Not every message is a good fit for every channel. The type of message you send should dictate which channel you use. For example, sending out your company’s monthly product advertisements via SMS will probably annoy your recipients, as that channel is best suited for concise, timely messages. Instead, email would be a better fit for this communication since the content is less time-sensitive and recipients can easily reference the material as often as they need over the course of the month.
Wondering how to deliver more relevant communications to your recipients? Ask them! Every user has unique interests and messaging preferences, so rather than guess, just ask them what types of communications they want to receive, what channels they prefer, and how frequently they want to hear from your brand. That’s the easiest and most accurate way to learn your recipients’ needs and wants.
Here are 3 ways your business can collect user preferences:
According to our 2022 Global Messaging Engagement Report, message frequency and irrelevance were the top 2 factors that turned off consumers from receiving email and SMS messages. To ensure neither of these problems frustrate your recipients, consider introducing a preference center.
Preference centers give consumers the ability to tell your brand what types of content they care about and how often they want to receive your messages. For example, an email recipient can share that they want to receive content around deals and promotions, but that your brand should skip sending them your monthly blog newsletter.
This transparency can benefit both businesses and recipients by helping to:
If your customers want to receive your content, they’ll be more likely to open, click, and engage with your messages.
When people receive content they find valuable, they’ll be less likely to report your messages as spam.
Instead of jumping straight to unsubscribe, your recipients can use your preference center to curate when and how they hear from your brand.
Your recipients can remove themselves from unwanted mailing lists, while also opting-in to receive communications around the topics they care most about.
Opt-in is typically use case/campaign and channel-specific, but as you introduce new channels to your customer engagement strategy, a best practice is to ask your email, SMS/MMS, and WhatsApp subscribers to set their messaging preferences as soon as they subscribe. That way, your business can send them targeted messages and respect their preferences from the get go.
While preference centers let you learn your recipient’s messaging preferences, you’ll need even more data to truly understand your customers. That’s where customer surveys can help. By incorporating such surveys into your messaging welcome series, you can learn an individual’s:
Together, this information allows you to further develop your user personas, better segment your recipients, and ensure you’re sending content your customers find highly relevant and personalized to their interests.
While every consumer has preferences, not every consumer will tell you directly what those preferences might be. Fortunately, there are useful data signals for nearly every communication you send. Everytime a recipient interacts with your messages, they send you powerful data that indicates what they like and dislike. Your business just needs to listen.
Using a CDP, your business can capture when a recipient opens, clicks, or even forwards one of your messages, so you can find patterns in their engagement and uncover the best way to reach your customer across all of your channels. Connecting that data to campaigns allows you to understand the ROI of every communication to optimize future campaigns and to create individualized marketing flows that are most likely to drive loyal customer relationships.
Together, these three strategies allow you to collect valuable information about your customers that you can then use to send more targeted messages your customers want to engage with.
