• by Ray Schultz , April 5, 2018

Consumers supposedly are in charge of the online shopping experience. But they almost have to be technical experts to navigate around certain obstacles.

The solution is to “serve them educational content on how to best engage with the brand,” advises Kelly-Jo Sands, EVP, marketing technology and data practice at Ansira. 

“One of the classic problems with giving consumers more control is that there’s an educational barrier there,” Sands says. That can make it a challenge for marketers, between technical rollouts and other changes, she adds.

This education begins with advising customers on “how to flag messages, and getting that up front in welcomes,” Sands continues. “People do often want to hear from your brand, and will be most receptive.”

The brand can also post a URL that will “lead them to a landing page and walk them through, step by step, with the consumer experience always top of mind,” Sands says 

In one way, this is like the old direct mail campaigns that educated people on how to do business by mail and assured them that doing so was safe. The difference is that consumers can drop out in an instant if they become frustrated.

Sands offered this advisory in connection with a white paper from Ansira titled Dominating Email Delivery. Its purpose? To provide input on how to get emails into the inbox.

“When people think about email as a channel and a creative medium, they go straight to creative — how pretty it is and what the content is, or how data-driven the segmentation is,” she states.  

What they often overlook is the “deliverability of it — the science of designing it to make sure that the emails you’re sending and investing in as a brand are getting through.” 

Educational copy should never be the primary focus of an email — it should be short and sweet, although it depends on “the brand and the welcome stream,” Sands notes. Often, it will say, 'Don’t miss out on great deals'."

“When we know the domain it’s heading to, we can customize the verbiage,” Sands observes.

Sands can’t recall anyone sending a dedicated email on this subject, but it can be done. 

“With some of the nuances, as with Gmail, it probably isn’t a bad idea to make sure they understand the action they can take in their own inbox,” she says.

“The Catch-22 is to send them and it’s already hitting their spam folder. There are other channels we can use to engage with people as well.”

Ansira is a 99 year-old company that originally started in the tear-sheet business. It now helps brands, largely in the automotive market, stay in touch with local resellers, using a variety of digital and data-driven strategies, including co-ops, says Ansira CEO Daina Middleton. 

Acquired by Advent in 2016, the company has 850 employees and offices in Dallas, the headquarters, St. Louis, Chicago, Portland and Detroit. It also has some support overseas.