another difficult year’ – I think we’re all just quite tired of things feeling really heavy. I am confident that our Christmas communications this year will have more hope than ever and be something uplifting this Christmas.

Q: A key topic of your discussion is strategic testing. How important is strategic testing in refining donor engagement tactics?

Lily: Strategic testing is crucial. I’m really lucky to work with our Supporter Experience Team who’re always supportive of trying something new. If you don’t test, you’ll never know what works, what could be developed, and equally important, what should be left in the past.

We’ve A/B tested everything from copy style, copy length, CTA’s, contributor stories, donation button placement, scheduling, donation web pages, donation block, and onward journey. From FY 21-22 to FY 22-23 testing has helped increase our email appeal income by +32%.

Emma: Testing is hugely important across all our channels. Often if the team is undecided about something or there’s a split in the vote, we try to test it. We’ve tested our outer creative, ask matrix, different pack inclusions, and even tested an aphasia-friendly summary in packs. I love this sort of stuff though, It’s so fun learning the results, and seeing which way it went – and you don’t always get it right either (hence why it’s so important to test and challenge your thinking).

Q: Could you walk us through the elements that made the Christmas campaign your best-performing campaign and its impact?

Lily: Over the past three years we’ve been continually developing and optimizing each appeal in the lead-up to our big Christmas appeal. We’ve implemented personalized messaging for our different audience segments, interrogated our data to deliver tailored gift asks dependant on previous donor history, tested copywriting styles, ensured our emails are visually engaging and aligned with our postal mailing creative, optimized journeys, and reviewed scheduling so all these elements work together to achieve desired results. Comparing Christmas 202 to Christmas 2021 main targets increased in terms of donations (+13%), revenue (+19%), and average gift (+5%).

Emma: Another key thing for us has been securing compelling stories to tell. We’re fortunate that the Stroke Association has invested in this area, and we now have a wonderful Storytelling Manager. They’ve found us a great story this Christmas, a young family whose father had a stroke last year. They overcame a lot of obstacles during recovery, not least being abroad when it happened, but they are so passionate about sharing their story and the help they received.

Q: Crafting welcome journeys is an art. Could you highlight a few enhancements you’ve made to these journeys that have significantly improved their effectiveness?

Lily: Our Cash Welcome journey was implemented back in January 2021 to thank supporters, introduce them to the charity’s work and its impact, secure a second cash gift, and convert to regular giving.

A split was added to this journey design, which tailored the email content and CTA depending on whether the recipient had already given an extra cash gift before the second gift CTA within the email welcome journey. Delivering personalized messaging for those who already gifted (additional thanks and impact) versus those who we hoped would gift again (donation ask and impact) improved the effectiveness of this email journey, as we delivered tailored messaging based on donor behavior.

Emma: It sounds simple but when we overhauled the program back in 2021, we very much thought about the basics; what were we trying to achieve? For our cash program, we wanted to thank and get people to give again. For our regular giving program, we wanted to keep people engaged and giving. For in memory, we wanted people to feel connected with us in the hope they might fundraise on our behalf. Keeping these goals in mind meant that all our postal and email communications had these ideas at the core. We weren’t just sending out communications for the sake of doing it or ‘because we should’.

Q: Could you discuss the Stroke Association’s approach to cross channel touchpoints for driving donor engagement?

Lily: The postal mailing and emails work in tandem to drive effective donor engagement. The mailing not only includes postal donations but also signposts recipients to our online donation pages and the ability to donate via QR codes. The emails utilize the mailing content and explore additional contributor (e.g. stroke survivor, researcher) stories further, compelling audiences to support the charity.

Emma: The postal mailing, donation web pages, emails, donation funnel, and transactional emails work in unison to provide a smooth and integrated experience. Its vital supporters have a seamless journey, with our content being relevant and inspiring them to take action and donate, thus building a deeper relationship with the charity and cementing donor retention.

Q: What valuable insights do you hope to gain from other attendees at the Dotdigital Summit this year?

Lily: I’m really looking forward to discussions around data and automation to drive engagement and successful cross-channel marketing. This is something we’re beginning to explore further as an organization, so these talks will be beneficial. I’m also looking forward to Tim Peake’s keynote session, as this should be pretty inspirational.

Emma: I’m really interested in discussions around reactive and triggered journeys – we’re still very much at the beginning of our organizational journeys. With some of our journeys further along than others, I’m keen to hear how other organizations make sense of the spider’s web and make it feel seamless to the customer. I’m excited full stop at being able to go to a conference in person, as I’ve not been to one since early 2020.

If you’ve not got your tickets for this year’s Summit yet, grab them here.

Can you give us some background about Le Col and your role? 

Le Col is a premium cycling apparel brand focused on making the best kit in the world. We use our unique insight from our legends such as Bradley Wiggins, Pro Cycling team (Bora- Hansgrohe), and founder/former professional cyclist Yanto Barker to help our customers ride faster and further.

