Panel Discussion: Personalized eCommerce in the inbox

Transcript:

Rickey White 0:00
come up for a panel, open discussion with the floor to talk about, you know, some email and deliverability things. So, I would like to welcome our panel to the stage All right, the floor is yours.

Arthur ten Have 0:25
Okay. Everybody asked me. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to this panel discussion. Welcome panelists. I want to I want to thank the organization, Nely and Andrew Bonar. They did a tremendous job to arrange this and I know how difficult it was and how hard working it was. So I want to thank them for having us here. Yeah, give you a blast. That's okay. My name is Arthur ten Have. I'm a product manager and also an a head of integrations at spoiler, which is a software company for email marketing automation, based in the Netherlands, and is part of the spotter group, which has included several companies within the marketing landscape from transactional email, like flow mailer, and also CDP like squeezely. So a lot of companies. Enough about me, let's introduce the panelists. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Maybe you can introduce yourself starting with John.

Jon May 0:57
Hi, I'm Jon May like the month and wait a

second, because your microphone isn't working? Oh,

my apologies. Hello, can you hear me now?

Arthur ten Have 1:53
Let's wait for the mic.

Jon May 1:55
And anytime now you'll be able to hear me. I can only be Brian, Brian best impression if you need to project it to the back of the room.

Kait Creamer 2:07
Yeah, so we met before lunch. I think most of you and I but I work in CRM marketing and framework from an email geek at heart. And I also love geeking out over people in relationships. Thank you. So

Cyrill Gross 2:23
you have some of you have seen me before talking about attractive female was introduced usually introduce myself as to interact the female guide, mean email marketing for nearly 50 years developing email consulting companies, and recently developing mailings a platform where you can create interactive emails without really killing it.

Jon May 2:47
And can you hear me now? I think so. Oh, good. Yes. i My name is Jon May like the month and I work for a company called the RAC, which is the UK is biggest breakdown provider with 30 million customers. And I'm the email marketing manager. So I look after the email marketing and CRM teams.

Arthur ten Have 3:03
Okay, thank you for for Being Well, as we all know, personalized emails is a great driver, to comfort consumers, more and more brands are starting to see that. Today we're going to talk about some difficulties, some opportunities and some challenges. All marketers are facing with it within email. So I have a couple of questions prepared for you. There are 10 questions starting with one and maybe you can start your own. Yeah. What does personalization within email means to you?

Jon May 3:35
So personalization, always, I think was initially just instead of sending an email out, it was kind of putting the first name in who, and then maybe like, Dear Mr. May, who, but actually, what we're trying to do is because we are the company is kind of more age towards an older demographic, but we have quite a wide array of customers. There's been quite a lot of research done that actually, our older customers prefer to be called Mr. May. And our younger customers prefer to be addressed by their first name. So there's a lot of kind of, I say, segmentation, but that personalization of putting people in the groups and talking to them in slightly different ways. So it's not just, I mean to different people would get a similar email, but it's ever so slightly phrased differently. Because some of our older customers felt that if we said, oh, hi, that doesn't, that doesn't connect with them. So trying to address them in a more appropriate way, I think, especially for insurance products, I think is definitely the way to go.

Arthur ten Have 4:28
Yes. Thank you. Next question is for you, surreal based on our experience, as you, the audience have seen this morning with the integration. What do you think are the biggest obstacles to do personalization within email?

Cyrill Gross 4:45
I mean, one of the big challenges that we see in integrating this kind of campaigns is that you have the data ready in the backend. So for example, if you load a personalized product list, recommend product recommendations. into the email, you cannot test every combination. So you need to be able to rely on the on the platform's behind. If you feed the data from a shopping feed into the email, you need to make sure the feed is ready to feed is properly working and all the products are in there, all the text is in there, you need to have the images ready, the images need to be in the right format that you don't have SKU effects in the in the email. And when the user opens the email, they just see a white space, but no no product image. That's one thing, you really have to consider that those systems are reliable that they are stable, that you have a proper monitoring. If something goes wrong, what can go wrong will go wrong. The question is just when. And the other thing is, I have been from Switzerland, I am used to Multi Language setups. So we know we all know the content in our preferred language is very important. There are studies show that for people it's more important for a good amount of people, it's more important that they have the information about the product in their native language, rather than the price. So we need to make sure that somebody has who has subscribed to a to a German speaking newsletter in German language, that they receive the email and the products in German. And when they click on a product, they go to a German detail page. If you have a language break somewhere, you're most likely to lose the customer. Yeah. And to handle that at scale. It's quite challenging.

