Email and customer engagement, how it works

Personalization goes beyond personal data

We recently started a project at an insurer to use interactive personalized video to improve this 'engagement' with customers. A video template is used from a central platform that presents real-time personal data in the video. This guarantees that each recipient receives a unique video with his or her personal data. For example, for the explanation of an invoice. Or about the termination of a policy and alternatives that the insurer has to offer specifically for this customer. By creating messages from the same platform with links in letters (via QR code), e-mails or referring to digital communication channels such as the app or My Environment via push notifications, recipients are much better encouraged to view the message. Using personal data in interactive, personalized video drives better customer engagement. And therefore better results. In a comparable example case, this integrated approach resulted in many more contact moments and more than 30% response rate. That quickly means a lot of money and a much better return on investment!

Content alone is not enough, context is king

The idea that good content determines success is a misleading mindset. Of course, very nice, striking campaigns can sometimes get me moving, but too often I find that the campaign itself has stuck, but the product has not. Too often this has the same effect for me as that pushy telemarketer who tries to push a product at the wrong times, while I have no need for it at all. I am inundated every day with marketing messages that are automatically spit out with the help of marketing automation systems. I'm not looking forward to that at all and, to make matters worse, I have to regularly empty my e-mail inbox. Unfortunately, spam filters have not yet been able to match the power of the NO-NO sticker for physical mailings. The GDPR legislation has made a positive contribution to this and reduced the amount of spam, but I would rather see organizations change more quickly from a push to pull marketing where marketing messages are tailored to specific actions of consumers or customers themselves. In those cases, Marketing Automation works very well. Organizations that are able to respond automatically to online interactions of consumers and customers usually do this from the context of the recipient, and therefore achieve much higher results than the few percent response with email marketing. For this you need more than just Marketing Automation.

You love me, you love me not...

In the field of e-mail, I come across organizations where people are convinced of the effectiveness of e-mail as a tool. But I also come across organizations that completely close down email as a communication channel and, from a security perspective, only send notifications by email with references to messages.

I am often asked about my vision on customer communication and how customer engagement can be improved. I personally still find e-mail a nice way to send and receive messages, which I feel it is necessary to keep. I cannot save an answered question to a call center and not use it later as 'evidence'. E-mails, provided they have a reply option, certainly still have value for me. The real change that I expect to encounter soon affects customer engagement much more strongly.