Retailers have been facing the multi-channel purchase challenge for years now. How do I get customers to keep shopping in the stores? How do I track when they’ve purchased from my store or online? What are they buying online that they don’t buy in the store?
Triggered shopping cart abandonment emails and cross-sell product recommendations have helped combat these challenges, but there’s still a variety of one-to-one marketing tools that anyone can use to better engage families. 2009 introduces the multi-touch messaging challenge. Where does mom prefer her marketing messaging? When does she check her email? When do the kids check their email? Do they still use traditional Internet Service Providers (ISP) to check their email? Should we be connecting with them via email, text, or social media?
Below are five solutions to the multi-touch messaging challenge. These solutions not only target audiences by demographic sector, but provide messaging options that connect the whole family.
#1 – There’s a good chance that stay-at-home parents just went back to work. This means there’s no time for non-relevant marketing communications.
What you can do: Use Email with Live Offers and AMPScript. By creating emails with personalized offers based on past purchase history or self-selected preferences, subscribers will get offers that are relevant to only what they’ve requested offers for. And they need them now more than ever.
#2 – With less disposable income than ever before, families will be highly selective in what they spend their leisure activity budget on.
What you can do: Stop sending messages with offers that don’t engage. Use Filters and Measures to pull only segments that open and click-through (or even redeem) your prior offers. By targeting this engaged group you can offer the most compelling offer possible to encourage them to spend their budget with you.
#3 – Mom is becoming more digital than ever thought possible.
What you can do now: Start incorporating social media tools (such as ShareThis) into your emails to empower mom to become the hip trend-setter her children never thought she’d become. By making it easy for her to share your messages, you reach a wider audience in the social realm.
#4 – Teens connect much more often with text messaging than with email.
What you can do now: Use text messaging to reach teen customers and you’ll reap the benefits. With the power of text messaging, teens can forward along offers for products they want their parents to purchase for them.
#5 – Multi-lingual families and friends connect online more than any other communications medium.
What you can do now: Segment subscribers by language preference. With International Sends, emails are translated to the appropriate language of the subscriber’s Internet browser. Family and friends will be happy to know they can connect to home…wherever they are.
Finally, the parent’s age will likely determine the social media tools they use.
What you can do now: Profile parents by segment. Typically older parents will appreciate emails with product ratings and reviews while younger parents appreciate emails that connect them to other communication channels. Not every tool will be for every parent. Test, test, and retest to get the best results.
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