Barclays Personalised Lending Video

Getting email marketing right has been my key mission over the past few weeks. Creating email campaigns that resonate with the recipient and cut above the noise for the target audience is a tough challenge for any marketer.
Dynamic, personalised emails are becoming increasingly common, with tailored offers, copy, imagery and links based on specific customer data. We can now send a customer who hasn't purchased in the past 3 months 20% off vs a regular customer 10% off. Brands are also experimenting with the endless possibilities to use the increasing amounts of data we hold on customers.
A brand who absolutely smashed data-driven personalised targeting through email is Barclays. In the video below you can see how they use extremely specific customer data to explain their offering, proposition and price and deliver the campaign in a fun and engaging way.

The videos appear to be bespoke (in reality there were over 500 names recorded), giving the customer a complete surprise as it feels as thought the video has been filmed especially for them. 

The overall campaign aims to make it clear to customers that Barclays can give you a good estimate of the value of a potential loan before you apply, therefore eliminating the fear of rejection. They also focused clearly on three reasons why customers may want to take out a loan i.e. home improvements, for a car or to consolidate debt. This made the proposition entirely clear for the consumer and provided visual reminders the entire way through of their own potential loan amount. It's almost like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey, but without the fear of having this taken away once applying.

The video was then embedded in to multi-device optimised emails, which were shown to have 106% uplift in open rates in comparison to Barclay's usual email campaigns. They also delivered 1100% uplift in click-through rates, so overall an all-round success.

Delivering these emails to a carefully selected data set, with highly personal and targeted offers, meant that Barclays were able to track and monitor how likely each customer was to convert, based on their past banking habits. Data really is giving marketers the power to shape campaigns like never before. Barclays were even able to address different customers in certain ways, for example over 50s were addressed with their title and surname, whereas under 50s were just addressed by their first name.

Emails are easy to track, fairly cost-effective and are direct channels which marketers can really take advantage of in order to deliver customer-centric communications. Don't let your email campaigns sink in with all the untargeted junk we receive on a daily basis!

Well done Barclays!