Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData: 18 Months Away And Then BOOM, The Customer Reappears: Action Streams
In old-school print, you segment the customer (16-18 months of recency, 1 life-to-date purchase), look at historical performance (profitable or not), then decide whether you send a bunch of paper to the customer. You throw 84 pages in the mail and hope for 1% of customers to buy something, the rest is pure waste.
In traditional e-commerce, the 16-18 month 1x customer gets your standard array of 5-20 batch-and-blast email campaigns per week, not personalized (from a merchandising standpoint).
Smarter e-commerce professionals personalize “what” the customer sees in email marketing based on historical purchase activity. These professionals generate 20% to 50% better click-through and conversion rates than traditional e-commerce professionals generate.
Modern e-commerce gurus POUNCE on the slightest bit of customer interest. When the 16-18 month 1x customer decides to visit your website, it’s “action time”.
- The customer is moved into a separate email “stream”.
- Content shifts from education / entertainment (designed to create engagement) to “buying something now”. Many of you already do “some” of this (cart abandonment programs) … but your personalized “Action Stream” should match purchase history with what the customer just looked at. If you were ever going to offer a discount/promotion, this might be a good time to explore the topic.
Are “Action Streams” hard work? Sure.
Action Streams are also your future, if you’re not already doing something comparable.
- Use social / video to keep the customer interested.
- Use batch-and-blast email campaigns to link social / video to commerce.
- Use Action Streams to POUNCE on customers who just visited your website and showed the slightest bit of interest in your brand.
