Our blog

There are a variety of email domains out there - which do you use? You may have stuck with your original, housed at aol.com or Hotmail.com. Or maybe you are more of a Gmail.com person, known as the domain of ‘techies’ and academia. Stereotypes abound for a whole range of other email providers. If you’re reading this in the office, there’s a good bet that you’re using an Outlook account…or perhaps you’re solely Apple-focused, and cherish your mac.com or me.com address.

Whatever the platform, marketing automation experts are taking its features into account and actively marketing towards you. Tailoring campaigns to reflect particular email platforms can make a world of difference.

Platform-specific

On May 3rd, ModCloth sent a seemingly innocuous weekly email to subscribers. If sent to a Gmail account, however, the email was triggered to display a message along the top encouraging users to “‘Star’ our emails so you don’t miss any future ModCloth messages!” ‘Starring,’ as a rule, is an action specific to the Gmail platform. With the way their new inbox layout works, repeated starring of a brand’s emails means that any future mailings will land squarely in the ‘priority inbox’ – front, center, and never in spam. This, obviously, is the Holy Grail for email marketers, and ModCloth tailored their email to entice those Gmail users specifically.

Never fear! ModCloth planned for this contingency, too, creating a standard template that would show a similar, but differently worded message in other inboxes.

In this way, ModCloth email recipients got the best of both worlds: Gmail users felt specially tended-to, and were given specific instructions that could pay big dividends for the brand (placement in Priority Inbox). Other email users received the sort of email they would have expected anyway, with no harm done! This is a situation where everyone won.

Lesson learned

We’ve said it before – while ‘automation’ sounds depersonalized, ‘marketing automation’ is in fact anything but. Since marketing automation campaigns are triggered off of specific client attributes or behaviors, they’re actually one of the most individualized ways to reach customers. Adding a layer of platform personalization on top of this further ensures that shoppers receive the most customized emails possible, something they’ll surely appreciate.

Have you seen any other examples of tailoring to specific platforms, above and beyond the normal variables (remember: some domains disable GIFs or images)? Let us hear ‘em in comments!

Like what you see? Check us out on Facebook, twitter, or Pinterest!