This sequence of events all began with a regularly scheduled promotional email from Delta that I would assume they sent to all members of their SkyMiles program. This email by chance happened to remind me that I was interested in visiting Salt Lake City for a weekend in February, and I knew from previous emails that Salt Lake City happens to be one of Delta’s hub locations. From this initial email I went to the Delta website, where I browsed for flights and compared airfare. I did not make a purchase during this web session.

A mere two hours later I received my first email in the lifecycle campaign, featuring the subject line “Visit delta.com For All Your Travel Needs.” This message served the simple purpose of outlining the benefits of booking my flight through delta.com rather than another third-party site. I was particularly impressed by the promptness of this message — my interest in Delta was clearly reciprocated by them in a timely manner.

Interestingly, the correspondence did not stop there. Delta reached out to me the very next day to continue explaining the benefits of their website and to outwardly ask for me to return to their site. This second message featured the subject line “Come On Back To delta.com” and reminded me that I had an unfulfilled order waiting for further action.

Even though I did not make a purchase during this period, the email exchange I had with Delta was quite valuable in a number of other ways. These include:

• The entire decision to consider shopping for tickets was set in motion from a regularly scheduled loyalty program campaign. Newsletters can generate revenue and interest just by being in front of the customer!
• My website activity triggered almost instantaneous correspondence from Delta showing that they were valuing my business. Website analytics data integration with email programs can help businesses show appreciation for their customers when the brand is fresh in their minds.
• Web analytics data isn’t just for cart abandons — it can also be used to trigger entire loyalty and retention-based messages. Taking a long view of the customer sales cycle can impart positive brand affinity to your customers that will pay off in the long run.

The moral of the story is that even though I didn’t make the purchase this time around, chances are the next time I need to buy airline tickets I will be stopping by Delta’s website first.

Today, Experian CheetahMail released

As most of us would expect, abandoned cart messages pull higher open, click and transaction rates than standard promotional messages. However, marketers might be surprised to learn that cart abandoners respond differently to triggered emails that leverage web analytics data. A few specific notes on browsers versus abandoners include:

• Emails sent to cart abandoners (those who have placed an item in their shopping cart but have not converted) with an incentivized offer only pull $0.09 more in revenue per email than those emails that do not contain an offer.
• Meanwhile, customers that only browsed products but did not add any items to their cart (i.e. ‘browsers’) are much more likely to respond to an incentivized email offer.

This report confirms that email marketers don’t need a special remarketing offer to convert abandoners into buyers. This is a positive development for the email industry in that we don’t effectively encourage our customers to abandon their carts with the hope of receiving a discount email at the end of the process.

Another frequent question is whether or not the email call-to-action should direct traffic directly to the shopping cart, or to land on the website home page. Data from this report suggests that marketers should keep the following rules in mind:

• The quicker a customer can access their own cart and view the actual products they were interested in, the higher the returns.
• That being said, even the most basic abandon and browse emails (even those that simply link to a website home page) pull in over 31% higher transaction rates compared to bulk promotions — a number that senior management will find difficult to ignore.

Across all industries, businesses are finding opportunities to follow-up with customers based on various website browsing activities. This white paper gives marketers the vital tips they need to avoid leaving unspent money on the table. Find your strategy to “remarket” to abandoners and browsers — download the white paper now!

Email marketing continues to be a mainstay in online advertising, but a few trends are forcing marketers to be more disciplined in the way they reach their customers.

Consider the following:

• Your customers are bombarded with an incredible amount of information every day. They have access to innumerable information sources and an unprecedented amount of flexibility in the ways they connect to these resources. Some estimates suggest that the number of emails delivered annually is approaching 62 trillion messages. To put this into perspective, an estimated 1.2 billion people have Internet access in the world. Therefore, the average Internet user will receive 142 emails every day (including weekends). Also, other forms of digital messaging media are continuing to proliferate. One estimate indicates that 81.2 million text messages will be sent to U.S. mobile phone subscribers this year.
• Expectations have changed too. Your customers expect an experience that speaks to them individually – messaging to their basic demographic or market segment is not enough.

So what do these trends mean for the email marketer? Relevance is more critical today than ever.

Two of the best ways to make your messages more relevant is to incorporate timeliness or behavioral data into your campaigns. Fortunately for marketers, integrating web analytics data into email campaigns is an easy way to make messages both timely and relevant. Many of today’s winning email campaigns are using web analytics data to engage customers by reminding them of a product they recently abandoned on a website, or introducing them to additional benefits of a product they just purchased.

