Bigfoot Interactive Enables Changes On the Fly
A new tool lets marketers set up campaign strategies based on assumptions, and then modify them based on reality.
E-mail service provider Bigfoot Interactive has launched a new tool that allows marketers to make changes to an email campaign on the fly in reaction to the campaign’s performance.
“The days of sending one message out to an audience and hoping you’re hitting the consumer with the right message at the right time are over,” said Al DiGuido, CEO of Bigfoot Interactive. “This is the next evolutionary step of email communications, with a focus on building relevant communications.”
The real-time ROI Response Optimizer gives marketers real-time reporting as email campaigns are deployed. Data includes the number of messages opened, link activity, and conversion statistics. Marketers can use this information to alter elements of the Web-based landing page, including product, creative or page placement. Changes can be based on pre-set business rules or made manually once the campaign begins.
The tool can be used to optimize an individual campaign’s performance, manage inventory, or respond to promotional objectives during deployment, he said. For example, a campaign featuring a product that was available in limited quantities or sold out in the midst of the campaign could be changed to shift demand to another product or offer.
“E-mail really lends itself to be able to anticipate and set up strategies based on assumptions going in, and then be able to react and modify them based on reality,” DiGuido said. “It’s something you could never do in an offline campaign because you don’t get the data as quickly as you do online.”
In direct mail, the time lag between the assumptions made before the launch of the campaign and data collected once it happens will sometimes extend from 30 to 90 days. With email, the results of a campaign can be determined as soon as the messages are sent out.
Many of Bigfoot Interactive’s 150 clients are retailers, so the coming quarter is an important one for them, DiGuido said. “They’re looking at Q4 as both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is, there’s huge demand. The curse is, there could be limited quantities of certain products. They don’t want to be in a situation where customers can’t get a product that was advertised,” he said.
Through new marketing automation utilities, a marketer can use Bigfoot Interactive’s packaged APIs to integrate the email platform with the inventory database to allow automatic shipment or notification once a back-ordered product becomes available.
“This offering makes it much easier for marketers to manage their campaigns to broader corporate goals,” said David Daniels, JupiterResearch analyst. “While real-time reporting alone is no longer a differentiator, the ability to automatically recast landing pages based upon business rules that are tied to these real-time results is. The ability to automate the integration between disparate data silos and trigger business logic is important to ensure that email messages are as timely and relevant as the need to be to capture the customer’s interest.”
