Robert Novotny, Director of Customer Success across MEA at WebEngage.
Customer engagement has been transformed significantly in recent years due to technological advancements and evolving consumer expectations. Yet, for Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) brands, email marketing remains a cornerstone strategy. As we navigate 2024, potentially a watershed year for D2C brands that saw mass digitization during the pandemic, it is essential to leverage innovative strategies to stand out with your email marketing efforts. Here are seven D2C strategies for email that can elevate your engagement game.
Understand your customer
The foundation of effective email marketing still lies in understanding your audience’s needs and challenges. Customer touchpoints are scattered across multiple platforms, and there is merit in using all of that available data to craft your customer personas, rather than relying only on data from your email campaigns. Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that can perform deep data analytics and provide Big Data insights can unify customer data from multiple sources to create consistent user personas. D2C brands can craft emails that resonate on a personal level by gaining deep insights into customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. This is crucial in 2024 - pure promotional emails are passé.
Tailored segmentation
To really ace email marketing, you need to focus on segmentation and targeting. Think of it as breaking your email list into smaller, specific groups so you can send the right message to the right people. As mentioned earlier, businesses can no longer just rely on selling goods and services as surface-level transactions. Selling has, more than before, become about communicating the positive impact on buyers’ lives. You can segment based on purchase history, where customers live, how engaged they are, and more. If you ran a beauty brand, would you send the same email to a budget skincare buyer as you would to a luxury skincare buyer?
Bespoke subject lines & preview text
The subject line and preview text are the first things a recipient sees, making them crucial for capturing attention. Once you’ve deeply understood your customer journeys and segmented them, creating bespoke subject lines and preview text can increase your open rates by up to 30%. This applies across the board - whether you’re reviving an abandoned cart journey or sending product recommendations, a well-crafted subject line must be treated as Step 0 in your conversion and retention functions.
Use the recipient’s name
Personalizing emails by addressing recipients by their names and incorporating relevant personal information makes the communication feel more direct and personal. This small but powerful detail is a big indicator of success as far as open rates are concerned. An email that starts with “Hi John, we’ve got a special offer just for you!” is more likely to catch the recipient’s eye than a generic greeting that is battling multiple generic emails in the customer’s inbox.
Trigger behavior-based emails
The true power of Marketing Technology (Martech) in 2024 lies in automation. With the help of a robust Customer Engagement Platform (CEP), brands can now track user journeys and campaigns in real time. This means that you can use a customer’s omnichannel behavior to identify relevant triggers to send out emails. For example, sending a personalized email when a customer abandons their cart can remind them of the products they are interested in and encourage them to complete their purchase. Other triggers can include browsing behavior, purchase anniversaries, and even inactivity. You can keep your brand top-of-mind to drive conversions.
Utilize Generative AI for hyper-personalization
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Martech has reached an exciting era. AI-driven retention operating systems provide consistent customer experiences and refine engagement strategies using deep-learning models. Every step of the way - from segmenting to finding the right channels for communication - in your campaigns can be tailored specifically to every customer, and this includes email. The starting point in incorporating it into your emails is to use your AI-driven tool to generate product recommendations, personalized greetings, and customized content based on a recipient's past interactions with the brand.
Send personalized video content
Videos can capture attention more effectively than text and images alone and are an under-utilized medium when it comes to emails and, hence, a way to stand out from your competitors. Imagine the impact a fitness brand could have on a customer if it sent a personalized video demonstrating workout routines based on their fitness goals and preferences. This medium also opens up new creative avenues to utilize brand ambassadors or influencers and can create incremental returns on your marketing spends.
Use Martech tools to build on old principles
For the most part, email marketing principles continue to remain the same: the key to success lies in understanding your customers and delivering personalized, relevant, and engaging content. But the sheer rise in the number of D2C brands and the increasing move towards digital sales means that an effort to stand out can be worth a lot. Martech has evolved to bring us into what is now an experience economy, where delivering value with every piece of communication is non-negotiable. It is imperative that D2C brands start leveraging the power of analytics and automation tools to tell their stories effectively and consistently. The problem statement for marketers is no longer how often you engage customers, but how meaningfully you do so.
