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Why a single customer view is key to better email marketing

The success of an email marketing campaign is generally measured in open rates, click-through rates and unsubscribes. And while these are great metrics to keep track of, they don’t always communicate the real-life value of a campaign. But by pulling together all your data into a single customer view, you can start to understand what a campaign has actually accomplished. Then you can use the data you’ve gathered to make each successive campaign a little more relevant.

In my last post, I wrote about a location-based marketing campaign using email and SMS. In the example, the retailer sends two versions of an email promoting a one-day sale – one goes to customers who live within 20 miles of one of the retailer’s locations, encouraging them to shop in store, while the other goes to those who live further away, directing them to the website.

So let’s imagine that the sale goes well and the retailer sees high turnover and increased footfall. But how much revenue can actually be attributed to the email campaign?

By pulling their data together, the retailer can get a pretty good idea of which customers were motivated by the campaign to make a purchase. Through their email marketing database, they can see who received their email and SMS messages – and which customers opened them. And through their EPOS and e-commerce systems, they have a record of who made a purchase on the day of the sale, what they bought, and how much they spent.

With a central marketing database (like Horizon), all of this information can be pulled together to create a single record for each customer. From there, it’s relatively simple for the retailer to create a list of customers who opened the promotional email or received the SMS and also made a purchase, either online or in store, on the day of the sale.

Segment customers by campaign activity and purchase date to calculate ROI

From this list, they can calculate the value of each customer’s purchases to see how much revenue was generated by the campaign, giving them the ability to attribute real-life ROI to their email marketing efforts.

But the data gathered here isn’t just helpful for looking retrospectively at the success of a campaign – it can also be used to send highly-relevant messages in the future, based on specific customer information.

For example, let’s say the retailer wants to run a new campaign to thank the customers who shopped in the sale. With the data they’ve gathered from their e-commerce and EPOS systems, they can send highly-targeted messages to different segments of customers based on the information they know. For example, they might send the highest spenders a few product recommendations from high-end brands, or encourage lower spenders to check out the latest deals.

Target customers based on past purchases

By recognising that a customer shopped in the sale and offering a couple of relevant product recommendations, the retailer can make each customer feel like a VIP – increasing their loyalty and the likelihood that they’ll purchase again. You don’t need to create a unique message for every customer, just relevant pieces of content for different target segments.

Creating a Single Customer View with Horizon

Horizon makes it simple to pull all of your data together to create a single customer view. You can easily set up an automatic file import from your EPOS, e-commerce or CRM system using Horizon’s Dropbox integration. Or, if you’ve got a developer on staff, you can set up an API integration to pull data directly from your system. And Horizon can hold any information you have on your customers, including purchase history, average spend, and interests and preferences.

Pulling your data together to create a single customer view doesn’t have to be difficult, and it’s definitely worth it. Whether you want to get a better idea of the value of your campaigns or send more targeted messages to build customer loyalty, making the most of your data is key.

Our Horizon Loyalty Hub makes it easy – find out how!

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