Personalized Email: “Dear Jasmine, how are you?”

Photo by Farrel Nobel on Unsplash

Everything is about personalization now.

Since the general trend of marketing has shifted from mass marketing to personalization, the way marketers plan advertising changed to personalized advertising as well. Personalized Email is one of the most effective techniques to gather people’s attention and interaction.

Personalized Email

Every human being is different from owning distinguish identity and self-esteem. With the help of current technology, marketers have more chance to identify, explore, and recommend relevant products and services to people by analyzing people’s interests and characteristics (Yu, 2011). According to Yu, more and more companies start to pay attention to individual marketing and personalized Email is the most popular advertising technique to interact with consumers (Yu, 2011). In another word, it is a trend now to use personalized Email to gain attention and encourage interaction with target audiences.

One of the techniques of personalized Email is to send messages to people’s last name or first name. Several studies and experiments have shown the positive effects of this kind of personalized advertising technique. Due to the reason that people treat their names as a symbol of identity and characteristic, people are more favorable and have more responses on messages which have specifically address their names rather than the standardized message with the same titles (Li and Liu, 2017). For instance, from an experiment, students tend to reply the survey Email which has their names, such as “Dear John Smith”, rather than the automatic one with “Dear Student” (Heerwegh et al, 2005, cited in Li and Liu, 2017). In addition, according to Rodgers and Thornson, this kind of personalized Email has higher possibilities to gain engagements from consumers if they see their individual names on the Email (2000, cited in Yu, 2011).

Another similar research has supported the positive effect of personalized Email by stating that messages with personalized names of the senders are also effective. According to Howard and Kerin (2004), people are more likely to accept the information from messages which have a common first name or initial being signed at the end. The reason is that people need to make sure the credibility of the source and they would trust or have more attention to the message if they think the message is from their friends or families.

Check Some Great Examples of Personalized Emails!

• Dropbox

Dropbox will send a personalized Email to users who have signed up for the service of Dropbox but haven’t downloaded yet (Hexton, n.d.). It is a humorous way to remind users of the brand and the service.

Image: (Hexton, n.d.)

• Spotify

This personalized Email from Spotify uses the clever tone to show the well-understanding of users and make users think they are exclusively getting the special offer (Zantal-Wiener, 2017).

Image: (Zantal-Wiener, 2017)

Are Personalized Emails Effective in Advertising?

Even though marketers all understand the importance of personalized Email strategies, some may still argue that it is not about how the message is personalized, it is the matter of content itself to attract people’s attention. According to Maslowska, van den Putte, and Smit, people may lose interest if the content is not relevant to them even if there is a personalized name on the message (2011, cited in Li and Liu, 2017). From this perspective, it does not matter if the email is written in a personalized way. Instead, it is all about the content to encourage people to do further action like purchasing which is the ultimate of advertising.

However, the core of advertising is to attract people’s attention first. Even though the content is the most significant element in advertising, the key is to make people notice about the advertising first by using personalized Email technique. Several types of research support the effectiveness of personalized Email that has higher possibilities to hook people’s interest and gain people’s trust than the standardized versions. It is more essential to attract people’s attention first or it would be useless even if the advertising content is excellently relevant to what people want.

To Conclude

Personalized Email advertising is one of the most effective advertising techniques to hook people’s attention and market the products and services based on their different demands. It is essential to use personalization strategies to maintain a trustworthy relationship with consumers.

What do you think? Have you even checked or ignored personalized Email? Do you think it has successfully grabbed your attention?

Reference

Daniel J. Howard, a, & Roger A. Kerin, a 2004, ‘The Effects of Personalized Product Recommendations on Advertisement Response Rates: The “Try This. It Works!” Technique’, Journal Of Consumer Psychology, 3, p. 271, JSTOR Journals, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 November 2017.

Hexton, C. (n.d.). 5 Killer Examples of Retention Email Marketing. [Blog] The Daily Egg. Available at: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/examples-retention-emails/ [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017].

Li, C, & Liu, J 2017, ‘Full length article: A name alone is not enough: A reexamination of web-based personalization effect’, Computers In Human Behavior, 72, pp. 132-139, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, viewed 2 November 2017.

Yu, J 2011, ‘Is it worth it to be unethical? Consumers’ attitudes toward personalized commercial e-mails’, Journal Of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 18, 4, pp. 274-285, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 November 2017.

Zantal-Wiener, A. (2017). 13 Email Examples That Totally Nailed Personalization. [Blog] HubSpot. Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34146/7-excellent-examples-of-email-personalization-in-action.aspx [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

Image Reference

Hexton, C. (n.d.). Dropbox’s activation email. [image] Available at: https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/examples-retention-emails/ [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

Farrelnobel, (n.d.). [image] Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/BhLFK8lHvUs [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017].