I’ve been at Le Col for just over three years now and my role is to head up our CRM team to ensure that customers are having an optimum experience across all digital touchpoints and build long-term relationships with the brand.

Are you excited about this year’s Dotdigital Summit, have you attended before?

Very excited for this years Summit! Yes, I’ve attended before and really enjoyed it.

What do you like most about the Summit, and what are you looking forward to this year?

I like the opportunity to listen to a great group of speakers – I feel like you always get actionable insights at the Summit to bring back to what you’re doing in the office. 

Your talk will focus on Black Friday, how do you think it has changed over the years? Are customers getting fatigued by Black Friday messaging?

People have been talking about Black Friday fatigue since I started in ecommerce. Most people I speak to have really seen an increase in sending of poor quality messages from companies that you forgot you subscribed to or just feel the need to send because it’s Black Friday.

I think with the state of the economy now and the challenges brands are facing, Black Friday is still a crucial trading period for most. As long as you put a good plan together – offering timely, relevant, and valuable customer-centric messaging to campaigning – people will always be engaged.

What will people takeaway from the talk?

Hopefully, they will leave with a few new tips and tricks that I’ve learned implementing Black Fridays over the last couple of years at Le Col. I would also like people to go away remembering that Black Friday is also an opportunity to speak to customers than just a discount sale.

What tactics do you suggest brands employ to generate loyalty from casual Black Friday shoppers?

Make sure you focus on a wider range of metrics when it comes to your Black Friday shoppers.

Obviously, transactions and revenue are key drivers during Black Friday, but we also put a premium on maintaining long-term relationship building goals including brand awareness, loyalty acquisition, and net promoter score.

What are Le Col’s plans for the future?

One of our key goals is to build on our loyalty programme, the Le Col Cycling Club. We’ve seen massive spikes in customer retention and satisfaction since launching the free membership in 2021 and we want to continue to build and develop on the programme offering new cool features going forwards.

What do you think will be a big trend in marketing for 2024?

Apart from A.I? I’d say in a world where third-party advertising will become more difficult due to Apple privacy protection and general privacy laws and shorter attention spans, we’ll see a greater reliance on first-party data for targeting and reporting, and increased focus on creative to stand out from the crowd to drive real incremental gain.

If you’ve not got your tickets for this year’s Summit yet, grab them here.

It gives us enormous pleasure to announce that Dotdigital has retained all three of its ISO certifications after passing eight days of auditing with no non-conformities being raised. Since obtaining our ISO 27001 certification in 2020, we have undergone regular audits. However, this is the first time Alcumus (our external auditors) have assessed all aspects of our three standards (ISO 27001, ISO 14001, and ISO 27701) simultaneously.

Our commitment to ISO standards

Since 2020, Dotdigital has opted to implement 3 ISO standards, underpinning its commitment to the protection of Information, the promotion of sustainability, and positive environmental behaviors. The three standards Dotdigital is certified to are:

• ISO 27001 – Information Security Management 
• ISO 27701 – Privacy Information Management 
• ISO 14001 – Environmental Management 

The global significance of ISO certifications

The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) is an independent body that sets global standards for safety, security, and quality. As the name suggests, its goal is to define standards for best practices that can be implemented, irrespective of the size, type, or location of an organization. By holding these certifications, we can show global clients and prospects that Dotdigital is the obvious choice for responsible marketers wanting a customer experience and data platform. Not forgetting that we’re also the world’s first carbon-neutral, ISO 14001-certified CXDP.

What is customer intent?

Customer intent is often confused with buyer’s intent – i.e. the thoughts or actions directing customers to make a purchase. In basic terms, that would be the moment a shopper enters a brick-and-mortar store and heads to the jeans aisle. Their intent to buy is clear.

However, in the wide world of marketing, buyer intent doesn’t take into account the wide range of online actions customers can take before converting.

Some actions can be simple, such as an immediate click-through from your homepage to a product page. But with the extensive range of channels customers can interact with you on, there are many actions that, when added together, can express their intent.

Why is customer intent important?

Today’s customers demand fast, friction-free experiences. They want brands to understand what they’re after and help them achieve their goals in real-time.

At the same time, marketers are asked to do more with less; to make marketing budgets go further.

Identifying moments of customer intent is essential to meeting both goals. For marketers, data insights that highlight micro-moments of customer intent provide you with more opportunities to convert customers and drive revenue.

For customers, brands that use customer intent can deliver personalized messages at the right time, making them feel valued and driving them into action.

Why is customer intent more powerful than demographics?

Marketers who exclusively rely on demographic information to target customers risk missing more than 70% of potential mobile shoppers.

Demographic information and marketing preferences are great tools to help marketers build a customer profile and understand what they want from you. Unfortunately, they offer little insight into what they’re looking for in the moment.

