Reading Time: 9 minutes In marketing, data isn’t a buzzword. It’s the lifeblood of all successful campaigns. But are you truly harnessing its power, or are you drowning in a sea of information? To answer this question (and many others), we sat down with Ankur Kothari, a seasoned Martech expert, to dive deep into this crucial topic. This interview, originally conducted for Chapter 6 of “The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die” explores how businesses can translate raw data into actionable insights that drive real results. Ankur shares his wealth of knowledge on identifying valuable customer engagement data, distinguishing between signal and noise, and ultimately, shaping real-time strategies that keep companies ahead of the curve.   Ankur Kothari Q&A Interview 1. What types of customer engagement data are most valuable for making strategic business decisions? Primarily, there are four different buckets of customer engagement data. I would begin with behavioral data, encompassing website interaction, purchase history, and other app usage patterns. Second would be demographic information: age, location, income, and other relevant personal characteristics. Third would be sentiment analysis, where we derive information from social media interaction, customer feedback, or other customer reviews. Fourth would be the customer journey data. We track touchpoints across various channels of the customers to understand the customer journey path and conversion. Combining these four primary sources helps us understand the engagement data. 2. How do you distinguish between data that is actionable versus data that is just noise? First is keeping relevant to your business objectives, making actionable data that directly relates to your specific goals or KPIs, and then taking help from statistical significance. Actionable data shows clear patterns or trends that are statistically valid, whereas other data consists of random fluctuations or outliers, which may not be what you are interested in. You also want to make sure that there is consistency across sources. Actionable insights are typically corroborated by multiple data points or channels, while other data or noise can be more isolated and contradictory. Actionable data suggests clear opportunities for improvement or decision making, whereas noise does not lead to meaningful actions or changes in strategy. By applying these criteria, I can effectively filter out the noise and focus on data that delivers or drives valuable business decisions. 3. How can customer engagement data be used to identify and prioritize new business opportunities? First, it helps us to uncover unmet needs. By analyzing the customer feedback, touch points, support interactions, or usage patterns, we can identify the gaps in our current offerings or areas where customers are experiencing pain points. Second would be identifying emerging needs. Monitoring changes in customer behavior or preferences over time can reveal new market trends or shifts in demand, allowing my company to adapt their products or services accordingly. Third would be segmentation analysis. Detailed customer data analysis enables us to identify unserved or underserved segments or niche markets that may represent untapped opportunities for growth or expansion into newer areas and new geographies. Last is to build competitive differentiation. Engagement data can highlight where our companies outperform competitors, helping us to prioritize opportunities that leverage existing strengths and unique selling propositions. 4. Can you share an example of where data insights directly influenced a critical decision? I will share an example from my previous organization at one of the financial services where we were very data-driven, which made a major impact on our critical decision regarding our credit card offerings. We analyzed the customer engagement data, and we discovered that a large segment of our millennial customers were underutilizing our traditional credit cards but showed high engagement with mobile payment platforms. That insight led us to develop and launch our first digital credit card product with enhanced mobile features and rewards tailored to the millennial spending habits. Since we had access to a lot of transactional data as well, we were able to build a financial product which met that specific segment’s needs. That data-driven decision resulted in a 40% increase in our new credit card applications from this demographic within the first quarter of the launch. Subsequently, our market share improved in that specific segment, which was very crucial. 5. Are there any other examples of ways that you see customer engagement data being able to shape marketing strategy in real time? When it comes to using the engagement data in real-time, we do quite a few things. In the recent past two, three years, we are using that for dynamic content personalization, adjusting the website content, email messaging, or ad creative based on real-time user behavior and preferences. We automate campaign optimization using specific AI-driven tools to continuously analyze performance metrics and automatically reallocate the budget to top-performing channels or ad segments. Then we also build responsive social media engagement platforms like monitoring social media sentiments and trending topics to quickly adapt the messaging and create timely and relevant content. With one-on-one personalization, we do a lot of A/B testing as part of the overall rapid testing and market elements like subject lines, CTAs, and building various successful variants of the campaigns. 6. How are you doing the 1:1 personalization? We have advanced CDP systems, and we are tracking each customer’s behavior in real-time. So the moment they move to different channels, we know what the context is, what the relevance is, and the recent interaction points, so we can cater the right offer. So for example, if you looked at a certain offer on the website and you came from Google, and then the next day you walk into an in-person interaction, our agent will already know that you were looking at that offer. That gives our customer or potential customer more one-to-one personalization instead of just segment-based or bulk interaction kind of experience. We have a huge team of data scientists, data analysts, and AI model creators who help us to analyze big volumes of data and bring the right insights to our marketing and sales team so that they can provide the right experience to our customers. 7. What role does customer engagement data play in influencing cross-functional decisions, such as with product development, sales, and customer service? Primarily with product development — we have different products, not just the financial products or products whichever organizations sell, but also various products like mobile apps or websites they use for transactions. So that kind of product development gets improved. The engagement data helps our sales and marketing teams create more targeted campaigns, optimize channel selection, and refine messaging to resonate with specific customer segments. Customer service also gets helped by anticipating common issues, personalizing support interactions over the phone or email or chat, and proactively addressing potential problems, leading to improved customer satisfaction and retention. So in general, cross-functional application of engagement improves the customer-centric approach throughout the organization. 8. What do you think some of the main challenges marketers face when trying to translate customer engagement data into actionable business insights? I think the huge amount of data we are dealing with. As we are getting more digitally savvy and most of the customers are moving to digital channels, we are getting a lot of data, and that sheer volume of data can be overwhelming, making it very difficult to identify truly meaningful patterns and insights. Because of the huge data overload, we create data silos in this process, so information often exists in separate systems across different departments. We are not able to build a holistic view of customer engagement. Because of data silos and overload of data, data quality issues appear. There is inconsistency, and inaccurate data can lead to incorrect insights or poor decision-making. Quality issues could also be due to the wrong format of the data, or the data is stale and no longer relevant. As we are growing and adding more people to help us understand customer engagement, I’ve also noticed that technical folks, especially data scientists and data analysts, lack skills to properly interpret the data or apply data insights effectively. So there’s a lack of understanding of marketing and sales as domains. It’s a huge effort and can take a lot of investment. Not being able to calculate the ROI of your overall investment is a big challenge that many organizations are facing. 9. Why do you think the analysts don’t have the business acumen to properly do more than analyze the data? If people do not have the right idea of why we are collecting this data, we collect a lot of noise, and that brings in huge volumes of data. If you cannot stop that from step one—not bringing noise into the data system—that cannot be done by just technical folks or people who do not have business knowledge. Business people do not know everything about what data is being collected from which source and what data they need. It’s a gap between business domain knowledge, specifically marketing and sales needs, and technical folks who don’t have a lot of exposure to that side. Similarly, marketing business people do not have much exposure to the technical side — what’s possible to do with data, how much effort it takes, what’s relevant versus not relevant, and how to prioritize which data sources will be most important. 10. Do you have any suggestions for how this can be overcome, or have you seen it in action where it has been solved before? First, cross-functional training: training different roles to help them understand why we’re doing this and what the business goals are, giving technical people exposure to what marketing and sales teams do. And giving business folks exposure to the technology side through training on different tools, strategies, and the roadmap of data integrations. The second is helping teams work more collaboratively. So it’s not like the technology team works in a silo and comes back when their work is done, and then marketing and sales teams act upon it. Now we’re making it more like one team. You work together so that you can complement each other, and we have a better strategy from day one. 11. How do you address skepticism or resistance from stakeholders when presenting data-driven recommendations? We present clear business cases where we demonstrate how data-driven recommendations can directly align with business objectives and potential ROI. We build compelling visualizations, easy-to-understand charts and graphs that clearly illustrate the insights and the implications for business goals. We also do a lot of POCs and pilot projects with small-scale implementations to showcase tangible results and build confidence in the data-driven approach throughout the organization. 12. What technologies or tools have you found most effective for gathering and analyzing customer engagement data? I’ve found that Customer Data Platforms help us unify customer data from various sources, providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions across touch points. Having advanced analytics platforms — tools with AI and machine learning capabilities that can process large volumes of data and uncover complex patterns and insights — is a great value to us. We always use, or many organizations use, marketing automation systems to improve marketing team productivity, helping us track and analyze customer interactions across multiple channels. Another thing is social media listening tools, wherever your brand is mentioned or you want to measure customer sentiment over social media, or track the engagement of your campaigns across social media platforms. Last is web analytical tools, which provide detailed insights into your website visitors’ behaviors and engagement metrics, for browser apps, small browser apps, various devices, and mobile apps. 13. How do you ensure data quality and consistency across multiple channels to make these informed decisions? We established clear guidelines for data collection, storage, and usage across all channels to maintain consistency. Then we use data integration platforms — tools that consolidate data from various sources into a single unified view, reducing discrepancies and inconsistencies. While we collect data from different sources, we clean the data so it becomes cleaner with every stage of processing. We also conduct regular data audits — performing periodic checks to identify and rectify data quality issues, ensuring accuracy and reliability of information. We also deploy standardized data formats. On top of that, we have various automated data cleansing tools, specific software to detect and correct data errors, redundancies, duplicates, and inconsistencies in data sets automatically. 14. How do you see the role of customer engagement data evolving in shaping business strategies over the next five years? The first thing that’s been the biggest trend from the past two years is AI-driven decision making, which I think will become more prevalent, with advanced algorithms processing vast amounts of engagement data in real-time to inform strategic choices. Somewhat related to this is predictive analytics, which will play an even larger role, enabling businesses to anticipate customer needs and market trends with more accuracy and better predictive capabilities. We also touched upon hyper-personalization. We are all trying to strive toward more hyper-personalization at scale, which is more one-on-one personalization, as we are increasingly capturing more engagement data and have bigger systems and infrastructure to support processing those large volumes of data so we can achieve those hyper-personalization use cases. As the world is collecting more data, privacy concerns and regulations come into play. I believe in the next few years there will be more innovation toward how businesses can collect data ethically and what the usage practices are, leading to more transparent and consent-based engagement data strategies. And lastly, I think about the integration of engagement data, which is always a big challenge. I believe as we’re solving those integration challenges, we are adding more and more complex data sources to the picture. So I think there will need to be more innovation or sophistication brought into data integration strategies, which will help us take a truly customer-centric approach to strategy formulation.   This interview Q&A was hosted with Ankur Kothari, a previous Martech Executive, for Chapter 6 of The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die. Download the PDF or request a physical copy of the book here. The post Ankur Kothari Q&A: Customer Engagement Book Interview appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 6 minutes What is marketing without data? Assumptions. Guesses. Fluff. For Chapter 6 of our book, “The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die,” we spoke with Alec Haase, Product GTM Lead, Commerce and AI at Hightouch, to explore how engagement data can truly inform critical business decisions.  Alec discusses the different types of customer behaviors that matter most, how to separate meaningful information from the rest, and the role of systems that learn over time to create tailored customer experiences. This interview provides insights into using data for real-time actions and shaping the future of marketing. Prepare to learn about AI decision-making and how a focus on data is changing how we engage with customers.   Alec Haase Q&A Interview 1. What types of customer engagement data are most valuable for making strategic business decisions? It’s a culmination of everything. Behavioral signals — the actual conversions and micro-conversions that users take within your product or website. Obviously, that’s things like purchases. But there are also other behavioral signals marketers should be using and thinking about. Things like micro-conversions — maybe that’s shopping for a product, clicking to learn more about a product, or visiting a certain page on your website. Behind that, you also need to have all your user data to tie that to. So I know someone took said action; I can follow up with them in email or out on paid social. I need the user identifiers to do that. 2. How do you distinguish between data that is actionable versus data that is just noise? Data that’s actionable includes the conversions and micro-conversions — very clear instances of “someone did this.” I can react to or measure those. What’s becoming a bit of a challenge for marketers is understanding that there’s other data that is valuable for machine learning or reinforcement learning models, things like tags on the types of products customers are interacting with. Maybe there’s category information about that product, or color information. That would otherwise look like noise to the average marketer. But behind the scenes, it can be used for reinforcement learning. There is definitely the “clear-cut” actionable data, but marketers shouldn’t be quick to classify things as noise because the rise in machine learning and reinforcement learning will make that data more valuable. 3. How can customer engagement data be used to identify and prioritize new business opportunities? At Hightouch, we don’t necessarily think about retroactive analysis. We have a system where we have customer engagement data firing in that we then have real-time scores reacting to. An interesting example is when you have machine learning and reinforcement learning models running. In the pet retailer example I gave you, the system is able to figure out what to prioritize. The concept of reinforcement learning is not a marketer making rules to say, “I know this type of thing works well on this type of audience.” It’s the machine itself using the data to determine what attribute responds well to which offer, recommendation, or marketing campaign. 4. How can marketers ensure their use of customer engagement data aligns with the broader business objectives? It starts with the objectives. It’s starting with the desired outcome and working your way back. That whole flip of the paradigm is starting with outcomes and letting the system optimize. What are you trying to drive, and then back into the types of experiences that can make that happen? There’s personalization. When we talk about data-driven experiences and personalization, Spotify Wrapped is the North Star. For Spotify Wrapped, you want to drive customer stickiness and create a brand. To make that happen, you want to send a personalized email. What components do you want in that email? Maybe it’s top five songs, top five artists, and then you can back into the actual event data you need to make that happen. 5. What role does engagement data play in influencing cross-functional decisions such as those in product development, sales, or customer service? For product development, it’s product analytics — knowing what features users are using, or seeing in heat maps where users are clicking. Sales is similar. We’re using behavioral signals like what types of content they’re reading on the site to help inform what they would be interested in — the types of products or the types of use cases. For customer service, you can look at errors they’ve run into in the past or specific purchases they’ve made, so that when you’re helping them the next time they engage with you, you know exactly what their past behaviors were and what products they could be calling about. 6. What are some challenges marketers face when trying to translate customer engagement data into actionable insights? Access to data is one challenge. You might not know what data you have because marketers historically may not have been used to the systems where data is stored. Historically, that’s been pretty siloed away from them. Rich behavioral data and other data across the business was stored somewhere else. Now, as more companies embrace the data warehouse at the center of their business, it gives everyone a true single place where data can be stored. Marketers are working more with data teams, understanding more about the data they have, and using that data to power downstream use cases, personalization, reinforcement learning, or general business insights. 7. How do you address skepticism or resistance from stakeholders when presenting data-driven recommendations? As a marketer, I think proof is key. The best thing is if you’ve actually run a test. “I think we should do this. I ran a small test, and it’s showing that this is actually proving out.” Being able to clearly explain and justify your reasoning with data is super important. 8. What technology or tools have you found most effective for gathering and analyzing customer engagement data? Any type of behavioral event collection, specifically ones that write to the cloud data warehouse, is the critical component. Your data team is operating off the data warehouse. Having an event collection product that stores data in that central spot is really important if you want to use the other data when making recommendations. You want to get everything into the data warehouse where it can be used both for insights and for putting into action. For Spotify Wrapped, you want to collect behavioral event signals like songs listened to or concerts attended, writing to the warehouse so that you can get insights back — how many songs were played this year, projections for next month — but then you can also use those behavioral events in downstream platforms to fire off personalized emails with product recommendations or Spotify Wrapped-style experiences. 9. How do you see the role of customer engagement data evolving in shaping business strategies over the next five years? What we’re excited about is the concept of AI Decisioning — having AI agents actually using customer data to train their own models and decision-making to create personalized experiences. We’re sitting on top of all this behavioral data, engagement data, and user attributes, and our system is learning from all of that to make the best decisions across downstream systems. Whether that’s as simple as driving a loyalty program and figuring out what emails to send or what on-site experiences to show, or exposing insights that might lead you to completely change your business strategy, we see engagement data as the fuel to the engine of reinforcement learning, machine learning, AI agents, this whole next wave of Martech that’s just now coming. But it all starts with having the data to train those systems. I think that behavioral data is the fuel of modern Martech, and that only holds more true as Martech platforms adopt these decisioning and AI capabilities, because they’re only as good as the data that’s training the models.     This interview Q&A was hosted with Alec Haase, Product GTM Lead, Commerce and AI at Hightouch, for Chapter 6 of The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die. Download the PDF or request a physical copy of the book here. The post Alec Haase Q&A: Customer Engagement Book Interview appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 9 minutes In the ever-evolving landscape of customer engagement, staying ahead of the curve is not just advantageous, it’s essential. That’s why, for Chapter 7 of “The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die,” we sat down with Mirela Cialai, a seasoned expert in CRM and Martech strategies at brands like Equinox. Mirela brings a wealth of knowledge in aligning technology roadmaps with business goals, shifting organizational focuses from acquisition to retention, and leveraging hyper-personalization to drive success. In this interview, Mirela dives deep into building robust customer engagement technology roadmaps. She unveils the “PAPER” framework—Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, Refine—a simple yet effective strategy for marketers. You’ll gain insights into identifying gaps in your Martech stack, ensuring data accuracy, and prioritizing initiatives that deliver the greatest impact and ROI. Whether you’re navigating data silos, striving for cross-functional alignment, or aiming for seamless tech integration, Mirela’s expertise provides practical solutions and actionable takeaways.   Mirela Cialai Q&A Interview 1. How do you define the vision for a customer engagement platform roadmap in alignment with the broader business goals? Can you share any examples of successful visions from your experience? Defining the vision for the roadmap in alignment with the broader business goals involves creating a strategic framework that connects the team’s objectives with the organization’s overarching mission or primary objectives. This could be revenue growth, customer retention, market expansion, or operational efficiency. We then break down these goals into actionable areas where the team can contribute, such as improving engagement, increasing lifetime value, or driving acquisition. We articulate how the team will support business goals by defining the KPIs that link CRM outcomes — the team’s outcomes — to business goals. In a previous role, the CRM team I was leading faced significant challenges due to the lack of attribution capabilities and a reliance on surface-level metrics such as open rates and click-through rates to measure performance. This approach made it difficult to quantify the impact of our efforts on broader business objectives such as revenue growth. Recognizing this gap, I worked on defining a vision for the CRM team to address these shortcomings. Our vision was to drive measurable growth through enhanced data accuracy and improved attribution capabilities, which allowed us to deliver targeted, data-driven, and personalized customer experiences. To bring this vision to life, I developed a roadmap that focused on first improving data accuracy, building our attribution capabilities, and delivering personalization at scale. By aligning the vision with these strategic priorities, we were able to demonstrate the tangible impact of our efforts on the key business goals. 2. What steps did you take to ensure data accuracy? The data team was very diligent in ensuring that our data warehouse had accurate data. So taking that as the source of truth, we started cleaning the data in all the other platforms that were integrated with our data warehouse — our CRM platform, our attribution analytics platform, etc. That’s where we started, looking at all the different integrations and ensuring that the data flows were correct and that we had all the right flows in place. And also validating and cleaning our email database — that helped, having more accurate data. 3. How do you recommend shifting organizational focus from acquisition to retention within a customer engagement strategy? Shifting an organization’s focus from acquisition to retention requires a cultural and strategic shift, emphasizing the immense value that existing customers bring to long-term growth and profitability. I would start by quantifying the value of retention, showcasing how retaining customers is significantly more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. Research consistently shows that increasing retention rates by just 5% can boost profits by at least 25 to 95%. This data helps make a compelling case to stakeholders about the importance of prioritizing retention. Next, I would link retention to core business goals by demonstrating how enhancing customer lifetime value and loyalty can directly drive revenue growth. This involves shifting the organization’s focus to retention-specific metrics such as churn rate, repeat purchase rate, and customer LTV. These metrics provide actionable insights into customer behaviors and highlight the financial impact of retention initiatives, ensuring alignment with the broader company objectives. By framing retention as a driver of sustainable growth, the organization can see it not as a competing priority, but as a complementary strategy to acquisition, ultimately leading to a more balanced and effective customer engagement strategy. 4. What are the key steps in analyzing a brand’s current Martech stack capabilities to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement? Developing a clear understanding of the Martech stack’s current state and ensuring it aligns with a brand’s strategic needs and future goals requires a structured and strategic approach. The process begins with defining what success looks like in terms of technology capabilities such as scalability, integration, automation, and data accessibility, and linking these capabilities directly to the brand’s broader business objectives. I start by doing an inventory of all tools currently in use, including their purpose, owner, and key functionalities, assessing if these tools are being used to their full potential or if there are features that remain unused, and reviewing how well tools integrate with one another and with our core systems, the data warehouse. Also, comparing the capabilities of each tool and results against industry standards and competitor practices and looking for missing functionalities such as personalization, omnichannel orchestration, or advanced analytics, and identifying overlapping tools that could be consolidated to save costs and streamline workflows. Finally, review the costs of the current tools against their impact on business outcomes and identify technologies that could reduce costs, increase efficiency, or deliver higher ROI through enhanced capabilities. Establish a regular review cycle for the Martech stack to ensure it evolves alongside the business and the technological landscape. 5. How do you evaluate whether a company’s tech stack can support innovative customer-focused campaigns, and what red flags should marketers look out for? I recommend taking a structured approach and first ensure there is seamless integration across all tools to support a unified customer view and data sharing across the different channels. Determine if the stack can handle increasing data volumes, larger audiences, and additional channels as the campaigns grow, and check if it supports dynamic content, behavior-based triggers, and advanced segmentation and can process and act on data in real time through emerging technologies like AI/ML predictive analytics to enable marketers to launch responsive and timely campaigns. Most importantly, we need to ensure that the stack offers robust reporting tools that provide actionable insights, allowing teams to track performance and optimize campaigns. Some of the red flags are: data silos where customer data is fragmented across platforms and not easily accessible or integrated, inability to process or respond to customer behavior in real time, a reliance on manual intervention for tasks like segmentation, data extraction, campaign deployment, and poor scalability. If the stack struggles with growing data volumes or expanding to new channels, it won’t support the company’s evolving needs. 6. What role do hyper-personalization and timely communication play in a successful customer engagement strategy? How do you ensure they’re built into the technology roadmap? Hyper-personalization and timely communication are essential components of a successful customer engagement strategy because they create meaningful, relevant, and impactful experiences that deepen the relationship with customers, enhance loyalty, and drive business outcomes. Hyper-personalization leverages data to deliver tailored content that resonates with each individual based on their preferences, behavior, or past interactions, and timely communication ensures these personalized interactions occur at the most relevant moments, which ultimately increases their impact. Customers are more likely to engage with messages that feel relevant and align with their needs, and real-time triggers such as cart abandonment or post-purchase upsells capitalize on moments when customers are most likely to convert. By embedding these capabilities into the roadmap through data integration, AI-driven insights, automation, and continuous optimization, we can deliver impactful, relevant, and timely experiences that foster deeper customer relationships and drive long-term success. 7. What’s your approach to breaking down the customer engagement technology roadmap into manageable phases? How do you prioritize the initiatives? To create a manageable roadmap, we need to divide it into distinct phases, starting with building the foundation by addressing data cleanup, system integrations, and establishing metrics, which lays the groundwork for success. Next, we can focus on early wins and quick impact by launching behavior-based campaigns, automating workflows, and improving personalization to drive immediate value. Then we can move to optimization and expansion, incorporating predictive analytics, cross-channel orchestration, and refined attribution models to enhance our capabilities. Finally, prioritize innovation and scalability, leveraging AI/ML for hyper-personalization, scaling campaigns to new markets, and ensuring the system is equipped for future growth. By starting with foundational projects, delivering quick wins, and building towards scalable innovation, we can drive measurable outcomes while maintaining our agility to adapt to evolving needs. In terms of prioritizing initiatives effectively, I would focus on projects that deliver the greatest impact on business goals, on customer experience and ROI, while we consider feasibility, urgency, and resource availability. In the past, I’ve used frameworks like Impact Effort Matrix to identify the high-impact, low-effort initiatives and ensure that the most critical projects are addressed first. 8. How do you ensure cross-functional alignment around this roadmap? What processes have worked best for you? Ensuring cross-functional alignment requires clear communication, collaborative planning, and shared accountability. We need to establish a shared understanding of the roadmap’s purpose and how it ties to the company’s overall goals by clearly articulating the “why” behind the roadmap and how each team can contribute to its success. To foster buy-in and ensure the roadmap reflects diverse perspectives and needs, we need to involve all stakeholders early on during the roadmap development and clearly outline each team’s role in executing the roadmap to ensure accountability across the different teams. To keep teams informed and aligned, we use meetings such as roadmap kickoff sessions and regular check-ins to share updates, address challenges collaboratively, and celebrate milestones together. 