What’s new in Dotdigital

Today marks the release of our first product launch of 2022. Thousands of people use our platform every day to deliver better customer experiences. With the plethora of channels available, reams of data that will make the hardiest of data gurus dizzy, and an API library that would keep you entertained for days (if you were so inclined), it can be hard to know where to start.

Whatever your marketing goals for 2022 may be, there’s something for everyone this quarter. Let’s dive in.

For the data-driven

We’re not the first to highlight a shift in best practice when it comes to data acquisition. Our Rise of the Responsible Marketer report which was published last year unpicks the relationship between trust, marketing, and loyalty. Various industry forces have made it harder for marketers to rely on third-party data. Brands and marketers are expected to leverage first-party data in their personalization and retargeting efforts.

First-party data is information about your audience that you have obtained firsthand, it is collected and owned by you. First-party data includes information you hold in your CRM system, data from your website, app, and social media accounts, data around the purchases your customers are making, engagement data derived from the messages you send your addressable audience, and of course survey data. This is by no means an exhaustive list but it gives you a flavor of what is meant by first-party data.

All of these data points can be immensely valuable when devising a digital marketing strategy that lands where you need it to; in the mind of your (future) customer. It’s likely that there is a ton of first-party data you already hold. Yet 87% of marketers say data is their company’s most under-utilized asset.

At Dotdigital we want to change that. Last year we launched segment analytics and single customer view (SCV). Paired with our advanced customer analytics capabilities (remember eRFM?), you can start using these insights to better understand your customer at every level. Single customer view, as the name suggests, can be a powerful tool with which you can research your personas in granular detail, it can also be used as a way to validate your data acquisition strategy. Single customer view in Dotdigital shows you what data points you are collecting, and where there is room for improvement.

Segment analytics is the next level up from that, you can gain engagement, web, and order insights into any segment you create in Dotdigital. So, how has the feedback been? In a nutshell, many of you told us this is awesome, but wanted this level of insights for address books too.
Wish granted.

For the campaign masters

The new year can be a great time to experiment with new channels. Got a mobile app? Then we have something for you. Improvements to push notifications make it a much more versatile channel with which you can drive meaningful next steps, and shorten your subscribers’ journey to complete that all-important action. That may be a purchase, a prompt to confirm a booking or appointment they’ve made with you or a push to discover a new set of subscriptions that you have launched in-app.

Push notifications work best as part of a cross-channel marketing strategy when used sparingly. They can boost overall app engagement by 88%, and achieve high click-through rates when personalized and timed well. For example, the push notification reaction rate peaks at 11 pm at night and is at its lowest around 8 am and again at 6 pm. It’s not hard to deduce what is happening here; consumers are less likely to engage during rush hour (even if fewer people are physically traveling into a place of work, we’re still in ‘wind-up’ or ‘wind-down’ mode at the start and end of our working day).

Then there is the point around relevance, instead of using mobile push notifications as a channel on which you plainly repeat what you already emailed your subscriber base about, use it as an opportunity to reinforce that message, personalize it further, and bring the ball back into your court.

With our February release, you can send customers to a deep-link in-app (i.e. a product or category page) instead of your app homepage. Make it clear where you want them to go, what you’re going to be telling them, and what’s in it for them.

Secondly, you can now set your push notifications up to be super-smart and perform a number of actions when they click through. Say you run a loyalty program and there’s a new message waiting for them in-app that explains all the benefits of the tier they have just hit, your push notification can be set to open this message on click. Similarly, if you choose to run an app-exclusive sale that is time-sensitive, you can now set your push notification to show the relevant products on sale and deliver a streamlined, one-click order process for customers who are ready to seal the deal. The opportunities are endless and largely untapped. Speak to us to find out more about what’s possible with mobile push notifications.

For developers

Let’s talk API’s. API stands for “Application Programming Interface” and gives you a way to programmatically tell one application to talk to another. This might be used to retrieve reporting data, check for events, and even trigger a perfectly timed alert, reminder, or notification. We’ve given our own Dotdigital Developer Hub a much-needed revamp. A collection of comprehensive guides document the art of the possible with our own library of API’s. Especially if you are the more-marketer and less-developer type, knowing what’s possible can help you have constructive conversations with your own development teams and agencies you partner with.

One of the changes we have made with this product release is the increase of our API request size limit (from 15MB to 50MB). This makes it easier to import vast amounts of data, such as contacts. It also opens up possibilities when using our transactional email API to send attachments.

Transactional messaging is a key part of any customer journey. It’s all good and well (and expected) that you prompt customers pre-point of purchase with information about your brand, product, and services. What will really make you stand out from the crowd, however, is completing that experience post-purchase with branded messages that provide updates on their order, an invoice confirmation (this is where that attachment comes in!), or simply a message of support should they require an escalation path in future. Read more about transactional messaging and all things aftersales in this blog.

To find out more about this product release and how it can help you achieve your goals for the year ahead, tune in to one of our lunch-and-learn webinars in March:

Advanced analytics have landed (EMEA): March 1, 12:00 pm – 13:oo pm GMT

Advanced analytics have landed (Americas): March 2, 12:00 pm – 13:00 pm EST

Advanced analytics have landed (APAC): March 3, 12:00 pm – 13:00 pm AEDT