Date Driven Marketing

Send the right message at the right time with date driven marketing

It’s often said that the secret to great comedy is timing.  The same is true of great marketing.

Every business has a story to tell. A compelling thing they need to say to each of their customers at a specific moment in time. The problem is once that time has passed, the compelling thing can become a little less compelling. The moment has passed.

Getting the timing right when sending marketing communications can be tricky.  I’m not referring to the time of day that an email should be sent.  I’m referring to how you can send super relevant marketing that is personalised based on the activity of each individual customer.

Websand will help you to find the right moment to tell your story, to manage your customer journey’s or to even to link marketing activity to your product lifecycle.

We call this date driven marketing and it’s a great way to create clever communication.

The video below explains things more more detail, we’d love your feedback on it.

Time sensitive marketing

One constant we all face as marketers is time.  It’s something that you need to be able to manage in order to hit the marketing promised land of ‘sending the right message to the right person at the right time.”

Customer segmentation by activity date

If you have customers and you’re looking to improve customer engagement and segmentation based on previous activity is probably a very good place to start.

For example understanding was people who haven’t bought from you for some length of time versus those people that have bought from you recently.

Typically you would create segmentation like this based on a date range so using a calendar.  The problem with that is that the activity of your customers changes all the time and every day is a new day.

Date Driven Marketing in context of ‘Today’

For us we have a slightly different approach.  Using Websand, you are able to create data driven marketing is based on customer behaviour in the context of today.

Let’s take today and draw line.

So based on today you have your things that have happened in the past (before today) and will happen in the future (after today).

Before today, for example could be based on the days since…

• somebody has bought something.
• someone has attended an event.
• someone is responded to marketing email.

After today, for example could be based on the days before…

• the end of a subscription, a contract renewal date,
• an upcoming event.
• or even somebody’s birthday.

These are events that you know happen at some point in the future – in relation to ‘today’.

The complexity is that will be different for each customer.  

 

Here’s how we handle it in Websand.

Let’s take we have an understanding that if someone has bought from us say 14 days ago we know they are more likely to buy from us in the future.

Cross selling to customers

So using Websand, we can create a rule that automatically segments your customers and triggers a marketing message to customers 14 days after their purchase.

Once set up, this rule will work every day.  Your market strategy is alive and well.  Driven by the behaviour of your customers. 

The same rule can be applied upcoming events (the future).  Provided you have collected the date, you can build a countdown to that date field using Websand.

And, this countdown will be applied uniquely to each customer.

Subscription marketing – managing Contract renewal

For example – you want to build a marketing strategy that is based triggered 21 days to contract renewal, 7 days and 2 days to contract renewal.

To make that effective and test the strategy – you need to run this process every single day. 

That is a lot of hard work – but Websand can handle it for you.

Set up the rules based on your contract renewal date, and Websand will apply this rule every day. 

Segmenting your customers into those that are 21 days from contract renewal 7 days and 2 days from contract renewal AND sending them the marketing message you have created for that audience.

 

Customer Segmentation in the context of ‘time’

You may also want to understand the behaviour of your customers based on a period of time.  

Again the reference point of this period in time is driven by customer behaviour, and this changes every day.

So let’s see you want to understand the number of people you bought from you more than seven days ago.

Using Websand, you can create a rule around that point in time seven days ago.  Based on that create a rule from events that happened either more than seven days ago or between seven days ago and today.

The context of this rule changes every day, so the rule is recalculated every single day and the results are effectively in real time.

The same process can also be used on dates in the future.  

This is really useful for nurture strategies, and for subscription based businesses (where the customer end date is known).

Here is the full picture of what you can create with date driven segmentation using the Websand segment wizard.

On a day

Rules based on the number of days in the future or the past (based on today).

Before or After a day in the past

Rules based on the number of days before or after a selected day in the past (based on today).

Before or After a day in the future

Rules based on the number of days before or after a selected day in the future (based on today).

 

Benefits of Date Driven Marketing

Making is easier for marketing professionals to send the right message to the right people at the right time.

Creates a process for your marketing strategy.  Your marketing moves with time, automatically.

Less admin. No batch driven time related messages.

Improved customer engagement – create marketing messages that are relevant and in context to time.

Date driven marketing makes retention marketing, loyalty marketing, customer lifecycle marketing and drip campaigns easy to put in place.

It’s not just restricted to dates, you can mix date driven marketing with other data you collect.  Mix your searches with product items, number of previous purchases, customer demographics or customer lifetime value, and create something really special.

Sign up for a demo

Sign up for a demo and we’ll show you how Websand can super-charge your your marketing performance and move customer engagement off the chart through date driven marketing.

Book a call to arrange a trial or fill out the form below and we’ll show you how!