Send relevant content
Context is crucial in marketing as it can seriously impact one’s purchase behavior. In order to deliver relevant emails at all times, e-commerce websites need to start sending emails contextually driven, which means emails with content adapting to each opener’s context, in real-time.
But what is context anyway? It can be a recipient’s location at the moment-of-open. Once you have the location data, you can easily get climate data so e-commerce sites could set up their email to display different products based on weather conditions or temperatures in real time at this precise location.
Context can also be a recipient’s device. If an e-commerce website also has a mobile app, it could display a “Get the app” banner on the email for mobile openers only. Of if the site also has a brick-and-mortar store, it could adapt coupon codes to the device, displaying a barcode — to scan in-store — if the email is opened on mobile, and a text code if it’s opened on desktop.
Send up-to-date content
Have you ever clicked on a promotion received via email, been redirected to the e-shop and realized it was not available anymore? It’s frustrating, right? Competition in the inbox is so fierce for e-commerce websites in 2016 that they just cannot afford to keep sending those outdated emails anymore.
Instead, e-commerce websites could use email technologies to insert a live stream of products (new arrivals, best sellers, etc.) into their emails. Then, at each opening of the email, the technology will get the information from the e-commerce website (stocks, prices, etc.) and display it in the email. By doing so, they can send emails with up-to-date content at all times.
Another interesting use of this dynamic content could be for e-commerce websites to insert their social networks live feed into their emails. Or, even better, they could leverage user-generated content by pulling live images from their Instagram accounts right into their emails for example.
Send at the right time
Every email marketer can tell you that sending emails at the right time is a real challenge for them. Indeed, every recipient is different, has a different lifestyle and different habits so when a brand use mass mailing to send an email at the same time to all its database, it just doesn’t work.
E-commerce sites can stop sending those batch-and-blast emails, they now have technologies allowing them to deliver their emails one by one, at a different time, depending on each recipient’s behavior. Email still is the best direct marketing channel but its ROI could be even better if each recipient received an email when (s)he is most likely to engage with the brand.
Originally published here.
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