Zantal-Wiener, A. (2017). Spotify. [image] Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34146/7-excellent-examples-of-email-personalization-in-action.aspx [Accessed 6 Nov. 2017].

Personalization: Marketing YOU instead of YOUR GROUP!

Photo by John Baker on Unsplash

Mass Marketing to Individual Marketing

The way to market people is different from the past. The data-driven world encourages people to speak more about their own identity and personalities by allowing them to record their daily life stories, interact with people on social media, and receive tremendous information. By studying consumer insight and to be closer to every single individual, the strategy of marketing is shifted from mass marketing to individual marketing. Personalization is so essential and necessary that each marketer should use this strategy in the marketing plan.

Personalization is the golden rule now.

Personalization is frequently used in marketing strategies in brands and even in politicians now (Vesanen, 2007). According to Peppers and Rogers, personalization is the process to come out with the specific marketing solution based on a customer’s data (1997, cited in Kwon and Kim, 2012). In another word, with the help of technology, marketers could find out people’s needs by exploring their interests, habits, personalities, or even lifestyles by tracking and analyzing data from previous purchase records, internet browse patterns, and activities in social media. Thus, marketers can come out with tailor-made solutions to the specific customer, and this is personalization.

In addition, marketers like to use personalized marketing to target individuals and recommend the products or services based on their interests. At this point, it is all about analysis of big data and algorithms running by computers. According to Shen (2014), personalized recommendation services are essential to improve and maintain customer satisfaction in terms of increasing sales as a short-term benefit and brand loyalty as a long-term benefit. In agreement with Kwon and Kim (2012), high customer satisfaction helps to increase sales, create the better reputation, and most importantly, gain loyalty from customers. By having customer loyalty, it is a positive cycle to have more profits and competitiveness in the market (Kwon and Kim, 2012). As a result, personalization has positive effects on companies and their relationship with customers.

Check great examples of personalized recommendation!

• Amazon

Amazon is famous for its recommendation system that suggests products to customers based on the complex processing of data and algorisms of people’s preferences. There is a significant proportion of profit, 35%, coming from people’s choice of purchase by recommendation system (MacKenzie, Meyer and Noble, 2013). For example, Amazon will suggest a list of products based on people’s activities on browsing history.

Image: (KRAWIEC, n.d.)

• Netflix

Netflix is another great example of personalized recommendation system that 80% of people’s choice of watching films has come from the suggestions by algorisms (PLUMMER, 2017).

Image: (Paul, 2013)

Use the Technique Precisely, People Are Cautious Now

Sometimes personalization can create backfire due to the increasing concern about the privacy issue. According to Yu, consumers may have negative perception toward the brand and the company because they feel their personal information is not secure and it is unethical to misuse their information in marketing (Yu, 2011). From a study conducted by Moore and other researchers, they have surveyed respondents about what did they think of “creepy marketing” and the biggest concern that respondents had is the privacy issue (Moore et al, 2015). Consumers are worried about their personal information might become an abuse for marketers to use improperly. Another study further illustrates the same idea by stating that the negative perception might cause unwanted consequences such as a decrease in brand favorableness and sales in long-term (Tsang et al, 2004, cited in Yu, 2011).

However, privacy issue will always be an ethical concern whenever personalized marketing is being mentioned since it has been a long debate about privacy and personalization. It is understandable that people care about their own information very much especially in this data-driven digital world. This challenge goes to marketers’ minds that it is marketers’ judgment to decide the amount of personalization they should use to maintain a good relationship with consumers and fit with the brand image and strategies at the same time.

To Conclude

Personalization is surely what marketers trying to achieve now to maintain a strong relationship with different customers. Even though personalization sometimes brings the issue of privacy, this debate will go on forever without an absolute solution. The most important thing is to study each consumer’s behavior and personality properly and to provide the best solution to their needs.

What do you think? Have you ever purchased products from personalized recommendation list?

Reference

Kwon, K. and Kim, C. (2012). How to design personalization in a context of customer retention: Who personalizes what and to what extent?. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, [online] 11(2), pp.101-116. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567422311000238.

MacKenzie, I., Meyer, C. and Noble, S. (2013). How retailers can keep up with consumers. [online] McKinsey&Company. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/how-retailers-can-keep-up-with-consumers [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

MOORE, R, MOORE, M, & SHANAHAN, K 2015, ‘CREEPY MARKETING: THREE DIMENSIONS OF PERCEIVED EXCESSIVE ONLINE PRIVACY VIOLATION’, Marketing Management Journal, 25, 1, pp. 42-53, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 November 2017.

