This blog post is from the archived Growmatik.ai blog. In 2024, Convesio acquired Growmatik and re-launched it as ConvesioConvert. Learn more about ConvesioConvert.
Personalizing and automating occasion-based marketing campaigns requires that you segment your customers. So, how do you go about doing it? Segmentation is often based on demographic data such as location, age, hobbies, etc. But is that enough to help you understand your customers? In reality, customers have a much more dynamic behavioral pattern. Their habits and interests change occasionally. Yet, marketers often overlook this type of dynamic segmentation based on occasions. In other words, it’s a lost opportunity. In this post, we break down how to automate occasion-based marketing campaigns in WordPress and to further implement it using Growmatik.
What is occasion-based marketing?
It starts with this simple assumption: an individual customer’s buying habits will not be the same every hour of every day despite sharing the same persona or segment with other customers. For example, people don’t drink the same beverage every time of day. They might start their day with a coffee, perhaps an energy drink in the afternoon, and some wine later in the evening. So an online beverage store that knows this can reach out to its customers at the right time and with the right content.
“An individual customer’s buying habits will not be the same every hour of every day despite sharing the same persona or segment with other customers”
Occasion-based marketing is essentially a type of customer segmentation that takes advantage of events, occasions and holidays to target customers. Therefore, if leveraged properly, it’s highly relevant.
But what does it take to design and execute successful occasion-based marketing? It starts with the right segmentation.
Occasion-based customer segmentation
There are two types of customer segmentation:
- Static segmentation that relies on customer’s demographic data such as location, gender, purchase intentions, etc.
- Occasion-based segmentation, which is more fluid and goes beyond solely demographic data and is tailored to place and time.
To segment your customers based on occasions, you need to come up with your very own set of occasions to start with. Remember that these occasions must be carefully picked by considering your industry and customer persona.
News
Global or local news and trends can be useful to drive more sales. For example, a marketer can take advantage of news about a pandemic – which is sadly a hot topic these days – to promote their virtual meeting software to companies that are looking to move to telecommuting during the pandemic.
Since these occasions are not predictable, there is little you can do to prepare and schedule. However, you should make sure that you have the required tools ready in case it happens.
For example, the company described above could send emails to its subscribers explaining and reminding them of the value of its product and how it can contribute to telecommuting. In Growmatik, you can create and send such emails pretty easily with simple rules. Go to the Automate page and select a condition. It could be all your leads. If you want a more specific segment to target, then you can go to the People page and use filters to create an elaborated segment and then choose Segment as a condition in the Automate page. Once you have chosen the condition, choose Send email as the action and then create the email content. Once you’re satisfied with the content, save it, exit and click on Create the rule.
Holidays and events
This is probably one of the most-tried occasions in marketing to drive more sales. You pick up on special days in the calendar and offer relevant sales promotions on those days. It could be Christmas Day in Western countries or Hari Raya in south-east Muslim countries. Regardless, you just need to make sure that the holiday you have picked resonates with your brand and target market. For example, Valentine’s Day is a better choice for a confectioner than for a software company.
Unlike news, these occasions are predictable, meaning that you can schedule a meeting and be prepared beforehand. In Growmatik, you can schedule and automate your occasion-based marketing campaigns to run on specific days of the year by sending emails, displaying marketing popups or personalize your website content. Just go to the Automate page and create a new rule by clicking on the plus button. Now as the condition, choose Date > Specific date. Now pick up a holiday or event in the calendar.
As an action, choose Show popup and create a new popup. You can use Growmatik templates or create a new popup that contains a message relevant to the spirit of the holiday or event. In this example, we crafted a popup for a confectionery online store to promote its special discounts on Valentine’s Day. You can further use Growmatik’s Coupon element to instantly generate ready-to-use discount coupons and place it inside the popup.
Sometimes, it’s not a holiday but simply a customer’s life events such as engagements, weddings, welcoming a newborn baby, birthdays, etc. For example, if you know your customer’s birthday date, you can send personalized emails and maybe a bit of treat – whatever suits your brand – to warm your relationship with them.
Daily occasions
Serving personalized and relevant offers right when your customers need them will boost your sales and customer loyalty. Imagine an online food and drink delivery service that displays a popup promoting wine in the afternoon while another popup presenting coffee is set to be displayed late in the night. Sounds ridiculous, right? Of course, this scenario may be unlikely and exaggerated a bit but the point remains. Most online stores don’t have any type of day-time based promoting triggers in place. They run the same promotions for everyone every hour of the day.
A while ago, I landed on the website that I usually order food from. It ran an ad promoting free desserts included in high-value orders. I signed into this website at four different times of the day and the same ad was still up and running on the homepage. I’m not sure about you, but for some people including me, dessert is not the best choice for breakfast! Wouldn’t it be better if they could display an offer promoting a free latte instead of free dessert?
Growmatik can run different types of marketing campaigns from emails to popups and webpage personalization at different times of the day. In this example, we want to personalize the website banner to change in the morning.
To begin automating your occasion-based marketing campaigns for daily events, first go to the Automate page. Then, create a new rule and select Date > Time of day > Morning as the condition. As the action, choose the Personalize page and select your homepage from the list. When the personalizer opens, locate the banner and click on the elements you’d like to replace. Double-click on the text to edit it. To replace the images, first select the image you want to replace and add a new image element by clicking on the plus button underneath and insert a new image element. Now remove the previous image. You can get creative and add extra elements such as a warm greeting message addressing the customer by their name to make it more personalized.
In the example above, we covered only page personalization, but you can also send emails, display popups or redirect the traffic to specific pages based on the time of the day in Growmatik. You can also create multiple different rules to achieve a multi-fold marketing campaign for better results.
Wrap up
As you can see, occasion-based marketing offers unlimited ways to help you increase ROI and customer loyalty. Some of the occasions such as holidays or Black Friday – while still effective – have been used by marketers for years hence they’ve become less engaging.
On the other hand, there are many personal events and occasions that are celebrated by consumers but rarely discovered and used by marketers. Besides, if you really want to target your customers based on their behavior and habits, you must embrace the fact that people behave differently on different occasions and take this into account when segmenting your customers. This new mindset combined with insightful knowledge of your brand, its values, and your customer’s persona could give you the ammunition to use your creativity to tailor unique strategies and take your marketing to the next level.
How else do you think occasion-based marketing helps you become more relevant to your customers? What occasion-based strategies have you taken and how did it turn out? Let everyone know in the comments below.
