New research by Autotarget reveals that email has a longer lasting impact on customer experience than we thought.
Chief strategy officer Steve Webster at Autotarget explains how the next stage of email metrics involve combining email response with other data streams like purchase behavior to create predictive models that clients can use to shape their promotional strategies. Webster says the new data shows that the effect of an email message is more subtle and long lasting than we suppose. "One of the first and surprising things we saw. There is the presumption that when someone receives an email message they then click on the email go to the Web site and either make a purchase or not and then they are done interacting with your email. This turned out to be wrong. We discovered very quickly that the power of an email impression lasts for weeks after the customer has actually received the message." "The particular interaction they will have with you later really depends more on their personal preferences than on your putting a new email in front of them. The email works like a classic advertisement, like a billboard going by. You have some of their attention but the mere fact that your brand name showed up on the FROM line has a very measurable impact on the likelihood of their future purchase. And that was a really big surprise to us." "We thought the quality of the HTML, the head shots and the creative made all the difference. It turns out that it does -- but not nearly as much as the fact that [the email] made an impression on a customer who actually was interested in receiving an email from you."
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