PLUMMER, L. (2017). This is how Netflix’s top-secret recommendation system works. [online] Wired.co.uk. Available at: http://www.wired.co.uk/article/how-do-netflixs-algorithms-work-machine-learning-helps-to-predict-what-viewers-will-like [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

Shen, A 2014, ‘Recommendations as personalized marketing: insights from customer experiences’, Journal Of Services Marketing, 28, 5, pp. 414-427, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 November 2017.

Vesanen, J 2007, ‘What is personalization? A conceptual framework’, European Journal Of Marketing, 41, 5-6, pp. 409-418, PsycINFO, EBSCOhost, viewed 10 November 2017.

Yu, J 2011, ‘Is it worth it to be unethical? Consumers’ attitudes toward personalized commercial e-mails’, Journal Of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, 18, 4, pp. 274-285, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 6 November 2017.

Image Reference

Baker, J. (n.d.). [image] Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/3To9V42K0Ag [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

KRAWIEC, T. (n.d.). “RECOMMENDED FOR YOU, THOMAS”. [image] Available at: http://rejoiner.com/resources/amazon-recommendations-secret-selling-online/ [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

Paul, I. (2013). [image] Available at: https://www.techhive.com/article/2024221/netflix-adds-personalized-profiles-with-recommendations-for-your-entire-household.html [Accessed 11 Nov. 2017].

 

Spread Happiness to the World: Positive Emotion Can Make Videos to Go Viral

Image: Rawpixel@unsplash

Why GO VIRAL?

In the modern-day digital world, people are overwhelmed by countless videos, images, messages, and information. It is surely marketers’ goal to make the delivered message stands out in the crowd. By making the content to become viral is to encourage people to involve with sharing. One of the most significant involvements among people in the digital world is to share with one another. The word “contagion” is used to describe this kind of phenomenon of spreading messages (Guadagno et al., 2013). The content will go viral when the message is shared spontaneously and extensively among cyber users on the Internet. Specifically, to videos, emotion plays a significant role to trigger people to click the share button. The question of what kind of emotional video content will people have more reaction comes to marketers’ minds. Some may argue that the appealing emotion is the main trigger while others may suggest that negative emotion is more provocative. However, especially in nowadays information explosion era, positive emotion has higher potential to resonate people’s feeling and to encourage them to share.

Emotion drives people to share.

Emotion seems to take a really important role when driving a viral message. According to an investigation by several researchers, the experience of emotion is the key element that triggers people to forward a message (Dobele et al., 2007, cited in Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead, 2013). The idea of emotional contagion has been illustrated that people’s emotion can be influenced indirectly by people shown in the video and by people who forward the video to them (Guadagno et al., 2013). In another word, senders and receivers want to have similar feelings when they share videos to each other. When senders have strong feelings to certain content, they hope to have the same response in return from their receivers and that is when people would be more likely to forward the videos.

Positive emotion can drive video to go viral.

Once marketers understand the importance of emotional element in the video, what kind of emotion needed to have is the next question. From the experiment by Guadagno, Rempala, Murphy, and Okdie, positive emotions such as cute and funny videos were the two remarkable emotions that participants tended to share the most (Guadagno et al., 2013). Participants would be more willing to share positive emotions rather than negative feelings to friends and families. This result is also supported by another research that surprise, as part of positive emotion, is the most important and strong feeling to trigger people forward the information (Dobele et al., 2007). People like to share things that they don’t expect to happen because they will be amazed or astonished by surprises and that is when people feel aroused.

Taking results from another experiment of watching “Puppyhood” which is a video shown to participants to test their emotional response. (Why Some Videos Go Viral, 2017). The most remarkable positive emotions are Warmth (58%), Happiness (56%), Hilarity (31%), and followed by Surprise (10%). On the other hand, negative emotions are relatively low as Confusion (8%), Contempt (8%), Disgust (4%), and Anger (1%) (Why Some Videos Go Viral, 2017).

Image: (Why Some Videos Go Viral, 2017)

 

Check some great examples of positive viral video that you must have seen before!

• Laughing Chewbacca Mask Lady

This 4 minutes long live video by Candace Payne is the most-watched Facebook live video in 2016 (BBC News, 2017).

Video: (Payne, 2017)

• PPAP（Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen Official）

There’s not much to say, you must know this brain-washing song!

Video: (PPAP（Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen Official）”LONG” ver. ペンパイナッポーアッポーペン「ロング」バージョン／PIKOTARO(ピコ太郎), 2017)

• Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You’re more beautiful than you think

Another good example of a positive viral video is the campaign, “Real Beauty Sketches”, by Dove. The video has more than 67 million views on YouTube now, and the video has been shared and reported by several media since it was released on the Internet (Fast Company, 2017).

Video: (Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You’re more beautiful than you think (3mins), 2017)

Negative emotion can also make videos to go viral as well, isn’t it?