When customers are looking for something; a product, a solution, or a service, they go to the web. More often than not, they turn to their smartphones. These intent-filled micro-moments are what brands need to target to connect with people.

How do you identify customer intent?

Marketing is no longer as simple as ushering customers down the funnel. The customer journey isn’t linear but cyclical and chaotic. We expect shoppers to visit our sites repeatedly and communicate with us on multiple channels before they’re ready to make a decision.

So now we know that we’re looking for intent-filled interactions to signify customer intent, how do we determine what these moments are?

Collect actionable data

Demographic and preference data is essential for creating personalized and engaging marketing messages. However, you need to collect more than just customer data. Actions such as category page views, product page views, registrations, on-site searches, and landing page clicks should all be measured.

These can help you identify patterns in customer behavior before they convert, such as how many times they visit a page before the point of conversion. You will then be able to target specific high-intent actions to drive customers towards completing your goal.

Spot the key customer starting points

Your homepage might be the page most frequently landed on, but it doesn’t reveal real customer intent. Instead, you need to decide where the customer journey begins. Site searches are always good indicators of customer intent. Shoppers are looking for something specific so you should act on this and make the journey to conversion as simple as possible.

Similarly, specific category pages or feature pages can clearly indicate what customers are looking for. If a customer knows what they’re after, then this is a vital place for you to track and target.

Create pre-intent content

Understanding customer intent goes hand-in-hand with understanding the pain points that have driven them to your website in the first place. By strategizing your content marketing to focus on these specific pain points, utilizing blogs and learning resource pages, you can capture customer intent before they realize yours is the solution they need.

For example, if your brand offers a kitchen fitting service you can create content targeting first-time homeowners with a checklist of things they need to consider when renovating a kitchen. This will help you pre-emptively capture customers interested in finding out more about your service. You can then guide them through your customer journey and lead them to the point of conversion.

How to use customer intent in your marketing automation?

Targeting intent-filled micro-moments increases revenue. There are several scenarios where customer intent can trigger timely, relevant, and personalized marketing messages.

Abandoned browse and cart abandonment emails

Active carts or high-intent page visits demonstrate clear intent. To turn this intent into conversions you need to build abandoned cart or abandoned browse programs. Our Global benchmark report shows that acting quickly can make a big difference – 45% of abandoned carts are recovered within 2 hours. So, it’s important to re-engage your customers quickly and guide them back to your site to boost the likelihood of securing a sale.

Repeat page hits

As part of your work identifying customer intent, you should have a clear idea about which pages on your website are essential to your customers’ journey. Using this intelligence, you can create automation programs that are triggered when a browser views the same page three times.

For example, if you’re a furniture company and have noticed customers frequently visiting your payment plans page, you can use this insight to trigger a campaign. When a shopper views the page numerous times, a friendly ‘ask us anything’ email might be just the push they need to convert.

Customer engagement

Customer modeling tools such as eRFM and lead scoring help you measure subscriber engagement. You can identify which customers are actively interacting with your brand and which have lapsed.

Customer modeling triggers campaigns when customers move between audience groups. So, when a customer stops engaging with your marketing and falls into a needs-nurturing or lapsed group, you can automatically enroll them into a win-back automation campaign.

Similarly, when an unengaged subscriber starts re-engaging, you can leverage the data you already have on them to deliver a personalized campaign that enhances their customer experience. Product recommendation blocks and dynamic content are just a couple of ways to drive newly engaged customers to convert.

Summary

Customer intent is the secret weapon for creating effective, relevant, and persuasive marketing campaigns. By examining your audience’s behavior, segmenting them based on their intent, and delivering tailored content that speaks to their individual needs, you’ll unlock unprecedented levels of customer engagement, conversion, and growth. So, tap into customer intent today, and take your marketing strategy to the next level.

Unfortunately, there is a significant disconnect between expectation and reality in CX. In research carried out by Adweek and Accenture Interactive, they found that while 80% of brands believe they deliver a superior customer experience, only 8% of customers agree.

Brands have to go further and break down boundaries to meet customers’ expectations.

What are interactive customer experiences?

Customer experiences have changed. Brands can do more with customer data. From personalization to augmented reality, savvy shoppers know brands can deliver exceptional experiences.

As a result, CX is less about fulfilling wants and needs and more about meeting increased expectations. Customers compare experiences with diverse brands across different industries. That means that a shopper who has a positive experience buying plants online expects a similar experience when buying anything; groceries, takeaways, jewelry.

Interactive experiences will help you continuously meet these experiences. Interactive content personalizes customers’ interactions with your brands and boosts overall engagement.

Think online questionnaires, web-based calculators, or gamified content. It’s content that lets users personalize and participate in it.

