Kristina: What is the importance of utilizing customer data to craft personalized email marketing campaigns?
Josh McCarter, CEO & Founder, Booker: With the amount of emails that are being sent on a daily basis, our inboxes are cluttered with spam and broadly-targeted email campaigns. Not to mention, open rates are lower than ever before. The simple question you should ask yourself is this: Do you want the emails you're sending to be opened or not? By utilizing customer data to fine-tune your email marketing efforts you can ensure that your messages won't be lost in the clutter.
Kristina: How should marketers use real-time data to benefit customers?
Josh: To specifically answer this question within the salon and spa industry, there are a number of reasons to use real-time data when messaging your customers. Maybe you want to notify them that they missed a regularly scheduled appointment or that you're running a special on certain products that you know this particular customer loves. By sending them these messages, you can help them stay on-track with their appointments and help them save money on things they frequently purchase.
Kristina: There seems to be two camps in data analysis: those who believe behavioral data is the best and those who believe real-time data is better. Where do you land?
Josh: We think the information you can gather from both behavioral data and real-time data is extremely beneficial. It's important to know how the general population is behaving. For example, gift card sales skyrocket around Christmas, Valentine's Days and Mother's Day - so it's important to pay attention to those trends and encourage customers to take advantage of purchasing gift cards during those times. With real-time data, you can take your marketing campaigns to the next level of specificity by targeting customers with promotions on services/products they regularly purchase
Kristina: What about incentives, like rewards and promotions, are these key to customer loyalty?
Josh: While offering rewards and promotions can be helpful with customer retention, we want to note that the most effective way to encourage customer loyalty is by making sure you provide the highest quality experience every time they step foot in your business. With that said, if you're operating in a heavily saturated space with a lot of competition (i.e. a nail salon or spa) where there are many options, one way to stand out from the rest is by having a rewards programs and/or promotions to keep customers coming back.
Kristina: Are marketers doing enough currently with data-based email?
Josh: I'd say no. Most of the time it's due to the fact that the data/intelligence lives outside of where email marketing campaigns are being executed. Frederick, for instance, sits on top of all of the intelligence. You need a tight integration between your user and marketing campaign in order for your efforts to be successful and worthwhile.
Kristina: How can they improve their use of email data?
Josh: Simply put: Pay attention to what's working and what isn't. If your audience isn't opening your emails, then you need to rethink your strategy.
Kristina: What are your top three tips for marketers to create a data-based email strategy?
Josh: Create personalized content that is relevant to your audience.
Evaluate your marketing efforts as much as possible. Take note of which messages are working and which ones aren't.
Test mediums that go beyond ordinary email marketing. We've seen success with text messaging, direct mail, etc.
Tags: Booker, email content, email data, email marketing, email marketing tips, mobile marketing
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