9. If you were to outline a simple framework for marketers to follow when building a customer engagement technology roadmap, what would it look like? A simple framework for marketers to follow when building the roadmap can be summarized in five clear steps: Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, and Refine. In one word: PAPER. Here’s how it breaks down. Plan: We lay the groundwork for the roadmap by defining the CRM strategy and aligning it with the business goals. Audit: We evaluate the current state of our CRM capabilities. We conduct a comprehensive assessment of our tools, our data, the processes, and team workflows to identify any potential gaps. Prioritize: initiatives based on impact, feasibility, and ROI potential. Execute: by implementing the roadmap in manageable phases. Refine: by continuously improving CRM performance and refining the roadmap. So the PAPER framework — Plan, Audit, Prioritize, Execute, and Refine — provides a structured, iterative approach allowing marketers to create a scalable and impactful customer engagement strategy. 10. What are the most common challenges marketers face in creating or executing a customer engagement strategy, and how can they address these effectively? The most critical is when the customer data is siloed across different tools and platforms, making it very difficult to get a unified view of the customer. This limits the ability to deliver personalized and consistent experiences. The solution is to invest in tools that can centralize data from all touchpoints and ensure seamless integration between different platforms to create a single source of truth. Another challenge is the lack of clear metrics and ROI measurement and the inability to connect engagement efforts to tangible business outcomes, making it very hard to justify investment or optimize strategies. The solution for that is to define clear KPIs at the outset and use attribution models to link customer interactions to revenue and other key outcomes. Overcoming internal silos is another challenge where there is misalignment between teams, which can lead to inconsistent messaging and delayed execution. A solution to this is to foster cross-functional collaboration through shared goals, regular communication, and joint planning sessions. Besides these, other challenges marketers can face are delivering personalization at scale, keeping up with changing customer expectations, resource and budget constraints, resistance to change, and others. While creating and executing a customer engagement strategy can be challenging, these obstacles can be addressed through strategic planning, leveraging the right tools, fostering collaboration, and staying adaptable to customer needs and industry trends. By tackling these challenges proactively, marketers can deliver impactful customer-centric strategies that drive long-term success. 11. What are the top takeaways or lessons that you’ve learned from building customer engagement technology roadmaps that others should keep in mind? I would say one of the most important takeaways is to ensure that the roadmap directly supports the company’s broader objectives. Whether the focus is on retention, customer lifetime value, or revenue growth, the roadmap must bridge the gap between high-level business goals and actionable initiatives. Another important lesson: The roadmap is only as effective as the data and systems it’s built upon. I’ve learned the importance of prioritizing foundational elements like data cleanup, integrations, and governance before tackling advanced initiatives like personalization or predictive analytics. Skipping this step can lead to inefficiencies or missed opportunities later on. A Customer Engagement Roadmap is a strategic tool that evolves alongside the business and its customers. So by aligning with business goals, building a solid foundation, focusing on impact, fostering collaboration, and remaining adaptable, you can create a roadmap that delivers measurable results and meaningful customer experiences.     This interview Q&A was hosted with Mirela Cialai, Director of CRM & MarTech at Equinox, for Chapter 7 of The Customer Engagement Book: Adapt or Die. Download the PDF or request a physical copy of the book here. The post Mirela Cialai Q&A: Customer Engagement Book Interview appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 10 minutes Picking an omnichannel marketing platform can feel like walking into a tech maze. Every vendor promises personalized customer experiences and 360-degree views. But behind the technical terminologies, most platforms just add noise. Right now, your customers expect seamless, intuitive experiences, whether they’re on your website, checking email, scrolling Instagram, or walking into your store. And they don’t care what platform you’re using. They care that it works. That it feels cohesive. And if your current tools can’t keep up, you’ll feel it in your churn rate, in your campaign ROI, and in the silence when nobody clicks. This article explains how to actually choose an omnichannel marketing automation platform that delivers a measurable, meaningful impact.   What is an Omnichannel Marketing Platform? An omnichannel marketing platform brings all your customer touchpoints—email, SMS, social, web, and more—into a single, unified connected system. It tracks customer behavior across different devices, personalizes communication in real time, and automates actions based on where each customer is in their journey. In short, such platforms allow you to completely harness omnichannel marketing — no more juggling five tools to launch a campaign or manually syncing customer profiles. It’s about delivering the right message, on the right channel, at exactly the right moment, without missing a beat. How Do Omnichannel Marketing Automation Platforms Work? At the core of omnichannel marketing platforms is automation, and it’s what makes them truly powerful. These tools don’t just streamline your marketing, they do the heavy lifting for you by intelligently responding to customer behavior in real time, on the right channel. Here’s how it works: Data Integration: The platform gathers data from every interaction your customers have with your brand, whether it’s a social media click, an email open, or a web visit. It stores and syncs that data, building a comprehensive customer profile. Behavioral Triggers: Based on that profile, the platform automatically triggers personalized actions. If a customer browses a product on your website and abandons it, the system can send them a targeted follow-up email with a discount. Or, if they engage with a post on Instagram, they might receive an SMS with relevant content. Multi-Channel Coordination: Instead of running isolated campaigns across different platforms, omnichannel automation makes sure your messaging is synchronized, no matter where your customer interacts with your brand. The experience is seamless regardless of whether it is conducted on a mobile device, desktop, or in-store. Ultimately, these platforms use automation to enable smarter, more personal marketing, allowing brands to swiftly reach their customers with the right message at the right time. Why is an Omnichannel Marketing Platform So Important for Marketing Teams? Marketing today is about being seen everywhere your customers are and delivering the right message in the right way. An omnichannel marketing platform makes that possible, and here’s why it’s crucial: Drives Better Engagement: Customers expect a smooth experience no matter where they interact with your brand. When your marketing is consistent across email, social media, and your website, it creates a sense of connection. More than just seeing your ads, they’re actually engaging with your brand in a way that feels personalized, familiar, and authentic. Makes Campaigns More Effective: With an omnichannel platform, you can monitor your campaigns in real-time and quickly adjust them if things aren’t going as planned. No more waiting for reports to trickle in. You can make changes on the fly, which means your marketing efforts are always aligned with what’s working at the moment. Allows for True Personalization: Forget generic messaging. An omnichannel marketing platform helps you gather data from every customer interaction, allowing you to tailor your approach based on what each customer is interested in. Builds Stronger Customer Relationships: When you engage with customers across multiple channels in a relevant, timely way, you make them feel seen and valued. This connection goes beyond a single sale. It turns casual buyers into loyal customers who trust your brand to deliver on their needs, no matter where they are. Delivers More Bang for Your Buck: The beauty of automation is that it frees up your team to focus on your omnichannel strategy, while the omnichannel marketing automation platform handles the routine tasks. This efficiency leads to better targeting, reduced costs, and a stronger ROI. You’re reaching the right customers at the right time without wasting effort. Helps You Make Smarter Decisions: All your customer data is centralized, so you’re not guessing anymore. Whether you need to optimize a campaign or uncover new opportunities, the insights provided by the platform allow you to make data-driven decisions that move your business forward. Responds to Customers in Real Time: When someone shows interest in your product, the last thing you want is to lose that momentum. Omnichannel marketing platforms trigger automatic follow-ups based on actions customers take, so they get the right message when they’re most interested, whether it’s through an email, text, or on social media. Keeps Your Brand Consistent: With everything tied together in one platform, your message, tone, and offers stay consistent across channels. No matter where a customer encounters your brand, they’ll have the same experience and brand recognition each time. Elevates the Customer Experience: When all of your channels work together, customers feel like they’re interacting with a brand that really gets them. The result? A better overall customer experience, which translates to stronger loyalty, higher engagement, and more referrals. In short, an omnichannel marketing platform is a game-changer for B2C marketing teams. It brings your efforts together in a way that’s efficient, intelligent, and most importantly, human, making it easier to engage your audience and deliver results.   How to Choose the Right Omnichannel Marketing Platform for Your Team Choosing the right omnichannel marketing platform is a big decision for any team. It’s an investment that can elevate your marketing strategies, enhance omnichannel customer engagement, and improve overall performance. But with so many options available, how do you ensure you’re making the best choice for your team? Here are some key factors to think about. Integration Capabilities: Your platform needs to seamlessly integrate with the tools you already use, so you can focus on what really matters. Whether it’s your CRM, email marketing automation software, or social media platforms, you don’t want to waste time and energy managing multiple systems that don’t talk to each other. Ask yourself, how easily will this platform integrate with and support the tools and platforms you already use? Ease of Use and Customization: A platform that’s difficult to use is more of a burden than a help. Look for one that’s intuitive and easy for your team to get comfortable with. The last thing you want is a tool that causes frustration and slows things down. Think about how user-friendly the platform is for your team. Can you easily customize features to fit your unique needs? Data and Analytics: An omnichannel marketing platform should give you clear, actionable insights so you can make smart, informed decisions. Does the platform provide detailed omnichannel analytics that you can use to refine your campaigns? Can it help you track customer journeys and behaviors across channels? Scalability and Support: Your business is growing, and your platform needs to grow with it. The last thing you want is to outgrow your tool in six months and have to go through the hassle of switching to something new. Check whether the platform is scalable enough to accommodate your future growth. What level of customer support is offered, and how responsive is the team? Now that you have a sense of what to consider when choosing an omnichannel marketing automation platform, let’s dive into the key features to look for.   5 Key Features to Look for in an Omnichannel Marketing Automation Platform You can’t build a high-performing marketing engine founded on disconnected tools and vague customer data. If your team is working across five different platforms to run a single campaign, something’s broken. The tool you pick will either streamline your marketing or slow it down. So, forget the bells and whistles for a moment. What you really need are features that bring clarity to your customer experience. Here are the five features that serve as the foundation of a platform that can scale with your brand. 1. Unified Customer Profiles across Channels Modern marketing starts with understanding. A powerful omnichannel marketing platform should combine customer data from every touchpoint (website visits, email clicks, mobile app activity, purchase history, and other interactions) into a single, continuously updated profile. This unified view helps your team move from being ‘reactive’ to being ‘proactive’. Instead of blasting generic messages, you can deliver relevant content tailored to where that customer is in their journey. It’s the difference between feeling like a brand knows you… and feeling like it’s spam. 2. Behavior-Driven Automation Workflows Static email blasts are outdated. Customers expect relevant, timely communication based on how they engage with your brand. The platform you choose should let you create workflows that automatically trigger actions like sending a reminder, adjusting content, or changing the message channel, based on real-time behavior. For example, a user who browses a product but doesn’t buy it, should receive a well-timed nudge — maybe an email, or a push notification. The point is: your platform needs to adapt to customer intent and behavior, not force every lead down the same path. 3. Real-Time Analytics and Reporting You shouldn’t have to wait 48 hours to know if something flopped. You need to be able to tweak your omnichannel marketing automation strategy in real-time based on what’s happening right now. Does the platform offer real-time insights into campaign performance? Can you adjust tactics immediately based on live data? Also, no one wants 20 meaningless charts. Look for a platform that shows you the vital metrics, like clicks, conversions, and drop-offs, so your team can make quick, sure choices. 4. A Centralized Campaign Builder for Every Channel If you’re logging in and out of separate tools to handle email, SMS, web and mobile push notifications, and in-app messaging, something’s broken. Your omnichannel marketing platform should let you map and launch all of those in one place, from one logic flow. That way, if you’re running a product launch, you can build the entire experience—email, follow-up text, in-app message—all from the same workspace. This keeps your messaging consistent, and it saves your team loads of time. 5. Scalable Personalization Powered by AI Everyone talks about omnichannel personalization. But if it takes your team hours to set up basic name merges or segments, it’s not scalable. A strong platform should help you personalize campaigns at scale using AI, not by making you do more, but by automating based on real customer data. Whether that’s product recommendations, timing messages based on when someone usually engages, or switching up channels depending on preferences, the goal is simple: make it feel like a one-on-one conversation, not a broadcast.   5 Best Omnichannel Marketing Platforms to Increase Customer Engagement 1. MoEngage MoEngage is a powerful customer engagement platform built for B2C marketing teams that want to create seamless, personalized journeys across channels like email, mobile and web push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app messaging, web, and more. It’s designed to help brands understand their customers deeply and act on that understanding in real time. What makes MoEngage stand out is how it brings all your customer data into one unified platform, allowing you to automate complex journeys without jumping between tools or teams. Whether you’re re-engaging an app user, launching an omnichannel campaign, or sending a personalized offer, this platform makes it easy and efficient. No wonder so many brands switch to MoEngage! How Pricing Works: MoEngage offers a tiered pricing model based on Monthly Tracked Users (MTUs). The Growth plan starts around $750/month, but it depends on what features you want to use. Larger brands can opt for the Enterprise plan, which includes more advanced features, higher limits, and dedicated support. Best For: Growth-focused brands that want to deeply personalize customer experiences at scale, particularly in industries like Ecommerce, fintech, media, quick-service restaurants (QSRs), travel, and mobile-first apps. In fact, it’s the perfect Ecommerce marketing automation platform for omnichannel customer engagement. If your team values real-time insights, automation, and customer-centric engagement, MoEngage is likely a great fit. 2. Shopify Plus Shopify Plus is an enterprise-level Ecommerce platform designed to help brands deliver a seamless shopping experience across all customer touchpoints. It enables brands to sell on various platforms, including online stores, mobile apps, social media, and physical retail locations, all managed from a single dashboard. While Shopify Plus does a great job managing omnichannel commerce, it’s not as feature-rich on the marketing automation side. If your team is looking for deep personalization, behavioral segmentation, or advanced journey building, you’ll likely need to connect Shopify with a marketing automation software platform. How Pricing Works: Shopify Plus pricing varies based on specific business requirements and sales volumes. Best For: High-volume omnichannel retail marketers and brands looking for a scalable Ecommerce solution that offers basic omnichannel capabilities and centralized management of multiple sales channels. 3. ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign does a great job of bridging marketing automation with a personal touch. It’s built for businesses that don’t just want to send mass emails, but send smart ones. The platform shines when it comes to customer segmentation, letting you trigger emails, SMS, or even site messages based on real behavior, not just assumptions. That said, it’s not the kind of tool you just open and instantly “get.” The automation builder is powerful, but there’s a learning curve. Still, once you set it up, it runs like a machine that’s personalized, timely, and way less manual effort than you’d expect. How Pricing Works: Pricing starts at $29 per month and scales based on contact volume and feature set. Plans can go up to $149/month or more, depending on business needs. Best For: Small to mid-sized businesses looking for a cost-effective, flexible marketing automation platform with strong segmentation and multichannel engagement tools. (No, we’re not getting into the omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing debate now). 4. HubSpot HubSpot is an all-in-one platform that helps brands grow by focusing on inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. It’s well-suited for those looking to integrate their marketing efforts across various channels, without the need for complex technical skills. Honestly, HubSpot’s strength is in inbound marketing and CRM. However, its capabilities in advanced omnichannel campaign automation aren’t as extensive as those in some other platforms. If you need highly sophisticated marketing features, you may want to look elsewhere. How Pricing Works: Pricing starts at $800 per month for the Marketing Hub. For full access to all features, the Enterprise plan starts at $3,600 per month. Best For: Brands that focus on inbound marketing and CRM, looking for a user-friendly platform to manage omnichannel efforts easily.   Migrate to a Better Omnichannel Marketing Platform Today One thing’s clear: not all omnichannel marketing platforms are created equal. The right platform should feel less like another tool and more like a strategic partner, helping you understand your audience, stay consistent across touchpoints, and make marketing smarter, not harder. MoEngage stands out for this very reason. In fact, our omnichannel marketing platform is built for teams who want more than just dashboards. It’s for marketers who want results. And the best part is, migrating to a customer engagement platform has never been easier. Want to see MoEngage in action? Book a demo today and explore what better marketing looks like. The post How to Choose an Omnichannel Marketing Platform appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 3 minutes In a recent webinar hosted by MoEngage, QSR marketing experts from Radar and Bottle Rocket came together to unpack the findings of the 2025 State of Cross-Channel Marketing for QSRs report.  With more than 800 total survey responses, including 70 from QSR marketers, this report revealed where quick-service restaurants are focusing their energy, what is holding them back, and the emerging strategies reshaping the guest experience. Here is a recap of the key takeaways, expert insights, and actionable advice shared by our panelists.   Where QSRs Are Focused in 2025: Loyalty, Personalization & Speed The webinar kicked off with a deep dive into shifting priorities. Customer engagement and loyalty emerged as the top focus for QSR marketers in 2025, with 80% of respondents increasing investment in customer experience technology. Mobile-first experiences and real-time personalization are no longer optional; they are essential for effective QSR marketing. Nick Patrick, CEO of Radar, put it simply: “Mobile has become the primary interface between QSRs and their customers. Real-time context is what makes that interface intelligent.” Challenges: Disconnected Data, Tech Silos, and Execution Speed While QSRs have the vision, many struggle with execution.  The report found that 60% of QSR leaders still struggle with personalization, and more than a quarter cited siloed data as a top challenge. The panelists echoed these findings, pointing to fragmented systems and misaligned teams as major hurdles. Brendan shared: “The POS system was designed for speed and accuracy, not personalization. But when you can use even a basic signal, like a loyalty status, to prompt a more human, high-touch experience, it makes a real difference.” Strategies That Work: Start Small, Focus Deep, Earn Trust Panelists emphasized the value of starting small with high-impact initiatives like curbside pickup or loyalty nudges. Cross-functional alignment and choosing scalable tech partners were key themes. “Don’t boil the ocean,” Brendan advised. “Start with one moment in the journey that can be improved and work cross-functionally to get it right.” Earning Location Opt-ins the Right Way Location data is a powerful lever for marketing and operations, but only if opt-ins are earned with care. Nick shared a practical framework: “It comes down to three things: transparency, value, and timing. You can’t just ask up front with no context and expect users to say yes.” He pointed to Outback Steakhouse as a standout example: “They clearly explain the value, guide users through branded screens, and then request OS-level permissions. It’s thoughtful, and it works.” AI in Action: Real Business Impact Artificial intelligence was another hot topic. Brendan shared two areas where AI is delivering real value: smarter cross-sell/upsell and feedback intelligence. “Even simple segmentation by daypart or region can lift basket size. Some tools report a 10% increase just by turning it on,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be complex to be effective.” QSR Webinar Recap: Closing Thoughts Whether optimizing app experiences, trying to unify your tech stack, automating manual processes, or building stronger loyalty loops, the advice was clear: start small, stay focused, and partner with tools and teams that can scale with you. Watch the full webinar on demand to explore these examples further and learn how MoEngage, Radar, and Bottle Rocket can help your team accelerate QSR engagement.   The post Digital Meets Dine-In: 5 Expert QSR Engagement Strategies appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 11 minutes Choosing the right drip email software can be a game-changer for your marketing strategy. With a variety of options available, understanding the pricing models and features each tool offers is key to making an informed decision. In this guide, we’ll walk you through essential factors to consider when evaluating pricing, so you can select the best solution that fits your needs and budget for your drip email campaigns. Ready to dive deeper? Let’s explore your options.   What Does Drip Email Marketing Software Cost? Drip email marketing software typically follows a few different pricing models, depending on the provider. Here’s a quick breakdown of the most common ones: Pricing Based on MAUs (Monthly Active Users): You pay based on how many unique subscribers actually engage with your emails (or your system) each month, not your entire list size. It’s a much fairer, scalable way to pay, especially if your audience fluctuates. You only pay for real activity. Flat-Rate Pricing: You pay a fixed monthly fee, regardless of usage, list size, or activity. But flat rates are often bloated to cover all usage types, so you’re likely overpaying if you’re not sending a massive volume of emails. It’s not cost-efficient for scaling brands. List-Based Pricing: You pay based on the total number of contacts in your database, whether they engage or not. However, you end up paying for cold leads, dead emails, and inactive contacts. This makes your costs climb unnecessarily as your list grows. Email Volume-Based Pricing: You’re charged based on how many emails you send each month. It can discourage you from running important nurturing campaigns or re-engagement flows because every email adds to your bill. It’s unpredictable and can spike costs during promotions. For email marketers, this model means added pressure to limit sends, often at the cost of customer experience and long-term engagement. Some platforms even bundle unnecessary features into expensive tiers, which bloats the pricing, especially for features you may not actually need. This is where MoEngage stands out. The platform offers a more transparent and scalable approach so that pricing is aligned to your actual usage and outcomes rather than inflated send limits.   6 Biggest Factors that Affect Drip Email Pricing Drip email pricing depends on several factors. Here are some of the biggest ones: 1. Number of active contacts Some platforms, particularly the ones that use the MAU pricing model, charge based on the number of customers who interact with your emails. The higher the number of active customers, the higher the pricing. 2. List size Managing an email list is easier said than done. Nevertheless, if you have a large database of contacts, you will be charged a higher monthly fee. In this case, pricing will remain the same even if you don’t have many active subscribers on your list. 3. Email volume The number of emails you send plays a big role in pricing. This is because high-volume automated email marketing campaigns require significant infrastructure for email delivery, tracking, and reporting. 4. Advanced features Platforms offering advanced features like RFM segmentation, automation, A/B testing, analytics, and AI-driven personalization typically charge more than others. Some pricing models allow you to opt for some or all of these features, depending on your business requirements. 5. Automation complexity If your drip campaign involves complex workflows, like different stages, conditions, triggers, etc., it can impact the pricing. Automation requires more resources to set up and maintain, which increases the price. 6. Integration with other tools Connecting your email platform with CRMs, Ecommerce tools, or analytics systems can drive up costs, especially if platforms charge extra for native integrations or require third-party connectors. Before signing up, ask yourself: how many of these tools are truly essential? Can any be replaced with ones that integrate more easily? A cluttered tech stack not only costs more but also complicates your workflows.   Top Features to Look For in a Drip Email Marketing Software Since you’re on the lookout for a drip email marketing software platform, focus on the features we’ve mentioned below. Core features that drip email software absolutely needs These features are the must-haves. They are the foundational tools required to automate, personalize, and optimize your email drip campaigns at scale. Journey designer: Easily set up multi-step workflows triggered by parameters like customer actions, behaviors, or time delays with minimal coding. Behavioral targeting: Send emails based on real-time customer behavior, such as cart additions, subscriptions, app activity, and more, for highly relevant messaging. Personalization engine: Dynamically include customer attributes based on past interactions and preferences to personalize emails at scale. High inbox deliverability: Tools and practices that ensure you have a healthy sender reputation and high inbox placement. Campaign optimization with A/B testing: Test different email versions to learn what drives higher engagement and optimize your drip flows continuously. Real-time analytics and insights: Access detailed reports and dashboards that track key drip email marketing metrics like opens, clicks, and conversions, and identify drop-offs in your drip journeys. Other features that are very useful to have These features aren’t absolutely necessary to run an effective campaign, but they can improve customer experience and operational efficiency. AI-based predictive segmentation: Leverage AI to predict customer behavior like churn or likelihood of conversion, and automatically adjust campaigns accordingly. Omnichannel messaging: Integrate messaging across various channels, like push notifications, SMS, WhatsApp, and in-app messaging for a cohesive customer journey. Pre-built templates: Quickly access pre-built, customizable email templates to launch campaigns faster without heavy design work.   9 Steps to Choosing a Drip Email Marketing Software With so many options available in the market, choosing the right drip email marketing software can seem like an uphill battle. No worries! We’ll even walk you through exactly how to evaluate and compare drip email tools for yourself. Once you’ve asked the right questions and gathered the facts during demos, it’s time to break down your decision-making process into clear, actionable steps. Step 1: Define Your Non-Negotiable Features The first step is to make a list of all the features that are necessary for you. For example, if your goal is to send behavior-triggered drip campaigns (like abandoned cart emails or re-engagement nudges), then features like behavioral targeting and multi-step customer journey automation are non-negotiable. On the other hand, if you only need basic scheduled newsletters, you might not need advanced workflow builders or AI recommendations. Once you have a list of non-negotiable features, it becomes easier to narrow down your platform choices. Step 2: Research and Compare All Viable Options Don’t just go with the most well-known or even the most affordable-looking tool. Research platforms that fit your business size and industry. Use peer reviews, comparison guides, and case studies to understand how the platform performs in real-world use cases. Also, remember that low entry pricing can be misleading. What matters is the total cost of ownership. Look for things like hidden fees, integration costs, or feature-based tier upgrades. These will add to the pricing later. Step 3: Book a Personalized Demo (and Demand Proof) When choosing your drip email marketing tool, make sure you request a personalized demo based on your business context, use cases, and workflows. A simple, generic walkthrough isn’t helpful because this is your first real glimpse into how the platform is going to support you long-term. If the demo isn’t tailored to your business, that’s a red flag—because if they can’t offer personalized attention when they’re trying to win your business, you’re unlikely to get it during onboarding or implementation. Ask to see features live, rather than just screenshots or slide decks. If a feature is critical, ask to see it in action. At times, sales teams may promise features that are still ‘in development’. Step 4: Attend the Demo with a List of Questions Once you’ve booked a demo, prepare a checklist of questions, like the one we shared above. This will help you stay focused and gain the clarity you need. Ask whether the features you care about are included in the base plan or locked behind premium tiers. Dig into pricing: will the costs scale predictably as you grow, or are there hidden fees that only show up later? Some platforms may offer attractive deals upfront but raise prices later or charge extra for essentials like API access, automation workflows, or deliverability support. The demo is your chance to surface all of this before signing anything. Step 5: Evaluate Ease of Use The drip email software you choose must be easy to use. Since marketers with little to no technical knowledge are most likely to use the platform, look for solutions that allow you to build email campaigns, segment audiences, and personalize messages easily. Say no to complicated or clunky interfaces that are not intuitive and require a steep learning curve. Step 6: Check for Advanced Capabilities Ask about AI features like predictive segmentation or email send-time optimization. Even if you don’t need them right now, having future-ready capabilities ensures you won’t outgrow the tool too soon. Step 7: Test for Scalability and Deliverability This is an important one. Look for solutions that can handle large volumes of emails with good email deliverability rates. Make sure the software you choose has a high inbox placement rate. Check if they have a solid infrastructure and dedicated IPs, should you need them. Also, consider scalability: will this platform still meet your needs when your contact list grows from 10,000 to 100,000? Make sure you’re not locked into expensive pricing jumps or performance bottlenecks. Step 8: Review Integration Options Make sure the tool you choose fits seamlessly into your existing workflow. It should integrate with your CRM, mobile app, Ecommerce system, and anything else in your ecosystem. Even if it doesn’t directly integrate, ensure that it offers flexible APIs and webhooks, or supports third-party connectors like Zapier, so you can still automate data flow without manual workarounds. Step 9: Compare Customer Support Quality Good software with bad support can be a nightmare. Check for onboarding help, technical support, availability, account management, and resources. Ask about how quickly the support team responds and resolves software issues to ensure that you have minimal downtime.   