By this point, marketers might wonder the outcome of negative emotion. According to the research, people are more likely to share the disgust and angry video as the most two significant unappealing emotions (Dobele et al., 2007). Furthermore, according to Health, Bell, and Sternberg, in terms of emotional video content, people’s choice of sharing depends on the audience they want to share with (2001, cited in Guadagno et al., 2013). People may form bonds and positive connection with their receivers when they share joyful video. Similarly, people may reinforce the sense of belonging to group members when they share anger video and blame at the same target together (Guadagno et al., 2013). Thus, both positive and negative emotion can encourage people to share and they all have potential to become viral on the web.

Even though it is undeniable that sometimes people’s feeling is triggered by negative emotions such as anger or sadness, it is also essential to think about that most violent or unfavorable videos are usually presented in the humorous tone (Dafonte-Gómez, 2014). By reviewing video list on the Internet, it is easy to see there are numerous videos using ironic and funny tone to mock at silly, angry, or even sad incidents happened locally and globally. One good example worthy to mention would be the video channel “crazyck101” in Taiwan. “crazyck101” is basically an online video channel which uses humorous tone to criticize and comment on current events happened mostly in Asia and sometimes in the globe. Even though most video contents are negative, the most important thing is that the way and the emotion the video is presenting to audiences at the end is using positive emotions like surprise and humor, which amaze people to share with friends and colleagues. That is why almost every video on “crazyck101” goes viral in Taiwan once it is released on the Internet. “crazyck101” has been subscribed by more than 500,000 audiences within only 100 days and the number of subscribers has climbed up to more than a million in one year (Facebook.com, 2017).

Image: (【0924】卡提諾狂新聞 #084 期, 2017)

To Conclude

The ideal goal of marketers is to produce some viral videos that can evoke the power of sharing among individuals. Emotion is surely the key element to arose people’s feeling to share. Several pieces of research have supported the idea that people are more likely to share positive emotional videos. In modern day life with stress and busy schedule, it is better to spread positive energy, warmth, and happiness among individuals and it is also what we want to receive as well.

What do you think?

You must have been shared videos with friends, families, or colleagues at some point on the Internet, right? Which kind of emotion do you think is best to make videos to go viral? Personally, I always like to share videos with inspiring ideas and positive energy to my friends to make their day fresh and happy. How about you? Please feel free to leave a comment below and we can discuss together.

 

Reference

BBC News. (2017). ‘Chewbacca Mom’ on winning Facebook in 2016. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38348401 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Dobele, A., Lindgreen, A., Beverland, M., Vanhamme, J. and van Wijk, R. (2007). Why pass on viral messages? Because they connect emotionally. Business Horizons, [online] 50(4), pp.291-304. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681307000043 [Accessed 22 Oct. 2017].

Dafonte-Gomez, A, , & n.d., ‘The Key Elements of Viral Advertising. From Motivation to Emotion in the Most Shared Videos’, Comunicar, 43, pp. 199-206, Social Sciences Citation Index, EBSCOhost, viewed 23 October 2017.

Facebook.com. (2017). 卡提諾狂新聞. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/pg/crazyck101/about/?ref=page_internal [Accessed 23 Oct. 2017].

Fast Company. (2017). The Story Behind Dove’s Mega Viral “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign | Fast Company. [online] Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/1682823/the-story-behind-doves-mega-viral-real-beauty-sketches-campaign [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Guadagno, R., Rempala, D., Murphy, S. and Okdie, B. (2013). What makes a video go viral? An analysis of emotional contagion and Internet memes. Computers in Human Behavior, [online] 29(6), pp.2312-2319. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213001192 [Accessed 22 Oct. 2017].

Nelson-Field, K., Riebe, E. and Newstead, K. (2013). The emotions that drive viral video. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), [online] 21(4), pp.205-211. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441358213000220 [Accessed 22 Oct. 2017].

‘WHY SOME VIDEOS GO VIRAL’ 2015, Harvard Business Review, 93, 9, pp. 34-6, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 23 October 2017.

Video/Image Reference

【0924】卡提諾狂新聞 #084 期. (2017). [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D98p_OnmvZI&list=PLH2b4YnNI7j0_bTKPQ74JsGAvdrkx16Fh&index=4 [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You’re more beautiful than you think (3mins). (2017). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Payne, C. (2017). It’s the simple joys in life….. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/candaceSpayne/videos/10209653193067040/ [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

PPAP（Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen Official）”LONG” ver. ペンパイナッポーアッポーペン「ロング」バージョン／PIKOTARO(ピコ太郎). (2017). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFlgNoUsr4k [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].

Rawpixel, (2017). [image] Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/5AqFkT1kn-Y [Accessed 24 Oct. 2017].