No excuses for negligence

Email marketing solutions firm iPost has launched a production release of Autotarget, its predictive analytics tool.

Autotarget analyzes data from a company's business channels, segments customers into like-buying "personas," then enables marketers to send targeted emails to each group. It works by defining customers that responded either favorably or poorly to certain offers or campaigns, then "predicting" which are most likely to behave similarly to those respondents. Marketers can then pinpoint the best message type for each group, as well as the optimum time of day to send them.

A recent Habeas study found consumers still perceive email as their primary method of personal and business communication. But despite the growing sophistication of email marketing tools, Return Path reported most marketers continuously fail to personalize their messages. One major repercussion of such negligence is getting messages junked by end users.

At ad:tech Chicago earlier this month, Director Ryan Deutsch of strategic services at StrongMail called email marketing "primitive," lamenting many companies blast the same email to all customers, or barrage individuals with inconsistent messages. To maximize effectiveness, users must be targeted consistently, with messages targeted to their sensibilities, said Deutsch.

But Autotarget is so easy to use, argues iPost CEO Russell McDonald, that "marketers of all levels" should be able to approach customers on a more personal level. Chief Strategy Officer Steve Webster said the new tool provides "a much finer grain of insight."

After a year of using it, clients will "know exactly what kind of customer each of their customers is," Webster added.