5 Best Email Drip Campaign Software and Tools It’s time to weigh your options in choosing an email drip campaign software for your business. Give this list a quick read! 1. MoEngage: Best for Omnichannel Engagement and Behavioral Targeting   MoEngage is a comprehensive customer engagement platform designed to deliver personalized and automated drip email campaigns at scale. Its powerful AI capabilities allow you to use behavioral targeting to reach customers at the right time with the right message at different stages of their customer journey. Why MoEngage is Best for Omnichannel Engagement and Behavioral Targeting: MoEngage offers multiple features that allow you to provide cohesive customer experiences across various touchpoints. You can reach out to customers via not just email, but also SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, and even ad networks without missing a beat. Features like advanced segmentation enable you to send hyper-personalized drip email campaigns tailored to individual customer actions, such as cart abandonment or inactivity. This ensures that messages are timely, relevant, and effective in driving engagement. How Pricing Works: MoEngage offers flexible drip email pricing based on the scale of your business and the exact features you’d need. You can always reach out to their sales team to learn more about their custom pricing plans. How to Set Up a Demo: To experience MoEngage firsthand, you need to book a demo first. Their team will then contact you to schedule a personalized walkthrough that showcases how the platform can meet your specific drip email marketing goals. 2. ActiveCampaign: Best for Email and Marketing Automation ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform that allows you to create email campaigns on channels your customers connect with. The platform offers predictive content features that help you show customers the most meaningful content. Why ActiveCampaign is Best for Email and Marketing Automation: ActiveCampaign excels in delivering sophisticated automation campaign workflows that can be tailored to various customer journeys. How Pricing Works: ActiveCampaign offers a four-tiered drip email pricing plan. The basic plan starts at $15/month for 1K contacts, while the Enterprise plan starts at $1,169/month for 50K contacts. If you have contacts upwards of that number, you need to talk to their sales team. 3. Kit: Best for Creators Using Emails Kit is tailored for creators, bloggers, and solo entrepreneurs who want to send customer relationship emails. It offers a user-friendly interface with powerful automation capabilities. Why Kit is Best for Creators and Solo Entrepreneurs: Kit’s email-first operating system allows creators to build long-term connections with customers. Its intuitive email designer can be used to create effective on-brand emails that are optimized for deliverability. Plus, it allows you to send email broadcasts for announcing product launches, sharing content updates, or promoting limited-time offers to your entire list in bulk. How Pricing Works: Kit offers a free Newsletter plan with basic features like visual automation, opt-in forms, and email broadcasts to up to 10K subscribers. But you can implement just 1 visual automation and an email sequence on the free plan. Advanced plans start at $25 per month for up to 1K subscribers, and go up to $2,166/month for 400K contacts. 4. Drip: Best for Ecommerce Marketing Automation Drip is a marketing automation platform designed specifically for Ecommerce brands. It offers tools to create personalized email campaigns that drive customer engagement and sales. Why Drip is Best for Ecommerce Marketing Automation: Drip provides deep integrations with Ecommerce platforms, allowing businesses to leverage customer data for targeted campaigns. Features like behavior-based automation and pre-built workflows help in crafting effective drip campaigns. How Pricing Works: Drip’s pricing starts at $39/month for up to 2,500 contacts. The cost scales up to $1,999/month based on the number of contacts, with custom pricing available for larger lists of over 180K subscribers. 5. Mailmodo: Best for Interactive Email Marketing Mailmodo is an email marketing platform that enables the creation of interactive drip emails using AMP technology. This allows recipients to take actions like filling out forms or booking appointments directly within the email. Why Mailmodo is Best for Interactive Email Marketing: Mailmodo stands out by offering interactive email capabilities that enhance customer engagement and conversion rates. Its drag-and-drop editor simplifies the creation of dynamic emails without any coding required. How Pricing Works: Like the other drip email marketing software on this list, Mailmodo’s pricing is based on the number of contacts and emails sent per month. Its three-tiered pricing model starts at $39/month for 500 contacts, going up to $939/month for 250K subscribers. Any more contacts, and you have to reach out to their sales team.   How to Get the Most Value Out of Your Drip Email Software Here are some of the ways in which you can leverage your drip email software to its maximum potential. Save time through automation: Automate welcome emails, follow-ups, and re-engagement campaigns to free up your team for more strategic work. Boost engagement with timely messaging: Set up triggers so that emails are automatically sent based on customers’ actions. This keeps your audience interested at every stage of their customer journey. Drive higher conversions with targeted sequences: Send the right email at the right time to move leads through the sales funnel towards a conversion. Personalize customer experiences at scale: Use segmentation and dynamic content to create a personalized customer experience without manually customizing every email. Continuously optimize with data-driven insights: Track performance metrics like open rates and conversions to refine your drip email campaigns and maximize results over time.   Maximize Engagement With MoEngage’s Drip Email Marketing Software To sum it up, drip email marketing can be quite powerful for engaging customers at different stages of their journey. Having the right drip email software in your tech stack ensures smooth, efficient workflows. Your team can focus on higher-value tasks while automating routine processes. It also ensures that your drip emails always reach the right person with the right message at the perfect time. MoEngage’s powerful email automation platform allows you to automate personalized campaigns that drive higher engagement and conversions. With advanced segmentation, behavior-triggered messaging, and seamless integration with your ecosystem, you can nurture relationships more effectively than ever. Curious to see how MoEngage can elevate your campaigns? Schedule a discovery call today. The post Drip Email Software: The Ultimate Pricing and Buying Guide appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 9 minutes Email provides a direct, two-way communication line to your target audience, which makes it, in a sense, more social than marketing channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. However, this doesn’t automatically lead to high open rates or email engagement. You need to know when the best time to send an email is and how often you should send them. Without a well-thought-out schedule, you’ll likely overwhelm your customers’ inboxes. In this post, we’ll discuss email scheduling and cadence best practices, along with the best day and time to send email marketing messages. Let’s jump in.   What is Email Cadence? Email cadence is the ideal frequency and most impactful time for your business to send marketing emails to your subscribers. It’s a process that involves experimentation, testing, and adjustments, as you’ll need to understand your subscribers’ preferences and modify your email schedule accordingly. It matters because it will greatly impact the success of email marketing campaigns, specifically engagement and your relationship with your subscriber list. Send too many emails, and they’ll likely unsubscribe. Get the timing wrong, and you’ll see an impact in your open rates.   The Best Time to Send an Email: By Industry and Day There isn’t a universal email cadence to replicate, as it varies by industry. That said, the best time to send an email is typically at the start of the workday between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. on weekdays, with Tuesdays and Thursdays being the most effective days. This is why it’s crucial that you dig into the averages for your industry, conveniently set out for you in this table based on the data collected. It’s a good place to start, especially if you’re new to email marketing and don’t have your own data yet. Industry Best Day To Send Emails Best Time To Send Emails Retail and Ecommerce Monday (for conversions) and Sunday (for opens) 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. and again 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Financial  Friday (for conversions) and Sunday (for opens) 8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. and again 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Media and entertainment Thursday (for conversions and opens) 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. and again 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.   An Ideal Sales Cadence Email Template (by MoEngage) Once you’ve identified the best time to send emails for your industry, you can plan your email marketing campaign around these times. We’ve created this sales cadence email template for a hypothetical brand, StrideGo, a subscription-based fitness app, to help you see how this will look in practice. It shows how to plot out your emails so you can balance frequency with the best times to send an email.   From sales to subscriber re-engagement, there are various ways you can tweak this template to match your campaign goal, as the following examples from well-known B2C brands illustrate.   Email Cadence Examples From Top Brands Some of the best email cadence examples come from brands that have turned email into one of their most effective channels. From limited-time flash sales to regular content updates that help build your brand as a thought leader, here are some ways you can approach email cadence, timing, and content. 1. Grammarly | Flash Sale Campaign goal: Promote a flash sale Grammarly’s email campaign serves as a good example of how to strike the right balance between staying top of mind without becoming an annoyance. The first email succinctly links the offer with their subscribers’ pain point, which increases their chance of opening it. They then wait two days before sending a follow-up email to remind subscribers that the offer will soon end. To capitalize on the powerful effect of urgency, they wait until the day the offer ends to send their final reminder. What this email campaign does well: Grammarly doesn’t solely rely on the massive discount to drive subscriptions. They take it one step further by linking their software with their potential new subscribers’ pain points. It’s a great example of a customer relationship email. 2. Airbnb | Announcing New Updates Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/host-news-updates-to-our-review-policy-new-sustainability-resources-and-more   Campaign goal: Highlight new blog content and product updates Airbnb sends monthly email newsletters that share industry news, product updates, and learning resources. On the surface, it functions as an email newsletter, but it’s also an effective tool for establishing thought leadership. Industry news isn’t as exciting or time-sensitive as sales, so it makes sense for this type of email to be scheduled on a monthly basis only. What this email campaign does well: The newsletter helps to build brand awareness and encourages product discovery. The strategic placement of several calls to action (CTAs) per email also helps to generate website traffic. 3. McDonald’s | Personalized Updates Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/smiles-davis-your-january-account-in-review Campaign goal: Update customers about their loyalty points See how they’re proudly announcing their email marketing cadence? Each month, McDonald’s sends a statement that summarizes loyalty program members’ activity for the past month and current status. It’s an effective tool for engaging their most loyal customers to grow their customer loyalty even further. What this email campaign does well: The personalized content makes regular diners feel special. Plus, the fact that it visualizes how many points they’re away from a reward, along with the only-once-a-month email cadence, serves as good encouragement to visit McDonald’s more often. How? Well, when customers receive the email once a month stating the reward, it serves as a slight nudge to pay a visit in the hope of winning more rewards!   5 Best Practices for Email Marketing Cadence Here are five email cadence best practices that will help you drive noteworthy results for you to replicate (and let you get the best use out of your email cadence tool). 1. Create a Customer Journey Each email marketing campaign should have a specific goal, whether that’s to create brand awareness or drive webinar registrations. Creating and mapping the customer journey will ensure that you know where your target audience typically starts and what type of message they’ll need at which point to move them toward your goal. If you have clarity on the typical steps your target audience takes and their behavior, your email communication will improve the customer experience. Each message will be relevant and valuable. 2. Segment Your List Email preferences differ from one segment to the next. For example, your frequent shoppers generally like to receive regular promotional emails with exclusive deals. On the other hand, occasional buyers would rather receive fewer emails and resonate better with educational emails. Segmenting your email list allows you to send daily emails to those in your most engaged group, while weekly emails are reserved for another group. 3. Personalize Content One of the most crucial email cadence best practices is content personalization. In addition to adjusting your email frequency to your segment’s preferences, you should also tailor the actual content so that it’s relevant to specific recipients. Generic content quickly gets ignored, while location-based product recommendations feel useful. For your email cadence to click, you need recipients to click on the CTAs, and personalized content will encourage engagement. The added benefit of using email personalization is that once your open and click-through rates improve, you can also increase your email frequency. 4. Test and Tweak Like with virtually anything in life, it takes time before you find your rhythm. The same applies to email cadence. A/B testing will allow you to see if your frequency and timing work and give you the data you need to improve your campaigns. You can, for example, send specials to half of your frequent shoppers daily, while the other half receive specials only weekly. Alternatively, you can send the whole segment the same email on the same days at the same time, and then experiment with the best time to send an email. 5. Let Subscribers Select Email Preferences While you still need to do your own rigorous testing, give your email subscribers the option to choose how often they want to receive emails from your brand. It’s as easy as adding a link in your email signature that takes them to a page where they can select which emails they choose to receive. You can even take it one step further and let them choose the frequency by type of message. For example, they might want to hear about deals weekly, while company news is best served only once a month. This also allows them to change the frequency at a later stage, should their needs change. Aside from making your job easier, it also gives your subscribers an alternative to unsubscribing from your emails altogether.   Top 3 Email Cadence Software and Tools There are several great email cadence tools that can automate much of the labor involved in identifying the best time to send an email campaign. Here’s a quick look that highlights the core and unique features of three such software solutions. 1. Best for Cross-Channel Customer Engagement: MoEngage   MoEngage’s enterprise-ready, cross-channel customer engagement platform gives your team the data and insight they need to personalize customer experiences. For help specifically with email cadence, you can use it to design relevant emails that match your customers’ preferences and meet them where they’re at in their journey. What makes it such a unique email cadence tool is its deep focus on customer engagement. It doesn’t just send emails but also helps you understand the why and when behind engagement. For example, it has a “Best Time to Send” feature that uses advanced data analysis to make sense of historical customer interactions. How pricing works: MoEngage keeps pricing simple and flexible by offering only two plans (Growth and Enterprise) and dozens of features available to be purchased as add-ons. What makes it stand out: MoEngage’s impressive predictive capabilities let you tailor your emails to your customers’ next best action, ensuring they receive timely, relevant content time and again. 2. Best for Email Scheduling for Small Businesses: Klaviyo Klaviyo’s marketing automation platform offers tools for email and SMS marketing. With its built-in data platform and drag-and-drop editor, you can easily create customizable templates and send personalized emails. You can, for example, use data like browsing history, past purchases, and subscription status to send relevant and timely updates. It also has a Smart Send Time feature to help specifically with the best time to send an email. How pricing works: Plans start at $45 per month based on features and the number of monthly emails you want to send. What makes it stand out: As it integrates with platforms like Shopify, you can use real-time customer data to personalize your communication. 3. Best for Inbound Marketing: HubSpot HubSpot is an all-in-one solution that businesses can use to attract and engage their target audience across the entire journey. It offers various hubs (like sales, marketing, and operations) built to work together and integrations with more than 1,000 third-party apps that expand its capabilities even further. To help with email cadence, you can check out Cadence, a multi-channel sales prospecting tool available in its app marketplace. It will tell you who to email and allow you to automate sequence steps. How pricing works: Depending on the platform solutions you need, pricing ranges from $15 per month per seat to $4,700 per month per seat for seven seats. What makes it stand out: HubSpot is built around inbound marketing and combines everything you’ll need for lead nurturing to customer support into one interface.   Manage Your Email Cadence With MoEngage When you’re creating your email marketing strategy, you should also plan for the best time to send an email. If you send your email at 4 a.m. on a Saturday, it will only be buried with dozens of other emails when your recipients finally make time to check their inbox. You want to find out at what time your subscribers are most likely going to open their inbox and ensure your email reaches them at this time. In addition to the day and time, you also need to consider the email cadence. Here’s an idea: why not remove the guesswork altogether? With MoEngage’s Best Time to Send (BTS) feature, you can reach out to your customers at just the right moment. What’s more, MoEngage’s AI engine, Sherpa AI, keeps updating the best time to send an email based on changing customer behavior. Want to see this super-cool feature in action? Schedule a 1:1 demo today. The post When is the Best Time to Send an Email? appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 9 minutes Did you know SMS open rates are as high as 98%, with 45% replying to branded SMS marketing? As texting continues to witness a steady rise, your brand could be missing out if you’re not leveraging automated text messaging for business! Text messaging is when your brand communicates with customers via SMS. These messages may be automated, that is, scheduled to be sent at opportune times. Interested in sending an automated text message for business? Keep reading.   What is SMS Marketing Automation? SMS marketing automation is the process of automatically sending text messages to recipients. It enables brands to send messages when certain trigger conditions are met. For instance, sending messages to a customer to confirm a purchase or remind them to complete a purchase when they have left items in the cart. What are the main benefits of automated SMS marketing? An automated text message for business can unlock many benefits, some of which are listed below: Saving time: Automated text message marketing saves time for core tasks rather than dedicating time for manual text responses for order confirmations, abandoned cart reminders, etc. Scalability: Using SMS marketing automation, brands can look to scale their SMS campaigns to a large customer base. Strategic communication: With SMS marketing automation, brands can deliver larger automated SMS drip campaigns tailored to specific target groups. Greater engagement: 90% of SMS messages are read within 3 minutes of delivery. With automated SMS marketing, brands can send timely responses and elevate customer experience. Higher open rates: Automated text messages typically have higher open rates than emails, making them a more favorable medium for reaching customers. Is sending automated text messages legal for businesses? Businesses can send automated text messages to customers as long as they follow the rules and regulations of the state where they are being sent. In the United States, automated text marketing requires following the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), which requires brands to get written consent before sending messages to customers. The new TCPA rules also state that brands need to honor SMS opt-out requests within 10 business days. Additionally, the CAN-SPAM Act sets rules for commercial communications. Brands need to ensure that recipients have opted for an automated text message service, as spam messages can result in fines. Moving on, how can your brand implement SMS messaging? Here are some use cases for automated text messaging for business to help you get started.   5 Common Use Cases for Automated Text Messaging for Business From the many ways in which brands can tap SMS marketing automation, below are a few use cases: 1. Reminders and Confirmations You could send personalized reminders and notifications to customers in the form of an informative automated text message, be it for bill payments, restaurant bookings, or any other appointments. Example: “Hi [Customer Name], here’s a reminder of your appointment with Dr. XYZ at 2 PM tomorrow. Reply 1 to confirm, 2 to reschedule, and 3 to cancel.” 2. Order Confirmations SMS marketing automation can be used to send tailored order confirmations and update customers on shipping and delivery. Manually doing this may be cumbersome and lead to errors, making it impossible for brands to operate at scale. Text messaging automation software can solve this problem by automatically sending shipping and delivery updates to customers to keep them informed of the latest activity. Triggers can be scheduled depending on the movement of the shipment. 3. Abandoned Cart Reminders An often underrated use of automated text messages for business is nudging customers about items they left in their cart. Brands can incentivize customers to complete their purchase by sending them text messages with specific deals on items left in the cart. The result? Higher potential conversions! 4. Promotional Offers Sending customized offers to customers via SMS marketing automation can be another way to boost conversions. Brands must ensure a crisp message followed by a clear CTA to relevant product pages. In this case, automation can do what is not manually possible. With the use of customer behavioral data, the right customers can be targeted with their preferred products. 5. Customer Support and Feedback While your customer support may not be available 24/7, some customer queries can be handled automatically using automated text messages for business. For instance, your brand could answer frequently asked questions (FAQs). SMS marketing automation can also be used for gathering quick feedback from customers who have recently interacted with your brand by simply including a link in the message.   How to Set Up Automated Text Messages for Business Setting up SMS marketing automation is easy and can be accomplished in just 5 steps, as listed below. 1. Sign up for an automated text messaging service To begin your automated text messaging campaign, you would first need to select a platform that meets your requirements. It would be wise to pick a service that allows you to automate end-to-end workflows and empower your team. 2. Upload recipients’ contact details Next, upload the contact details of those who have opted to receive your texts. You can either drag your contact file onto the page or browse for it to upload it. Remember, just having the recipients’ phone numbers doesn’t mean you can start sending them SMS messages right away. They need to explicitly give you their consent first. 3. Create segmented lists Create segmented groups of recipients based on criteria such as demographics, customer type, and so on. This can help your brand send automated text messages to relevant audiences and raise the chances of engagement. 4. Compose messages This step can be highly crucial as the content of your SMS can make or break your connection with your customer. Leveraging data can help with hyper-personalizing your communication. Typically, a crisp message with a relevant CTA could boost your click-through rates. 5. Schedule, test, and deploy Once your text messages are ready, it’s time to set up a schedule to send them. Some messages may be on specific recurring dates like birthdays, while some may be triggered by certain customer actions like cart abandonment. Finally, don’t forget to test your SMS marketing automation before you deploy it!   5 Automated Text Message Examples and Templates for Campaign Inspiration Now that you know how to set up automated text messages for business, let’s get some much-needed inspiration for creating your own successful SMS marketing campaigns. 1. Lulus | Promoting Offers and Deals Source: https://smsarchives.com/messages/lulus-text-message-marketing-example-12-31-2021/ Notice how women’s wear brand Lulus strategically uses automated SMS marketing to remind customers of their ongoing holiday sale, with a link to finish the purchase. In this case, automation helps deliver personalized deals to customers who may have earlier browsed through the brand’s website. For those who dropped off the website due to the absence of offers, this SMS can work as a smart nudge to complete that purchase. 2. Old Navy | Wishing Customers on Special Days Source: https://smsarchives.com/messages/old-navy-text-message-marketing-example-05-09-2021/ In the example above, Old Navy not only wishes its customers Happy Mother’s Day, but also goes a step further in offering deals on women’s wear. In this case, an automated text message could be used to narrow the target audience to women who are or could be mothers. This also includes wishing them on their special days. 3. Gaspar | Appointment Confirmation and Reminders Source: https://support.opentable.com/servlet/rtaImage?eid=ka0UQ0000003ogD&feoid=00N0c00000Ay3y5&refid=0EMDn000001hK7V A practical use of automated text messages for business is to confirm appointment reservations and get a response from the customer if they are willing to make changes. To elevate the experience further, the brand could add options to reschedule or cancel the reservation on the SMS itself, using automated text messaging. 4. Amazon | Shipping and Tracking Source: https://www.wonderment.com/hubfs/Wonderment_September2021/image/amazon_sms_shipping_alerts_w720.jpg This template ticks all the boxes for a well-crafted automated text message for business. Amazon informs the customer of the product name, expected date, and order status, along with the tracking link. These kinds of informative messages tend to be super useful to customers. 5. The Perfect Jean | Retargeting via Cart Abandonment Messages Source This automated text message example can serve as a model template for cart abandonment notifications. The brand reminds the customer of the items left in the cart and encourages the purchase by offering a custom discount code and a link to complete the purchase.   Top 3 Automated Text Message Services for Businesses SMS marketing automation can be simple to set up with the right tools. Here are some leading services that can help you send automated text messages to your customer base. 1. MoEngage MoEngage’s SMS automation software can make targeted SMS campaigns seem like a breeze with ready-to-use campaign ideas, hyper-personalized messaging, and 360-degree customer views. Standout SMS Automation Feature: MoEngage’s automated text message marketing service stands out for its ability to integrate SMS into the overall customer journey and deliver insight-led, revenue-driven campaigns. How Pricing Works: Schedule a demo to know which of the two pricing plans works best for your business. 2. Textedly Textedly offers an easy-to-use automated text message software for real-time conversations with your customers. However, it lags behind in providing an omnichannel brand experience. Standout SMS Automation Feature: The service has an intuitive platform and also a shared team inbox to ensure timely automated responses for instant customer support. How Pricing Works: While the service offers a free plan with limited features, the basic plan starts at $26 a month and varies for other advanced plans. 3. Sender Sender enables SMS automation campaigns for bulk, personalized messages to customers. Standout SMS Automation Feature: Sender is an automated SMS software that offers affordable, easy-to-use templates for automating text messaging campaigns. However, it is limited to email and text message services, and does not offer integrated engagement solutions as part of the overall customer experience. How Pricing Works: Sender offers a free plan, with paid plans starting at $10 a month.   SMS Marketing Automation Strategies That Improve Campaign Performance Sure, you may be excited to launch your own automated SMS campaign. But hold on! There’s so much more you can get from automated text messaging, with some practical SMS marketing automation strategies listed below. 1. Make your automated text message conversational and interactive Customers love it when their brands are responsive to their needs! Using automated SMS services, you can make your text messages conversational. For instance, you can ask a series of questions to help customers reach informed decisions regarding your product or service. 2. Always ask for consent Before blasting automated text messages to your customers, it’s best to get their consent. Clear opt-in and opt-out options are necessary not only from a legal standpoint but also from the transparency angle. 3. Segment and personalize for your customer Nobody likes a random brand message that could be sent to just about anyone. You can use customer demographic and behavioral data to segment your customers into different groups. Armed with better insights, you can send more targeted and personalized text messages to your customers. 4. Grow your subscriber list with incentives Customers would be happy to consent to receiving your brand’s messages if they are offered something in return. Weaving smart opt-in messages with exclusive promotional deals and other perks can grow your subscriber base. 5. Review the little things A text message is one of the quickest ways to reach a customer. When done right, it can work wonders for your brand! But before you hurry to send out texts, remember to include crucial elements like a crisp main message, a valuable offer, a strong CTA, and a link to access the relevant offers or information. Finally, don’t forget to do automated SMS testing before sending the SMS.   