Arthur ten Have 6:37
Okay, thank you on the next question is for you case, how was personalization has changed in recent years? And how does that impact consumer experiences? What's your opinion about it?

Kait Creamer 6:48
I love this conversation. Because John, I think you highlighted it really well earlier how different demographics like to be addressed differently. That's I think that's a really simple example, but also a really potent example of is almost invisible. Yeah, exactly. And it touches on what Jen mentioned earlier in her talk about how how you make people feel with personalization, so how people like to interact with you. And I think in the past, we've kind of used personalization as this excuse to just surface some of the data that we've collected about people. And it's interesting, I think, probably more for us as email marketers than the consumer is, I think a lot of times they kind of see stuff that looks artificially personalized, or, you know, we who surface that you bought these three sweaters in the last month, like, yeah, it's technically personalized. But is that actually meaningful? And is that creating any sort of relationship? And I think what's starting to shift now is people have this baked in expectation around how you're going to use that data. And if you're going to use it in like truly a meaningful and valuable way. And not this just like inauthentic surface level, we have data about you. And we're going to show it to you in a flashy way. So hopefully, you appreciate it. And so I think, in the future, we'll start to see more and more things like Spotify wrapped is the really easy example, right? They, Spotify collects all of this data about you for years and years on end months and months on end about your listening data. And then they try to surface it in a way that's engaging and meaningful. And they actually give you something at the end of that email. So they give you a playlist of all the stuff that you really enjoyed over the years. And so something that somebody told me years ago that really stuck with me and resonated with me was that consumers aren't comparing your emails to the emails of all of your competitors. They're comparing your emails to all of the emails that they're getting in their inbox. So they have this higher standard for what's personal, what's relevant, and what's actually making a meaningful difference in their inbox, rather than just like what flashy data you can show.

Arthur ten Have 8:50
Understood. Yeah, thank you. Now, the next question is for you, John. The more data is available, the more personalized an email can be. What do you consider as a challenge? And how far can you go? To be personalized that too?

Jon May 9:07
Yeah, I think we can always go a bit too far with personalization. I think that the great example is the film Minority Report with the walks through the shopping mall. And it scans virus and it comes up with a product that's like, immediately for you. And I think the so we're working on a project at the minute, where we are essentially we are tracking people, you know, they come to our website, we can track them. And actually, if they've got an active policy, we can see where they are. And if we see they're going on a certain page, we can assume they're in the market for that kind of product, where we don't want to send one minute later after they leave the page. We we saw you're on our page, you know, 1347 by this thing, you've got a bit so in the day after it we're like, oh, you know, this is something that we've got an offer or something. So it's you've got to, we can track so much but consumers aren't very, I suppose they are aware that they're being tracked, but equally, we don't want to feel like we're being tracked So Spotify is a great example. They have big PR billboards and like, it was like to the person who played Justin Bieber's, I'm sorry, like, 200 times on Valentine's Day, are you? Okay? Obviously, it's creepy, but at the same time for one person that certainly resonates. But like we can, it can be a bit too creepy. And I think, eventually we will get there. And I think Minority Report is probably not necessarily accurate content, the film, but this particular example, certainly in 20 years that might be more relevant. But I think it's going to take a little while for people to adjust to how creepy some of the technology can be. If you request your all your data from Facebook and things, you just see how much they do they have about you. It happens, but most of the time, we're alright with it. But we don't want to see it.

Arthur ten Have 10:41
Yeah. As long as it is serving you. And yeah, they

are interested. Yeah, there

Kait Creamer 10:49
was a there was a good example, actually, years ago, I think of this gone wrong, where somebody I think bought a toilet seat on Amazon, and then suddenly started getting all of these emails recommending, oh, you might also like these six toilet seats. It's like In what world? Am I shopping for all the toilet seats in my house all at once. Like, just because you have the data doesn't mean that you always need to surface it. Just because

Jon May 11:11
we can doesn't mean that's the existential question. I suppose all tracking or segmentation? I mean, I don't say that the limits are kind of endless. But I mean, for technology wise, they kind of almost are. We can track people wherever they go, location data, everything. But should we?

