Personalization: From email marketing to online retailers

August 22nd, 2007 by Kelly Rusk

Personalizing email marketing used to mean adding “Dear first name” at the top of your message, but now as technology progresses and users are more sophisticated, this method, while it probably still works, is only the least you can do to personalize your messages.

Dylan at the Email Wars points to an email by Columbia, which goes as far as posting a notice at the top of the email, reassuring subscribers the email is customized to their personal interests and preferences.

HP does a great job of personalizing your newsletter. First, you are taken through a few options asking about whether you are interested in home use products, business products or solutions for government/health/educational institutions. Then you are offered a variety of different publications. Finally, if you select the newsgram, you receive a welcome email that asks you to go to the site, select the HP products you use/are interested in, what feature topics interest you, what types of creative projects you like, as well as typical preferences you’d see for an e-newsletter (change your email address, HTML or text format etc.)

While the sign up process takes some time, my guess is that while HP’s conversion may be lower - the email results are likely fantastic. Also, being a large, well-established brand I’m sure they aren’t scrounging for subscribers.

Of course, around here, we know personalization isn’t just for email — however, some online retailers have a hard time grasping this, according to the e-Commerce Times, which says online retailers are lagging offline stores, despite personalization being a much easier fit online:

“What struck me most about this report was that merchandisers in the offline world are personalizing their strategies in spite of the serious constraints working against them: supply chain complexity, marketing costs, shelf-space limitations and the like. Yet retailers are doing it. So, why do online retailers — who face none of these limitations — still struggle to present a truly personalized, dynamic shopping experience for each and every shopper?”

Posted in Email marketing, Kelly Rusk, Personalization, eCommerce |