Here’s why your E-mail campaigns need a personal touch

Real-time pricing, also known as dynamic pricing strategy is a practice in which businesses set flexible pricing for their products and services based on the market demand. With the advent of A.I., businesses create complex algorithms which base the pricing of their products based on competitor pricing, supply and demand, and other factors in the market. This is a common practice in most industries such as retail, travel, hospitality, entertainment, electricity and public transport.

During the latter half of the last decade, successful email marketing campaigns have a taken a new shape in the form of personalised story-based marketing. Billions of dollars have been splurged on real-time pricing and inventory infrastructure of these email marketing campaigns. In a recent Nielsen study of manufacturers, 68% of respondents said that they face more competitive price pressure than ever, creating new demands for them to be agile and adaptive in setting price and promotion plans for the year. The competition is high and the customers are increasingly choosy and cost conscious, this means that they are easily charmed away from a familiar brand.

The most apt example of real-time pricing and inventory in emails would be Amazon’s emails when one abandons a check out cart. A recent study by Shopify indicated that 67.45% of e-commerce users abandon their cart without checking out. Amazon has built an email marketing campaign that sends out the cart items cost based on dynamic pricing and an inventory update to convince the client into making the purchase. These real-time email campaigns add a sense of personalization to your business which makes the consumer feel comfortable. With the emergence of Big Data, it has become easier to generate these statistics and they’re also used in advertising across the web.

Here are a few do’s and don’ts of real-time email marketing:

• Real-time marketing often means mobile marketing, all clients are mobile oriented and always on the go. Marketers need to meet them on the best or preferred channel, this may mean sending out coupons or links to your app store.
• Don’t go overboard, there are times when some real-time responses can be extremely creepy and may cause privacy concerns. The last thing you want is to appear to be too in-your-face with a customer.
• Build a strong foundation, focus on establishing a foundation for enabling automated processes and this begins with ensuring you have the best data you possibly can.

To summarise real-time email marketing pricing strategy, here are its benefits:

1. Automated Communication
   One of the most valuable benefits of marketing automation is being able to communicate, in real-time, with customers at the most critical points along their user lifecycle. Email marketing is already a crucial part of the vast majority of marketing strategies. But, by using real-time automation, it can be taken to the next level.


2. Better Consumer Profiles
   Successful marketing efforts must, in some way, depend on being able to create the most unique and personalised journey for a consumer. Building the best possible experience will not only keep a brand top-of-mind but will also keep that customer coming back.


3. Better Testing and Implementation
   Real-time marketing automation performs at its best when marketers focus on continuous process improvements and experimentation. So understanding what works best and most efficiently is something every organisation has to strive towards.

Using a real-time pricing & inventory mechanism in emails and interactions with eager customers is a great way to make them feel special using personalised information and user-specific offers. Real-time email interactions increase trust, brand equity and have even resulted in increased sales! It’s never been easier to personalise interactions and getting in on this action is a no-brainer. It's time to start personalising!