Arthur ten Have 11:28
Yes. Okay. Next question is more as a consumer as a consumer, what emerging trends in E commerce will gain traction in coming years? Do you think

Kait Creamer 11:40
I am so excited by the behavioral changes we're seeing from consumers now. And for myself, I noticed this just as as a consumer, not an emailer per se. But I think people have become so much more comfortable with subscription models. So this is a thing that I find fascinating. I don't know if you all have experienced this to where I don't know, five or six years ago, if somebody had asked me if I wanted a subscription to hot sauce, I would have asked them if they've lost their damn mind. And now, I think that's something that we're also much more comfortable with. So Amazon has started this with I think, like the one click ordering where it's like, okay, well, every six weeks, we'll send you more toilet paper or hot sauce, or dog poo bags, or whatever. And I think when we start to see the big brands get more comfortable with subscription models for really mundane things like small things like hot sauce, toilet paper, whatever,

Jon May 12:34
the Subscribe and Save. So if you've got like batteries, you say, 5%, if you agree to get it once a month, and you're like, I mean, I get it? I do, but it is yeah, once I was gonna start doing it, everyone else has stopped doing it. Right?

Kait Creamer 12:46
And it just seemed, at least to me, it seemed at first like that is ridiculous, I would absolutely never do this, why would I find myself to be on the hook for batteries, you know, every six weeks or whatever. But I think because we get more and more comfortable with these new models of like how you're meant to engage with brands and in ways that are more valuable for you. So it's not just like it's the new norm. But it's the new norm because there's added value there that we didn't see before. I think we're gonna see that be an emerging trend that really, really sticks and takes off. So I'm excited to see where that goes. Yes,

Arthur ten Have 13:17
that's Whoopi nice to see all the things happening. Cereal. We've seen your presentation before this this morning. With the interactive email possibilities. Obviously it can reduce as one click through the channel of buying stuff on E commerce. How can interactive elements help improve personalized email Do you consider?

Cyrill Gross 13:42
I mean, the main advantages for sure you have to you have less clicks is less effort to order. And if you if you promote a product that buyer a shopper is more likely to buy and you make the process to buying it easier. The probability that they buy even increases increases more. And you can if you carefully select the products you're gonna you're gonna put an offer and it's like for this fast moving consumer goods where I see that I wanted I buy it. process you have behind it. There it can leverage the conversion rate. Yes, just because it makes it easier just because recommendation are like personalized content makes the selection for me as a human easier, while interactivity makes the action easier. So in the end, they get taken more serious in my natural human laziness. Yes, that does the job pretty much.

Arthur ten Have 14:46
So the new possibilities, the technical possibilities you are working on. It's it's not just sending personalized email, but it can even be personalized with by interacting the email

Cyrill Gross 15:00
that different sharpers get different interactions in the email. It can be possibly can do it up to a certain extent. I mean, it's, it's, it's passive sort of flow logic we have is no scripting, but you can control what happens when you when you do something, you could as well in a survey, for example, you can skip certain questions for certain users, for example, that's, that's feasible.

Yes. That's very nice.

Kait Creamer 15:25
Yeah, I find that particularly interesting when you when you kind of do that Choose Your Own Adventure scenario with email workflows on like a large scheme, but then smaller if you put people through survey flows, or ask them to interact in certain ways and kind of like allowed slightly different paths. It's really interesting to see where people deviate.

Cyrill Gross 15:44
Yeah, definitely. That's something you can do. And we did that already. For some campaigns, you build some sort of a decision tree? Yeah. And then you end up we did that for health insurance, various about additional insurance, add ons. So you could choose, do you know about it are you interested in and it guides you through four, four or five steps, and in the end, you came to either ask for an offer or request a call back or your you're all set already, something like that, that's feasible. And that helps definitely, we do that with a rating this product rating example I say I showed there. So for some products, some of their clients with some products, asking, asking additional questions about the product, how did it fit was the size? The size matches the size? And how does it feel? Is it comfortable? Or for one tool, trading company? They ask, is the tool really working? Well? You can do that as well. Very, very much personalized?

