The Hypothesis
If you know a person has a high level of intent to purchase, you can better prioritise your email messaging toward them.
The more appropriate you are, the more impact you create. Communicating with a high intent customer versus one with lower intent to purchase is a perfect scenario for serving more impactful messaging. Using this in conjunction with affinity data (product relationships) and loyalty can supercharge your CRM efforts ten fold.
So, when emailing customers who have high intent to purchase, your messaging should be appropriate to that stage. Talking about your brand virtues or breadth of product might not be as impactful at this stage. Instead, personalising messaging to the exact product or category they’re interested in, as well as the logistics of a purchase (delivery, return, warranty, payment options etc.) would be more effective than generic emails.
The Tech You’ll Need
- A CRM or ESP. Basically, a way to send targeted emails.
- The Made With Intent platform or an alternative way to predict and push customer intent data to the above. We don’t mind, honest.
Combined, this will give you the ability to push intent data to wherever you send your emails from. From here, you can segment people who have a high intent or are in the evaluating or deciding phase of their journey, for example.
The Made With Intent platform sends this intent data to customer profiles, meaning you can target high intent customers using our trademarked expected conversion (xC™) metric.
Setting This Up
Here’s a walkthrough of how the Made With Intent platform lets you add intent data to your emails and other communications.
The Target Segments
Any segment of customers classified under high intent would be an appropriate fit for this approach. As would customers in a latter buying stage, such as deciding or committing.
Following our intent-based segmentation framework, the below segments would be the best matches for this play:
Struggling Buyers
This segment is made up of people who have a level of intent to purchase, but a low intent to return. Their momentum will also have decreased, showing they are struggling at this stage of their journey. These customers are a perfect target for an email that reaffirms the virtues of the purchase—reminding them why they should purchase their selected product, and why you’re the best place to do so.
Hesitant Buyers
This segment consists of customers who have reached the evaluating stage of the journey at a minimum and have a high xC™ that has decreased recently. They are past the peak of their intent and the decreasing momentum suggests some form of hesitancy. They may have some concerns or uncertainties, so it’s often useful to address common anxieties of the purchase at this stage.
Basket Builders
These customers have built their basket and have a high level of intent, with good momentum. In this instance they will have most likely left the site, but they also have a strong potential to return back to it. A quick reminder of items in their basket and/or a focus on a product in their basket would be useful at this stage. A discount is likely not required given they have shown good momentum to purchase, but could be a lever to pull if you wanted to close a sale with urgency.
The Impact
How H. Samuel used intent data in their CRM to drive a £96k uplift in just 12 weeks
H. Samuel segmented their customers by those who have purchased in the last six months and have been on site in the last 30 days, but haven't converted. They combined this with Made With Intent’s intent metrics to add context on likelihood to purchase to their customers’ profiles.
From there, within Bloomreach, they were able to segment low, medium and high intent customers. They could then target them with different email campaigns based on their buying stage and try to secure a second purchase.
For example, a high intent customer received more of a sales-focused message enticing them to come back to site soon, based on what the user was looking at, with a reason to buy. Whereas low-to-medium customers received more of a nurture campaign, focused on “don't forget about us” messaging and brand USPs until they triggered a move into a higher likelihood to purchase.
This approach to email resulted in a 12% increase in CTR for H. Samuel’s more targeted, intent-based campaigns and a £96k uplift in just 12 weeks.
More appropriate communication creates a greater impact. If you interpret user behaviour to work out where they are in their purchasing lifecycle (you know, their intent), you can create a much greater impact if you respond to this.
By focusing on your emails to high intent users and tailoring the messaging appropriately, you can improve impact and incremental revenue. But this is just one play of many. Learn more about how Made With Intent can help you unlock post-visit intent for your emails or go to our playbook to see more plays.
