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!

Vine

 If you haven't heard of/used/had a look at Vine then you need to get on it! It's a new social media site which I think is going to take off very fast! I would say the site is a cross between twitter, instagram and youtube and it allows users to post a six-second video clip and share with other users.

Many celebs, dance groups and wanna-be singers have taken to Vine to provide entertaining and informative content. I did have a go myself but I don't think I'm funny enough!

So clearly with the huge level of entertaining content on social media platforms at the moment- organisations are finding different ways to slide their marketing content in amongst the others.

As vine only provides content creators with a six-second limit, it separates the best, most creative and unique marketing teams from the weak. Companies have to get their thinking caps on in order for their content to be liked, revined and shared.

A suprising company that I saw on the list was Natwest bank....
They used the application to answer customer's frequently asked questions on twitter- a creative way to engage with customers! This meant that customers could find the answers without having to go on the natwest website or google the questions for themselves!

Will definitely make natwest stand out and the vines can be reshared on facebook and twitter for a higher coverage!

 Another interesting vine from Puma which captures attention...


 Bacardi UK showing how brands can be creative with the Vine app.


And finally doritos showing how vine can be used to engage consumers and INVOLVE them in campaigns.

Vine is a fabulous tool used by marketers and I hope you agree!


Steph