In-email customer experiences

Interactive experiences can come in many formats, but in recent years, email marketing has made massive strides towards providing customers with unique experiences.

AMP for email

AMP for email is a powerful tool that revolutionizes customer experience by allowing you to build web-like experiences right in their inbox. It allows readers to interact with your email and choose their own path.

This innovative feature is an excellent asset when it comes to showcasing various aspects of your brand, products, or services. While offering captivating and personalized customer experiences, you can also guide users towards accomplishing a specific goal. However, you also want to drive users to complete a specific goal. Using an AMP-powered carousel feature, email recipients can flick through your highlighted products or campaign photographs before clicking on your email’s main CTA. For example, a ‘register your interest’ button.

Similarly, customers can discover their own pathways by choosing what content they’d like to see in your email campaign. You can later use these insights to deliver a more personalized experience throughout their journey.

Real-time personalization

To create long-lasting relationships with customers, it’s important to provide a hyper-personalized experience. Real-time personalization is a way to achieve this by using up-to-date customer data. Typically, pulling in a subscriber’s first name using data field is an example of this.You can also use location data to provide location-based dynamic content, to make the campaign super relevant to the customer. By segmenting data and getting to know your audience, you can create targeted content that resonates with them. 

GIFs and videos

GIFs and videos bring joy and delight to your email openers. They grab your subscribers’ attention immediately, keeping them engaged and scrolling down your marketing.

Embedded videos have a great engagement rate which ultimately drives more conversions. Animations and videos make communicating complex ideas simple. In a matter of seconds you can explain your latest product launches and business updates.

Advice from interactive experience experts

Odicci helps brands boost customer engagement and drive customer loyalty with interactive experiences such as quizzes, games, and product finders. These are the top tips on creating interactive and engaging emails from CEO Founder of Odicci, Jacques Prothon:

Creating emails that work: how to jazz up your email design

Just because customers are interested in receiving emails doesn’t mean that you’re keeping them engaged. Thankfully, there are many things you can do to ensure your customers are engaged with your emails. We’ve listed six ways to jazz up your email with interactive experiences.

Gamification: can you beat the high-score?

By introducing gamification into your customers’ experience, you can enhance their engagement and increase clicks and conversions. By asking people to play a game such as a memory game or a matchmaker you are tapping into the creative potential of your subscribers. Add an engaging moving gif design to drive clicks and enjoy your dwell time stats go through the roof as people will be engaged for a long time on your website. Thanks to this pinball game Virgin Holidays experienced a 47% click-through rate.

FOMO: are you one of our lucky winners?

By using elements of accomplishment, envy, ownership, and scarcity you are driving your audience towards clicks. When signing up, subscribers are expecting to receive some type of value, such as a coupon, free gift, or a contest entry. If you want subscribers to continue being engaged with your emails, keep providing something of value and make them interact online with an online scratch card or shake your phone to reveal a prize. Feelunique is driving subscribers to an interactive summer spin for a chance to win special discounts.

Enhance customer experience: swipe your preference

To enhance customer experience Central England Co-Op used an interactive “Tinderesque” swipe survey behind email to collect customer preferences and deliver more personalized emails. The swipe survey running behind an email marketing campaign drove a 28% click-through rate with 20% of surveyed customers sharing their preferences. The swipe survey is a great experience to boost clicks and drive engagement.

Rewarding customers: thank you, here is something for you

Subscribers are looking for positive experiences with brands. One of the most popular customer rewards in use by many brands is when a subscriber reaches a certain level of a loyalty program. Paperchase uses various experiences to reward members of their TreatMe Loyalty program, here is an example of Spin the Wheel on PayDay for TreatMe members only.

With loyalty you can also combine experiences with other moments such as birthdays, special moments in the year, or the launch of a product by giving exclusive access.

Customer Feedback: how did we do?

After a purchase or a delivered service use interactive experiences to ask for feedback and make that experience engaging, fun and above all easy. TeamSport used a Net Promoter Score survey to get feedback from customers after their races. Valuable information is collected for each track and customers can be rewarded afterwards.

Intrigue: what does the future hold?

Instead of engaging your audience with a standard marketing message, use email to create interest, curiosity or intrigue. Use a clever hook to invite subscribers to an interactive personality quiz or a product profiler and deliver a personalized brand interaction

A great way to deliver the message and drive clicks from your emails to these engaging experiences is to use moving GIFs that demonstrate how the reward, game, quiz or interactive promotion works in a few seconds. Using moving GIFs is the perfect way to show what engagement and reward(s) subscribers can expect. To get the best results you can create moving GIFs that are personalized or tailored to a segment, or audience.

Summary

As we know email marketing is one of the best tools to drive sales and convert leads. With interactive experiences it is possible to substantially increase your click-through rates and conversions whilst delivering great value to your audience. Don’t be intimidated these interactive experiences can be published in just a few clicks. Give it a try or contact Odicci for more information about our pre-built interactive experiences, with more than 80+ out-of-the-box experiences you won’t be disappointed.

