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How to use personalized email to build emotional Intimacy with your brand

James Glover, president and CEO of Coherent Path, explains why retailers need to zero in on the specific types of emotional connections your customers expect in order to plan campaigns that reinforce those connections and cultivate intimacy.

Photo by istock.com

October 15, 2019

By James Glover, president and CEO, Coherent Path

Which single metric correlates most strongly with a brand's retail success? You might be surprised to learn it's not click-through rate (CTR), or segmentation precision, or even the seamlessness of the customer journey — instead, it's a more elusive factor that's interrelated with all the above.

That crucial factor is emotional intimacy. A 2019 survey by marketing agency MBLM found that among 6,200 consumers across 15 U.S. industries, brands with the highest intimacy scores consistently outperform their rivals at all levels — including competitors in the Fortune 500 echelon.

Why is that? Because retail transactions are far more than just a simple exchange. A full 50 percent of Millennial consumers, in particular, will buy from brands they trust even when cheaper options are available. For those customers, every transaction represents an emotional bond with a brand — and brands that respect and reinforce those bonds end up cultivating far stronger customer loyalty, and much greater ROI, over the long term.

Those revenue-driving relationships begin with the recognition that relevant content alone isn't enough. As important as product recommendations are, they're only one component in an ongoing dialogue throughout every customer's unique journey. Here's how such dialogues can nurture intimacy over time, creating deeply meaningful and mutually beneficial customer relationships.

Relevance sparks dialogue — but emotional intimacy drives conversions

Emotional intimacy might sound like a fluffy concept to discuss in the context of business impact. In truth, though, intimacy has been a vital factor in customer relationship-building since the earliest days of retail. Back then, friendly shopkeepers would greet every loyal customer by name, and recommend products that customer needed on that particular visit — along with items they'd realize they wanted next week, and even next month.

Today's key difference is that instead of fostering those personal relationships through one-on-one conversations, modern brands face increasing pressure to cultivate millions of relationships simultaneously, across a wide array of digital and in-store channels. And while that's far beyond the capabilities of any single human (or team of humans), it's precisely the task that automated personalization software is designed to handle.

MBLM's survey found that the two brands rated as the top emotional-intimacy performers are Amazon and Whole Foods. These two winners might come as surprises — until you consider how thoroughly they've automated themselves into our daily routines. Through subscription-based deliveries, same-day service and one-click purchases, Amazon and Whole Foods have become such integral components of our lives that we hardly even think of them as “brands” distinct from ourselves anymore.

Each brand's path to emotional intimacy is as unique as the value it offers

Throughout every customer's one-of-a-kind journey, successful retailers cultivate intimacy by providing personalized email content that's relevant to that customer's current interests and aspirations — whether that's a set of product recommendations, a helpful blog post, a fun quiz, or even an interactive vision board that helps the customer picture themselves in the hero's shoes.

In other words, personalized content comes in many forms — and each of those forms can be a dialogue starter in its own way. Of course, meaningful dialogues take time to unfold, so you'll have to exercise patience and restraint as each conversation blossoms into a revenue-driving relationship. Over time, though, carefully cultivated email dialogue will nurture intimacy, paving the way for conversions at precisely the moments they'll click.

As a productive first step in your brand's intimacy brainstorming, start by thinking — and/or running some surveys — about how your customers perceive your brand's core value in their emotional lives. Do you reinforce or enhance their sense of identity? Do you provide them with familiar rituals or moments of indulgence? Do you reawaken nostalgic memories or fulfill comforting ideals?

Your brand's keys to intimacy probably sit at the intersection of several of those emotional value-adds — along with a variety of others, too. Those are your strategy's starting points.

For every brand, the common factor in intimacy is moments of meaning

Although every brand's path to intimacy-building is unique, it's also easy to identify one all-important common factor across all emotionally intimate brand relationships. That crucial factor is the delivery of moments of meaning — experiences so genuine that they convince your customers you really "get" them on a gut level.

For example, Amazon Smile offers customers the opportunity to donate a portion of each purchase to their favorite charity. Spotify provides each user with individually curated playlists that feel like they come straight from a close friend. And Heineken recently went viral with a video showing how people from opposite ends of the political spectrum can join forces to complete the (seemingly) simple task of assembling furniture.

In short, the formulas for moments of meaning take different shapes for every brand — and for every customer, too. Finding your brand's unique set of formulas will take some trial and error, just as it has for well-established nationwide retailers like Target, Staples and Neiman Marcus. But the rewards of discovery far outweigh the risks of experimentation.

Zero in on the specific types of emotional connections your customers expect from you, and you'll be well on your way to planning campaigns that reinforce those connections, cultivating intimacy that feels every bit as seamless as a one-click Amazon purchase.