Originally published on

What better way to identify, develop, and nurture relationships with ideal prospective customers? In a variety of forms, behavioral marketing has the proven ability to extend campaign reach and to drive sales and conversions.

But though the online advertising world has heartily embraced behavioral targeting, e-mail marketers are still wary of it. Privacy lessons learned the hard way in the e-mail world over the last five years or so hold valuable warnings for behavioral marketers.

E-mail, which has at times been touted as the most successful marketing channel of this age, has its obstacles as well: spam, spoofing, phishing, and other fraudulent practices continue to plague the medium. Consumer trust in e-mail is frayed, and smart e-mail marketers know better than to mess with the trust that remains.

Behavioral targeting has a similar consumer trust issue. The idea of being followed around the Internet by marketers doesn’t sit well with many surfers. Combine that with the fact e-mail addresses are personally identifiable and have been used in the past to extract personal information, and any potential union of e-mail with behavioral targeting seems dubious.

At its core, the e-mail marketing model is behavior-based. As the relationship between user and sender evolves, the actions and the response of the user, even that user’s stated preferences, allow e-mail messages to grow smarter and more relevant with each interaction. Automated optimization programs, much like behavioral media programs, exist to inform e-mail messaging and frequency and to change offers and landing pages based on consumer response to prior e-mail messages. This type of give and take can and should be leveraged to target consumers by their e-mail behavior, with all the associated cross- and up-selling opportunities.

According to JupiterResearch, marketers who target e-mail campaigns to specific behavioral and demographic characteristics see 18 times the ROI (define) of traditional e-mail messages.

By their nature, e-mail transactions allow a deeper level of personalization. Behavioral targeting feeds off that personalization, leading to stronger relationships, higher conversion rates, and increased customer loyalty. Since the rise of spam and tightening of e-mail filtering processes, e-mail marketers have adhered to a philosophy of relevance to increase deliverability rates and strengthen consumer trust in the channel. Behavioral targeting is the surest way of providing the highest relevance to a wide array of individual users. The catch: how do we keep the targeting anonymous and, more important, assure consumers of their anonymity?

Consumer Education Is Key

Consumer education is a key component of establishing and maintaining trust in behaviorally targeted e-mail. We can’t just talk about safeguards; we must demonstrate them — consistently. Online shoppers have legitimate privacy concerns. They’re wary of allowing anyone, particularly a new marketer, into their world. It’s vital to provide e-mail users with proof of anonymity and recourse if that anonymity is breached. E-mail and advertising technology, such as flagging and opt-out links, exist to assure customers no personally identifiable information is extracted and any unscrupulous parties who would breach that privacy are monitored and subject to sanctions.

Not only must opt-out policies be honored, but it’s paramount all information gained via e-mail for behavioral targeting is on an opt-in, permission basis. Federal CAN-SPAM regulations are an added incentive, as all behaviorally targeted e-mail must be compliant. The best way to be assured of that is to operate on an opt-in basis and know for sure your customers want to hear from you. Privacy policies may need a thorough review and possible revision. Like any change in program, this work should be scrutinized for overall revenue impact. Do we gain more revenue from the insights provided by behavioral e-mail or do we lose potential customers due to privacy concerns?

Both behavioral targeting and e-mail are channels used with increasing frequency by multichannel marketers. The two are hardly mutually exclusive. Rather, they’re mutually beneficial. The hitch is rich e-mail relationships can exist between customers and marketers, whereas behaviorally targeted media messaging is anonymous. Consumers are much more likely to provide permission to a company they already do business with, but valued brand names can create confidence in the absence of a prior relationship.

Commercial e-mail content can be tailored in accordance with information gleaned from behavioral targeting tactics, and behavioral targeting can be fueled by behaviors observed from e-mail practices. It’s a match made in heaven, so long as users get the requisite prenup.

Originally published on

As I dropped two kids off at college recently, it occurred to me parents should be natural, intuitive behavioral marketers. If you boil the process down to watching behaviors, predicting and responding to behaviors, and anticipating needs, I have almost 20 years experience. Pre-Internet, pre-technology, hey, for some of us even pre-personal computers — we parents have this process down pat.

I turned to renowned child-rearing expert Dr. Spock to see what guidance he might provide for those of us brushing up on our behavioral marketing skills. The key messages I got from my quick refresher course in child rearing can readily be applied to most of life’s challenges, but they’re particularly adaptable to the strategic planning of behavioral marketing programs. I took just a few of Dr. Spock’s gems of wisdom and considered how they might be applied in our behavioral marketing context, and I learned a few things.

Trust Yourself and Your Children
You know more than you think you do

There are no clear-cut rules in life — or in marketing. Using a healthy dose of common sense, most of us raise our children by responding to their responses. You learn as you go along that little Johnny loves applesauce but tends to throw the kind with strawberries in it. You have established preferences by watching and learning. If you’re smart and prefer a clean kitchen, you adjust your offerings to match your audience’s tastes. I’m sure it was a shock the first time Johnny rejected the applesauce with strawberries. You thought he might like it because he likes both applesauce and strawberries, a logical test that yielded actionable information.

Interestingly, Dr. Spock points out children learn from both what parents do and don’t do. If you don’t pick up a baby every time she cries, she learns to soothe herself. If you don’t supply your customers with the relevant information or products they crave, they’ll go elsewhere.

Learning from successes and mistakes is how people grow and how marketing programs are optimized. In business we’re often rewarded for innovative thinking. Most often, the desired outcome is the result of constant incremental improvements — baby steps, if you will. You wouldn’t expect a baby to move successfully from a crawl to a four-minute mile in one giant leap.

Likewise, we would be well advised to use time wisely to monitor program performance and track results that trend positively. Building on that knowledge, you can challenge your behavioral targeting partners to continue to innovate and create strategies that drive performance.

Raising Children in a Changing World
The key to success is flexibility

We humans are amazingly adaptable creatures. If programs aren’t as adaptable as the audience they seek to service, they’re doomed to failure.

Customer needs change along with a myriad of dimensions, including year, season, competitive set, technology advances, disposable income, and influence of the popular press or an acquaintance. There are a thousand things we can’t hope to know or incorporate into our programming. What we can do is respond to needs we can observe without irrationally clinging to old information.

Sue used to prefer sweet little dresses to wear to school every day. You may have a closet full of them. Some may even still fit, but she’s outgrown them and now prefers the latest velour sweat suits that allow her to make a fashion statement on the playground. If you continue to bring home frilly dresses, she’ll continue to reject them and wonder why you’re so dense.

A healthy respect for historical data and its uses is positive, however the lifespan of valuable data as it relates to customers is very short. Clinging to old information and not challenging the status quo hurts a program. Even if the program is performing within ROI (define) goals, there’s an opportunity cost to complacency. How much better could it do if actively managed?

It’s critical to maintain tight control of programs and make regular, in-campaign adjustments. The environment isn’t static, so campaigns and budgets require fluidity as well. Luckily, available technology allows us to consistently test elements of a campaign with a small portion of the budget to get a quick read on positive changes we can make.

Customers Are Not Children

None of this is meant to suggest you should treat your customers like children. However, if you use common sense and heighten your attention to customers’ responses, you’ll have a stronger connection with them. Hey, they might even come home for the holidays.