As I mentioned yesterday, I’m only privy to the nitty gritty of email campaigns on the Inntopia Marketing Cloud side of things. So, while there’s great stuff happening elsewhere, this is the only place I can dig in.

And dig in is exactly what I want to do.

Because the most important aspect of email, in my questionably-humble opinion, is the fact that it’s one-to-one.

One-to-One

Every email to every recipient is completely unique to some level. Sometimes that’s simply the link and image URLs, sometimes it’s the entire contents of the email based on a long list of data points.

But because what someone sees in an email (and the time they receive it) can be tied to what you as a marketer know about that individual person, this means that you can increase the relevance and performance of an email by tying in more and more insightful, actionable data.

This email from Les Sommets is a perfect example.

Let’s first dig into what data was used to build this campign.

Web Data
The first thing they used was browsing behavior of their guests on their website. They had special code on their site that connected the dots between people in their guest database to visitors on their website.

Transactional Data
But also tied to each of those guests was their purchase history. In other words, Les Sommets not only knew what they were doing on their website, they knew what they had (or hadn’t) purchased from them.

Email History
The last thing I’ll mention is that they knew that guest’s email history. They knew, for example, exactly which emails had recently been sent to each guest.

Add it All Up

By combining these data points together, Les Sommets was able to send an email to all the people who

1. Hadn’t yet purchased their season pass
2. Had been browsing the season pass details page on their website within the last 24 hours
3. Hadn’t received an email about this in the last couple of weeks

When those criteria were satisfied, the email you see above was automatically sent to them. And because of #3 above, individual recipients didn’t get too many of these emails.

The result? Every email – yes, individual emails that cost fractions of a penny to send – generated an average of $30.96 in revenue.

This campaign is such a perfect illustration of why I love email. It’s ideal for turning guest data into automation, it’s designed for one-to-one so you can focus on individual guests doing things that single a ton of intent, and the numbers – especially when those first two points are done well – are untouchable.

One Last Thought

I hope one lesson about email doesn’t get lost here. Specifically, strategy. This email wasn’t about a hard sell, it was about helping people who are hesitating to take the next step.

But the only way you can confidently pinpoint groups like this? Your database.

And just about the only way to deliver a message based on that data that’s will get them to act? Email.

We think about marketing in a lot of ways, but because email can be built on such specific insights about each recipient, it’s a perfect candidate for – as Corey Ryan used to say – marketing that is so good, so helpful, so timely…people would pay for it.

In other words, Les Sommets knew exactly who might have questions about their passes. And giving folks a way to get an answer to those questions is all it took to get them to buy.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.