How to Use Event-based Targeting to Win More Customers

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We hear a lot from marketers on using event-based targeting to win customers. But what if we can make it even better?

An interesting thing happened.

I was browsing through some e-commerce websites along with my brother to buy utility items for our new space. I was multitasking, not because I had a long list of things to purchase but because I had to keep an eye on my hyper-impulsive-buyer brother.

We got few things in each of our carts, and just then, the plumber rang the doorbell. We rushed to get our plumbing fixed. Our online cart isn’t running away anyway, right? By the time we were done with the plumbing woes, I had one notification on my phone reminding me to complete the purchase. But being the lazy duck that I am, I choose to go for a hot cup of coffee over online shopping.

However, my brother is a different ball game altogether. The moment he received the notification, he jumped onto his system to finish the purchase. Frankly, who buys a new fishing rod when you already have 3 in the closet? I was super impressed with his discipline.

Over the coffee, while I was cursing him for wasting another 50 bucks, I was also thinking how a simple notification can drive someone to make the final purchase. But then, why I haven’t made my purchase yet? While the store was successful in targeting us at the right time converting my brother’s purchase, it wasn’t able to convert me into a buyer.  

Finding the sweet spot for targeted marketing

“Add to Cart” is tough, but “Proceed to Payment” is the toughest.

Therefore, getting users interested and engaged on the platform is not enough. You need to lead them till the very end of the purchase funnel (and even further) to fulfill the end goal of making profits. Effective marketing campaigns help in achieving this goal.

There are 3 crucial elements that ensure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns:   

In the case of my brother and me, we got notified, the store nailed timely and relevant targeting. But while crafting the message, the relevance was absent. Thus the same notification didn’t work for me as it did for him.

While for both of us the time element in the user journey was the same, our motivations and hence the behaviors are entirely different. While he is a habitual spender, I need a stronger motivation (maybe a good discount) to leave that cup of coffee and get back to shopping. To achieve this, segmentation of the users wrt their user behavior works remarkably well in creating relevant messaging for each user.

The idea is to get all of the 3 elements and ensure that your marketing campaigns are useful as well as relevant for the user. By using Smart Triggers and Segmentation together, you can successfully do this.

Using Smart Triggers

Smart triggers enable you to trigger event-based campaign actions and notifications. It helps in engaging the users at the right time generating the optimum responses. Smart triggers can generate as much as 4X higher conversions than push campaigns. Thus they become pivotal in user onboarding, driving user engagement, and retargeting the funnel drop-offs. Otherwise, if you use the Office 365 shared calendar, a trigger could be sharing it with all attendees so that they know who’s coming.

We have discussed Smart Triggers in a lot more detail in our earlier post while introducing Real-Time Triggers and Exit Intent Notifications.

Smart Triggers help in nailing highly personalized messaging and perfecting message delivery time. By using behavioral segmentation capabilities, you can add the missing component of right targeting to reach the sweet spot.

Using Behavioral Segmentation

Segmentation helps in improving the campaign targeting by delving deeper into user preferences – analyzing user history and behavior patterns. It also enables marketers to target a user segment created basis the most significant user properties or traits.

In fact, our clients have been able to drive 120% premium subscriptions using segmentation.

You can target a variety of use cases with comprehensive segmentation parameters. Here is a sample screenshot from our dashboard showing how marketers can implement behavioral segments directly.

How to use Behavioral Segmentation with event-based targeting (Smart Triggers)

Let’s get back to my experience in which the e-commerce store used smart triggers to retarget the users in the cart abandonment scenarios.

In this case, we can divide the users into two segments – habitual spender and inactive buyer. A habitual spender such as my brother can be defined as the user who has made at least one purchase in the last 30 days. These users have a high probability of completing a purchase and could be targeted with a simple reminder. An inactive user such as me could be defined as the user who has not made a single purchase in the last 30 days. These are the inactive users who need some attractive incentive to make the purchase.

Impact on your ROI

Having a one-to-one conversation with your customers is essential not only to convert them but also to improve your ROI significantly. Segmentation helps in pushing the discounts to users judiciously. Rather than sending the same discount to everyone, you can frame the messaging as per the user motivations. While an inactive buyer needs a stronger push with an attractive discount, a habitual spender could be attracted by a timely reminder. Thus customer segmentation helps in improving the campaign ROI by increasing impact and decreasing the campaign cost.

For delivering impactful marketing campaigns, it is necessary to make the customer experience as exclusive as possible. An intelligent marketing automation suite can be your one-stop solution to achieve this feat.

To ensure that you don’t ruin your night’s sleep in achieving this, we have gone a step ahead to add the sophisticated feature. You can now deliver end-to-end personalization in all the marketing campaigns through behavioral segmentation in Smart Triggers powered by MoEngage.

Check out this exciting feature on our dashboard for free today. Let us know about your feedback or success story or both at [email protected]. We would love to hear your perspective.