TShawna Dahlin, Senior Email Marketing at Microsoft, says, “We are sending emails to sell Xbox 'Call of Duty' to mothers who may have just bought their first smartphone.”
However, establishing a profile of Microsoft users to achieve relevant segmentation and be able to send relevant messages to users was not an easy task, given the heterogeneity of the databases they had available. Their initial idea was to establish a consistent data infrastructure and integrate all sources (online buyers, brick-and-mortar, web subscribers…), but given the slow speed they expected from this process, they decided to get started with the resources they had. So, they increased the volume of emails and established a segmentation method based on user behavior.
Before establishing the segmentation, they asked themselves the question “What do we want to talk to our users about?” Thus, working together with the marketing and customer service teams, they established a strategy of interesting content for Microsoft that was consistent with the concerns that customers regularly express.
After this, the question was: What information do we have uzbekistan business email list about users? Most of the database is made up of on and offline clients, so the main information that Microsoft had was:
Another very important aspect that Microsoft's strategy teaches us is not to be too specific in segmentation. Ending up with too many segments is not efficient, since it increases the amount of resources we need to produce content, send it and analyze the results obtained. And therefore, it will reduce the ROI of the strategy. The idea was to create segments that allow us to send relevant content without fragmenting the database in an unsustainable and unprofitable way.
However, small and very specific segments may not allow us to have an efficient routine sending strategy, but they can be positive for small, one-off actions. For example, Microsoft has the information of users who have bought the Surface product and when a line of accessories for this product was released, they were able to target them specifically, increasing the profitability of the action.
Source: MarketingSherpa
Source: MarketingSherpa
Implementing the segmentation strategy without waiting for the IT department to have an appropriate data infrastructure ready made the implementation process arduous, but it also allowed them to see which strategies worked and which didn't. So, in a second phase, with the development of this infrastructure solution, they were able to automate processes that had demonstrated good results.
This is a great effort by Microsoft to gather all the information they could from their users and use it in their content strategy. An effort that ultimately had a significant reward, with a 600% increase in their revenues through email.