Enhance Your Outreach with Automated SMS Marketing from MoEngage Brands can use the small but mighty SMS in many ways to deepen customer engagement. However, it is important to get subscriber consent and use other best practices to make the most of automated SMS marketing. MoEngage’s SMS marketing platform can help you have smoother interactions with your customers guided by detailed analytics, as part of a seamless omnichannel journey. Get a personalized demo to know how MoEngage can help you tap the massive potential of automated text messaging. The post Automated Text Messages for Business: A Marketer’s Guide appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 8 minutes Sometimes, even the slickest emails can land with a thud in the spam folder. The culprit? Your email sender reputation. Just like a bank checks your credit history before lending you money, mailbox providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) check your sender reputation before deciding whether to deliver your customer relationship emails to the inbox or banish them to spam. So buckle up, because here, we’re about to unpack everything you need to know about what an email domain reputation is and how to keep yours squeaky clean. Now, you’re probably wondering…   What is Email Sender Reputation? Email sender reputation, also known as email domain reputation, is a measure of your brand’s trustworthiness as an email sender. It’s based on factors like your sending history, email engagement, and complaint rates, influencing whether mailbox providers deliver your messages to recipients’ inboxes or junk folders. A solid sender reputation is the golden ticket to inbox placement. Without it, your carefully crafted automated email marketing campaigns might as well be shouting into the void. Mailbox providers are constantly on the lookout for spammers and shady senders, and your reputation is a key indicator of whether you’re one of the good guys. But how do they know that?   5 Factors That Influence Email Marketing Sender Reputation Your email sending reputation isn’t built overnight; it’s a result of consistent behavior and several critical factors. Let’s break down the big five: 1. Quality of Your Email List Building your email list is hard, we know. But honestly, validating it to ensure that all email addresses are real and belong to existing subscribers helps you maintain a positive sender reputation score with mailbox providers. This is why you should use a proper email validation API, as it can help you quickly check if the email addresses are legitimate. Your reputation score can suffer if you’re labeled as a bad email sender, with all the bounces you get from a bad email list. 2. Email Sending History Having an established history with a particular IP address can boost the legitimacy and reputation score of your emails, which means the sender, messages, and recipients are all coming from a legitimate place. Spammers will often change IP addresses and, therefore, cannot establish a long and reputable sending history with IPs. 3. Consistency and Volume of Emails The number of emails you send and your consistency in sending them are also indicators of your legitimacy and reputation. Sending two emails every other week, for example, shows stability and predictability in terms of your sending volume and activities. Mailbox providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) also examine your sending patterns and frequency to determine whether you’re still on the right track or have turned to spamming. 4. Email Open Rates or Engagement This is a metric that records subscriber activity or your email engagement, such as the open or click-through rates. It’s very significant because mailbox providers value their subscribers’ preferences. Your emails could be filtered out if there is a very low response rate or no interactions at all. 5. Emails Marked as ‘SPAM’ Mailbox providers would take a cue from their subscribers’ preferences whenever they receive emails. So, if your email messages are consistently marked as ‘Spam’, then this feedback would result in your emails being screened or placed in the Spam or Junk folder. And that’s not where you’d want your emails to hang out.   How to Check Email Sender Reputation You can verify your email domain reputation by monitoring key metrics and using reputation checking tools. Many email marketing software platforms (like MoEngage, for example) provide dashboards and analytics that help you monitor these crucial indicators. MoEngage goes a step further by offering insights and tools to help you proactively manage and improve your email deliverability, making it easier to spot and address potential reputation issues before they escalate. In fact, you can achieve an inbox placement rate of over 95%! Coming back to the topic, the platform indicates email domain reputation as High, Medium, Low, or Bad. More specifically, it lets you: Filter campaigns based on reputation while exporting their data. See historical trends in your domain reputation. View more information, such as when the reputation information was last updated. Analyze email marketing metrics, like open rates and click-through rates. How an Email Sender Reputation Score Works Your email sender reputation score is a dynamic rating that mailbox providers assign to your sending domain and IP address. This score isn’t a fixed number, but rather, a constantly evolving assessment based on your list quality, sending history, and other factors we’ve discussed above. Higher scores generally mean better inbox placement, while lower scores can lead to the dreaded spam folder. Different mailbox providers have their own algorithms for calculating this score, and the exact formulas are usually kept secret. However, the underlying principles revolve around your sending behavior and recipient engagement. How Can You Do a Domain Reputation Test and How Often Should You Do This? You can run an email domain reputation test using various software tools (we’ll get to some of the best ones in a sec!). These reputation checkers analyze your domain and IP address against known blacklists and provide insights into your current standing. Ideally, you should be monitoring your key metrics within your ESP regularly (daily or weekly) and perform a more comprehensive domain reputation test at least monthly, or more frequently if you’re experiencing deliverability issues. Consistent monitoring helps you catch problems early and maintain a healthy reputation.   3 Best Email Domain Reputation Checkers Alright, let’s talk tools. While your ESP often provides built-in deliverability insights, these external domain reputation checkers can offer another layer of perspective. Let’s jump right in! 1. MoEngage Okay, we might be a little biased, but hear us out. MoEngage is more than just an email marketing platform; it’s a powerhouse for cross-channel customer engagement. Its robust analytics and deliverability features give you a clear view of your email performance, helping you proactively manage your email sender reputation. MoEngage stands out because it integrates domain reputation monitoring with tools to improve engagement and personalize your campaigns, leading to better deliverability in the long run. Unlike some standalone domain reputation checkers, MoEngage provides actionable insights within your workflow. How Pricing Works: MoEngage offers customized pricing plans based on your specific needs and scale. Contact the sales team for a personalized quote. Best For: Brands looking for an integrated customer engagement platform (CEP) with robust email deliverability management capabilities. 2. Spamhaus Project The Spamhaus Project allows you to track spam, malware, phishing, and other cybersecurity threats. ISPs and email servers filter out unwanted and harmful content using Spamhaus’s DNS-based blocklists (DNSBLs). How Pricing Works: Spamhaus provides its blacklist data and lookup tools for free to most users, as part of their mission to combat spam. Best For: Quickly checking if your domain or IP is on major spam blacklists. 3. MxToolbox You can use MxToolbox to check if your domain is mentioned on any email blocklists. It scans your domain for mail servers, DNS records, web servers, and any problems. While comprehensive in its checks, this domain reputation checker doesn’t provide the same level of integrated deliverability management and analytics that a platform like MoEngage offers. How Pricing Works: MxToolbox offers both free tools and paid subscription plans with more advanced features, with pricing starting from around $85 per month. Best For: Performing a broad check across numerous email blacklists.   How to Improve Your Email Domain Reputation So, your domain email reputation doesn’t look as shiny as you’d like? No worries! Here are concrete steps you can take to improve it. Think of it as spring cleaning for your email sending practices. 1. Manage a Clean Email List Email list management is foundational. Regularly prune inactive subscribers, remove bounced addresses, and promptly honor unsubscribe requests. Implement a double opt-in process to ensure subscribers genuinely want to hear from you. A clean, engaged email list signals to mailbox providers that you’re sending to interested recipients, and reduces bounce rates and spam complaints. It’s crucial for a positive email sender reputation score. 2. Send Confirmation Emails with Double Opt-Ins Include double opt-ins where you send automated confirmation emails to subscribers. This helps you distinguish valid email addresses from nonexistent ones. Basically, protecting your email sender reputation is easy when you adhere to best practices. Ensuring that your email messages are engaging and interesting helps you get more clicks and open rates. Attracting more interaction to your email messages sends a signal to mailbox providers that you have a legitimate and professional organization. Increasing the positive activities and reviews will help build and solidify your branding strategy, sending a message that is relatable and understood by your subscribers. 3. Pause Violating Campaigns Notice a sudden spike in bounces or spam complaints after a particular email marketing campaign? Pause the campaign immediately to investigate the cause. Ideally, you should not send transactional and non-transactional emails from the same domain (domain/IP set). If the compliance requirements are met, there is no need to pause transactional emails. However, you should pause all one-time emails. Continuing to send problematic emails will only further damage your email sending reputation. Addressing the issue swiftly demonstrates responsibility to mailbox providers. 4. Correct the Mistakes Once you’ve paused a problematic campaign, take the time to understand what went wrong. Did you use a purchased list? Was the content or subject line misleading? (In which case, you need to have a list of the best email subject lines handy). Identify the root cause and implement corrective measures so it doesn’t happen again. Showing that you learn from your mistakes helps rebuild trust with mailbox providers over time. Then, raise a ticket to Gmail or other ESP explaining the cause behind the reputation issues, your changes, and the next steps you plan to follow. Have checkpoints to detect issues immediately, so you can always stay on top of them. 5. Use Subdomains for Sending Emails Establish a subdomain you’re going to use only for sending emails to customers. That’s because if anything goes wrong, the subdomain will take the hit directly, while mildly affecting your company’s main registered domain. It’s like a backup. Also, hopefully, your customers will remember and recognize your subdomain with time. So even if your emails do land in the spam folder, customers might mark them as ‘Not spam’. Yay! 6. Resume and Ramp Up Your Email Frequency After addressing the issues and making necessary changes, don’t be afraid to resume sending. But take baby steps. Resume your transactional emails first. Don’t send transactional and promotional emails from the same domains and IPs. If you already have, separate them while correcting your email setup. Next, resume your personalized event-triggered campaigns. Then, slowly send one-time campaigns to email openers and clickers (such as emails that have been opened 5 times in the last 60 days). Send at a lower RPM and send only 2-3 campaigns per week. After the email domain reputation improves, gradually increase the overall sending frequency and volume (it could take 6-8 weeks). When emailing non-engaged customers, slowly raise your email frequency to prevent sudden volume spikes from triggering spam filters. This careful approach communicates to mailbox providers that you are a responsible sender. 7. Customize Your Sending Patterns Avoid sending all your emails at the same time to everyone on your list. Segment your audience and tailor your sending schedules based on their engagement and time zones. This shows mailbox providers that you’re sending relevant content to the right customers at the right time, improving engagement and your overall email marketing domain reputation. Create lifecycle campaigns to engage your customers. Use dynamic segments, so inactive customers get dropped off automatically. Implement personalization across every aspect of your email.   Maintaining Email Domain Reputation with MoEngage Maintaining a stellar email domain reputation is an ongoing effort, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Hundreds of B2C brands trust MoEngage to provide the insights and tools they need to monitor deliverability, understand audience engagement, and proactively manage their sending practices. By leveraging the platform’s analytics and segmentation capabilities, our customers can be sure their emails consistently land in the inbox, where they belong. Ready to take control of your email deliverability and build a rock-solid email sender reputation? Explore MoEngage’s comprehensive email marketing solutions. Or better yet, request a demo to see MoEngage’s email solutions in action today. The post How to Check and Fix Your Email Sender Reputation appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 5 minutes Last week, Google unveiled many interesting updates around Gemini at Google I/O 2025. The key highlight was the launch of Gemini 2.5 Pro, their most intelligent model yet. Although there were many updates, we’ve focused on those that will be beneficial for marketers like you. So, relax and read on to discover all the insights. Future of Google Search Shopping Google is reimagining how shoppers shop online—from product discovery to trial to checkout. If you sell online and list your products on Google, this is a huge update. The traditional method of shopping involved scanning hundreds of websites, reading reviews, and then buying a product. But with Google AI Mode or the Gemini app, shoppers can ask complicated questions, and Google will do the heavy lifting. Source – Google  For example, rather than searching for “best rugs for sofa”, shoppers can use Google AI mode and ask something like this, “I have a light gray sofa, I need a rug to brighten my room”. They can also add insights like “I have four kids at my house and they like to bring friends over”. But that’s not it, there’s more. Try it on Now, shoppers can try on clothes virtually to get a feel for how a style might look on them. Source – Google  They just need to upload your full-size image. While you might have seen something similar on other platforms, Google takes it to the next level with – Advanced 3D Shape Understanding Segmentation Diffusion There’s also a completely new way for checkout. Agentic Checkout Shoppers are always on the hunt for the best deals. Google’s new Agentic Checkout feature simplifies online shopping. It allows shoppers to specify their desired price, color, and size for a product, and Google will alert them when the item meets or drops below that price. When the price is dropped, shoppers can instantly check out with a click of a button, and all the details of your product (including size and colour) will already be added. Source – Google  Google examines numerous websites, sending alerts when its findings align with your specified preferences. If a price reduction occurs, a single click enables immediate checkout, as all your product specifics, such as size and color, are already saved. What does it mean for marketers? If you sell products online and list them on Google, you have a completely new channel through which your customers can discover, try, and purchase your products. However, optimize your products according to Google’s guidelines to ensure that they appear for relevant queries. Apparel companies must take advantage of the Try it on feature to provide their customers with a rich, personalized experience. Overall, E-commerce marketers can drive a lot of awareness, engagement, and conversions using the above updates. Gemini 2.5 Pro, AI Overviews and the New “AI Mode” Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google’s most intelligent, secure, and efficient LLM yet. Marketers can continue to use it for complicated tasks and deep research. It powers Google AI Overviews and the latest AI mode inside the Gemini App. Google AI Overviews is used by over 1.5 billion users every month across 200 countries. Rather than just providing links, AI Overviews provide direct, conversational answers and summaries. This change means that users get more information without clicking through, changing how visibility and traffic work. Seeing the rapid usage of AI Overviews, Google has launched something called “AI Mode.” They’ve reimagined Search from the ground up. Source – Google   Unlike a normal Google search, users can ask longer and more complex questions. The queries can be 2-3 times longer, and they can even ask follow-up questions. And the best part: It’ll take into account their personal information for even more personalized answers. AI Mode has already been launched in the US. What does it mean for marketers? To summarise, marketers now need to shift gears from just getting people to their website/app to making sure their content shows up in these AI-generated snippet/answers. Google has updated its generative AI capabilities, including image, audio, and video generation. Veo 3 now generates audio alongside video. Below is an example. What does it mean for marketers? Google is really pushing boundaries when it comes to what you can generate using AI. Marketers should definitely explore the various generative AI capabilities for improved campaign creation. However, if you’re looking to craft customer campaigns that resonate with your target customers and get higher engagement, you need to check out our own Generative AI platform, Merlin AI. There’s nothing better than an AI that constantly analyzes your previous campaigns to give you personalized output. Glance leveraged it for 50% faster campaign go-live times. Read the complete story here. Gemini Now Supports MCP The Gemini SDK now supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which was introduced by Anthropic. In addition, Google is bringing agentic capabilities to Search, Chrome, and the Gemini App. They call this “Agent Mode.” MCP is an emerging technical standard that allows AI models (like those used by Google) to connect more easily and securely with external, real-world data sources and tools. What does it mean for marketers? If you’re serious about building AI agents and you’ve been using Gemini, this is big news. The support for MCP opens up a new world of possibilities. But if you’re just getting started, you can read our latest on AI Agents for Customer Engagement. AI Agents can assist marketers with everything from campaign creation to analytics to decision-making. To help drive awareness, we’re also hosting a live masterclass titled “Agentic AI and Customer Engagement in 2025 and Beyond”. In this live panel discussion, we’ll cut through the noise and explore the exciting, practical ways to leverage AI in customer engagement. You can save your seat here. Android XR The most interesting launch was Google’s push into the XR space, the Gemini-powered Android XR platform. Designed for smart glasses and VR headsets, Android XR leverages Gemini for real-time translation, live messaging, contextual navigation, and more. Source – Google  What does it mean for marketers? Android XR is an emerging channel for marketers to consider. Its potential for rapid adoption suggests it could become a significant additional marketing avenue in the near future. Keep an eye out for future updates. Wrapping Up For marketers, the above updates mean that embracing AI-powered tools and strategies is no longer optional but essential for success. By leveraging these innovations, marketers can drive better results, improve customer engagement, and stay ahead of the curve in the ever-evolving world. The post Google I/O 2025 – What Marketers Need to Know appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 15 minutes If you’ve been in the Ecommerce game longer than ten minutes, you’ve probably noticed a pattern: every marketer under the sun is obsessed with finding the perfect Ecommerce marketing automation software platform. And honestly? They’re not wrong. Standing out in the cut-throat Ecommerce world is about meeting your audience where they are with hyper-personalized messaging. Spending 23 hours a day doing it manually? News flash: without marketing automation software to help you automate your Ecommerce campaigns, you don’t stand a chance. That’s why 35% of marketers have already automated their Ecommerce customer journeys. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back. This blog post will help you clearly understand and fearlessly implement marketing automation for your Ecommerce brand. Let’s get started!   What is Ecommerce Marketing Automation? Ecommerce marketing automation is the use of software to streamline, personalize, and scale marketing tasks. It powers activities like email campaigns, SMS, push notifications, and customer segmentation. It helps you create smoother, more personalized customer journeys without lifting a finger every single time. By automating repetitive yet impactful tasks, like sending birthday discounts, reminding customers about abandoned carts, and segmenting audiences, you free yourself to focus on strategy. Put simply, it’s how you make your brand feel personal at scale without breaking a sweat.   6 Benefits of Automating Your Ecommerce Marketing By automating the repetitive tasks and fine-tuning your messaging at scale, you can focus on what really matters: building an Ecommerce brand your customers love. Here’s how automating your Ecommerce marketing can take your business to the next level. Improved Customer Insights: Marketing automation for Ecommerce helps you uncover patterns, such as when customers browse, what they frequently abandon in their carts, and how they respond to your campaigns. Understanding this helps you tailor future strategies, delivering what your customers want without the guesswork. Enhanced Customer Service: Make your customers happy, and the revenue will follow. Marketing automation for Ecommerce improves customer experiences by resolving their queries almost instantly. Whether they seek sales assistance or post-purchase support, they no longer have to listen to the annoying IVR music or wait for someone to respond to their ticket. Generate More Leads: Ecommerce marketing automation can improve leads qualitatively and quantitatively. Interestingly, it is a symbiotic relationship, where automation nurtures leads to develop a loyal customer base, which in turn transforms into brand advocates. Such evangelists attract more leads and improve lead-generation activities. Omnichannel Monitoring: Let’s say a customer clicks on your Instagram ad, checks their cart on desktop later, and finishes the purchase on your app. Ecommerce marketing automation platforms track this entire journey, showing you how your customers interact across platforms. It’s like having a bird’s-eye view of all your channels, making omnichannel strategies smoother and more effective. Better Customer Relationships: Automation isn’t just about scaling. It’s about humanizing your approach. Ecommerce marketing automation tools can send personalized messages based on customer behavior, like a thank-you email after a purchase or reminders for a sale item they were eyeing. Over time, these little touches build stronger, more loyal relationships. Higher ROI: By targeting the right customers at the right time and cutting out wasted efforts, you see better conversions, an increased lifetime value, and more efficient campaigns. It’s no surprise that brands using marketing automation for Ecommerce see higher ROI than those managing everything manually.   How to Use Marketing Automation for Ecommerce More Effectively When done right, Ecommerce marketing automation becomes your secret weapon for building stronger customer relationships at scale. Let’s explore how you can level up your automation game and make your Ecommerce workflows work harder for you. 1. Acquire New Contacts You can automate your marketing for Ecommerce to grow your contact list and attract new customers. If you regularly produce high-quality, actionable, and insightful content, your audiences will be keen to hear from you. This situation can be an excellent premise for offering them something of value in exchange for adding their information to your email list. Typically, surveys, whitepapers, reports, and similar documents are available to those who sign up for a business newsletter. Similarly, if someone makes a purchase on your online store, your Ecommerce marketing automation software can add their details to your customer database. Every addition offers granular insight into buyer profiles and helps discover commonalities, which you can later exploit. 2. Segment Your Audience Segmenting your subscribers helps you increase sales by offering customers what they already want. You can segment your contacts to make lists based on various common factors like location, average order value, engagement level, age, profession, etc. For instance, if you have two different types of newsletters for subscribers based on their interests, you’d have to create two different lists of contacts in your Ecommerce marketing automation software to send the right message to the right customers. In fact, you can achieve several levels of segmentation via lists, tags, and custom fields to make your messages highly targeted and relevant to customers. 3. Welcome and Onboard New Customers Like it or not, first impressions matter. Nowadays, it’s a given that signing up on a website would trigger Ecommerce email marketing automation workflows that will welcome customers to the website. These communications can require explicit consent for adding the customer to the email list (we know, managing an email list isn’t easy), share an overview of the brand’s value or message, or guide them through the purchase process. You can also lure the new accounts with promos and discounts that will get them swiping their card in no time! A welcome series can also be particularly helpful in extending customer service for those who have already purchased your product or service. You can share details on how to use the offerings to extract maximum value. Such a consideration can boost customer loyalty and enhance customer experience. 4. Automate the Checkout Process for More Sales A complicated checkout process can deter customers from completing their purchase, but you can prevent a large percentage of abandoned carts by creating a smooth and trustworthy checkout process. With marketing automation for Ecommerce, you can fill in customer details automatically and display preferred payment options to make it as convenient as possible for customers to complete a purchase. You may also add a live chat option on the checkout page to swiftly answer customers’ queries during the buying process. 5. Translate Abandoned Carts into Sales Cart abandonment is a serious problem in the Ecommerce sector. About 7 out of 10 buyers abandon products in their cart for various reasons. This figure varies depending on the device. As a result, cart abandonment can cost your online Ecommerce store billions of dollars in sales per year. Fortunately, marketing automation for Ecommerce attempts to offset these losses through regular follow-ups and check-ins. Automatically triggered emails that hit the right combination of subject lines, email copy, and CTA could convince the shopper to buy from you. 6. Win Back Inactive Customers Similar to cart abandonment, you could have customers who may have signed up on your online store only to forget about you entirely! Or you could have someone who made an occasional purchase and pulled the plug on their CLV. Ecommerce marketing automation platforms can help in such instances. You can customize email marketing automation campaign workflows that deploy after a lapse of X number of days, offering the client coupons or promos to pique their engagement. 7. Capture Customer Feedback Ecommerce brands that encourage customers to post their ratings and reviews against the products can improve conversion rates. In this regard, marketing automation software makes the task easier through automatic feedback collection. You can implement email marketing automation for Ecommerce that prompts the buyer to share their customer experience after X days post-purchase. 8. Establish Omnichannel Presence Consider a situation where someone has browsed through the products on your online store. This action indicates that they are either curious about the product or have considered purchasing it. That’s a lead right there. Through Ecommerce marketing automation tools, you can reach the lead through other channels, say social media platforms, and test their responses. If they continue engaging with the ads, it is a clear indication that they are a qualified prospect. Automated workflows can then capture their details and continue nurturing them to the point of purchase. That’s the beauty of omnichannel marketing! 9. Send Media-Rich Dynamic Communications Dynamic content refers to customizing your content for visitors. With dynamic content, the content and images on your pages adapt to customers’ in-session behavior, demographic data, and characteristics. This offers two benefits. First, presenting relevant offers helps decrease bounce and increase conversions. Second, it allows you to create personalized experiences. Including rich media, such as product images, can make a world of difference when you are re-engaging your leads. For our Ecommerce customers, we’ve seen product images improving their CTR for emails and rich push notifications. It also offers great potential to cross-sell or upsell products on your online store. All you need to do is set up product blocks and let your marketing automation platform handle the rest. This form of content marketing automation for Ecommerce will share relevant details such as product specifications, price, and other crucial details that will be too tempting to pass up! 10. Use Lead Scoring for Higher Conversion Rates An Ecommerce marketing automation platform that offers lead scoring can help you boost conversions by automatically sending personalized content to prospects depending on their position in the sales funnel. Lead scoring can also be used for pre-qualifying leads before passing them onto your sales team by assigning a score to every lead based on their actions on your website and other predetermined factors. Cold leads or those with low scores can be segmented further and nurtured with personalized content before passing them on to the sales team. For instance, as soon as a subscriber shows interest in buying from your Ecommerce store, you may automatically enter them into a drip campaign to slowly nudge them into completing the purchase. You may set the following types of automated email marketing campaigns to nurture your leads and drive customer loyalty as well: An automated welcome email series for effective onboarding Follow-up emails to remain in touch with new leads on certain predetermined milestones Offer emails to encourage purchase Review requests for feedback and user-generated content (UGC) Abandoned cart emails to recover lost revenue Emails celebrating milestones and personal events 11. A/B Test Your Landing Pages A/B testing refers to simultaneously testing two or more variants of a page to see which one performs the best. With your marketing automation Ecommerce software, you can quickly run such tests between your product pages and landing pages to make informed decisions regarding the digital assets you’ll use. Some of the elements you may consider for split-testing are: Headlines Compare a longer versus a shorter headline Ask a question in your headline Use a testimonial in your headline Try positive and negative emotions Calls-to-Action Compare the use of words like “Free”, “100%”, “Bonus”, etc. Try different color combinations Placement of text Banner Image Placement Color scheme Text on display 12. Invest in an Automated Social Listening Tool With an automated social listening tool, you can monitor customer conversations around phrases, keywords, hashtags, and industry-specific terms. This will give you a holistic view of how customers talk about your brand and what they expect from it. Some social listening tools are also equipped to run sentiment analysis on captured data to give you actionable business insights. 13. Automate Reviews on Your Website Gathering customer feedback and acting on it is crucial to your brand’s success. However, manual collection of reviews can be a tedious job. Instead, you can set up trigger emails that are automatically sent to customers a few days after product delivery to ask for feedback. You may even use web push notifications or in-app prompts to gather feedback and reviews for your products. 14. Reward Loyal Customers Loyal customers buy more. With Ecommerce marketing automation, you can segment your best customers and reward them for their shopping behavior to boost customer loyalty and subsequent sales. An automation program can also be set to convert first-time shoppers into repeat customers by automatically rewarding them with a special discount or promotion via email. Offering customers a coupon or discount code that applies to their second purchase is an excellent way to keep them coming back. Under your loyalty program, you can offer flat discounts, exclusive offers, BOGO promotions, free gifts, and more. 15. Use Chatbots for Customer Service Customer service is the focus of most Ecommerce brands and requires dedicated resources to tend to customers 24/7. This translates into a significant amount of revenue for any brand, which can be optimized with the introduction of chatbots in the front line of customer service. But that’s not all. You can also use chatbots in retail and give your shoppers a highly personalized experience.   7 Ecommerce Marketing Automation Examples to Learn From How can you improve conversion rates and other key metrics through marketing automation for Ecommerce? Nothing hits home like an example does. So here’s a list of marketing automation best practices and strategies used by real-world Ecommerce brands to help you get the gist. 1. Nike: Customer Service Chatbots Source: https://www.producthunt.com/products/github-visualizer#nike-stylebot   As you can see in the above image, Nike StyleBot uses chatbots in retail and gives its shoppers a highly personalized experience. It helps customers style their shoes and browse previously uploaded designs for inspiration. Shoppers can interact with Nike StyleBot on Facebook Messenger to mix and match, create their designs, and share them with friends, making the whole experience a lot more fun than usual. 