18 Months Away And Then BOOM, The Customer Reappears: Action Streams

In old-school print, you segment the customer (16-18 months of recency, 1 life-to-date purchase), look at historical performance (profitable or not), then decide whether you send a bunch of paper to the customer. You throw 84 pages in the mail and hope for 1% of customers to buy something, the rest is pure waste.

In traditional e-commerce, the 16-18 month 1x customer gets your standard array of 5-20 batch-and-blast email campaigns per week, not personalized (from a merchandising standpoint).

Smarter e-commerce professionals personalize "what" the customer sees in email marketing based on historical purchase activity. These professionals generate 20% to 50% better click-through and conversion rates than traditional e-commerce professionals generate.

Modern e-commerce gurus POUNCE on the slightest bit of customer interest. When the 16-18 month 1x customer decides to visit your website, it's "action time".

• The customer is moved into a separate email "stream".
• Content shifts from education / entertainment (designed to create engagement) to "buying something now". Many of you already do "some" of this (cart abandonment programs) ... but your personalized "Action Stream" should match purchase history with what the customer just looked at. If you were ever going to offer a discount/promotion, this might be a good time to explore the topic.

Are "Action Streams" hard work? Sure.

Action Streams are also your future, if you're not already doing something comparable.

• Use social / video to keep the customer interested.
• Use batch-and-blast email campaigns to link social / video to commerce.
• Use Action Streams to POUNCE on customers who just visited your website and showed the slightest bit of interest in your brand.