Don't Have Access To AI? Ask For Zip Codes

Email marketers would be wise to ask for customers’ ZIP codes more often. 

Asking for a ZIP code is far less invasive than asking for someone’s home address, and those five numbers can turbocharge email marketing campaigns with geotargeting.  

For example, Warner Music Group utilizes geotargeting to alert fans when their favorite artists are in town. The music label’s email marketing practices were spotlighted Monday in Bluewolf’s annual The State of Salesforce Report. In its sixth annual report, the IBM Company surveyed more than 1,700 Salesforce customers to evaluate their IT and AI practices. 

Since leveraging geographic details to develop more relevant email messages, in tandem with the technology needed to automate the process, Warner Music Group has seen a significant lift in engagement. Fans are 200% more likely to open an email and 300% more likely to click through the email to purchase a ticket.

Warner Music Group now prioritizes live events in its marketing initiatives, since concerts are the most significant source of revenue in an industry being disrupted by music streaming services. The company sends personalized emails to fans containing details about upcoming shows in their locale.

Previously, the company’s production team used to have to develop branded email templates for each artist, each tour, and each geographic region. Doing all of this manually was a huge resource commitment for the company, requiring hundreds of production hours. 

By using the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Warner Music Group was able to automate this email development process to save time and resources. Salesforce provided Warner Music Group with the flexibility to design a marketing stack that works best for them. 

WMG first created a set of APIs that cleaned and verified customer data, as well as triggering email workflows. The company also teamed up with StoryPorts, a Salesforce Marketing Cloud HubExchange partner, to automatically populate email campaigns with online content.  

With StoryPorts, WMG also overlaid the Bandsintown event widget API onto its Salesforce Marketing Cloud accounts. When emails are initiated, the API fills in key details such as artist, venue, performance dates, and links to buy concert tickets. It identifies a geo-targeted segment of the artist’s fan list, via a programmatically updated filter in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Next story loading loading..