Improving differentiation and response rates, and the future.

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Improving differentiation and response rates
"Email marketing is extremely competitive today," says Van Boskirk. "Ninety-five percent of marketers are actively emailing, or planning to by the end of the year. To differentiate from your competitors, you must communicate value and be relevant in the emails you send by using demographics, attitudes and motivations, and also BT, which is now a 'have to do' in creating your email program."

"Generally," Van Boskirk explains, "we see BT playing out in terms of the content in the message, the timing of the message, and also the type of message, which could be a newsletter, an alert, a promotional pitch, a utility like a stock ticker or calculator, or even a taste of humor."

How well is this received?
"At the end of the day," says Cangialosi, of Blue Sky Factory, "marketers are trying to create targeted one-to-one relevance. Most people are likely to respond very positively to this."

Says Epsilon's Della Penna: "When it's done well, consumers have a very positive reaction. You get lower complaint rates and higher conversion rates. Of course," he cautions, "marketers must always follow the golden rules of 'notice, choice, and access,' and provide disclosure that's integrated into their preference centers so consumers can understand what the company is doing with its data."

David Daniels, research director of JupiterResearch, a global provider of original information, images and research for IT, business and creative professionals, says, “Our research indicates consumers respond well to this type of targeting primarily because the email offers are more relevant to them. For example, a JupiterResearch consumer survey found that 60 percent of consumers who made immediate purchases from email did so because the email contained products they were already considering. Only nine percent of immediate buyers said simple subject line personalization was a purchase driver."

Regarding the marriage of BT with email: "I don't think the end consumer even knows it's happening," suggests Doyle. "But even if they do, the net result is that they like it because they're getting served with content, information and advertising better suited to their needs. One thing we've learned, for example, is you can increase the frequency of your BT emails because people being well-targeted are less averse to getting advertising."

"They definitely like it," opines Van Boskirk. "HP is asking its customers, and people say they like it. They want to get messages that are related to what they have interests in."

What is the future of behavioral targeting and email?
"I don't think there are any more technological obstacles," says Doyle of Prospectiv, "but I do think that sometimes people are overwhelmed by the number of targeting criteria available for emails. It's much more complex than doing BT on the web, because you're dealing with more variables: you’re blending who they are with behavioral information, and then you've got the issues of what to serve, when to serve it, how many times to serve it within the email, and how many times to send email.

"That makes email a very delicate tool and technique. You're going into your customer's inbox. It's much simpler when they come to you on the web, which they do more often. You're sending only a few emails," Doyle cautions, "so each one is more important."

The next step, says Van Boskirk, "is to integrate email more closely with other channels. It's easy to use email behavior in email targeting. And we're starting to see closer integration between what you did on the web and the kind of email I send you. We're going to see more and more of this integration, so: 'I know what you did in our store, or how you responded to the direct mail program we sent you two weeks ago, and I'm using all of this in our email.' This level of integration is not yet mainstream, but we're going to see it more and more."

Says Doyle: "One-to-one marketing and targeting on a behavioral basis are pushing us into an on-demand world. The consumer is in control of what advertisements they're seeing. BT is going to become more important as time goes by. Over the next few months and the next year or two, I think you're going to see a lot more dynamic ad content served in emails."

Della Penna says, "The leaders of tomorrow will be the marketers who can figure this out. This is where the world of marketing is going, using data to be better marketers."