Today, machine learning and artificial intelligence have joined forces with data science to help us see into the future with predictive analytics. Marketers can use insights to boost revenue, generate sales, and prevent shopper churn.

What is predictive analytics?

Predictive analytics is powered by machine learning models that analyze past behavior to identify patterns that predict what’s next. In other words, you can predict the future from today’s data.

According to a Venture Beat report, an impressive 44% of companies are embracing the power of data-driven insights by integrating predictive analytics into their marketing strategy. 

This growing trend highlights the widespread recognition of predictive analytics as a game-changing tool for businesses. Insights into the future are key to helping brands stay at the forefront of customers’ minds. This is done by identifying opportunities ahead of time and mitigating risks before they happen. 

Dotdigital offers four predictive insights: next order date, customer lifetime value (CLV), number of purchases, and churn probability.

Spot opportunities a mile away with Dotdigital

The best thing about seeing into the future is that you have the upper hand. Imagine a world where you could get intel on your customers before they even knew it themselves. Well, you don’t need to imagine it.

More revenue when you need it most

More revenue is always good. But seeing where and when it will come from is even better. Marketers can create campaigns that push people over the sales line with predicted next-order dates. 

Let’s say it’s been 21 days since a customer last placed an order, and they’re predicted to place another one in seven days. Here’s what you could do within the next week to increase the likelihood of them making a purchase:

• Send them personalized product recommendations
• Offer them a discount code
• Notify them of any active sales you’re running

Better yet, create a segment of customers who meet similar criteria to maximize campaign ROI. That way, anyone orders in the next seven days could be nudged to the end of the purchase funnel. 

Delight your most valuable customers

It’s likely you already know who your biggest spenders are, but that only looks retrospectively. Predicted CLV lets you see the overall value a customer could add to your business. That means you know exactly who to reward, expanding the longevity and value of your most engaged contacts. What are some ways to reward brand champions at scale?

• Remind them to join your loyalty program
• Give them exclusive or early access to sales or products
• Offer them VIP deals to expand their purchasing power with your brand

Foresee, expect, and avoid the risk

In the fast-paced marketing world, staying ahead of the curve is crucial. With predictive analytics, you will see potential risks and make data-driven decisions. 

Keep customers shopping with you over competitors

No one likes losing a customer. When churn happens, it‘s often too late to do anything about it, especially if you’re looking at customer data retrospectively. If you can foresee churn, it’s easier to craft experiences that re-engage because you have a key tool on your side: time.

Don’t spend too much or too little on a lost cause

The most effective retention campaigns take a lot of time and resources to create; in fact, they can be very expensive. When you have access to churn predictions, you know where to spend your energy. For example, why spend a week crafting a retention campaign for customers with a 95% churn probability? If they’re already uninterested, the last thing you want to do is push them away with another email.

Target those with a lower probability

Equally, those with the highest predicted churn rates will likely need a much harder sale to get re-engaged—for example, a hefty discount. To avoid reducing your profit margins, it’s best to only send this message to customers with a high probability of churning.

Hyperpersonalize to avoid brand erosion

We can all admit how easy it is to become fatigued by boring emails that don’t offer much value, particularly when they’re not personalized. The last thing you want to do is send an SMS campaign aiming to increase loyalty to a customer whose churn probability is high. You also don’t want to advertise a premium offer to someone with a low predicted CLV. It’s crucial to make sure that your messaging resonates with your audience to safeguard your brand. Otherwise, it may come across as insincere.

Easier customer profiling

If you want to know more about your customers, you can do it at a glance with the Dotdigital predictive diagram in the single customer view. Not only can you access all contact data in one easy location, but you can spot similarities seamlessly. Let’s say you discover that your customers with the highest predicted churn rates have not opened an email in over two months. 

You can then determine a customer profile that shows a correlation between engagement and churn. Better still, Dotdigital lets you generate a lookalike segment, which kickstarts your re-engagement campaign in just one click. With Dotdigital, profiling your customers for re-engagement or offering promotions is a few clicks away. This can help prevent customer churn and keep them interested in your brand through different channels.

Step into the future

Predictive analytics has revolutionized marketing. Marketers can now seize the opportunity and navigate risks before they arise. In the age of technological advancements, the potential of predictive marketing will only expand. This will reinforce the need to embrace a future-ready approach for a competitive edge. In today’s world, making data-driven decisions is crucial for success, and predictive analytics is leading the way in this transformation toward a bright future.

Predictive insights, AI-powered campaign support, and unified customer data all give you next-level tools to deliver successful marketing that stands out and lands with impact.

Let’s explore the new features now available from our May release.

