It seems to me that there is a lot of confusion around the terms behavioural marketing and targeting, in both what they mean and how you can carry it out effectively. This is not good for the marketer searching for the right supplier.
For those direct marketers out there, targeting messages to achieve greater relevance and, thereby, results, is traditionally achieved through database segmentation or ‘RFM’ data… ie what, when and how much the customer has spent with that company, underpinned perhaps by demographic and lifestyle data.
But, due to the speed of online data processing, customer and browser behaviour can also now be taken into account. There is a truism in direct marketing that past behaviour is the key determinator to future behaviour, and this is the key to real behavioural marketing.
Consider a consumer who visits a retail site. They browse products A, B and C. Two days later, they return to the site and browse product B only, but still do not make a purchase. What do you know about this individual? Well, one can make the assumption that they are interested in product B and that is about all.
True behavioural marketing can, using integrated email, analytics and database systems, identify that individual as a previous customer and will be able to tie that browsing information to that individual. The creation of an ‘online database’ is step one that is, currently, beyond most providers in the market space.
What the marketer does next is key. Traditional email marketing would push a standard weekly offer-based email to this consumer, as well as to the hundreds of thousands of other consumers, subscribers and customers on the retailers database. The likelihood that this mailing will be relevant to the individual (ie contain pertinent information on product B) and a strong call to action/offer to purchase is minimal.
Behavioural email marketing makes recent information on browser behaviour available to the marketer so that actions can be taken within a relevant and effective timeframe. And here automation is critical. Segments of behaviour (for instance ‘Received a quote, did not purchase’) can be identified but this cannot be sent as a manual campaign. The marketer will develop a ‘spider’s web of segmented, automated and behaviourally driven email marketing around the web site, managing the customer through the key processes (eg ‘Welcome’ and ‘cross-sell), reacting and influencing behaviours that the marketer does not want (eg ‘basket abandonment’) and storing browsing information for future targeted and segmented email marketing.
This is the future of the development of email marketing over the next few years. This ‘spider’s web’ of behavioural email that helps to improve web site conversion also takes the emphasis off of main campaign sends. If the vast majority of your targeted emails are being sent automatically and are behaviourally driven, the marketer becomes far less reliant on the typical main, weekly, ‘newsletter’ campaigns that, due to their volumes and the difficulty of segmenting to the nth degree without automation, are going to continue to struggle to appeal to the customer.
And underpinning this success are automation processes that allow integrated analytics and email solutions to be truly leveraged.
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