2. Tattly: Reward Points for Every Purchase Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/youve-earned-6-tattcoin-   Tattoo marketplace Tattly runs an automated point-based system that offers reward points for every purchase that can be redeemed on the site for discounts or other goodies. Why is it such a good Ecommerce strategy? Because, c’mon, who doesn’t like discounts? As you’d agree, customers who buy the second time are even more likely to return for the third time, and so on. Incentivizing subsequent purchases through carefully crafted reward programs, like Tattly does, is an excellent way of building loyalty and promoting sales. It’s a clever way of using a marketing automation software platform! 3. Belgian Boys: Ecommerce Marketing Automation with a Win-Back Email Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/we-miss-you-belgian-boys   Belgian Boys, an NYC-based breakfast item brand, uses email marketing automation software workflows that deploy after a certain number of days have passed without any action from a customer. Given that the account has already gone cold, the brand has nothing to lose, right? That’s what they thought when sending this automated email. The copy’s dripping with food-related metaphors that make the reader lick their lips and think twice about leaving the brand forever. Plus, instead of boring CTAs like “Shop Online” or “Order Now”, the CTA “Wait, there’s been a mistake” is pretty conversational, which makes it all the more fascinating and click-worthy. It gives off a feeling of mystery — the customer is left wondering what’s going to happen next, so they’re tempted to click the button. 4. Airbnb: Request Customer Feedback Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/search/emails/airbnb   First of all, customers seeing a warm and friendly subject line like “We’d Love Your Feedback! It’ll Only Take 3 Minutes” can’t help but open the email. As you can see, this automated email from Airbnb encourages customers to share their feedback about the brand—a chance for them to improve conversion rates. Ecommerce marketing automation software helps them implement email automation that prompts the buyer to share their experience after a certain amount of time following their purchase. 5. Warby Parker: Automated Shipping Confirmation Email Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/transactional-update-email-design-from-warby-parker   Warby Parker sends this email when a customer’s home try-on glasses are shipped. Okay, cool. The customer knows that their order is on the way, and they can track it. They can also verify their address as mentioned at the bottom of the email. But you know what sets this automated email apart? It thanks the customer. And don’t miss the playful “Just for you” heading and the sentence congratulating the customer on choosing to try on the glasses at home. All of that’s a humble way of acknowledging that the customer is important for their brand. Because transactional emails, like this one, get high open rates (who doesn’t want to know when their order has shipped?), Warby Parker knows they can drive a ton of traffic and get sales if they include a few strategic CTAs. 6. Dyson: Abandoned Shopping Cart Email Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/items-in-your-basket-at-dyson-com   Life is hectic, and customers are fickle. There are a thousand reasons why customers don’t finish the checkout process, and Dyson knows that. Sending them this gentle reminder is a surefire way to not only show them that Dyson cares about them, but also coax them to finish what they started. 7. Patagonia: Welcome Email Automation Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/welcome-to-patagonia-emails   When a customer signs up for Patagonia’s emails, they’re immediately welcomed to the email list, with the promise of all types of useful content. And guess what? At the bottom of the email, Patagonia includes a lot of different calls to action (CTAs). When customers click on those, they’re already telling Patagonia what they’re interested in before they’ve even purchased anything. Smooth, right?   5 Best Ecommerce Marketing Automation Software to Increase Engagement Below, we’ll walk you through five of the best Ecommerce marketing automation platforms. We’ll break down what makes each one shine in its own way, where they might fall short, and give you pricing insights to help you pick the right fit for your Ecommerce brand. Let’s get right into it. 1. MoEngage MoEngage is one of those rare platforms that makes tech advanced enough for enterprise brands while still being friendly for mid-sized Ecommerce teams. It’s an all-in-one customer engagement platform combining push notifications, in-app messaging, SMS, email, and more—all tailored for customer lifecycle management. Its standout feature? AI-powered Ecommerce personalization. MoEngage uses machine learning to analyze customer behavior and predict what they might be interested in buying next. For Ecommerce brands, this means you’re not just spamming offers, but landing in their inbox or notifications with exactly what they’re most likely to purchase. How Pricing Works: Plan details vary based on the features your brand needs. Request a custom quote for enterprise-level flexibility. Best For: Ecommerce brands looking for cross-channel marketing automation and predictive audience segmentation with intuitive workflows. 2. BigCommerce Source: https://www.bigcommerce.com/apps/atom8/   BigCommerce is an all-encompassing Ecommerce platform with features to build, run, and grow your online store. That said, because it’s primarily a platform to build and manage your Ecommerce website, its marketing automation workflows can sometimes feel limited compared to those in tools like MoEngage or Omnisend. That’s because BigCommerce doesn’t offer automation on its own platform; you need to integrate GritGlobal’s Atom8 Automation to optimize your online store. So, if you’re neck-deep in email workflows and need automated email drip campaigns, for example, BigCommerce might not check every box. How Pricing Works: Their pricing is tailored to each client’s needs, depending on the growth stage they’re in. Best For: SMBs and mid-market businesses looking for a do-it-all Ecommerce platform with baked-in automation for basic marketing needs. 3. Omnisend If email marketing is your bread and butter, Omnisend may just bake you a second loaf. Designed specifically for Ecommerce marketers, Omnisend combines email, SMS, and push notifications to engage customers at every stage of their journey. Its pre-built, Ecommerce-specific workflows (hello, abandoned cart recovery) are built to save you hours of setup time. The magic lies in its deep integrations with Ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. Omnisend’s segmentation features are also worth shouting about. You can easily target customers based on behavior, past purchases, and even how much they’ve spent, so your messaging is as relevant as possible. Where might it fall short? Limited flexibility in cross-channel campaigns (beyond email, push notifications, and SMS). How Pricing Works: Omnisend offers a free plan with basic email automations for 500 contacts. Plans scale upwards based on email list size and features. Best For: Ecommerce brands working with smaller teams but seeking powerful email/SMS automation without the hefty price tag of more enterprise solutions. 4. Rejoiner Rejoiner is at its best for one thing and one thing only: reducing your cart abandonment rates. If your Ecommerce brand is losing more customers than it wins at checkout, this platform can help you build laser-focused campaigns to bring those shoppers back. Its predictive revenue tracking ensures you have clear visibility into how much money is at stake and saved with each abandoned cart workflow. The downside? It’s not an apt tool for cross-channel marketing automation. If you need broader automation beyond email, like SMS, in-app, or push notifications, you’ll need to integrate it with other tools or run them separately. How Pricing Works: Rejoiner’s pricing ranges between $25/month for 1K contacts and $1,695/month for 149K contacts. It offers custom pricing for a list of over 150K contacts. Best For: High-traffic Ecommerce brands laser-focused on maximizing revenue recovery from abandoned carts. 5. ShipStation At first glance, ShipStation might seem like an odd pick for a list of Ecommerce marketing automation tools. But hear us out. While it’s primarily a shipping software solution, it earns its spot here because of its lesser-known post-purchase automation tools. You can delight customers with personalized shipping confirmation emails, branded tracking pages, and upsell offers strategically placed in delivery notifications. If you’ve ever wanted to strengthen loyalty and cross-sell opportunities after someone completes a purchase, ShipStation’s workflows can be a game-changer. However, it’s not built for pre-purchase interactions. If you’re looking to create in-depth automation around acquisition, consider other platforms in this list first. How Pricing Works: Plans start at $9.99/month for smaller businesses and go up to $399.99/month for advanced features and higher shipping limits. Best For: Mid-to-large Ecommerce brands looking to enhance post-purchase customer engagement and improve the customer experience.   Why Omnichannel Beats Multichannel Marketing Automation for Ecommerce Multichannel marketing automation fails to deliver a cohesive experience. It gets your messages across different platforms, but the messages are disconnected. In contrast, omnichannel marketing automation is about connecting the dots so every message feels like part of one big, seamless experience. We know you’ve already heard enough on the omnichannel vs. multichannel marketing debate. But seriously, it gets more interesting when you stop and think about it. Picture this: a customer clicks on a product ad on Instagram, later gets an app notification with a discount code, and finally receives an email reminding them the item is almost sold out. Each touchpoint builds on the last, creating a smooth, personalized customer journey. That’s how omnichannel marketing automation works. Take Nordstrom, for example. Added something to your online cart? You can pick it up in-store the same day. Every interaction, whether it’s an email, a notification, or an in-store visit, feels like part of the same story. A multichannel approach might stop at sending a single email for an abandoned cart. Whether you’re doubling down on omnichannel and cross-channel engagement with MoEngage, building loyalty post-purchase with ShipStation, or maximizing abandoned cart recoveries with Rejoiner, the key is finding the right fit for where you are and where you want to go.   Set Up Ecommerce Marketing Automations with MoEngage MoEngage lets you create seamless, personalized customer journeys that feel more human. From AI-driven insights to tailored message automation, it’s built to keep your audience engaged at every step of their Ecommerce journey. Ready to step up your Ecommerce marketing automation game? See MoEngage in action. The post Ecommerce Marketing Automation Strategies to Boost Revenue appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 4 minutes Lifecycle marketers are facing a profound shift in how they engage customers. Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as both a promise and a pressure point, positioned as the key to delivering hyper-personalized, timely, and impactful experiences. Yet behind the AI hype lies a more nuanced reality: executing AI-driven lifecycle marketing at scale is often messier than advertised. Marketers are caught between high expectations and systemic challenges, from fragmented data to stalled adoption and internal roadblocks. Understanding what’s holding AI back (and how to move forward with confidence) is essential for modern lifecycle teams.   The Great Data Disconnect One of the most persistent obstacles to realizing AI’s potential in customer engagement and lifecycle marketing is the inability to access and seamlessly activate customer data. Many marketers report being bottlenecked by their reliance on centralized data teams, which slows down the ability to test, iterate, and personalize campaigns at scale. While platforms frequently advertise integrations with major data warehouses such as Snowflake, Databricks, and Amazon Redshift, the reality often falls short. These connections may exist in name but not in function. Instead of enabling real-time audience segmentation or event-triggered personalization, many marketers are forced to rely on manual data exports, SQL queries, or engineering support just to get campaigns off the ground. This idea reinforces what many already know from experience: a tech stack is only as powerful as its weakest connection. The end goal isn’t just connection, but cohesion.  You need platforms that support bi-directional data sync, real-time event streaming, and transparent visibility across the customer journey without additional tools or workarounds. Until these capabilities are widespread, you’ll continue to feel like your AI ambitions are constrained by outdated infrastructure.   When AI Falls Short: Fatigue, Friction, and Fading ROI Even with the right data, many marketers are growing skeptical of AI’s ability to deliver tangible results.  AI fatigue is real.  Teams have poured time and resources into personalization engines, predictive analytics models, and generative content tools…only to find underwhelming returns. This disconnect isn’t imagined. Many AI projects ultimately fail to deliver on their promised ROI, often due to unclear use cases, lack of stakeholder alignment, or insufficient change management. For lifecycle marketers, this often plays out as prolonged proof-of-concept cycles (hello, year-long POC that never seems to end…) that absorb months of energy with little to show. It’s not uncommon for teams to invest in tools that generate predictive churn scores or optimal send times, only to realize those insights aren’t actionable within their rigid engagement platforms. The issue is compounded by the flood of marketing tools claiming AI capabilities. In many cases, the “AI” is little more than rule-based automation in disguise, creating confusion around what real AI looks like and how it should be evaluated.   The Hidden Cost of Vendor Lock-In Another growing concern is vendor lock-in. As marketing tech stacks expand, so does the risk of becoming overly dependent on a single vendor’s ecosystem. This can be especially problematic when marketers outgrow their existing platforms but fear the complexity and disruption of switching. Model Context Protocols (MCPs) offer a path forward. These emerging frameworks are designed to create portable, standardized models for audience segmentation and campaign orchestration. With MCPs, marketers can define core elements—like audiences, campaign flows, and experimentation strategies—in a vendor-agnostic way. This means if they switch platforms, they don’t have to rebuild everything from scratch. The appeal is clear: reduced rework, faster time to value, and more flexibility in choosing best-of-breed tools. MCPs are still gaining traction, but their potential to reduce friction and future-proof marketing strategies is significant. Meanwhile, marketers continue to seek out credible migration stories that show what platform transitions look like in practice. Clear documentation, proven onboarding frameworks, and peer testimonials are increasingly essential for vendors looking to attract modern, data-savvy teams.     Practical Tips for Testing and Evaluating AI Tools Despite the challenges, marketers can adopt a more strategic approach to AI: one that reduces risk and increases clarity. Instead of jumping into full-scale deployments, teams can take smaller, more deliberate steps.  Using the following tactics, you can better differentiate between hype and real capability, allowing you to adopt AI tools that align with your goals and constraints. 1. Use sandbox environments Ask for a sandbox to simulate real use cases without impacting production data. This allows teams to pressure-test capabilities before committing. 2. Prioritize transparent case studies Look for success stories that offer a behind-the-scenes look at implementation, challenges, and actual results, not just polished outcomes. 3. Test integration depth, not just compatibility Don’t stop at “Yes, we integrate.” Ask: Can you trigger journeys based on real-time data? Can attributes update dynamically? Does data flow both ways? 4. Evaluate vendor support and education The best tools come with great training, responsive support, and documentation that accelerates onboarding and learning. 5. Learn from your peers Communities like the Lifecycle Luminaries Slack channel offer real, unfiltered feedback from practitioners. These sources are often the most trustworthy and valuable for unbiased opinions.     Embracing AI Realistically and Strategically AI has the power to transform lifecycle marketing, but only when it’s applied with clarity, intention, and the right foundation. Success doesn’t come from chasing the flashiest tools. It comes from solving real problems: fragmented data, limited visibility, and disconnected systems that prevent marketers from executing the strategies they already know will work. That’s why the most effective marketers right now aren’t asking, “How do I use more AI?” They’re asking, “Where can AI remove friction and help me act faster, smarter, and with more confidence?” At MoEngage, we’ve seen meaningful results when AI is embedded directly into the marketing workflow, not layered on top as an afterthought. Our AI engine, Sherpa, supports use cases like predictive segmentation, intelligent send-time optimization, and creative performance insights. These features are designed to help marketers spend less time reacting and more time proactively engaging their customers. This isn’t about replacing human decision-making. It’s about making smarter decisions, faster, with AI as the assistant, not the driver. As lifecycle marketing continues to evolve, the marketers who succeed won’t be the ones with the most tools. They’ll be the ones who combine strategic thinking, team alignment, and well-integrated AI to deliver personalized, timely, and scalable customer experiences. Marketers must remain curious but skeptical, innovative but grounded. Those who strike the right balance will be best positioned to harness AI’s full potential (not just as a trend), but as a lasting engine of engagement and growth. The post Navigating the AI Revolution in Lifecycle Marketing: Challenges & Opportunities appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 4 minutes The marketing landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation driven by artificial intelligence. AI has evolved beyond a mere marketing assistant that expedites tasks. With AI Agents, marketers can now delegate entire tasks, from initiation to completion. Despite the current hype surrounding AI, its impact on the future is undeniable and likely to be permanent. Amara’s Law perfectly understands the current situation. What is Amara’s Law? The law says that we often overestimate a technology’s short-run impact and underestimate its long-run impact. This is very similar to Gartner’s Hype Cycle. With so much hype around AI, it can be very overwhelming. So, it’s critical to look beyond all the hype and figure out real-world AI uses and how to fit those solutions into your business workflows. Rise of AI Agents “AI Agents” has to be the buzzword for 2025. You might have seen people talking about it on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms. There are a lot of opinions; some say it’s just hype, and a few say it’s the next big thing. So it comes down to: But is it worth all the hype? AI agents are intelligent, autonomous systems that understand natural language and leverage business context to reason through complex tasks and take action on your behalf, while operating within set guardrails. If we look at Customer Engagement specifically, there are tons of practical use cases. Its usage ranges from campaign creation to onboarding to analytics/optimization. 1. Campaign Creation  If we specifically look at campaign creation, the AI agents can do everything from – Choosing an audience segment Crafting campaign content Deciding the best channel and time to send The current way we’re segmenting users with filters works, but it’s not super easy to learn. It takes time to create segments using filters, and you need to know your events and attributes pretty well. This means marketers need to seek additional support. However, using AI agents, you can effortlessly create targeted customer segments in seconds using natural language. Creating a segment is as easy as typing a prompt like “Identify customers who abandoned the credit card application process”. That’s it. Basically, you can use AI agents to turn ideas for a customer segment into reality with just one instruction. It’s super quick to get things done this way, and you don’t need to learn anything complicated or leverage additional tools. 2. Customer Journey Orchestration  Building adequate multi-touch flows for customer experiences is often time-consuming and complex, involving intricate logic and a steep learning curve. AI Agents addresses this by using AI to translate customer journey ideas into optimized flows instantly. This AI-driven approach dramatically reduces build time, enabling marketers to brainstorm and ideate with AI, focusing on strategy and creativity. Customers can create and refine flows using natural language and receive tailored recommendations. 3. Analytics & Optimization  AI Agents can also assist in – Data Querying – Ask in natural language to create appropriate charts for the data. Data Monitoring – AI detects an anomaly and conducts RCA and regression models to uncover the “why” for the movement of your metrics. Data Interpretation – AI explains what’s happening in a chart/data. 4. Decisioning Agents  Marketers face the challenge of moving from “best fit for a segment” to “true 1:1 fit for an individual”. This requires optimizing interactions with the right message and incentive, for each customer, in the right channel, at the right time and frequency – something that’s not humanly possible at scale. Decision-making agents address this by leveraging Reinforcement Learning and Generative AI to enhance user context. They optimize delivery by determining the best message copy, send time, and channel. Incrementality testing can measure the impact of decision-making agents, providing transparency in decision-making. This enables marketers to achieve more effective and personalized customer experiences. Benefits of AI Agents Implementing AI agents for customer engagement has multiple benefits. The benefits of AI agents extend beyond simple automation, creating value through enhanced efficiency, cost optimization, real-time audience insights, and elevated customer experiences. Here are a few – Improved Productivity: AI agents handle routine inquiries and tasks simultaneously, freeing human agents to focus on complex issues. They operate in real-time to provide the latest customer insights. This seamless workflow integration allows businesses to accomplish more with existing resources. Reduced Costs: By automating repetitive tasks, brands can significantly lower operational expenses while maintaining a great customer experience. Improved Decision Making: AI agents analyze vast amounts of customer data to identify patterns and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed. They provide consistent, data-driven recommendations free from human biases or fatigue. Real-time insights allow brands to anticipate customer needs and proactively engage with them. Impact of Generative AI on Customer Engagement  Generative AI continues to improve, driving growth in Customer Engagement across various segments. The number of martech software products has grown by a whopping 27.8% in the last 12 months, the highest in the last few years. If we look back, adoption curves used to be measured in years. But with generative AI, adoption is growing in months or even weeks. One significant challenge is accurately gauging the real-time adoption of Generative AI. It’s like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. This difficulty is akin to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. We can all agree that Generative AI has many useful use cases. However, multiple reports suggest marketers leverage it mainly for brainstorming campaign copy ideas and for writing the copy itself. That’s why we launched Merlin AI Copywriter and Designer last year. With Merlin AI, we have successfully merged the advantages of Generative AI with the world of Customer Engagement. You can read more about it here.  Wrapping It Up  AI is transforming Customer Engagement beyond automation with intelligent AI agents handling complex marketing tasks autonomously. Despite the hype around AI agents and generative AI, they offer real benefits like improved productivity, cost savings, better decisions, and enhanced customer experience through streamlined processes and insightful analytics. Leveraging Generative AI and AI agents is now critical for the sustained success and growth of consumer brands. The post AI in Customer Engagement – AI Agents, Gen AI, Future and More appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 7 minutes The way brands look at data has changed over the past few years. While in the last decade, brands may have focused on data collection (the more data, the merrier), over the passage of time, marketers are dawning upon the realization that unless data is actionable, it’s not really usable. Marketers have struggled for years to draw actionable insight from fragmented customer data that exists in silos across countless tools.  Rather than adding yet another tool to their tech stack to mitigate this silo problem, marketers are re-evaluating their entire tech stack. As a result, forward-thinking brands realize that to unlock truly personalized, real-time customer experiences requires tapping into the single source of truth: their data warehouse. Let’s explore why this shift is happening and how a CDEP like MoEngage is the perfect partner in this new paradigm. From Passive to Active: The Evolution of The Modern Data Warehouses Data warehouses aren’t new. Traditionally, many businesses relied on on-premise warehouses, which were powerful but often rigid, expensive to scale, and sometimes siloed.  The game-changer has been the advent of cloud data warehouses (such as Snowflake, Google BigQuery, Databricks, Amazon Redshift, and Azure Synapse). Cloud data warehouses offer consumer brands the following advantages: Scalability: Easily handle vast and growing datasets without massive upfront infrastructure investment. Flexibility: Integrate structured and semi-structured data from teams like sales, customer support, finance, marketing, etc. Performance: Process complex queries rapidly, enabling faster insights. Accessibility: Democratize data access for various teams (with appropriate governance). Gone are the days when data warehouses were merely passive repositories of data. Today, they often contain the most complete, up-to-date, and trustworthy business view. Benefits of the Warehouse-First Approach for Campaigns Real-time data: Data warehouses often provide real-time data, enabling marketers to understand the pulse of the customer and make decisions based on timely and accurate information rather than the slightly-dated information that ends up in a CDP (customer data platform). Real-time analytics: A warehouse-first approach helps marketers to understand the current state of the business (as in ‘what is happening right now’. This real-time analytics also helps them spot deviations in key performance indicators (KPIs), detect problems proactively, and make faster decisions. Real-time segmentation: Traditional segmentation relies on slightly stale data (hours or days old). By automatically moving customers into or out of segments based on their latest actions/changes in attributes, marketers can personalize the customer experience in real time, thereby becoming more relevant and timely. Data consistency and quality: Loading data into a warehouse involves data cleansing, validation, standardization, and transformation, which improves the quality of data in the warehouse. Speed, scalability, and cost-effectiveness: Data warehouses offer scalable storage and processing power, allowing businesses to adapt to their evolving needs rapidly. Compared to storing and processing data within multiple tools, data warehouses are a more cost-effective way for businesses to manage massive amounts of diverse data. Faster time-to-value (Potentially): Once set up, activating new data points or segments can be quicker if the data already resides in the warehouse. This also means that campaigns can be launched faster vs. when data needs to be copied into a CDP before being sent to an email platform or an SMS automation tool. Improved data governance: By consolidating all data into a central repository, data warehouses ensure that data governance policies, standards, and procedures are standardized across the board.   Benefits of a Warehouse-First Approach For B2C Consumer Brands CDEP and the Warehouse-First Approach Forward-thinking consumer brands have realized that customer data management and customer engagement cannot exist in silos.  This is how a data-driven marketer is thinking in 2025: I have all the information about my customer consolidated in a data warehouse. The data combines customers’ past purchase history, product interactions, customer support history, marketing-related data, and many other pivotal data points. I want to use this data warehouse information directly to drive contextual, relevant, and personalized experiences through my campaigns in real-time. I don’t want to spend time copying the data into another tool and then into a marketing automation or a customer engagement platform. Any data latency will prevent me from providing real-time personalized experiences, and will negatively impact my engagement, retention, and monetization campaigns.   For consumer brands that need to respond to the pulse of the customer in real-time, the martech stack needs to be warehouse-native.  This is where a CDEP (Customer Data and Engagement Platform) fits in like a glove. What is a CDEP? A customer data and engagement platform (CDEP) is an integrated, all-in-one platform that combines robust data management capabilities with best-in-class engagement, AI, and analytical capabilities.  A CDEP can: Unify data to build a single customer profile with real-time data ingestion Segment your customers based on behavior, demographics, or propensity Hyper-personalize communications in real-time, at scale Automate campaigns via advanced AI functionalities Analyze campaign performance and customer behavior to unlock deep customer insights What Makes MoEngage the Perfect Warehouse-Native CDEP? A CDEP helps consumer brands leverage warehouse as the central system without creating new data silos.  A warehouse-native CDEP like MoEngage minimizes data duplication and data movement, leverages the warehouse’s processing power, enhances security, and can lower costs in the long run. To evaluate why a CDEP (Customer Data and Engagement Platform) like MoEngage shines in a warehouse-first marketing approach, we need to understand these three pillars: 1) Capabilities of a CDEP Data Ingestion, Unification, and Management Capabilities Instead of extensive data storage, a warehouse-native CDEP connects directly to your data warehouse. It allows marketers to build segments using rich data in situ within the warehouse environment, leveraging the warehouse’s processing power and data freshness. Side note: A CDEP can also double down as a data management platform if you do not have a data warehouse or do not wish to connect it with your warehouse.  Data Ingestion: A CDEP comes equipped with flexible and robust data management capabilities that can capture a complete view of customer interactions. Sources of data ingestion include event streaming, batch data uploads, platform integrations (via connectors and APIs), and data warehouse integrations (Snowflake, BigQuery, RedShift, etc). Data Storage: A CDEP would leverage your existing data warehouse as the primary, persistent storage location for comprehensive customer data. Data Unification: CDEPs can unify data from various sources into a 360-degree customer view for each individual, resolving identity across devices and channels. CDEPs do this by ingesting and recognizing identifiers (email, phone, user ID, device ID etc) and applying deterministic matching rules to stitch identifiers and associated data together. Data Governance, Privacy & Security: CDEPs have best-in-class data governance, privacy and security features like Data Access Management, Data Encryption, PII Masking and Tokenization, and Data Retention Policies. These measures ensure that data remains protected at all costs. Integrated Engagement Capabilities A CDEP seamlessly combines data processing with built-in omnichannel campaign orchestration and delivery across multiple channels. These best-in-class engagement capabilities are further augmented with AI capabilities that can help consumer brands improve the customer experience. Omnichannel Messaging Capabilities With over 11 channels, including email, SMS, push notification, WhatsApp, etc., a CDEP like MoEngage can help your brand build and optimize personalized customer journeys across channels and devices. AI Capabilities Generative and predictive AI capabilities offered by a CDEP can easily learn from the warehouse data and use AI agents to suggest the ideal customer journeys, decisions that help brands optimize campaigns, and generate segments. Segmentational Capabilities A CDEP can generate actionable segments in real time based on demographics and attributes, behavioral and transactional data, and propensity. A CDEP uses fresh and comprehensive data in the warehouse, allowing marketers to build customer segments based on demographics, attributes, behavior, transactions, or propensity scores. Analytical Capabilities After unifying data from different sources, a CDEP can help marketers make sense of the data through the power of its analytical capabilities. Be it identifying trends and patterns in customer behavior, segmenting the audience, predicting the likelihood of certain actions in the future, or informing future strategy, CDEP’s robust analytical capabilities can help marketers with actionable insights in real time. Reporting and Dashboards: Built-in data visualization capabilities can help marketing, growth, and product teams across consumer brands track key business metrics like campaign engagement rates, conversion rates, churn rates, DAUs, and MAUs. Behavioral Analytics: Features like funnel, RFM, and cohort analysis can help consumer brands analyze behavioral trends of customers. 