Here’s what you should be concerned with in 2015 that you
may have tabled behind more ‘important’ initiatives in 2014:
Your transactional mail is just as important as your
marketing mail. That’s right! Transactional mail, you know that welcome message
that nothing short of a ‘first date’, or the all-important password reset that
let’s you use your account or make a transaction, these things have to be
prioritized over the batches of 20% coupons that you’re sending. I’m guessing
there are still oodles of companies out there that have no clue if their
transactional and triggered messages are getting stuck behind batched
campaigns. Spend the time to get it right: get the password reset out first,
make sure welcome messages don’t arrive 3 or 4 days later with the information
someone needs on day 1, and that receipts and confirmations that decrease calls
for customer service get to where they’re going without being impeded by sales
messages or newsletters.
Yep mobile is still important. If you’re not responsive
all the time then half of your audience isn’t getting the same rendering
experience as your other half. With the number of devices in the wild today you
have to assume that your email is viewed on dozens of different mobile devices
and browsers on displays stretched to extreme letterbox proportions (and
curved—coming soon to a desktop near you). So the importance of ensuring a
smooth experience regardless of the device or platform is paramount. Part of a
mobile device’s unstated purpose is to diminish the barriers from browse to buy
by deep linking to a native mobile app via a received email; if the initial
rendering of the email is poor the likelihood of using an app as the next step
in the customer journey is scant at best.
Inbox & Verse were unleashed by the Sith! Don’t
worry, the sky isn’t falling because Google decided to reinvent email by
launching Inbox, nor is IBM’s Verse going to cause CTRs and open rates to
plummet. These are efficiency tools that were built in hopes that people agree
to the fact that Google and IBM both know much better about how and what you
want to read and experience in your inbox. When Google Tabs were launched the
industry cried foul and proclaimed that the sky would fall. We’re still here. I
predict that these tools will have a limited following and if their algorithms
are worth their salt they will simply prove out that the most engaging brands
and communications, the ones customers want to read, will remain top of mind
and top of inbox. That is all.
The proof is in the pudding. Now what?! Here’s what you
need to know: depending on whom you read mobile traffic accounted for 45% of
all online traffic during the holidays. Nearly a quarter of all online sales
were generated via mobile. And finally, more men shop on smartphones than
women, this is true in my house given my wife uses my Amazon account (or orders
me to use it). The fact of the matter is that every holiday season results in a
wealth of data—it’s stacking up all around you, petabytes of behavioral
analytics that you should leverage throughout the year. My prediction is that
some of the potential, and here I stress potential, that like the force, it’s
all around you, it’s really up to each and everyone one of us to use the data
at our fingertips in meaningful ways. The holidays are not an event; it’s the
gift that should keep on giving through out 2015 and beyond.
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