We are all familiar with email. It’s been nearly 50 years since the first one was sent, and it’s since grown to be a fundamental global communications channel. Billions of people use it to keep in touch and share information and brands still rely heavily on email to communicate with their customers across all stages of the customer lifecycle. But as technology has developed, other channels have appeared (push notifications, in-app messages, and web push to name a few) to provide alternatives in marketing and customer experience messaging. So where does email fit in today?

Email’s Need for Relevance

Brands still send emails for all the reasons we’ve become familiar with: newsletters, promotions, surveys, order confirmations, security updates etc. But the truth is that the competition for our attention is far greater than it has ever been before due to the growth of new channels. Add to this the fact that some ISPs (like Gmail) are filtering marketing emails directly to a ‘promotions’ tab. Furthermore, the spotlight on data privacy has made consumers dangerously aware of the dreaded ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of your emails. Both these things mean that there is a growing need for emails to be hyper-relevant to individual users. 

Enriching Email With User Data

The key to great customer experiences today is personal relevance. And the key to providing personal relevance is utilizing the masses of behavioral data that you have accumulated for your individual users. To get the most out of your data you need to be able to share it freely (within reason) across channels. Being able to use data from what an individual user has done in their mobile app to enrich your email communications is extremely powerful. For instance, Kate has viewed the mortgage section of her bank’s app twice this week, and her bank sends her an email explaining everything she needs to know about applying for a first-time mortgage. It’s this kind of hyper-relevant communication that elevates your email from being ignored to being truly useful, and deepens your customer relationships. 

Email - Part of Your Brand’s Multichannel Strategy

At Swrve we believe that brands should utilize email more strategically. For instance, a customer satisfaction survey could be delivered as an in-app message, instead of a survey. In fact our customers’ completion rates back this up: 70% through the app, compared to <1% via email. Think carefully about what would work best as an email, and what would work better as a push notification or an in-app message, and then back it up with data to help you influence future campaigns. And if your initial attempts are dismissed on one channel, use it reinforce your efforts on another channel at a later date. 

Email Use Cases

Here are some common use cases for email campaigns across the customer lifecycle that are possible to deliver through Swrve:

Customer Onboarding

Send a reminder email to new customers who you know are yet to complete the registration process. Incentivize them to complete this valuable process with a special offer, or a voucher. And once they have completed this step, ask them to login to the app the next time they open it to help unify customer data across channels. 

Targeted Promotions

Send an email which is enriched with personalized content based on user behavioral data. For example, if a user has been browsing flights to Berlin regularly, deliver an email which reflects their interest. This kind of targeted promotion delivers huge increases in conversions and shows that you understand their interests. Plus stands a much higher propensity to engage.

Feature and Product Discovery

Pointing out new features or products is a great way to engage with customers, particularly if you base it on past user behaviors. For instance promote the upcoming season of a TV series to users who have watched or purchased previous episodes, and have not used your app in the last 30 days, and are opted out of push notifications.  

Newsletters

Long form content works particularly well in email, and so newsletters are the perfect way to inform your customers about a variety of different topics they may be interested in. Make them have more of an impact by using behavioral data to deliver them at the optimal time for each user, based on their previous engagement history. 

To learn more about how Swrve helps global brands deliver relevant emails to individual users, please schedule a demo with our experts.