On Day Two of Salesforce Connections 2015, one thing was clear: marketers are thinking about personalization. Or, to be more accurate, they’re thinking about how to keep in touch with customers across both physical and digital channels.
During a morning breakout session, “The Strategic Formula for Email Conversion Success,” Jon Powell, the senior manager of executive research and development for MECLABS Institute, explained that people open their inbox with their fingers on the delete key.
“You have to create an immediate personal connection with the customer,” Powell told attendees.
That starts with relevance. And to be relevant to customers, you need to know what interests them.
The Downfall of the Demographic
During the keynote this morning, after a mini-concert from Elle King, Scott McKorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, emphasized how important it was to keep track of the customer journey across mobile, physical, and digital channels.
One powerful point came up even earlier: the “demographic” as we know it is fading away. Every single customer has different interests and passions.
If you can create marketing, content, and, ultimately, products that cater to those interests and passions, you can build an unforgettable customer experience – whether someone is buying something in a store, ordering online, or using a mobile app.
Email Forwards – How to Make Your Email Go Viral
Another email session in the afternoon reminded attendees of something that can slip people’s minds – emails can go “viral,” too. Any time someone forwards an email, the email is getting shared. But what kinds of emails get forwarded the most? And how can you ensure that you can really make emails go viral?
Justine Jordan and Chad White of Litmus broke down some of the company’s latest research into how businesses can ensure that emails get forwarded as much as possible.
One big takeaway? It’s not design that makes the biggest impact, it’s relevant, personalized content. The brands that did see emails go viral created targeted and highly segmented campaigns, often with just a few copy changes to make the messaging as relevant as possible to the recipient.
Litmus found that personalized emails see a 4.5 times higher forward rate than emails that aren’t personalized.
The challenge of omnichannel marketing goes hand-in-hand with personalization. Once marketers are able to figure out what customers really want – and deliver it to them – the results will follow.
To that end, Movable Ink’s CEO, Vivek Sharma, and Ivy Inniger, director of CRM & loyalty at Lenscrafters North America, discussed just how important API integrations are to email when it comes to building personalized, seamless customer experiences across channels. And focused on the question: #whatsmyapp.
Tune into our session at 12:30pm at the Cloud Expo Hall to learn why email API integrations can fuel your contextual marketing engine and you can start asking: #WhatsMyApp?