2) Scalability, Reliability, and Elasticity Reliability offered by a CDEP means that the platform is consistently available without any downtimes or disruptions. A reliable CDEP ensures high availability, fast response times, and stable performance for brands like yours. A reliable CDEP is built on elastic infrastructure, which means that the platform’s capabilities will be available to you even during periods of extensive and high usage by other customers. 3) Customer Support  If you’re planning to migrate to a warehouse-native CDEP, you might have some concerns about the amount of effort, developer bandwidth, friction, and migration costs that you could incur while making the switch. MoUpgrade program by MoEngage accelerates migration timelines and delivers faster time-to-value (TTV) in weeks instead of months or years.  The program allows for a smooth migration to a warehouse-native CDEP without any disruptions to ongoing campaigns, data collection cadences, or your brand’s existing data pipelines. Conclusion: This shift towards warehouse-first marketing marks a pivotal change, moving beyond fragmented data collection to leveraging the data warehouse as the single source of truth. A warehouse-native CDEP like MoEngage emerges as the ideal solution. By integrating data management, engagement, and analytics directly with the warehouse, CDEPs empower brands to deliver truly contextual, real-time experiences, driving better results and faster time-to-value in 2025 and beyond. Talk to our team to understand how a CDEP can help your brand better harness the power of your data warehouse.   The post Warehouse-First Marketing: Why Brands in 2025 Are Choosing a CDEP appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 12 minutes Effective marketing begins with reliable information about your customers and your campaigns. That’s where email analytics tools come in. They help you analyze customer engagement, optimize email performance, and drive meaningful growth. But in a sea of tools that promise ‘insight,’ it’s hard to know where to start. Whether you are a solo marketer or part of a larger team, finding email analytics software that aligns with your goals can make all the difference between guesswork and identifying your growth funnel. This blog post reviews some of the best email marketing analytics tools to set up reliable, actionable campaign reporting. What is an Email Analytics Tool? An email analytics tool is software that tracks, measures, and reports key email marketing performance metrics of your campaign, such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. This enables marketers to develop informed, data-driven strategies that boost ROI and help in personalizing campaigns. The data shared by the tool depends on how advanced it is. It further taps into the behavioral side of your customer, such as customer journeys.   5 Benefits of Using Email Marketing Analytics Tools For lack of better words, intuition is good in marketing, but data is better. With email marketing analytics software, you can know your customers like the back of your hand, deliver hyper-targeted and behavior-triggered marketing campaigns, and always be sure of your actions. Put simply, email analytics tools turn raw data into actionable insights, and here’s how you can level up your game using them: Improve Campaign Performance: Analytics tools provide data on what’s working (and what’s not) by focusing on key conversion metrics and customer behavior. This helps you make data-backed tweaks to email content, subject lines, delivery times, offers, and more, leading to better email engagement and results. Understand Your Audience Better: Your email analytics software will reveal insights into your audience’s behavior, preferences, and habits with just a few clicks. It’s crucial to know when your readers open and engage with emails, which CTA they interact with the most, and what offers they’re likely to click on. This is because it empowers you with incredibly valuable insights to create personalized and relevant messaging. Improved Targeting and Personalization: 78% of marketers agree to rely heavily on personalization for their email marketing campaigns. Analyzing data on customers’ behavior and preferences helps you understand your audience better and tailor campaigns to their specific interests and needs. This can lead to higher engagement and better response rates. Optimize Send Times and Frequency: Since 61% of customers prefer receiving promotional emails weekly, your tool could be used to customize and create emails specifically for your audience. As a result, instead of relying on guesswork about when to send, you can determine the optimal time and cadence based on real customer behavior. This reduces unsubscribe rates and makes your emails more likely to be read. Identify and Segment High-Value Leads: The most significant benefit of using email marketing analytics software is knowing your core audience versus those who will never take action, saving you thousands of marketing dollars. These tools are designed to identify which customers are most engaged, enabling you to build targeted segments for follow-up campaigns. Understanding the value of what an email analytics tool can do for you is the first step, but picking the right tool is where the magic begins. Let’s break down the key factors to assess.   How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Analytics Software Picking the right tool can be overwhelming when you have so many options. But the best tool is the one that’s right for your business goals, team, and depth of insights needed. So, before you make the plunge, here are the key factors to consider. Let’s go over them in detail. Metrics and Reporting Abilities: Your email analytics software should identify top-performing audience segments, highlight geographical and device trends, and uncover content preferences across subject lines, visuals, and text. Most importantly, it should track conversions and attribute revenue, helping you connect every campaign to real business impact. Integration with Your Tech Stack: Today’s email marketing analytics tools must be self-sufficient and smoothly integrate with your tech and marketing ecosystem, such as your CRM, CDP, Ecommerce, or internal marketing automation software. The more your platform works smoothly with your entire tech stack, the swifter its implementation and usage. Integrated systems reduce manual jobs, eliminate silos and empower your teams to collaborate and work smarter. Real-Time Analytics: Real-time analytics allows you to monitor and optimize performance on the go and serve your customers with the best possible experience. It lets the marketing team respond to customers’ needs instantly, adjust campaigns in real time, and improve campaign ROI. Ease of Use: When picking a tool, always check for intuitive navigation, visual reporting, customizable dashboards, and precise documentation. A user-friendly tool will speed up execution, reduce ‘handover’ time, and allow your team to move quickly from insight to action. Scalability: The final question that remains, is the platform scalable? Does it have enough capabilities to grow with your business, audience, and campaign scale? Choosing a scalable platform protects you from future roadblocks, avoids costly migrations, and ensures your investment continues to deliver long-term. Once you have narrowed down your choices based on your overall goal, the next step is to analyze the tool based on its offers and your needs. Not all email analytics tools are created equal, and understanding which capabilities are essential to you can save money, time, and frustration.   5 Key Features to Look for in an Email Analytics Software While the basic features remain the same, all email analytics tools will have a hero feature that shines, one that will let you experiment with content formats and style. Meanwhile, another will have the most gorgeous data visualization of your campaign reports you have ever seen. Your job is to pick what works best for you. Let’s examine a list of features that go beyond basic metrics and improve customer engagement. 1. Detailed Campaign Insights Your email analytics tool should help you turn data into insight, and insight into action. This means the tool must provide real-time insights on campaign performance, including detailed metrics like email open rates or click-through rates. Marketers can use this feature to monitor live campaigns and quickly identify customer trends or issues that need immediate action. Here’s what a tool’s dashboard on campaign performance looks like, once the email has been sent. Why this is a key criterion: Having real-time visibility on data that helps you make better decisions for your customers beats any other feature by miles. It’s a marketer’s opportunity to pivot, optimize, engage, or build on campaigns. 2. Custom Dashboards Custom dashboards show you charts and tables to digest customer data swiftly and clearly. They allow you to build tailored views of your core metrics, pulling in data points that matter most to your unique goals. Whether it is campaign performance, audience segmentation, or simply the result of an A/B test experience, these dashboards provide a sharp glance at once to maximize ROI. Your tool’s custom dashboard should allow multiple reports to be created for a desired destination. These reports should have different granularities, such as time ranges, chart types, or tables, just like the one below. Why this is a key criterion: Custom dashboards cut through the noise by allowing you to focus on metrics that matter, eventually boosting efficiency and the ability to make strategic decisions fast. 3. Automated A/B Testing Automated A/B testing can help marketing teams save time, effort, and resources, especially when dealing with hundreds of emails at once. This feature automates the A/B test of your email campaigns, enabling you to test different content, time, frequency, offers, and content blocks, automatically selecting the winning variant. Why this is a key criterion: Marketers rely on it to continuously improve performance, remove guesswork, and bring out the best of their campaigns, not assumptions. 4. Campaign Error Breakdown The campaign error breakdown, a little-talked-about feature of the email marketing world, tells marketers why their campaigns fail. Was it due to an invalid address, poor optimization, spam complaints, or a technical error? This granular reporting can save teams thousands of dollars in marketing money by simply diagnosing the issue and refining their lists and templates for better delivery. Why this is a key criterion: Understanding why your brand emails are not hitting the right inbox is crucial for healthy email list management and ensuring your messages reach the inbox, not the spam folder. 5. Link Click Tracking through Click Maps This feature can be rather beautiful. Its ability to use hot and cold colors and tell marketers exactly where their customers are clicking—a simple breakdown highlighting the hotspots of engagement—makes it attractive. It’s an intuitive feature that helps marketers quickly identify which links, buttons, and content or images in the email have drawn the maximum attention from customers. Why this is a key criterion: With these insights, teams can build on their content, refine email layouts, and place the messaging where it draws maximum attention to boost conversion. Heatmaps turn raw click data into digestible insight.   How to Integrate Email Marketing Analytics Tools Into Your Martech Stack Pro tip: Invite not just your growth team, but also your product, engineering, and data teams before you begin any migration-related task. This is also when your team should export all relevant events, metric nomenclature, and other platform-specific jobs to ensure the migration doesn’t fail. Now, as you begin the mammoth task of integrating email marketing analytics into your Martech, know that it’s not just a technical step, but a strategic one. When done right, it provides a single source of truth for customer insights and allows you to create consistent, data-driven experiences across every touchpoint. 1. Auditing Your Current Martech Stack A Martech stack audit before you begin will tell you everything you need to move forward. Where is the data flowing from? Which source reports on customer activity? Are there any duplications in metrics? Does the data in your CRM tool align with the data in your email tool? Is your campaign data properly flowing into your analytics platforms for reporting? A thorough audit will reveal all of this and more, which should be documented for all relevant teams to sign off on and learn from. Defining what gets shared ensures every tool gets the data it needs, eliminates blind spots, and creates a unified view of your customers. 2. Defining Key Metrics and Integration Goals Before you unplug your current system, you need to know exactly which key fits into which lock. Were you tracking and digging deeper into behavioral trends to measure campaign ROI, or were your campaigns defined at a surface level? Outlining what success looks like for your email analytics tool at the start opens up avenues for exact paths to follow, processes to set, and establishes clear guidelines. This can be done once your integration KPIs are set, for precise outcomes. Without clear email marketing metrics and goals, you risk drowning in data with no direction. Defining success upfront keeps integration linear, focused, and impactful. 3. Configuring Data Flow and Synchronization To maximize the output of your integration, ensure your data moves smoothly, accurately, and in real time. Set up your data pipelines carefully, double-check events and field mappings, and test for accuracy across platforms. Ensure your events and email metrics match and align with your CRM, marketing automation, and BI dashboards. Flawless data flow means fewer silos and blind spots, eventually enabling marketing teams to run campaigns smoothly with reliable insights. It ensures every team, from marketing to growth, operates with the same playbook. 4. Choosing the Right Email Analytics Tool After a thorough scan of the email marketing analytics software on the market, selecting the right one for your tech stack can feel overwhelming. Even when all the tools look the same, they differ in terms of the value they bring. Some can bring advanced data visualization, while others are ahead of everyone by using AI-powered features. Some may have a massive CRM ecosystem, while others may be seamless and intuitive to use — you have to prioritize your and your team’s needs, and future growth. The right tool is excellent for what you need today and promising for what you need tomorrow. It sets you up for long-term success. 5. Documentation. Training. Handover. Everything we have discussed so far will be useless if your team finds it difficult to use the new tool. While each tool will have its own set of best practices for onboarding a new client, the following flow works best. Set up a video onboarding session, and share its recording Send out detailed, easy-to-digest navigational documents Appoint a POC and have them set up initial campaigns Set up bi-monthly checkpoints to refine workflows and adaptation Weekly blocker and feedback sessions This process will also allow you to gather insights on what keeps your team at bay, highlight challenges, and enable the marketing tool to set customers up for success. Empowered teams turn integrated tools into business results.   5 Best Email Analytics Tools for Assessing Performance Email personalization, using data and insights to fuel campaigns, cross-channel marketing, and now leaning on AI to optimize campaigns and workflows aren’t just a ‘good-to-have’ feature anymore, but a must-have. Collectively, these features shape a brand’s image and how customers experience their product. Here’s a round-up of the top email analytics tools, each standing out in its unique specialization. 1. Best for AI-Powered Campaign Reporting: MoEngage MoEngage is a customer engagement and data platform that offers deep analytics across email, push notifications, SMS, and more. It unifies data to provide a single view of cross-channel interaction with customers. Its AI-powered optimization insights and journey mapping tool allow brands to design compelling and contextual emails based on customers’ behavior, preferences, life cycles, and even future trends. What stands out about the solution: MoEngage suggests the best email send times and content recommendations, which makes crafting email marketing campaigns easier, even for teams without deep technical expertise. Some of the world’s biggest brands, like SoundCloud and Poshmark, use MoEngage for its AI-powered predictive analytics, allowing them to tailor their campaigns to customers’ next best actions. 2. Best for Advanced Segmentation: Mailchimp Marketing teams of all sizes adore Mailchimp’s user-friendly and intuitive interface. The platform excels in providing reports on email open rates, performance, conversion, and segmentation. Specifically, its visualized dashboards give you actionable insights about your audience’s behavior. For example, you’ll know which subscribers are responding to what kinds of email content, making it easier to segment them. What stands out about the solution: Mailchimp lets you compare your campaign performance over a specified time frame. This allows you to gain more detailed insights into engagement and revenue metrics that matter most to your email campaigns. 3. Best for Funnels: GetResponse GetResponse is a popular choice for brands looking to build robust email marketing workflows without needing a developer. It stands out in its ability to monitor deep engagement workflows, fine-tune strategies, offer recommendations, and scale campaigns effortlessly. The tool offers a wide range of automation templates and funnel-building options for marketing teams to create campaigns quickly. What stands out about the solution: GetResponse goes beyond the basic functionalities of your email analytics tool and offers top-notch features like lead scoring and conversion funnels, all in one place. For teams that want to map out complex journeys, GetResponse’s visual workflow builder is a steal. 4. Best for Dynamic Dashboards: ActiveCampaign ActiveCampaign is a one-stop shop that combines marketing automation with detailed email analytics, making it the go-to tool for small to mid-sized businesses. It tracks every customer touchpoint and ties it back to email behavior, making automation seamless. Furthermore, its custom reports and tagging options allow marketers to segment contacts in specific ways. With its shareable and dynamic dashboards, you don’t need to shuffle through your data anymore to figure out the most important email metrics. What stands out about the solution: ActiveCampaign offers site and event tracking, so email engagement can be connected directly to customer behavior. It also blends email analytics directly into automated workflows, allowing marketers to tweak campaigns in real time. 5. Best for Personalized Benchmarks: Klaviyo Klaviyo helps brands connect the dots with data and build long-term relationships. It offers personalized benchmarks to help you compare your metrics to those of your competitors. Klaviyo can create real-time email performance metrics tied directly to revenue, allowing an immediate peek into campaign performance and making ROI tracking effortless. It also has automated flows for major events like cart abandonment and post-purchase follow-ups for built-in performance benchmarking. What stands out about the solution: Klaviyo’s detailed revenue attribution reporting provides brands with crystal-clear insights into driving sales.     Take Your Pick From the Best Email Analytics Tools We have discussed at length what makes a powerful email marketing analytics tool. Robust features like real-time insights, error diagnostics, and visual heat maps complement a solid data visualization and the tool’s ability to read customer data and tie it back to the email marketing campaign. MoEngage offers a robust suite to help marketers optimize every email and drive meaningful results. Take the next step towards more intelligent email marketing — schedule your demo today. The post Best Email Analytics Tools for Setting Up Campaign Reporting appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 17 minutes Email marketing isn’t just about sending emails. Your emails could have the most compelling subject line, the perfect design, and personalized offers, and still land in your customers’ spam folders. You may call it ‘heartbreak.’ We call it an email deliverability issue. Email deliverability ensures your messages reach your audience where they’ll be read, not in the clutches of spam filters or ignored ‘Promotions’ tabs. Thankfully, this guide is here to arm you with actionable tactics to improve email marketing deliverability. But wait! Before diving headfirst into tactics and tools, let’s take a step back and address the basics of what exactly deliverability is, and how it’s different from email delivery.   What is Email Deliverability? Email deliverability is the ability of your emails to successfully land in your customers’ primary inboxes, rather than getting routed to spam folders or getting rejected. It evaluates whether your email reaches its destination, and if it’s considered trustworthy by mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook. Email Delivery vs. Email Deliverability: What’s the Difference? On the surface, email deliverability and email delivery may sound like interchangeable terms, but they’re far from identical. Let’s make it crystal clear: Email delivery means your email has been successfully accepted by your recipient’s email server. In other words, it’s like your email knocking on their door and being allowed into the house. Email deliverability, on the other hand, is what happens after that door is opened. Does your email land in the inbox? Or does it get tossed into the spam folder? Here’s an example to tie it all together: Imagine sending out 1,000 emails. If 950 of them successfully reach the targeted servers, you have an email delivery rate of 95%. But if only 750 of those emails end up in the inbox, your email deliverability rate is 75%. See the difference now? “But what does it matter anyway?” you ask. Why is Email Deliverability Important? Email deliverability is the backbone of every successful email marketing campaign. If your emails don’t land in recipients’ inboxes, your efforts won’t drive results. A strong deliverability strategy ensures your messages reach the right inboxes, increasing engagement and driving action. It also protects your sender reputation by monitoring key metrics like your sender score and IP reputation. Tools like MxToolbox and Talos can help you proactively check your domain and IP health. Ultimately, high email deliverability safeguards your reputation and maximizes the impact of your email marketing efforts.   What Affects Email Deliverability? Below, we’ll discuss the most important factors that can affect your email deliverability. Buckle up, marketers. This is about to get real. 1. Domain and IP Reputation Mailbox providers (think Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook) use your domain or sender reputation to assess how trustworthy you are. Accordingly, they decide which folder to send your email to. If they see evidence that you send sketchy or unwanted emails (read: spam), your reputation tanks faster than a celebrity caught in a scandal. And so does your ability to hit inboxes. 2. Number of Emails Sent More isn’t always better. Unless we’re talking about pizza or vacation days, of course. When it comes to email volumes, though, the quantity you’re sending can directly impact your email deliverability. If you send out too many emails too soon, mailbox providers might consider this overly aggressive behavior. They may slow down your email delivery (throttling) or flag you as spammy. 3. Email Content Does your email content look like it was written by a used car salesman from ‘95? You’re headed for trouble. Here’s the deal: Email providers analyze the content of every email to determine if it’s spammy garbage or something worth reaching an inbox. Things like excessive exclamation points, ALL CAPS, misleading subject lines, or overusing words like “FREE!!!” sound alarm bells. Oh, and including massive files (like 15MB GIFs) or embedding shady links? That’s like grinning with spinach stuck in your teeth. How does email file size affect deliverability, though? Well, it typically takes longer to download and see heavy emails, and that can impact email engagement. Mailbox providers like Gmail also clip messages weighing over 102 KB. The moral of the story is, your email file size should be less than 100 KB. No questions asked. 4. Email Sending Infrastructure Welcome to the tech part of email deliverability. Your email sending infrastructure includes things like: Proper domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC): Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting & Conformance (DMARC). These security protocols prove to mailbox providers that you’re not a shady imposter trying to phish their customers. Dedicated IP addresses: These help establish consistency over time, especially for higher email volumes. Reliable Email Service Providers (ESPs): Choose platforms that prioritize deliverability. In short, they should authenticate your emails, use reputable IPs, and comply with CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and other important regulations. 5. Performance Metrics and User Engagement Here’s where you have to face cold, hard facts: your audience’s reaction to your emails matters more than your own opinion of your email campaigns. Metrics like open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and spam complaint rates aren’t just vanity numbers. If mailbox providers notice that customers are ignoring your emails, deleting them without reading, or marking them as ‘spam’ (ouch), they’ll quietly penalize you by deprioritizing all future emails you send. Translation: Lower engagement = Bad email deliverability. Speaking of which, it’s time to see what makes deliverability good or bad.   How Do You Measure Email Deliverability? Measuring email marketing deliverability is about understanding not only how many emails you’re sending, but also how many actually reach the intended inboxes and how well they perform when they do. To measure email deliverability, you’ll need a sharp eye for identifying patterns in your campaigns. Let’s dive into the most important aspects that impact how you measure and interpret deliverability. What is a Good Email Deliverability Rate? Okay, let’s address the elephant in the inbox: how good is good? In general terms, a “good” email deliverability rate ranges between 95% and 98%. If you’re hitting these numbers, pat yourself on the back—you’re doing far better than average. Anything below 90%, however, is definitely cause for concern, as it signals red flags in your sender reputation, email copy, or email list management tactics. That said, keep in mind that these numbers can vary depending on your industry, audience, and email strategy. For instance, Ecommerce brands targeting global audiences often deal with larger volumes and higher bounces. On the other hand, smaller B2C SaaS brands might maintain a higher deliverability baseline due to more niche, curated lists. What is an Email Deliverability Score and How Do You Use It? An email deliverability score is a score to assess your overall email performance based on factors like bounce rates, sender reputation, customer engagement, and list hygiene. Essentially, mailbox providers like Gmail and Outlook assign trust levels to sender domains and IP addresses, and the deliverability score helps you understand how high (or low) their trust in you is. Use this score strategically to: Audit the effectiveness of your latest email campaigns. Track long-term trends in reputation and performance. Adjust tactics, such as improving sender authenticity or list hygiene. Pro tip: Most email marketing platforms can provide you with a deliverability score right inside your dashboard. Sure, the score gives you a bird’s-eye view of the deliverability. But you need to dig deeper to get precise insights into what’s working and not working for your emails.   Top 5 Email Deliverability Metrics to Understand Campaign Performance Here are the five email deliverability metrics every savvy B2C marketer needs to analyze. Now let’s look at them in detail, shall we? 1. Open Rate The open rate measures the percentage of recipients who open your email after it lands in their inbox. It’s the first metric that indicates whether your subject line, brand, or sending name resonates enough with your audience to make them open your emails. Low open rates might mean your emails aren’t even making it to inboxes (hello, spam folder!) or that your subject lines need to get better at sparking curiosity. 2. Clickthrough Rate (CTR) The CTR is the percentage of recipients who clicked on a link inside your email after opening it. This metric is a direct indicator of how well your email content engages the audience. Did they find value in your email, or did you lose their attention somewhere within your copy? 3. Spam Complaint Rate The spam complaint rate measures the percentage of recipients who mark your email as ‘spam’. This email marketing metric matters because mailbox providers take complaints very seriously, which might tank your sender reputation. 4. Unsubscribe Rate Unsubscribe rate tracks how many recipients opted out of receiving your emails. While it’s natural to see a few unsubscribes here and there, a sudden spike signals a disconnect between your email strategy and audience expectations (think irrelevant content or too-frequent emails). 5. Deliverability Rate The deliverability rate measures how many emails actually made it to the recipient’s inbox (or spam folder), compared to how many you initially sent. Recipients unsubscribing is essentially them telling you, “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’s a sign of misaligned targeting or irrelevant content and can provide insight into how to refine your audience segmentation.   3 Critical Email Deliverability Issues and Problems to Avoid Even the best marketers face roadblocks on the highway to the customer’s inbox. Here are three email deliverability issues to sidestep early: 1. How to Avoid Spam Filters in Email Marketing Spam filters are filters that catch anything they deem suspicious or irrelevant and banish it to the spam folder. For B2C marketers like you, this spells disaster. Emails flagged as spam don’t just fail to reach your audience; they damage your sender reputation and affect future deliverability. The good news? With the right practices, you can dodge spam filters and ensure your emails land in the inbox. “Pull Rather Than Push” The best way to avoid spam filters is to focus on engagement. Instead of spamming your users with hollow promotional material, entice them with rich, relevant, and consumable content that provides unmistakable value. Whether it’s exclusive offers or personalized updates, make emails worth opening. Maintain a Clean Email List Emailing outdated, invalid, or irrelevant addresses is your one-way ticket to spam territory. Worse, you might email a spam trap. It’s an intentionally invalid address designed to catch domains with poor email practices (more on that later). Spam filters look for patterns, and a high volume of bounces or spam reports can slam your domain reputation, decreasing overall deliverability. One way of recognizing the issue is when your email open rates are drastically low. Create Content in the Right Balance and Tone Spam filters are deeply sensitive to the content of your email—everything from subject lines to text color can trigger red flags. To pass their strict scrutiny, your content must be clean, relevant, and balanced. What to Avoid Words like “FREE!!!” or “Make Millions Now” trigger alarms. Avoid excessive punctuation, caps lock, or promotional buzzwords. Keep content short, relevant, and readable. Long-winded emails frustrate customers and scream “spam” to filters. What to Focus On Add recipients’ names and offer content tailored to their activity or preferences. Optimize your emails for mobile. Most customers check emails on their phones, so ensure proper rendering on smaller screens. Include alt text for images and a plain-text version of every email for better compatibility. Build a Relationship with Subscribers Spam filters penalize cold, irrelevant communication, but fostering a respectful relationship with subscribers can work in your favor. Don’t ignore unsubscribe requests. Rather, respect their choice to opt out. Bombarding unsubscribers breeds resentment and spam complaints. Encourage subscribers to add your domain to their address book. This keeps your emails prioritized and inbox-friendly. Tailor communication around subscriber needs rather than what your company wants to push. Strong customer relationships not only improve email deliverability, but also create brand loyalty. That’s where customer relationship emails come into the picture. 2. How to Maintain a Healthy Email Domain Reputation Your email domain reputation is a key factor that mailbox providers use to decide whether your emails land in the inbox, spam folder, or get blocked altogether. A poor reputation, caused by spam complaints, bounces, or sending to spam traps, can destroy your deliverability and damage your brand’s credibility. To maintain your reputation, focus on consistent sending patterns, clean email lists, and authenticated domains using SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Avoid sudden spikes in email volume, and ensure your content is relevant and personalized to improve engagement. 