Get early access to the new Dotdigital

Welcome to the new Dotdigital. We’ve upgraded our platform architecture and UI to ensure Dotdigital is everything you need now, and in the future. Taking on board customer feedback, the new version of our platform reflects changes in the marketing landscape, and in the ways you want to work. A customer experience and data platform built by marketers, for marketers.

A better user experience

We’ve updated various areas of the Dotdigital user interface to perfectly align with the working methods of the future marketer. We’ve incorporated your comments and suggestions to make it easier than ever for you to utilize all elements of the platform to the fullest, and save time thanks to our new, streamlined navigation.

Changes include:

• All channels now under one campaigns section.
• New and improved audience section to manage contacts, segments, personas, and more.
• Easy to discover analytics and reporting with the new analytics section.
• A new connect area for all your data requirements.

Plus, we’ve also made improvements to our campaign management tools to make the day-to-day management of your campaigns run smoother.

Updated campaign features:

• Simpler campaign replies. Campaign replies are now easier to manage in the Dotdigital platform.
• Improved sign-off process. You can now select multiple team members to have sign-off powers within the platform, reducing backlog and improving usability for large teams.
• Better campaign tags management. Campaign tags can be used to filter and customize performance reports in Dotdigital. A new dedicated area makes it much easier to see and manage all existing and new tags.
• Easier organization. You can now filter your campaign reports by date and even see how transactional campaigns performed during a specific time.
• Effortless product search. We’ve also made some improvements to make it quicker and simpler to find the products you want to include in campaigns.

Get a stronger, unified picture of your customers

Our new unified contact data technology allows you to link all customer data back to one single customer record. You now have more ways to identify contacts, and we’ll continue to expand the sources available to you, including our improved API and our ever-growing list of integrations.

Unified contact data allows you to get the full picture, and gives Dotdigital’s analytics tools more data to analyze when creating recommendations for you. Unified contact data is a big part of what powers a CXDP to enable you to elevate your customer experience.

Why unified contact data is important

• All your data in one place. All of your contact data will be kept together as a single source of truth.
• A clearer, 360 degree view. Unified contact data strengthens the insights you have on a customer, no matter where that data originates.
• Improved campaigns. Seamlessly create data-led campaigns in Dotdigital, providing highly relevant and personalized experiences for your customers.
• Save time. Benefit from all of your customer data from different software applications and multiple variations of customer accounts automatically syncing to Dotdigital.
• A future-proof platform. Unified contact data ensures Dotdigital grows with you as your business and tech stack grows.

How unified contact data works

Unified contact data allows you to unify your customer data from various marketing channels and different software that makes up your customer journey, under one roof. This gives you the full picture of your customers’ journey and experience so you can react with relevant and timely communications across multiple channels.

Unified contact data is now in a Public preview, so you can self-enroll straight away to unify your contact data if you wish to. All of our customers who took part in the limited early-preview love it, so we’re confident you’re going to as well.

An improved API

Our improved API helps you better unify your data by making it easier to connect your systems. Greater efficiency and speed means you can enjoy high speed access to data and easily put in and get out the data you need. There’s also more guidance to help you build your integration and troubleshoot any issues issues, faster than ever before. Our improved API is ready to integrate with your marketing stack now, and in the future too. Flexible infrastructure means that our platform is built to grow with you, and support you in that growth too.

Some highlights include:

• RESTful API with JSON payloads.
• Higher than ever call rates.
• High performance real-time data access, with bespoke content selection criteria.
• High throughput bulk data import mechanisms.
• Support for service versioning to ensure you automatically access the best version of the service without backward comparability issues.
• Unified security across all our APIs.

How to get started

You can start using the new Dotdigital today! Just head to this article in our help center for more information.

The power of generative AI at your fingertips

At Dotdigital, we’ve long utilized AI technology to offer you sophisticated insights, find engagement and revenue opportunities, and provide concrete actions for you to implement. Our latest release continues to build on this by giving you helpful tips and tricks on how to improve your campaign you when you’re putting together email content, or writing your next subject line.

Powered by WinstonAI

WinstonAI encompasses all sorts of known and new smart technology in the platform. Today we’re focusing on his generative AI capabilities. To do this, WinstonAI draws on Microsoft Azure’s generative AI technology (GPT-3.5) to offer suggestions and inspiration on how to take your campaign content to the next level. Working also with Microsoft provides us with the security and enterprise promise of Azure, so you can be sure that you are adopting AI responsibly.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI is a form of machine learning that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, and even audio, by analyzing huge amounts of previous data. Recent breakthroughs in the technology mean that the power of generative AI is now accessible to marketers in their day-to-day work, and we’ve incorporated this into the Dotdigital platform.