Arthur ten Have 16:47
Definitely. Yeah, this knife. John, I spoke to you before your work at the RSC. And for people who don't know the company, it's a big company in the UK, where if your car is damaged during driving, they help you out. And you have did some projects with personalization based on the location of someone. Can you tell us about some of these projects that successful? Yeah,

Jon May 17:10
so there's kind of two main projects that we've got one is trying to make the images a bit more local to where people are. So obviously, America is so big, I mean, I wouldn't even the UK is one state of the size of America. But it's still a very big place. And people have very strong kind of cultural identity. So a few years ago, it was all photos of Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, but it was very London centric, and most people don't live in London. I hate to say there's more than cities and just London in the UK. So what we decided to do was actually, let's split the country into kind of more regions. So if you live in the north, you might see the angel of North was this big kind of iron statue. As you drive past the one and you know, if you live in the south, you might see something slightly different. So trying to make it a bit more local to the people who are seeing it. Also kind of invisible personalisation. So we've kind of suspended it because the open rates, the iOS 15 updates, but if it's raining outside, or if it's in a rainy time of year, you would see different imagery from if it's blaringly hot outside. So you know, we're not going to send you a make sure your car's all set for autumn with, you know, patrolling his shorts, and it's beaming and sunshine, you know, it's going to be raining. And we're going to make sure that the image is going to reflect that. In addition to that we've kind of done because we've worked with a lot of garages and it's a lot of vehicle servicing, there's maps of this is a your location, because we know where people live. And actually, these are the three nearest garages to you click here to book in, and we've seen that kind of drastically have three, four times the amount of clicks just because people can analyze work out actually, yeah, that's not too far from me, and then click through. So not only he's got a higher click through rate, the intense and actual conversion is significantly higher. So it's kind of helping people make that decision kind of almost before they click, and then they kind of not committed obviously, but the the significantly higher intent at that point. Yeah.

Arthur ten Have 18:58
And do you have reports about it that it's if you measured it,

Jon May 19:02
yes. So we work with a partner who could have do do the platform and yeah, it's kind of three four times on the click rate and then kind of multitudes up to 10 times on the conversion it's no it's somebody it's not like huge is not every single person goes through the does it because there are certain steps you've got to go through but it's much much better. And then you know, we do a B test hold control pops out all this stuff. And it is just statistically significant. It's all good. We have a whole data analysis team and they say this is absolutely good. We should never stop doing it.

Arthur ten Have 19:30
That's good to hear. Okay, what ecommerce brand stands out in your ebooks as you can see that what what is really outstanding, your emails,

Kait Creamer 19:41
love brands that have a sense of humor about themselves and not this like inauthentic we're gonna be crazy over the top like just try to do something different, but actually brands that lean into their humaneness. So I think one of the brands that that does really well is who gives a crap toilet paper. I really really love their marketing. It's this is one of those cases of a brand that is marketing what is inherently I think a pretty unsexy product they're sending, they're literally sending cardboard boxes of toilet paper to your front door. But what's cool about them is that they've leaned into this niche market or that other brands weren't doing before. So they send toilet paper that sustainable they give back to, like World Health Organizations, they, they take care of their people and and they do it in a really fun way. So they have a sense of humor about their products, they, they know that nobody's really taking toilet paper that seriously. But they're, they're selling it in a way where I know that I don't have to go to the Albert hind on the street to buy something that's wrapped in a ton of plastic and carry it back on my bike, I can get something delivered to my front door in a cardboard box that I feel good about, it's taking care of the world. And then beyond that, it seems like a really small thing. But they wrap each of their rolls of toilet paper in sustainable, just paper packaging, that actually looks really nice. And I don't know if you all have experienced this too. But when I moved from America to the Netherlands, I quickly realized that I didn't have nearly the same amount of storage space that I was used to having small houses, exactly, everything was a lot smaller. So suddenly, everything that I was storing in any capacity, I'm like, I needed a way for this to look halfway decent. And I don't really want you know, these huge packages of toilet paper in my bathroom that are ugly for people to look at. So I really like this particular brand. And one thing that they do that I think is just like immaculate marketing, it's so good. They include one roll in every box that looks like a gift and they tell you to give it to other people. And it's the honestly that's how I got hooked on it. There was a friend of mine who came over from my birthday. And she was like, Haha, I got your old toilet paper. It's a good joke, but it's a great company. And I think companies like that. Companies like BarkBox and chewy, I'm revealing that I'm like secretly a crazy dog mom. But BarkBox and chewy do this really cool thing where they if your dog passes away, they instead of just like stopping your subscription or waiting on you to say, Look, I need to stop this and then saying okay, well your subscription lasts for another year, tough luck, sorry. They send they send flowers, or they send a card or they do something that's particularly compassionate. And really meeting people where they are. So I think these brands that have a sense of humor about themselves and recognize that it's people on the receiving end of their marketing. I think that's what's what's really emerging. And that's what stands out to me that I really relate to the conversation that I feel like this has to be said, because you all probably have the same experience. But frequently I'll have friends be talking about email just in regular social contexts. Just saying like, Oh, I got the email from this, this company, and I clicked unsubscribe. And they'll stop and be like, sorry, Kate. Like, I'm a human to know how email works. I'm not going to be sad that you unsubscribe from some other random brands email. And I think that's what the difference is when you realize that there's not this like, immense rift between marketers and actual human beings. We're all just kind of people living our lives and trying to do right by each other. I think when you recognize that and lean into your brand's marketing, that's what stands out for me. And I think that's what tends to stand out for most other people too.

