Contextual Email Marketing as a paradigm for personalised customer experiences.

In this post we will delve into the concept of Contextual Email Marketing, a notion that is gaining strength in specialized media, in light of the conclusions of the document The Imperative of Contextual Marketing Recently published by Forrester.

In a previous post We have already introduced three considerations regarding Contextual Email Marketing: the moment of interaction, the place y the operational business circumstances. Here we will continue to develop some of these concepts and introduce others with the aim of gaining a deeper and broader understanding of what contextual email marketing means.

First, let’s look at the main conclusions contained in the document we mentioned earlier:

1. While marketing professionals prioritize personalized experiences, strategies to achieve this are recognized as immature. To personalize, it is often a tendency to «segment» lists instead of developing a personalized communication context for the customer based on the moment and behavior of the customer. Only 16% of marketers have the ability to anticipate customer intentions based on real-time recognition of their behavior and context.
2. 70% of the marketers who claim to have a database with a unique view of the customer state that the data they capture is very useful, while the percentage drops to 50% when it comes to marketers who are not yet implementing cross channel strategies. Moreover, those marketers who are implementing cross channel strategies are nearly 30% more capable and likely to incorporate real-time marketing actions across different channels.
3. When asked by the end user, he indicates that the channels in which the content and offer are less relevant to him are precisely the ones that are most used by marketers (Email, Direct Marketing, Retargeting).

The efforts that marketing professionals in general, and relational and interactive marketing in particular, must undertake are evident in order to take into account the context of the user's interaction in communications.

From our point of view There are 4 fundamental levers that must be taken into account to undertake this task in Email Marketing.

1. The user's behavior. It is not just about implementing a communication strategy that takes into account the user's behavior regarding opens and clicks, but also their behavior on the site. It will be a matter of consistently implementing:, remarketing and retargeting email programs.
2. The content. The content must be updated in real time according to the context and behavior of each user. We will see how it is becoming increasingly common to resort to dynamic content that changes according to the moment, place, and device of interaction.
3. The moment. There are emerging providers of «smart email» whose technology allows, once a campaign has been sent, to deliver the message to the user’s inbox at the moment when there is the greatest chance that they are checking their email. It involves incorporating the browsing behavior patterns and taking them into account to deliver the email at the most opportune moment.