Why generative AI in marketing is important

• Get inspiration. WinstonAI appears when you create an email campaign and provides relevant and personalized inspiration based on analyzing pools of data.
• Stay focused and save time. You will receive AI-powered suggestions just when you need them most. WinstonAI is easily made part of your existing processes.
• Better content, more engagements. WinstonAI gives tips on how to improve the tone of your email, points out where your audience might need additional detail, and highlights opportunities that will make your campaign even more successful.
• Subject line support. WinstonAI will provide three subject line alternatives to the one you’re working on. These recommendations are based on data from your 25 most recent email sends, to ensure the advice is tailored to your brand and campaign style.

Predictive analytics

Know your customers’ next move before they do with predictive analytics. AI analyzes your customer data to create intelligence-driven predictions, so you don’t need to rely on guesswork.

Predictive analytics let you know what engagement and revenue opportunities are on the horizon and allows you to be proactive in converting that customer. This makes it easy to act at just the right moment to increase sales and put effective, long-term retention strategies in place.

Why predictive analytics are important

• Stronger campaigns. Improve customer targeting with intelligent insights powered by data.
• Improve CX. Provide an enhanced customer experience with expert personalization and just-in-time targeting.
• Save time. Let the tech do the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on other campaign elements.
• Be one step ahead. Get exclusive intel to create proactive targeting strategies that will keep you ahead of the game.
• Insights you can trust. Have more confidence in your campaigns, inspired by concrete data analysis.

How predictive analytics works

Our predictive analytics focus on:

• Churn probability: (e.g. This customer is 40% likely to churn).
• Predicted next purchase date: (e.g. This customer’s next purchase date is predicted to be June 3).
• Predicted customer lifetime value: (e.g. This customer’s predicted CLV is $360).
• Predicted total future orders: (e.g. This customer is predicted to have three future orders in total).

The data will be available in:

• Single customer view as dynamic metrics.
• You can also create segments that use predictive metrics to decipher which customers to include.

How you can use predictive analytics

• Prevent shopper churn. Easily identify which customers are at risk of leaving your brand. Be proactive and target these customers with a powerful win-back campaign.
• Hit targets faster. Segment contacts based on predicted next purchase date and create campaigns with urgent messaging to encourage sales, such as time sensitive discount codes and free shipping for a limited time only.
• Encourage loyalty. Target customers that are likely to shop elsewhere by creating a segment based on whether they have missed their predicted purchase date. Make these customers feel valued and revive their interest before they go to another brand.
• Drive profitability. Identify and reward your future high-value customers with predicted customer lifetime value. Nurturing these customers early on can help ensure long-term success.

To get started with predictive analytics, sign up to our exclusive early access preview here.

What else is coming in this release?

New campaign heat maps

New campaign heat maps provide a clear, visual map of where contacts are engaging with your emails. Heat maps use a traffic light system to visually highlight where the most clicks take place, with red meaning most clicked, and green meaning least clicked.

This allows you to re-structure your emails to ensure key content is in the most prominent positions.

New Shopify and WooCommerce metafields

We now sync metafields (also called custom fields) as part of our out-of-the-box integrations for Shopify and WooCommerce. Merchants will be able to utilize the extra data they store against their customers and orders to create even more personalized experiences.

Metafields will be synchronized automatically and can be used to to create segments, power hyper-personalized dynamic content, and be deciding factors in automations and more.

New Gorgias integration

Gorgias is a customer service platform built specifically built for ecommerce brands. It allows support reps to communicate with customers across multiple channels, including live chat, SMS, social media, email, phone and more.

This integration will allow you to

• Get more insight into your customers, enabling you to personalize the messaging, content, channel and timing of your communications.
• Exclude contacts based on ticket status.
• Automatically enroll contacts into a program when their ticket is closed.

Back-in-stock notifications

As part of this release we launched back-in-stock notifications for all Big Commerce and Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) merchants using Dotdigital. Shopify merchants have been using and loving this feature for a few years. Our easy-to-use configurator means you can create on-brand notifications in no time at all and start generating more revenue in the background straight away.

Once a customer has signed up to back-in-stock notifications from your site, you can send them a triggered email as soon as the item is available to purchase. Back-in-stock email automations are a simple yet effective solution to recovering otherwise lost revenue. Not only do you save that initial sale, but also reduce the chances they will shop from a competitor (there and then, but also in the future).

Over to you

Now it’s over to you to get started with these new features, and of course reach out to your Customer Success Manager or head to our help center if you need any more information.

We’re also running a host of webinars to support this new release, sign up below.

What is responsible marketing?

Responsible marketing is a customer-centric marketing approach. It’s about building trust between you and your customer, meeting their needs, and thinking about more than the business’s interests to positively impact the community.

For B2B brands, building trust is imperative. Trust and credibility are central to customer retention, lifetime value, and optimizing investment in sales and marketing.

Organizations must demonstrate their commitment to protecting the customer’s best interests to build trust. That means meeting regulatory responsibilities and putting the customer at the center of everything you do.