3. Avoid Email Spam Traps Spam traps or honeypots are invalid email addresses created by mailbox providers to identify and penalize senders with poor email list hygiene. These addresses don’t engage with emails and can enter contact lists through outdated addresses, typos, or unethical practices like scraping or purchasing lists. Hitting spam traps damages your sender reputation, affects email deliverability, and can result in emails landing in spam folders or being blocked altogether. Types of Email Spam Traps There are three main types of spam traps: Pristine Spam Traps: These are never-used addresses created to catch senders who purchase lists or scrape public forums. Recycled Traps: These are once-valid addresses repurposed into traps after prolonged inactivity and failure to suppress them. Typo Traps: These are email addresses containing user-input errors, like “gail.com” instead of “gmail.com.” Each of these indicates lapses in list hygiene or collection processes and contributes to deliverability issues. How to Identify Spam Traps Spam traps often point to declining email deliverability rates because these addresses never engage with emails or click through content. They are typically outdated, invalid, or associated with suspicious email collection methods. If you notice drops in deliverability metrics like increasing bounces or disengagement, tools like SpamCop can help detect these problematic addresses. How to Avoid Spam Traps Precision list management is key to minimizing spam traps. Double opt-ins verify addresses and ensure subscribers consent to communication. Send confirmation emails upon sign-up to validate authenticity, and consistently remove inactive subscribers to prevent recycled traps. Buying contact lists is a strict no-no, as these are a magnet for spam traps. If issues arise, validate your list using professional tools and re-permission campaigns to re-engage or suppress inactive contacts. A clean, permission-based list not only avoids spam traps, but also enhances engagement and deliverability.   How to Improve Email Deliverability: 9 Best Practices to Follow Improving deliverability requires discipline, tactics, and the right email deliverability service. Follow these eight tried-and-tested deliverability best practices to ensure your emails land in customers’ inboxes, and not the dreaded spam folder. 1. Confirm Sender Authentication Before anything else, authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Without them, email providers might assume your campaigns are malicious and block them altogether. Work with your IT team or use platforms like MoEngage to configure these settings efficiently. MoEngage ensures your domain’s authentication is in place, enhancing your odds of bypassing spam filters. 2. Build a Clean Email List As we’ve mentioned before, high-quality email list is a non-negotiable for strong deliverability. Outdated or purchased lists kill your reputation faster than a bad joke at a standup gig. Here are a few pointers to help you clean and grow your email list regularly: Use double opt-ins to ensure new subscribers genuinely want your emails. Regularly remove bounced, invalid, and unengaged addresses from your list. Never buy or scrape email lists. It’s unethical, and in some regions, outright illegal. 3. Get the Email Copy Right Email content dictates how your audience connects with your brand (or doesn’t). Poorly written, overly spammy-looking content will ruin your reputation with both readers and ESPs. Craft personalized, value-driven copy. Steer clear of all-caps headlines, exclamation overload, or spammy language (we can’t seem to stress this enough in this email deliverability guide). A/B test your emails to identify what resonates best with your audience. 4. Use Fewer Images Yes, visuals are powerful, but they can also slow down your email’s load time and raise red flags for spam filters, especially if you add multiple clickable elements (like buttons). Keep your email design balanced with a higher ratio of text to images. A 40:60 text-to-image ratio is considered ideal. Use alt text for each image to ensure accessibility, in case images don’t fully render. Maintain standard HTML email template sizes — it’s 600 pixels for desktops, 320 pixels for vertical, and 480 pixels for horizontal views on mobile devices. Keep your HTML code light and clean without any hidden images or URLs. 5. Reduce the Number of Links Bombarding readers with more links than necessary doesn’t just look spammy, but can also tank deliverability. Spam filters are especially ruthless if your links come from too many domains. Stick to one or two actionable, well-placed links per email. Avoid URL shorteners or unverified domains. Don’t forget to preview your email to ensure all hyperlinks are functional and minimal. 6. Segment Your List Generic email blasts, move over. Segmentation allows you to send tailored content based on customer preferences and behavior. Use demographic and behavioral data to create focused email segments. MoEngage’s deep Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value (RFM) segmentation capabilities help you craft hyper-personalized campaigns that boost clickthrough and engagement rates. 7. Use Real Names and Email Addresses Never underestimate the human touch. Blatantly promotional email addresses like ‘promotions@mybusiness.com’ are easily classified as such and are usually placed in the ‘Promotions’ tab. Using real people’s names instead, like ‘John Doe’ and ‘jdoe@mystore.com’, suggests the sender might be a human being, and the content might not be promotional. 8. Comply with Email Deliverability Regulations Ignoring compliance laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and CAN-SPAM? Nuh-uh. You don’t want your domain to get blacklisted just because you failed to meet a few legal requirements, do you? Always include an opt-out link, honor unsubscribe requests immediately, and only email customers who’ve explicitly given consent to receive your emails. 9. Set Up Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) BIMI is the new gold star for email branding. It lets you display your brand logo next to your emails, boosting trust and recognition, and improving email deliverability. Configure BIMI, which requires a combination of domain authentication and logo verification. Adding this layer increases the likelihood of your emails being opened and decreases spam suspicion.   How to Increase Email Deliverability for Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook have enforced strict guidelines to keep spam out and ensure better inbox experiences for subscribers. For brands, this means staying compliant or losing precious inbox placement. Let’s break it down. First things first: your authentication game needs to be airtight. If you’re sending more than 5,000 emails a day, a DMARC policy is non-negotiable. It’s also crucial that the domain in your “From” address is configured with the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols. Additionally, valid forward and reverse DNS/PTR records are required for your email sending domains and IPs. Platforms like MoEngage handle much of this for you during onboarding, but it’s worth double-checking if you’ve added new sending addresses or use your own ESP. Then, make unsubscribing effortless. Both Gmail and Yahoo demand clear, visible, one-click unsubscribe links and mandate that opt-out requests be honored within 48 hours. With MoEngage, this functionality is automatically included for compliant campaigns. If you’re using your own custom setup, ensure subscription tracking is enabled and working in real time to avoid trouble. Finally, you must keep spam rates in check. Yahoo and Gmail expect a spam rate below 0.10%, while hitting 0.30% could spell major email deliverability issues. Prevent this by sticking to opt-in subscribers, sending periodic consent confirmation emails, regularly cleaning your lists, and suppressing unengaged subscribers. Maintaining dynamic sending patterns based on customer interests and behavior also helps you adhere to updated compliance standards. By aligning your email drip campaigns with these rules, you’ll ensure maximum inbox placement, keep spam filters at bay, and boost your customer engagement.   How to Conduct an Email Deliverability Test Running an email deliverability test can help you identify potential issues before they wreak havoc on your campaigns. Whether it’s an email authentication problem, unengaged recipients, or (gasp!) spam-triggering mistakes, running these tests ensures your emails make their way into inboxes smoothly. Below, we’ll give you a detailed walkthrough of 5 tips to help you ace your email deliverability testing game. 1. Use Seed Email Lists A seed list is essentially a mini-audience of test email addresses from various providers (like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook). Sending your email to this group allows you to measure whether it lands in the inbox, Promotional tab, or the spam folder. How does this help? It gives you insights into any immediate deliverability issues tied to specific providers or domains. For example, if your test email lands in Yahoo’s spam folder, you can troubleshoot the issue (such as tweaking the content or verifying authentication settings) before it impacts a broader audience. Fixing these bugs early can boost your email deliverability rate and protect your sender reputation. 2. Monitor Email Authentication Protocols (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC) During your email deliverability test, check each security protocol to ensure the email is passing authentication checks, so it comes across as legitimate and trustworthy. A properly authenticated email drastically improves your chances of landing in an inbox. 3. Test Subject Lines and Preheaders Your subject line sets the tone and determines whether someone opens your email or sends it to email purgatory. When testing email deliverability, keep an eye on how different subject lines perform. Use A/B testing tools to experiment with variations and select one that is catchy, yet non-spammy. Combined with preheader tweaks (essentially your preview text), this can optimize both inbox placement and engagement metrics. 4. Check for Blacklist Issues (And Stay Off Them) Email blacklists are essentially “no-fly lists” for senders known to spam inboxes. Even the best intentions can land you here if you’re not careful (think: sending to outdated email lists or ignoring proper opt-in procedures). Before you send any email campaign, you should run an email blacklist check using tools like MXToolbox. Identifying and resolving blacklist issues early significantly reduces the risk of your email being blocked at the server level. Plus, it helps you maintain your all-important sender reputation. 5. Evaluate Email Engagement Metrics Early Sure, email deliverability testing mostly focuses on getting your email into inboxes, but don’t ignore engagement metrics like open rates and clicks during your test phase. Why? Because customer behavior heavily influences what mailbox providers like Gmail think of your emails. Low engagement during testing could suggest your content or timing needs refinement. Test to identify whether certain segments of your subscribers (e.g., inactive subscribers) impact email deliverability performance. Based on these insights, you can remove unengaged subscribers or reconnect them with tailored re-engagement email campaigns later, creating a more engaged and clean list.   [Infographic] Email Deliverability Checklist: Make Sure You’re Prepared Nail your campaigns with these foolproof steps made for B2C marketers to ensure email deliverability.   3 Best Email Deliverability Tools to Ensure Your Emails Reach Your Customers’ Inboxes From ensuring domain authentication to tracking reputation scores, there are email software platforms to equip you with the insights and features needed to consistently hit inboxes. Here are the 3 best email deliverability tools to consider for your campaigns. 1. MoEngage *shy giggling* We’re honest. *eyelash batting* Seriously, MoEngage is a powerhouse designed specifically for B2C marketers working in industries like Ecommerce, fintech, QSR, and media. While it’s much more than just an email deliverability tool (think of it as a complete customer engagement and retention platform), MoEngage shines by offering advanced deliverability monitoring features. With real-time analytics, automation tools, and even AI-driven delivery optimization, you’ll know when, where, and why your emails are or aren’t landing in inboxes. It lets you filter for email bot opens and set up double opt-in with advanced configuration options. It also offers email deliverability services, including setting up proper authentications, email strategy discussions, assistance with inbox placement/bulking issues, troubleshooting blogs and blacklisting issues, content analysis, and reviewing industry best practices. Pricing: MoEngage offers customized pricing based on business size and requirements, with growth plans starting from $750/month. Its premium plans offer advanced segmentation, AI-powered optimizations, in-depth analytics, and a lot more. Best for: Dynamic audience segmentation, AI-driven email optimization, and granular insights into email deliverability. 2. Inbox Monster Inbox Monster is the go-to for marketers who require deep transparency into email deliverability metrics. The tool specializes in deliverability testing and gives real-time insights into where your emails are landing—whether it’s the inbox, ‘Promotions’ folder, or spam. It also offers spam trap monitoring, blacklist checking, and even time-sensitive post-send diagnostics, ensuring you get a complete picture of your email performance. Pricing: Inbox Monster operates on a subscription-based pricing model. Plans typically start at $79/month for smaller teams, with enterprise-level solutions available. Best for: Real-time DMARC and spam trap notifications 3. Mailmodo Mailmodo offers interactive Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) emails, which are a great choice if you want to improve both deliverability and engagement in one fell swoop. It focuses heavily on keeping your emails out of spam folders by providing tools like spam test previews, inbox placement testing, and personalization options. Its interface is easy to use for marketers who want quick insights and actionable suggestions without needing to wade through overly complex data. Plus, the tool’s smart templates for AMP-based campaigns drive customer interactions without leaving the email itself. Pricing: Mailmodo offers transparent plans ranging between $39 and $159 per month for 500 contacts. For brands needing higher volume and premium features, the pricing scales accordingly. Best for: Free email authentication tools, such as DMARC, SPF and DKIM record checkers These three email deliverability software tools cater to different needs, whether you’re striving for enterprise-level optimization or interactive inbox experiences. Ultimately, selecting the right email deliverability tool depends on your goals, audience, and budget.   Your Guide to Email Deliverability: Conclusion At the end of the day, email deliverability isn’t just about metrics; it’s about respect. Respecting your audience’s space, preferences, and limits goes a long way toward ensuring your emails land where they’re supposed to: the inbox. Want a tool that does it all and more? We give you… (drumroll) MoEngage! MoEngage doesn’t just focus on email deliverability; it drives customer interactions at every touchpoint. Now that’s something worth landing in inboxes for. Why not schedule a discovery call to see how MoEngage can do it for your campaigns? The post Email Deliverability: How to Dodge the Spam Folder appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 6 minutes You invest heavily in driving traffic, but if visitors aren’t converting – signing up, making purchases, or engaging deeply – you might be missing out on significant growth. The culprit is the generic, one-size-fits-all experience that fails to resonate. You did everything right, maybe even worked with a CRO expert, but did not achieve personalizing your website for every visitor.  That is where Website/App Personalization and Experimentation Software come in useful. This category of tools includes well-known names like Dynamic Yield, Optimizely, VWO, Adobe Target, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Personalization. Our own product, MoEngage Personalize, also competes in the same category and is gaining traction quickly with our customers.  These tools empower marketers to craft tailored experiences that dramatically improve engagement and conversions. Early platforms like Optimizely and Adobe Target focused on A/B testing and basic segmentation during the initial days, but that was over a decade ago. Over time, a lot of tools started to leverage AI, real-time data, predictive modelling and omnichannel integration to deliver dynamic experiences. So let’s dive into what these tools do, why they’re vital for CRO, and see some real-world examples. What are Personalization & Experimentation Platforms? To describe them simply, these powerful CRO tools are designed to transform your digital properties from static pages into dynamic, responsive environments. They generally have capabilities to: Understand User Behavior in Real Time: Go beyond basic analytics. Track clicks, scrolls, hovers, time-on-page, navigation paths, and more to see precisely how users interact with your site or app while they are on it. Implement Sophisticated Audience Segmentation: Group visitors based on a multitude of criteria – demographics, geotargeting, device type, traffic source, past purchase history, real-time behavior (like pages viewed or cart contents), and imported CRM data. Run Data-Driven Experiments (A/B Testing & More): Scientifically test variations of nearly any element on the page. This can include A/B testing headlines, calls-to-action (CTAs), images, layouts, forms, or even entire user flows using multivariate testing to pinpoint which variations really drive results. A lot of modern tools use AI and predictions to automatically distribute traffic based on results. Deliver Dynamic, Personalized Content: Automatically adjust website or app content in real-time. Show targeted banners, serve relevant product recommendations, customize offers, personalize text, and even alter navigation based on the specific user segment or individual behavior. Think of these platforms as your CRO command center, enabling you to hypothesize, test, learn, and adapt your digital experience continuously. How Personalization & A/B Testing Tools Drive CRO Success Now let’s talk about how all this fits into your CRO strategy. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. Personalization and experimentation platforms are fundamental to achieving and executing these strategies. Here’s what can be achieved: Reduce Bounce Rates: By tailoring content and offers, you meet users where they are in their journey, instantly making your site feel more relevant and valuable. This is key for reducing bounce rates. Higher Conversions: Personalized pathways guide users quickly towards the final conversion goals, removing confusing steps or providing critical information proactively. A smoother journey equals higher conversion likelihood. Improve Loyalty: Relevant and easy-to-navigate journeys lead to greater user satisfaction, building trust and encouraging repeat visits and loyalty. Eliminate Guesswork: Marketers can stop relying on intuition for content and designs. A/B testing tools provide concrete, statistical evidence about what design, copy, or flow performs best.  In summary, leveraging these tools for CRO translates directly into tangible business results: more leads, higher sales, increased engagement, and better ROI on your acquisition spend. Real-World Examples: Personalization & Experimentation Use Cases That was all a little bit theoretical, so let’s also look at some practical examples. The following examples are in increasing order of complexity and businesses can try them out depending on the maturity and readiness of the organization: Example 1. Dynamic Content & Offers (Simple Banner Replacements): Business Scenario: An e-commerce site selling apparel wants to increase revenue. Application: Instead of showing everyone the same homepage banner, the platform identifies user segments. New visitors will see a “Welcome – 10% off your first order” banner. Returning customers who previously browsed women’s dresses will see a banner showcasing the latest dress arrivals or a special promotion on that category. Visitors from colder climates could see winter wear prioritized. And so on… CRO Impact: Increased banner click-through rates, higher engagement with relevant categories, and ultimately, more purchases. Example 2. A/B Testing for Improving Conversions (Simple Experimentation): Scenario: An e-learning platform wants to boost free trial sign-ups from their homepage. Hypothesis: Changing the main CTA button text from “Start Free Trial” to “Start Learning for Free” might resonate better. Action: Split homepage traffic where 50% see the original button (Control), 50% see the new variation (Variant). CRO Impact: The tool tracks clicks on each button and subsequent trial sign-ups. If “Start Learning for Free” yields a statistically significant (>18%) uplift in sign-ups, it’s declared the winner. Learning: The benefit-oriented language performed better. The change is rolled out to 100% of traffic. (Platforms like VWO and Optimizely frequently feature case studies centered around CTA and headline testing.) Example 3: Behavioral Targeting to Activate Subscriptions (Simple Behavior Based Offers) Scenario: An online publication wants to convert anonymous readers into subscribers. Application: The platform identifies users who have visited more than 5 articles on the website in the past 1 month but haven’t subscribed. Display a targeted pop-up or banner offering a special introductory subscription rate, emphasizing the value they are already getting. CRO Impact: Higher subscription rates, recovery of potentially lost sales, and tailored nurturing based on user engagement levels. Example 4: Geofencing based App & Web personalization (Complex Online-Offline Journey using Location Data) Scenario: A Quick Service Restaurant Chain wants to drive traffic into their outlets Action: A user who has previously opted-in for location sharing via your app enters a 1-mile geofence around your downtown retail store. They get a push notification to see the closest outlets and personalized offers in the app. Or for an anonymous user, detect they are on a mobile device and broadly locate them in the city using IP-based geo-targeting (less accurate). On the website, show a generic banner for “nearby stores.” Result: Users immediately see options relevant to their specific area, increasing the likelihood of browsing menus and placing an order in a nearby outlet compared to seeing generic and irrelevant menus or offers. Example 5: Dynamic Product Recommendations Based on Behavior & Attributes to Boost Conversions or AOV (Product Recommendations and 1:1 Personalization) Scenario: An online electronics retailer wants to increase the average order value (AOV) and help users discover relevant accessories. Action: A recommendation engine tracks real-time browsing (products viewed, added to cart) and uses historical data (past purchases, loyalty status) for every single user to predict individual outcomes. Personalization Ideas: On a laptop product page: Show a “Customers Also Bought” carousel featuring compatible items like laptop bags, mice, and docking stations. On the cart page: If a user adds a camera, display a recommendation block for memory cards or tripods (“Don’t Forget These!”). Homepage for returning customers who previously bought gaming gear: Prioritize showing new gaming peripherals or special offers on games. Result: Users are intelligently guided towards relevant or complementary products, increasing the chance of adding more items to their cart and boosting AOV. (Tools like Dynamic Yield and MoEngage Personalize have in built sophisticated e-commerce recommendation capabilities) Getting Started Embarking on a personalization and experimentation journey as a large organization can be overwhelming. There are a lot of use cases that are possible and constantly building and improving journeys requires a mindset shift.  The best approach is to start small. Identify a key conversion goal and a specific user segment. Formulate a hypothesis about what might improve the experience for that segment and design a simple A/B test. Or, implement a basic personalization rule, like showing a targeted banner to returning visitors. Some complex use cases like geofencing and product recommendations can come later once the muscle for building personalized journeys has been established within the organization. And at a foundational level, the key is to begin gathering data, testing your ideas, and learning what resonates with your specific audience. Over time, these incremental improvements, powered by the right tools, can lead to significant gains in conversion rates and overall business growth.  Talk to a personalization expert. Disclaimer: This blog post discusses the general category of Personalization and Experimentation SaaS tools. Mention of specific company names is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement. The post Your Guide to Top CRO Tools & Strategies (Using Website/App Personalization & Experimentation) appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 3 minutes Recently, we brought together industry experts from Treasure Data and Artefact to discuss the evolving landscape of BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance) marketing. This post summarizes the key insights and takeaways from the “Banking on Trust: AI-Driven Personalization to Fuel Customer Growth” webinar.   Report Overview: BFSI Marketing in 2025 The webinar kicked off with an overview of a new report surveying 153 BFSI professionals, comparing their strategies to those of 847 B2C marketers. The report highlighted how BFSI marketing strategies have evolved from 2024 to 2025 and how they stack up against the broader market.  Key findings included: Digital Reliance: The BFSI industry leans heavily on digital engagement, with email, mobile apps, and social media leading the charge. AI Adoption Surge: The percentage of BFSI marketers not using AI has drastically decreased, signaling widespread adoption. Key Challenges: BFSI marketers face significant challenges in cross-channel execution, delivering secure personalized experiences, and leveraging real-time analytics due to fragmented customer data.            Topic 1: Building Hyper-Personalized Experiences at Scale Personalization is crucial for growth in BFSI. Customers expect relevant and timely communications, whether it’s a credit card recommendation or investment insight.    Financial institutions are successfully balancing scale, compliance, and personalization by: Treating personalization as a governance imperative: Investing in Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) that unify data and enforce consent management and AI explainability. Building a robust customer data strategy: Unifying fragmented data sources to create a comprehensive view of clients. Recognizing personalization as an organizational maturity issue: Emphasizing ethics, governance, and trust.   Topic 2: AI, Automation & Real-Time Engagement AI and automation are pivotal in anticipating customer needs, detecting risk, and delivering the right message at the right moment.  Key insights include: Event-driven personalization: Using AI to respond to behavioral triggers such as application drop-offs or spending changes with real-time personalized engagement. Tailored AI Applications: Different BFSI sectors use AI in nuanced ways. For example, retail banking might use AI for churn prediction, while wealth management utilizes it for trend analysis. Focusing on Real Signals: Effective AI usage involves reacting to real signals like onboarding drop-offs or spending habit shifts, making interactions feel natural and proactive.   Topic 3: Cross-Channel Engagement: The Digital-First Imperative BFSI brands heavily prioritize digital channels, but cross-channel execution remains a significant challenge.  Key takeaways include: Triggered Journeys: Using AI to deliver personalized content across channels in real-time. Cross-Channel Message Consistency: Ensuring a unified message across all channels to build trust. Automated Cross-Channel Journey Orchestration: Using AI to design automated journeys based on interaction data. Channel Strategy by Product Type: Different financial products require different channel strategies. For example, credit cards often rely on mobile and email, while mortgages involve branches and agent chat.   Topic 4: The Future of Customer Engagement in BFSI To future-proof customer engagement strategies, BFSI firms should prioritize: Embracing Predictive AI: Forecasting customer behaviors and trends to enable proactive engagement. Developing an Omni-Channel Strategy: Ensuring consistent and personalized messaging across all touchpoints. Implementing a Privacy-First Approach: Prioritizing data security and transparent data practices to build trust. Building a Governed AI Personalization Layer: Integrating AI across marketing, servicing, and product. Investing in Real-Time Data Streaming: Powering contextual experiences with up-to-date data. Experimenting with New Engagement Formats: Exploring AI Agents, personalized video statements, and automated financial coaching.   Banking on Trust: Webinar Wrap-Up The webinar concluded with key takeaways emphasizing that: Personalization is an organizational capability requiring clean data, strong governance, and lifecycle use cases. AI and automation shift communication from reactive to proactive, acting on behavioral signals in real-time. Cross-channel engagement needs unified experiences with journey ownership and consistent messaging. The future of customer engagement relies on strong data infrastructure, governed AI, and agility. These insights provide valuable guidance for BFSI marketers looking to enhance customer engagement and build trust in an evolving digital landscape.  Want to dive in deeper? Watch the full “Banking on Trust” webinar on-demand here.   The post Banking on Trust: Key Takeaways on AI-Driven Personalization in BFSI appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 11 minutes Nowadays, customer engagement isn’t what it used to be. For years, brands have been throwing money at marketing, running campaigns on every platform imaginable, and hoping something sticks. But despite all the tools, tech, and data at their disposal, most brands are still missing the mark. Why? They’re playing by outdated rules in a completely changed game. Here’s the truth: Consumers have evolved. Brands haven’t. A McKinsey report makes it painfully clear—71% of consumers expect personalized interactions, and 76% get frustrated when brands don’t deliver. Think about that. Three out of four customers walk away annoyed when they don’t get the experience they expect. And let’s be honest, in today’s world, one bad experience is all it takes for a customer to switch to a competitor. So, what’s going wrong?   This question sparked our recent panel discussion, which featured industry leaders like Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder of Info Edge, and Raviteja Dodda, CEO of MoEngage. The conversation delved into how brands can fundamentally rethink engagement in a world where customer expectations are evolving quickly. So, what did they dive into? Why brands are struggling to meet modern customer expectations How AI-driven, real-time engagement is changing the game Why data silos are killing brand-customer relationships And why businesses that don’t optimize their engagement strategy to keep up with the times will fall behind The old way of doing things is dead. If brands want to survive and thrive, they need to adapt fast. So, how do they do it? Let’s examine the biggest takeaways from the discussion and consider the future of customer engagement. The Harsh Reality: Why Most Brands Are Getting It Wrong Since we’re on the same page about evolving consumer expectations, let’s understand why brands struggle to keep up. Where’s the disconnect? Why are so many brands struggling to engage customers in a way that works?    The short answer: They’re stuck in the past. During the panel discussion, Sanjeev and Ravi pointed out a fundamental flaw: most brands still rely on legacy Martech platforms and strategies that don’t meet today’s customers’ expectations. Take the aforementioned McKinsey report, for example. It indicates that consumers expect companies to deliver hyper-personalized interactions, and they get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.  Yet, brands are still blasting out campaigns that only contain first-name personalization, which is simply not enough for today’s consumers. The level of customization consumers require stems from analyzing their behaviors and preferences, i.e., one-to-one personalization at scale. The lack of such customization is one of the main reasons that consumer brand retention rates are plummeting. The Three Big Mistakes Consumer Brands Are Making Here’s where brands are going wrong—and what our panelists had to say about it: 1. Disconnected Data = Disconnected Customers One of the biggest challenges? Data silos. Brands collect massive amounts of customer data, but it’s scattered across different platforms—CRM systems, ad networks, email tools, and more. What does that lack in the context of customer engagement? Brands must prioritize building genuine, data-driven customer relationships, rather than chasing short-term wins. Without a unified customer profile, engagement strategies are fundamentally flawed. Instead of personalizing interactions, companies rely on outdated insights, leading to irrelevant messaging and missed opportunities. 2. Batch-and-Blast Campaigns Just Don’t Work Anymore For years, brands have relied on mass marketing tactics—sending the same message to thousands (or millions) of customers simultaneously, hoping something sticks. But let’s be honest: Consumers are tuning out. They’re bombarded with messages across multiple channels, and if those messages aren’t timely, relevant, and personalized, they get ignored.  The solution? AI-driven, real-time engagement.  