To better illustrate the real world benefits that can be achieved, let’s consider a best practice case study: U.S. Auto Parts Network. US Auto Parts integrated Experian CheetahMail’s email marketing technology with Omniture SiteCatalyst online analytics through Omniture Genesis.

With the integration in place, U.S. Auto Parts gained precise insight into the purchasing habits of customers by measuring their post-email click behavior. They were then able to maximize both time and behavior based relevancy by using online behavior data to automatically trigger highly targeted ReMarketing messages to cart abandoners by reminding them about products still in their shopping cart. The email reminders linked back to the abandoned cart, including the products, with added incentive to complete the purchase.

The results? U.S. Auto Parts boosted revenue per email and transaction rates 50 times higher through the integration by using time and behavior as the key triggers. By creating and measuring relevant content, US Auto Parts’ emails connected with customers, leading to clicks and higher conversions. As email marketers continue to find innovative ways to engage customers, relevance will make the difference between boosting conversions or becoming just another email in customers’ inboxes.

Chris Parkin is Senior Director of Genesis Solutions for Omniture. To read more of Chris’ thoughts on web analytics, check out the Omniture blog.

Here’s my real-life example that illustrates the issues surrounding web analytics/email integration:

I am a frequent shopper of the online retailer Amazon.com, where I have purchased books, electronics, and baby items exclusively. Last week, however, I received an extremely targeted and somewhat perplexing email promoting Amazon.com’s variety of gourmet and specialty meat selections. Wild Boar 10 Rib Rack anyone?, asked the email. The first line of the message was “As someone who has shown an interest in gourmet meat…”

What? Gourmet meat? Me? From Amazon.com? Huh?

Then I realized what had happened. About three weeks ago I was doing a search on how to best cook beer can chicken.  After re-tracing my steps, I recalled landing on an Amazon.com meat page, clicking around about five times, and leaving. I do not think this makes me a lover of online gourmet meat…but maybe it does?

Items to consider:

1. Personalization was not used in the subject line. If Amazon knew I clicked on a handful of pages, surely the company knows my name, right? Would name personalization make this message more or less intrusive given that it is based on browse behavior?
2. How do we differentiate a user’s definite “interest” in a particular subject area versus just casual browsing?
3. The timing of the message was smart and relevant – this is prime BBQ season, after all. Had it been sent in the dead of Winter, I would have found the message less useful.

Takeaways:

1. Browse behavior messages should be targeted, but not so targeted that users are looking over their shoulders to see who is watching them.
2. Marketers need to be selective in choosing which pieces of behavioral data are used in an email.
3. Be sure to carefully define what “showing an interest” means. Long browse durations, cart abandonments, repeat visits, etc. all seem to be strong indications of user interest rather than casual browsing.

I’d like to hear from you. Can an email be overly targeted? Where should email marketers draw the line?

The eMarketer study cites high shipping costs as the top reason why consumers abandon their shopping carts, as well as the desire to comparison shop, a lack of money, and wanting to search for a coupon.

These findings reinforce my rationale for frequently encouraging clients to create abandon cart campaigns. As I see it, ReMarketing should be a key part of almost any businesses’ email lifecycle program, helping maximize potential revenue during checkout.

When it comes to ReMarketing, there are a few critical rules to remember:

• You can only email people who have registered on your site or who have opted into your email program after the abandonment occurs.
• Frequency caps are recommended to limit the number of times a person receives an abandon message (particularly if there are coupons involved).

I also recommend using other site features beyond the scope of email to reduce the number of carts abandoned by unregistered users. These strategies include:

• Next to the total price and check out buttons, I recommend building a “shopping list” or “wish list” feature to store items for future purchase. Personally, I always use the shopping cart tool to bookmark what I want so that later on I can easily find the products when I am ready to buy. By giving users this functionality, shoppers can use wish lists to easily port the items to and from their shopping carts. This functionality also gives businesses another avenue to quickly acquire email addresses during the wish list setup.
• You may want to consider “pop under” windows triggered by abandoned carts. When someone abandons the site – particularly from check out – you can launch a pop under with a simple email sign up form promoting the value of your email program.

If you’d like to learn more about ReMarketing, you can have a look at our proprietary ReMarketing solution, as well as our partner integrations with the leading web analytics companies.