Responsible marketing for B2B

B2B responsible marketing involves promoting products and services ethically and transparently to other businesses. You need to understand the needs and values of your target audience. In addition, you should use accurate messaging, protect customer data, privacy, and stick to industry regulations and standards. 

No matter the industry or vertical, customers want to be treated fairly, uniquely, and with respect. In fact, more so in B2B than in any other sector.

In many cases, B2B sales rely on a human connection; the real relationships between your prospects and your sales team. For this reason, responsible marketing is vital for B2B marketers.

The principles of responsible marketing

Now let’s break it down. What does it mean to put customers first?

1. Data security

In our report, we found that 75% of people believe brands could do more to protect their personal data. These are the same people you’re reaching out to. It goes to say that they’re taking this into their work life and letting it influence their opinions of brands they’re looking to do business with.

Customer awareness has grown, particularly during the COVID pandemic. Over half the people surveyed (51%) claimed they were more aware than ever about the data brands are collecting. There has been a corresponding rise in mistrust in brands, with 63% of respondents claiming to be increasingly wary of giving out personal data.

2. Privacy regulations

With privacy regulations sweeping across Europe and the US, it’s fair to say that email subscribers are more informed about their privacy rights. They know what brands should and shouldn’t be doing with their data.

Combined with some very public data breaches and people have every reason to be wary of brands collecting their personal data. 36% of email marketing subscribers claim they’ve continued to be marketed to even after they’ve unsubscribed and asked to be removed from the database.

You must demonstrate your commitment to meeting these regulations and respect their right to privacy if you want to earn their trust.

3. Appropriate use of customer data

37% of people claim to have unsubscribed from a brand’s mailing list because the messages they were receiving were irrelevant. With recipients more aware of the data you’re collecting, they demand to see it being used appropriately. Failing to do so will lead to high churn rates for your marketing database.

As long as there is a clear value exchange, people are willing to give brands their data. Using the data, you have to improve the customer experience is a must. Collecting and not using information that will improve the customer experience will only damage your reputation, making it harder for you to create a strong, loyal customer base.

4. Good citizenship

Responsible marketing isn’t limited to your data practices. Good citizenship is also essential. 74% of those surveyed said a brand’s impact on society determines whether or not they trust them.

Clients and prospects want to hear more about how brands are supporting charitable causes or what they’re doing to be more sustainable. By incorporating this into your core brand messaging customers will find it easier to make an instant connection with your business. These connections keep you top-of-mind when the time comes to make purchase decisions.

Responsible marketing for B2B in action

So now you know the core principles of responsible marketing, how can you apply them to your B2B business? These are our top tips for adopting a responsible marketing approach to your strategy.

1. Be open, honest, and transparent

Our report makes it clear that consumers want transparency. They expect this when they’re sourcing new partners to work with too. Customers trust and believe you when you are honest and responsible when marketing. 

They are more informed and conscious of the products or services they choose to purchase. They often value transparency and authenticity in the companies they engage with. This helps build a positive image and fosters long-term customer relationships. 

Email subscribers want to know why you want their data and what you’re going to do with it. This kind of transparency will help recipients feel more confident to part with their data.

2. Give control to the user

Recent data security and privacy changes have empowered users to take control. By giving them control over how and when you contact them, you’re actually helping to build trust in your brand. Offer them the choice to pick a channel they want to correspond via. Would they prefer email, SMS, or over the phone?

Asking new subscribers what stage in the journey they’re at – looking around, actively shopping for new services, etc. – will help you deliver a unique journey for every subscriber. Rather than making certain data fields mandatory, allowing subscribers to choose what information they give you will give them more confidence in your brand.

You can even give your customers the ability to opt-in or opt-out of data sharing. Users will have more control over their customer data and can share only the information they are comfortable sharing.

3. Be clear about the benefits of data sharing

Nothing says open, honest, and trustworthy like explaining what you’re going to do with customer data. It’s easier to collect extra information by outlining the benefits of them sharing it with you.

If you’re collecting office locations, then explain it’s because you’ll be delivering treats and goodies to valued prospects and clients. Even basic information like name and job title should come with an explanation. But remember, you have to do what you say.

When customers understand why their data is being collected and used, they will be more comfortable sharing it. Being clear about the benefits of customer data sharing is an important part of building a strong relationship with your customers and establishing your brand as a trustworthy and reliable partner. 

4. Use data to create experiences

What’s the point of collecting customer data if you’re not going to use it to improve the customer experience? Understanding your customer lifecycle will help you know what data you need to collect to improve pivotal touchpoints.

As well as leveraging zero-and first-party data you should be using browsing behavior to trigger personalized campaigns such as abandoned browse automation programs. Experience is key, especially for B2B. You want to make every transaction as human as possible to drive prospects through the funnel.