Arthur ten Have 23:36
Yeah. Great example. Thank you for sharing it. Yeah. And they're both Dutch companies. Operating in all the world? I don't know,

Kait Creamer 23:45
I'm actually not sure. Okay. I think who gives a crap? I'm not entirely sure. I feel like my whole world has become a lot more Dutch, the last two years. So it's hard to place that distinction.

Arthur ten Have 23:56
It's good to hear. I'm actually at the last question I prepared. And I think it's very interesting. So I want to ask you, all of you. What do you think about? We know the difference between transactional email and yeah, marketing newsletters? Do you think in the future, they will come more and more together? So probably product recommendation can be placed into something like an order confirmation? What do you think about that?

Jon May 24:27
Yeah, I think quite like companies like Amazon do quite a lot of that or like some of that already. I think personally, transactional email should always be at the top of whatever you're trying to do, because it's either a receipt or renewal or something. And then underneath it, sure. But Chad right there Chad White did a book email marketing rules and he's got a thing on, you know, it should be less than, you know, a certain percentage. I think that's actually probably true. You don't want like a short transactional email and then like, honking long marketing message. Yeah, that should be the other way around. You know, if it's shouldn't be really long, but you know, long enough that it does what it needs to Do and then maybe a small banner or something. So like we've tried to put more especially during the lockdown, like how to look after your car, which isn't necessarily marketing, but it goes onto the website. And then you can go into other products and things. So we've kind of tried to, but it was, again, it was at the bottom trying to be out of the way of, you know, it shouldn't get in the way of what you're trying to do, and essentially and for transactional, obviously, trying to understand the information that they're giving you, yeah, added value, you should be adding value not

Cyrill Gross 25:25
adding value to the communication you send anyway, it's just what you have to be careful is that you have the content that you're allowed to send advertising. So if you don't have to consent for sending ads, and you put some advertising product recommendations into transaction mail, it's actually a GDPR violation. So you can only put it in for clients who have given you the consent to send marketing. That's very important to consider.

Arthur ten Have 25:54
Yes, if you have any comments, on the last question, Kate?

Kait Creamer 25:59
Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's really a balance and making sure that it's relevant and useful. And honestly, at the end of the day, like, I've had so many conversations about, well, is this actually technically transactional? Or like it? Or is it technically promotional? Or could we maybe make it transactional? And that's a hard conversation to have. But I think if you just take it out of the email context, and start considering it person to person, I was having a conversation this morning with my friends, Kim and Oscar, and we were talking about, here's where we want to go for dinner tonight. And if you think about this in the transactional context, like if I texted back and said, Okay, we're going to this place. And also, let me tell you about all of the other amazing things that I think we should do, and that I'm very excited about on my trip to Spain, like, it just seems completely irrelevant. It's not useful. And so I think in transactional context, people are generally looking for a certain set of information. And so if I text back and say, here's where we're going to dinner, this is where our reservation is, this is what time we need to be there. This is when we need to leave. And oh, by the way, I think these other things might be interesting. From a human to human perspective, that makes perfect sense. And I think when we're talking about marketing, we often there's like this gap where we forget to think about that. But really, if you're if you're being useful, and you're prioritizing the things that are valuable to the people on the receiving end, then I think that's where you start to see a really good mix of transactional and promotional.

Arthur ten Have 27:24
Yes, I think so. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for answering all those questions. Thanks for being here. And maybe he see you next time. Yes. Thank you.