Instead of static segmentation, brands must shift toward behavior-based targeting—where real-time customer actions trigger messages. What if: Instead of sending a generic email blast to all customers at 9 AM, brands use AI to analyze customer behavior and deliver messages when customers are most likely to engage. That’s what modern engagement looks like. 3. Ignoring the Offline-Online Gap In markets like India, the offline-to-online journey is still a huge part of consumer behavior. A customer might discover a brand in a physical store, browse products online, and complete the purchase through WhatsApp or an app.  Yet, most brands treat online and offline engagement as separate worlds. That’s a huge mistake.  To illustrate this dramatic shift in consumer behavior, Sanjeev Bikhchandani pointed out,  “10 years ago, 93% or 94% of our traffic on Naukri came from laptops or desktops. Today, about 97% of our traffic comes from mobile.” This reinforces the critical need for brands to prioritize mobile-first engagement strategies, especially in markets like India, where mobile penetration is rapidly increasing. Brands that seamlessly integrate offline and online experiences—where a customer’s journey is frictionless, whether in a store, on an app, or talking to a customer support rep—will always stay ahead of the competition. Those that don’t? They’ll lose customers to those brands that can. So, What’s the Solution? If brands want to fix these issues, they need to rethink engagement from the ground up. Break down data silos and build a single customer view. Ditch batch-and-blast marketing and move toward real-time, AI-driven engagement. Unify offline and online experiences to create a seamless customer journey. Most importantly, they must stop treating engagement as just another marketing tactic and make it the core of their business strategy. This is precisely where MoEngage comes in—but more on that in the upcoming sections.  The New Engagement Playbook: What Winning Brands Are Doing Differently The old engagement playbook—mass marketing, disconnected channels, and one-size-fits-all messaging—simply doesn’t work anymore. Customers expect real-time, intelligent, and hyper-personalized engagement across every touchpoint. Winning brands understand that the best way to drive revenue isn’t through aggressive promotions but by delivering seamless, relevant experiences that keep customers returning. But how do they achieve this at scale? Let’s break it down. 1. AI-Driven, Hyper-Personalized Engagement Winning brands aren’t just collecting customer data—they act on it in real time. They’re moving beyond static customer segmentation and using AI to deliver dynamic, behavior-driven engagement. So, what does this look like in action? Instead of sending generic product recommendations, leading brands analyze past behavior and predict what customers are most likely to buy next. Instead of emailing a discount code to all customers, they send personalized offers based on past purchase frequency and engagement. Why it works:  Customers respond to brands that “get them.” AI-driven engagement ensures that every interaction feels relevant and timely—not random and forced.  2. Breaking Down Data Silos with a Unified Customer View Earlier, we discussed how scattered customer data is killing engagement. Top brands solve this by creating a 360-degree customer view—a single source of truth that connects every interaction across channels. How does this change the game? For example, if a customer browses a product on the app but doesn’t buy it, the brand can retarget them with a relevant offer via WhatsApp. For example, if a customer calls customer support, the agent instantly sees past interactions and tailors the conversation. The result: No more disconnected experiences. Customers feel understood, and engagement becomes effortless. 3. Omnichannel Engagement: Meeting Customers Where They Are Today’s consumers don’t stick to one channel—they move between apps, social media, email, WhatsApp, physical stores, and more. Winning brands don’t treat these as separate touchpoints. They create a seamless journey—where every interaction feels connected. Example: Customers add an item to their cart on a website but don’t check it out. An hour later, they get a push notification reminding them. A day later, they receive an email with a limited-time discount. If they visit a physical store, the sales rep knows their preferences and can offer personalized recommendations. The key is consistency. No matter where the customer engages, the experience feels smooth and personalized. So the takeaway here is: Engagement Needs a Complete Mindset Shift  It’s NOT about sending more messages. It’s about sending more brilliant messages at the right moment. It’s NOT about just gathering customer data. It’s about using data intelligently to personalize experiences. It’s NOT about treating every channel separately. It’s about creating a seamless, omnichannel journey. This is precisely how brands drive higher retention, deeper customer loyalty, and long-term growth. So, how can businesses start making this shift? Let’s get to the final piece of the puzzle.  The Missing Piece: AI-Powered Martech Solutions Shifting to real-time, AI-driven engagement isn’t just about changing tactics—it requires the right technology. During our panel discussion, Sanjeev Bikhchandani emphasized a fundamental business principle: “Be frugal. The only thing you’re in control of is your costs. Your revenues are not in your control—that depends on the market, the customer, and the product-market fit. But costs, you’re in control of.” This wisdom applies perfectly to a customer engagement strategy. Many brands need better personalization, smarter engagement, and seamless omnichannel experiences. But there’s one problem: Their Martech stack isn’t built for it. Legacy marketing tools were designed for a different era where mass email blasts and static customer segments were the norm. That approach doesn’t work anymore. Customers expect brands to understand their preferences, predict their needs, and naturally engage with them. So, what’s the fix? An agile Martech platform that connects data automates engagement, and makes AI-powered personalization effortless. How Martech Platforms Solve These Challenges Breaking Down Data Silos Right now, most brands have customer data scattered across multiple tools, including CRM, analytics platforms, customer support systems, ad networks, and more. The best Martech platforms bring all this data together in one place, so brands can see every customer’s complete, unified profile. Personalization That Feels Human, Not Robotic AI-driven platforms go beyond generic customer segmentation. They analyze customer behavior in real time and predict what’s relevant to each person. Instead of blasting the same email to everyone, brands can deliver messages tailored to each individual’s interests, past purchases, and engagement history. Omnichannel Engagement That Feels Seamless Customers don’t think in “channels”—they just interact with brands wherever convenient. The right Martech platform syncs engagement across mobile apps, email, WhatsApp, social media, and even physical stores, ensuring every interaction builds on the last. Smart Automation That Works in the Background No marketing team has the time to craft messages manually for every customer. Automation powered by real-time insights ensures brands engage customers at the perfect moment—whether it’s a personalized product recommendation, a cart abandonment reminder, or a loyalty reward. Why This Matters: The Brands That Adapt, Win During the panel discussion, Sanjeev Bikhchandani made one thing clear: “If you get the investors’ money first, there is no guarantee that the customer’s money will come. Focus on getting the customer’s money first.” And the best way to get customers to spend is to engage them in a natural, relevant, and effortless way. Brands that understand this and adopt the right Martech tools are seeing incredible results. Let’s explore how leading brands are winning with MoEngage. Real-World Success Stories: How Leading Brands Are Winning with MoEngage We’ve discussed the mistakes brands make and why traditional engagement strategies fail. But some companies are getting it right—leveraging AI-driven, data-backed engagement to drive actual results. Here’s how some of the biggest brands are using MoEngage to stay ahead: BigBasket: 38% Higher Push Notification Deliverability with AI-Driven Optimization For an online grocery giant like BigBasket, timely communication is everything. Whether it’s notifying customers about fresh stock, discounts, or delivery updates, ensuring messages reach the right audience is critical. But here’s the issue: Many brands struggle with poor push notification deliverability, leading to wasted efforts and lost revenue. BigBasket tackled this challenge head-on with MoEngage’s Push Amplification, which optimizes message delivery for maximum reach. The impact: Push notification deliverability improved from 65% to 85-90%, a 38% increase Higher customer engagement and real-time updates that drive conversions Want to see how BigBasket improved push notification deliverability by 38%? [Read the entire case study here.   OYO: 44% Higher Push Notification Delivery for Better Engagement As one of the biggest hospitality platforms, OYO depends heavily on mobile engagement to drive bookings. However, like many brands, they faced a significant hurdle—low push notification delivery rates, especially on Xiaomi devices, which limited their ability to reach customers. Using MoEngage’s Push Amplification Plus, OYO was able to bypass device-level restrictions and significantly improve message delivery. The impact: 44% higher push notification delivery on Xiaomi devices 25% overall improvement in campaign notification delivery More customers reached, resulting in higher repeat bookings and engagement Learn how OYO boosted push notification delivery by 44% and increased repeat bookings. Explore the case study here. Ferns N Petals: 40% Higher Conversions with On-Site Messaging For an online gifting platform like Ferns N Petals (FNP), engagement doesn’t stop at bringing customers to the site—it’s about converting them. The challenge? Ensuring visitors don’t drop off before making a purchase. FNP leveraged MoEngage’s On-Site Messaging (OSM) to trigger real-time, personalized pop-ups based on customer behavior—such as discount offers when a customer hesitates at checkout. The impact: A 40% conversion rate on their targeted shipping discount campaign A 12.86% conversion rate on lead generation pop-ups Higher revenue from personalized engagement at critical touchpoints See how Ferns N Petals achieved 40% higher conversions with personalized engagement. Read the success story here. What’s the Common Thread? A Smarter, Data-Driven Engagement Strategy These brands aren’t winning because they’re spending more on marketing. They’re winning because they’re spending smarter—focusing on AI-driven, real-time engagement that resonates with their customers. Better push notification delivery leads to higher engagement Real-time, behavior-based messaging improves conversions Integrated, cross-channel communication creates a seamless customer experience The takeaway is clear: When brands move beyond mass marketing and start engaging customers at the right time, on the right channel, and with the right message, the results speak for themselves. Next, let’s dive into how brands can replicate this success and build a future-ready engagement strategy. The MoEngage Playbook: How Brands Can Replicate This Success We’ve seen how brands like BigBasket, OYO, and Ferns N Petals have transformed customer engagement. But the real question is—how can other businesses achieve the same results? What’s the playbook for success? MoEngage’s approach isn’t about making assumptions. It’s about leveraging real-time customer insights, automation, and AI-driven engagement to create a seamless experience across every touchpoint. Here’s how brands can do it: 1. Unify Customer Data for a 360° View Most brands have a lot of customer data, but it’s scattered across different systems, making it nearly impossible to create a personalized experience. With MoEngage’s Customer 360, businesses can combine data from multiple sources—mobile apps, websites, email, push notifications, WhatsApp, and offline interactions—into a single, unified customer profile. No more fragmented engagement Real-time analyzing of customer preferences and behavior Smarter, more relevant messaging When businesses understand their customers more deeply, they can create highly personalized experiences that drive loyalty and conversions. 2. Move from Batch-and-Blast to Hyper-Personalized Engagement Consumers today ignore generic marketing. They want relevant, timely, and hyper-personalized interactions. With MoEngage’s AI-powered segmentation and predictive analytics, brands can: Identify high-intent customers and send tailored offers Recommend products based on past behavior Automate messaging based on real-time actions For example, instead of sending the same email to all customers, MoEngage helps brands send personalized messages at the right moment—whether it’s a cart abandonment reminder, an exclusive discount, or a re-engagement campaign. 3. Optimize Every Channel—Email, Push, WhatsApp, SMS, and More A customer might open an email but not click. They might visit a website but not convert. The key is meeting customers where they are across multiple channels. MoEngage helps brands create coordinated, cross-channel campaigns that engage customers at the right touchpoints: Email → Personalized product recommendations Push Notifications → Instant engagement with time-sensitive alerts WhatsApp & SMS → Conversational commerce and customer support On-Site & In-App Messaging → Real-time engagement to prevent drop-offs Bridges can significantly increase engagement and retention rates by orchestrating seamless platform interactions. 4. Use AI to Predict and Automate Customer Journeys The future of engagement isn’t just personalization—it’s predicting what customers need before they even ask. MoEngage’s AI-driven capabilities include: Predictive Segmentation: Identifying customers likely to churn and proactively engaging them Best Time to Send (BTS): Sending messages when customers are most likely to engage A/B Testing and Insights: Continuously optimizing campaigns for higher conversions The result? Brands don’t just react to customer behavior—they stay ahead of it. The Bottom Line The brands that win in today’s market don’t have the most enormous budgets or the most aggressive marketing tactics. They understand their customers better, faster, and smarter than their competitors. By following this playbook, brands can cut through the noise, build deeper relationships, and drive sustainable growth, just like BigBasket, OYO, and FNP have done. And with MoEngage’s customer data and engagement platform leading the charge, businesses don’t have to figure it out alone. Want to see how MoEngage can help your brand achieve the same success? Book a demo today and start creating smarter customer experiences.   The post The Future of Customer Engagement: Are Brands Truly Ready?— Insights and Strategies from InfoEdge appeared first on MoEngage.

Reading Time: 12 minutes Sometimes, email list subscribers go dark. It could happen for a number of reasons, including receiving too many emails, no longer being interested in the content, or forgetting why they signed up in the first place. But here’s the deal: just because someone goes quiet, it doesn’t mean they’re gone forever. The trick is to win them back with carefully considered re-engagement emails. As a marketer, you have access to a lot of data that can be used to craft personalized messages that stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes can send a run-of-the-mill follow-up email. Or, you can take it a step further with re-engagement emails. Incorporating small, thoughtful touches, such as using their name, referencing their past order, informing them about the availability of a new line, or even offering a discount on their most frequently purchased item, can make a significant difference. In this article, we’ll dig into what makes a re-engagement email campaign successful and share examples from leading B2C brands who have used this tactic to re-ignite their customers.   What are Re-Engagement Emails? Re-engagement emails are targeted emails sent to inactive subscribers to recapture their interest, encourage engagement, and boost retention. They aim to reconnect with customers by reminding them of positive past experiences with your brand, ultimately rebuilding their trust and showing them your value. A good way to do this is by sharing social proof, offering a discount, and keeping the customer updated about a new product, but never resorting to a hard sell. The idea behind re-engagement emails is to tell them, ‘We miss you’, but not ‘Buy now’.   9 Benefits of Sending Re-Engagement Emails Re-engagement emails enable you to revive a dormant customer base and enhance retention. Let’s explore the benefits of sending these emails in detail. Reduce Churn: Re-engagement emails can help you proactively retain customers before they are lost entirely. How? By giving them a timely, gentle nudge. Increase Customer Lifetime Value: Re-engagement emails present a significant opportunity to leverage customer data, thereby increasing the likelihood of engagement and conversion. They’re a low-effort, high-impact tool that provides a cost-effective opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, or simply bring customers back into the product experience. Save Acquisition Cost: Brands have a 60% higher chance of selling to an existing customer than to a new one, thereby reducing their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). With re-engagement emails, you can strengthen customer relationships and maximize your ROI from existing customers. Introduce Updated Offerings: What if your customers churned because your product wasn’t mature enough for them? Could you possibly retarget them with a better offering? A second chance to show off new features and fixes? Re-engagement emails, among other things, also allow you to say, “Hey, we listened and improved” with poise. Strengthen Customer Relationships: It’s not just about transactions; it’s about building connections. These emails enable you to demonstrate care, foster empathy, and stay connected beyond the sale. Build Top-of-Mind Awareness: As they say, out of sight is out of mind, and more often than not, re-engagement emails are one of the most innovative ways to stay in sight. They ensure your brand doesn’t fade into the background when others make the noise. By showing up with timely, relevant, and non-pushy content, you can remind lapsed customers why they initially chose you. Improve Email Delivery: When you reconnect with your disengaged customers, you also have the opportunity to clean and refine your email list and assess the health of your email addresses. It saves you cost, and ensures that removing unresponsive subscribers improves your sender reputation and email deliverability. Drive Personalization: It’s 2025, and where would a brand be without personalization? Brands that use personalized emails can achieve conversion rates ​​between 2.8x and 300.7x compared to non-personalized emails. What gets opened? What CTA works? Can you leverage past purchase history data? What brings customers back? Use these questions and more to fuel your email personalization engine, segment smarter, and trigger behavior-based automations. Now that we’ve unpacked the benefits of re-engagement emails and why they matter, let’s look at how you can implement them.   Common Types of Re-Engagement Emails There’s hardly a one-size-fits-all when it comes to winning your customers back via re-engagement emails. But here are the most common and proven formats that brands rely on: 1. The “We Miss You” Email A ‘We Miss You’ email is a personalized reactivation message designed to reconnect with customers who haven’t interacted with the brand in a while, reminding them of their past interest and experience with the brand. Why they matter: A simple, heartfelt “we miss you” message for customers who haven’t interacted is usually seen as genuine. However, nearly every other brand now uses it, so don’t forget to be playful. Reactivation emails, such as “come back” or “we miss you,” signal interest without being pushy, and should be part of your re-engagement email strategy. They’re targeted at customers who have gone cold but still have intent or curiosity. 2. The Incentive Email An incentive email uses a promotional offer, such as a discount, free shipping, or a loyalty reward, as a hook to bring back the customer and drive immediate engagement. The idea is to lower the friction between the customer and their purchase journey by offering an incentive. Why they matter: Offers like “20% off your next order” or “Free shipping” will drive engagement, even if they don’t drive sales. They bring customers back, of all kinds — new, curious, and dormant — as a quick motivation to check the products they are interested in. Furthermore, using customer milestones, such as birthdays or anniversaries, drives email engagement at a deeper level, prompting a reduction in friction in the buying process on a day that is relevant to them. It also makes customers feel like savvy shoppers, excited to earn the rewards for something they’ve earned through their relationship with the brand. 3. The Product Update Email A product update email informs customers of new features, improvements, or changes in the product or service. These kinds of emails are beneficial to show ongoing value and progress in the product. Why they matter: This type of email is most effective for B2C SaaS or app-driven businesses, where emails highlight new features or an improved version for customers who last engaged with the product. These emails demonstrate a brand’s understanding of its customers. They tell your audience that you know what they like and consume, and you’ve taken the time to let them know you’ve added something useful for them. 4. The Feedback Request Email A feedback request email is a great value driver, used to solicit customers’ opinions or experiences with your product, helping brands gather valuable insights while also increasing user engagement. Why they matter: Sometimes, asking your customers what’s going right or wrong helps more than you think. You get valuable feedback, and customers feel heard. These emails demonstrate that you’re willing to get to know the customer, and customers expect you to offer hyper-relevant value based on their feedback. 5. The Countdown Email A countdown email is used to create a sense of urgency by highlighting a limited-time offer, deadline, or value. It is primarily used to motivate customers to take quick action before the time runs out. Why they matter: Emails that generate a sense of urgency prompt customers to take immediate action. They nurture the ever-present desire to buy by telling customers they have a limited period to make up their minds, in exchange for better benefits. These emails serve as a perfect reminder of customers’ initial interest, create FOMO, and nudge them over the line with a discount.   Real-Life Re-Engagement Email Examples to Learn From 1. Spotify | Vertical Product Discovery Email Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/your-mood-deserves-its-own-soundtrack Campaign goal: Make music discovery effortless and tailored, driving re-engagement. This re-engagement email from Spotify sends a personalized nudge to get its listeners back on the app. This is possible because the brand already knows the users’ listening history and makes artist recommendations based on it, in a scrollable, mobile-friendly format. How this email re-engaged customers so well: The email is effective because it taps into our mood, memory, and music habits. By serving up familiar vibes with fresh suggestions, it sparks curiosity. The vertical, story-like layout keeps customers scrolling, while clear CTAs, such as “Explore your mood,” make jumping back into the app seamless. 2. Cowboy | Sharing Company Updates Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/designed-in-belgium Campaign goal: Stay top-of-mind with customers and softly introduce product pre-orders. Cowboy, the connected electric bike brand, sent an update email announcing their move to a new HQ in France. On the surface, it’s a simple company update, but it’s designed to do more. By tying their move to a broader narrative of the cycling culture and their mission to empower urban riders, the email builds emotional connection and brand affinity. It also subtly mentions pre-orders, acting as a soft launch without a hard sell. How this email re-engaged customers so well: Even without a flashy offer or discount, this email keeps the brand relevant. It humanizes Cowboy by sharing its journey, values, and presence in a new market. The soft mention of pre-orders creates curiosity without pressure, making it feel more like being part of something than being sold to. It’s a clever mix of storytelling and subtle conversion. 3. Starbucks | Product Reminders Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/the-starbucks-you-love-is-ready Campaign goal: Win back customer attention and reinforce seasonal offerings. Starbucks sent out a reminder email highlighting what’s new in-store, ranging from menu updates to perks like free refills and access to the condiment bar. It’s not pushing a major promotion or product drop, just a gentle nudge to get customers back in the loop and the store. How this email re-engaged customers so effectively: Most customers require frequent reminders, and Starbucks is aware of this. This email serves as a gentle reminder, leveraging familiarity and small incentives to re-engage lapsed attention. By spotlighting the little things, such as freebies, it reactivates interest without being pushy. Simple, timely, and effective. 4. Bubble | Sharing Social Proof Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/derms-know-best Campaign goal: Build trust through social proof and drive conversions. Bubble, a skincare brand rooted in transparency and community, sent an email featuring dermatologist-recommended products alongside real customer testimonials. The email is clean and straightforward, showcasing short quotes about their skincare wins. It taps into what skincare buyers crave: reassurance, results, and relatable stories. How this email re-engaged customers so well: When it comes to skincare, trust is everything. By combining expert endorsements with real customer experiences, Bubble bridges the gap between curiosity and conversion. The visuals and quotes humanize the brand, making it feel authentic and compelling. It’s an innovative, no-fluff format that builds credibility while nudging customers to try what’s already working for others. 5. Duolingo | A Simple Follow-Up on Usage Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/these-reminders-dont-seem-to-be-working Campaign goal: Re-engage inactive customers through humor and personalization. After a series of standard reminders failed to bring customers back, Duolingo sent a follow-up email with the subject line: “These reminders don’t seem to be working.” It includes the customer’s learning streak status and a playful nudge that mirrors the brand’s witty, self-aware tone. How this email re-engaged customers so well: The email feels like a continuation of Duo’s sassy personality, which customers have come to expect across channels. That consistency builds trust and keeps the brand memorable, even when customers are not actively engaged. 6. Marvel | New Release Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-now-in-theatres Campaign goal: Drive excitement and engagement Marvel sent a no-frills email announcing a new movie release; a crisp, straight-to-the-point update that something new is here. For a brand with a massive loyal fan base, that’s all it takes—the email banks on anticipation and the power of a well-loved cinematic universe. How this email re-engaged customers so well: When your audience is deeply invested, information is the offer. Marvel didn’t need to dress it up; just letting fans know what’s dropping was enough to spark clicks and conversations. The simplicity adds to the impact, making it feel like an exclusive heads-up rather than a marketing push. 7. Grammarly | Adding Personalization Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/you-used-numerous-new-words-last-week Campaign goal: Use personalization to build a long-term connection. Grammarly sends a data-backed email to customers highlighting their progress, including the number of words written, productivity levels, and language mastery. It’s not about selling a feature or pushing an upgrade; it’s about showing customers how far they’ve come with the product. A subtle way to remind them of the value they’re getting. How this email re-engaged customers so well: It taps into a powerful emotion — the desire for personal growth. By turning usage stats into a feel-good reflection moment, Grammarly strengthens customer attachment. This kind of personalized recap helps the brand stay relevant even when customers aren’t actively thinking about it, which is significant when it’s time to renew or upgrade their Grammarly plan. 8. Headspace | Free Trial for Hesitant Customers Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/start-your-journey-with-14-days-free Campaign goal: Nudge hesitant customers with a low-friction entry point Headspace sends a 14-day free trial email to customers who’ve shown interest but haven’t converted. The copy is simple, straightforward, and benefit-led, mirroring the brand’s calm, clutter-free aesthetic. No hard sell, just a gentle invitation to try mindfulness on their terms. How this email re-engaged customers so well: It removes the pressure and makes the decision to come back feel easy. For customers on the fence, a free trial backed by clean design and clear value is the perfect push. The campaign reflects the product experience itself: calm, helpful, and low-effort. A well-aligned move that invites action without noise. 9. McDonald’s | Reward Points Too Hard to Resist Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/you-earned-329-points-toward-free-food Campaign goal: Drive conversions through a clear, no-fluff discount offer. McDonald’s would categorize its customers as loyal, frequent, occasional, or accidental. They would know how many meals a potential occasional eater would turn into a frequent, and further, a loyalist. So, a clear offer promoting customers’ earned free food and points, ‘a potential perceived reward or exclusive benefit’ is an excellent means to bring anyone back. Without overwhelming the reader, McDonald’s subtly highlights the value in the offer. How this email re-engaged customers so well: Clarity sells. McDonald’s avoids gimmicks and unnecessary build-up, focusing instead on delivering value instantly. The design is minimal, the message is focused, and the call to action is unmissable. It respects the reader’s time while still nudging them toward the sale. 10. The Streamable | Offering Exclusive Perks Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/these-are-all-the-deals-for-national-streaming-day Campaign goal: Boost engagement and build trust by offering value For National Streaming Day, Streamable sends an email highlighting the best streaming deals from top platforms, including Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. The email provides a detailed overview of every offer, explaining how customers can claim them. It’s thoughtful, well-timed, and surprisingly generous coming from a brand that isn’t the one offering the discounts. How this email re-engaged customers so well: It flips the script. By spotlighting others, Streamable earns trust and positions itself as a helpful insider rather than a hard seller. It’s a smart hijack of a topical moment, wrapped in a utility-first format.   How to Create Enticing Re-Engagement Emails That Customers Love With the above examples, are you convinced now that re-engagement emails are a powerful strategy to encourage disengaged customers to take action? Good. Here’s how you can nail them to a T: 1. Personalize Emails Personalized emails see a 26% increase in open rates, making it a priority in email marketing. We recommend going deeper than just the first name and tailoring content based on behavior, actions, purchase history, preferences, and other relevant factors. When customers feel that the email is directly addressing them, they are more likely to click, explore, and make a purchase. 2. A/B Testing From your subject line to the image in your email, everything must be A/B tested for the best outcome. Brands can use predictive analysis to craft email variations that are likely to perform well; they can also explore content optimization through suggested improvements, optimizing for factors such as time, subject lines, CTAs, and more. 3. Make Them Responsive Because customers view content on multiple devices—smartphones, laptops, and tablets—it’s essential that your content adapts accordingly. With 59% of millennials using their cellphones to check emails, optimizing for mobile is crucial. Be consistent across devices for a better experience and a stronger brand image. 4. Explore Automation Email automation enables you to reach customers when they are most receptive, thereby circumventing delays, unnecessary repetition, and monotony. Constantly refine your email automation strategy across the customer lifecycle, particularly during win-back campaigns. 5. AI Integration AI-driven email marketing yields a 13% increase in click-through rates and a 41% rise in revenue, demonstrating the transformative impact of AI on campaign performance. Today, brands are utilizing AI to achieve hyper-personalization at scale, build predictive segments with a likelihood of action, generate dynamic content, and predict customer actions such as engagement or churn. Utilizing it is one of the email marketing best practices to enhance your email marketing and make it more authentic and on-brand.   Use MoEngage to Win Back Customers with Re-Engagement Emails Re-engagement emails aren’t just a last-ditch effort; they’re where your journey of direct communication with the customer begins. With the right strategy and tools, you can deliver personalized, timely emails that turn silence into clicks and conversions. MoEngage’s all-in-one email platform helps automate, personalize, and optimize re-engagement emails across the customer lifecycle. Ready to see it in action? Try our demo today. The post 10 Re-Engagement Email Examples to Win Back Customers appeared first on MoEngage.