Editorial Articles

Better targeted email campaigns mean higher email relevance for the recipients and, as a result, higher response rates. Email marketers know this formula. Yet, truly individualised email messages are still not the norm but rather the exception today. One of the main reasons for this is that many marketers simply feel that the extra effort put into producing more targeted content may not be worth the x% or .x% of additional response gained. Now on the one hand I can understand where they are coming from. Imagine an online retailer that sends targeted promotional email offers based on gender - the marketers involved in working on the email template would have to set up two variations of the email. Now this is still feasible, but then the level of targeting based on just one parameter is not very high. Now imagine adding additional demographic (age bracket, region, etc) or behavioural targeting criteria (recent purchase, average order value, etc) - the number of the needed offer variations suddenly becomes unmanageable.

Or does it?

Not if you use Content Automation which allows you to send email campaigns, targeted down to the unique behaviour and preferences of individual recipients, with no extra, or even less workload. Now wouldn’t that make you want to start sending all your email campaigns with more targeted content?

Email Content Automation enables marketers to have semi or fully automated creation of their email messages by inserting content from an external source – like the company website, online shop, product database, etc. – into the email message via XML/RSS or HTTP links. This method can be applied to both simple, one-size-fits-all campaigns and highly individualised campaigns alike. All you need to do is create a set of rules that define which recipient receives which content. One set that can be reused in multiple campaigns.

So the benefits of email content automation are clear: it saves you time (and thus money) by dramatically reducing manual workload. This extra time can be used for more campaign testing, deeper response analysis and better forward planning. It reduces the risk of errors by minimising the human interaction element. Finally, it enables using time-sensitive content in email messages, e.g. stock market updates, breaking news, latest tweets or live product availability.

Granted, enabling automated content for your email campaigns may require some work - both from the technological integration perspective and the setting up of proper targeting rules. But it’s a one-time investment well worth your time in gold – or future email campaign response rates.

Daniel Harari
Marketing Director, Co-Founder, emarsys