This week, William and I went to New York for the National Retail Federation’s Big Show. Beyond the robots handling inventory, the miniature drones quietly watching the aisles and the glowing gizmos that recreate 3D shapes in fan-like devices, here’s what I saw there: email marketing is not dead!
Quite the opposite: email is as present as ever, and it’s often the main key to communicating better with customers. Businesses face major challenges when it comes to capturing customer data, and email was among the solutions proposed by the experts at NRF.
Individualization or personalization?
I noticed how techniques and strategies have evolved: more than ever, they focus on individualizing rather than personalizing communications.
The distinction is interesting, because when you personalize your strategies, you often think in terms of segments such as group, age or region… Whereas individualization refers to adding criteria such as consumer habits and/or purchase history.
In 2019, it’s no longer enough to greet Mr. Smith in the header of a mailing. Today, you need to engage him with more individual suggestions, along the lines of: Mr. Smith, you like this, so you’ll love that!
The big comeback of barcodes and QR codes!
Plenty of techniques and technologies rely on them… Touring the show, I could confirm that barcodes and QR codes are very useful for supporting efforts to individualize offers and for making additional information easy to access. Even if it’s often just a link to content, it makes things much easier.
Ethics and laws...
Even though exhibitors didn’t bring it up right away, I could see the impact of the new rules introduced by various governments and lawmakers. Data protection and the regulation of commercial and communication practices will be major issues in the near future. Using local resources also seems to be a strong trend, to avoid losing control and drifting away from your responsibilities in the cloud.
One small disappointment with the tools on display: I didn’t find many tools or solutions that make it easier to acquire customer profiles. I would have liked to see next-generation kiosks or tablets in action…
Long live email marketing.
P.S. Here’s a quick look at what we saw at the Big Show!