With first-name personalization as a baseline, new research highlights that dynamic content personalization is not table stakes any longer, and increases in email personalization sophistication correlate with higher returns.
Real-time email personalization firm Liveclicker has released its Value of Personalization report, in partnership with market research and advisory firm The Relevancy Group (TRG). The study explores the use and impact of personalization tactics on email marketing revenue.
Using performance metrics reported from respondents and a mean monthly sending volume of 26 million messages, TRG applied the measures by personalization tactic used and calculated results. Among the key findings:
- Behavioral targeting delivers an almost eight percent increase in email revenue
- Real-time targeting based on native open-time and live business-context data delivers a 13 percent improvement
- Machine learning personalization delivers a 21 percent revenue increase
Of additional importance, almost half (47 percent) of consumers cite the customer experience as the driver of which brands they decide to purchase from, beyond the quality of goods and price. Fifty-five percent state that they like email marketing offers that include relevant products and offers.
Aspects of email marketing that consumers prefer:
“With the continued competition for consumers’ attention and their demand for relevant experiences in the inbox, more than ever marketers need to leverage data to reach recipients and influence brand selection,” said David Daniels, CEO and founder of The Relevancy Group, in a news release. “To make emails more relevant for consumers, marketers must make personalization investments that leverage live data readily available at the moment of open to optimize the customer experience and advance results.”
The research also shows that while nearly half of organizations are utilizing personalization across digital channels, the majority of marketers cite email as highly or somewhat effective, an acclamation that was higher than any other channel. Further, those that utilize adaptive content to change the content/offer of the message at the time of open state that email marketing is highly advantageous.
However, despite the fact that data abounds and both consumer and marketer aspirations are high, email marketers are leaving opportunities behind by not embracing sophisticated personalization tactics. For example, just 26 percent of marketers utilize email click-through behavior and even fewer use website click path behavior.
“The findings in this report are proof that a one-size-fits-all approach to email doesn’t work. Brand marketers today need to get more advanced than personalization that’s based on basic demographic data,” said Justin Foster, co-founder and VP of market development at Liveclicker, in the release. “We’ve learned that targeting based on real-time contextual data delivers a huge revenue benefit, so marketers need to identify the data that will be actionable for their brand – and the technology that can leverage it – to improve personalization, the customer experience, and ultimately, results.”
Liveclicker and The Relevancy Group is hosting a webinar today (Jan. 24) at 1pm EST on the value of personalization. Register here.
The report is based on an August 2017 survey of 301 qualified advertising and marketing executives.
