How rich first party data from product sampling can support your CRM programme

With Google’s upcoming phase-out of third party cookies and the rise of consumers shopping online since the Coronavirus pandemic, many brands are now seeking ways to grow their first party database. From personal details such as email or more lifestyle-based details such as where consumers shop online, digital sampling offers a multitude of opportunities to find out more about your customer. So here’s how rich first party data from product sampling can support your CRM programme:

Enhanced personalisation

According to Experian, personalised emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. Marketers who don’t offer personalised experiences, be it via email or web messaging, are missing out on a huge opportunity. Campaigns through Sampl can help support personalisation by generating rich first party data. We recently worked with a brand specialising in hair care products, targeted at specific hair types. Through our campaign, we asked consumers to give details about their hair type, enabling the brand to personalise their communications with each consumer.

Audience segmentation

Similar to enhanced personalisation, Sampling campaigns can also help to support audience segmentation. If you’re a brand that targets multiple separate demographics (for example, for fragrance brands there will often be “gifters” or consumers buying for themselves), you’ll want to ensure that you’re treating these audiences separately with targeted messaging that keeps each one engaged. Sampl campaigns include the ability to capture detailed insight from consumers via bespoke surveys. When we work with fragrance brands, we often ask whether the consumer is buying for themselves or for someone else. This enables the brand to tag these separately in their CRM system and engage them with the right messaging. For example, around key gifting periods such as Father’s Day or Christmas.

Improve and maintain your email deliverability

A slightly more technical reason, but something that all CRM marketers need to keep on top of: in layman’s terms, the likes of Gmail and Yahoo don’t want people sending unwanted emails to their users. To avoid this, they have algorithms in place to detect spammy email and move it to the junk folder. To maintain great “deliverability”, it’s important to keep engagement rates high and unsubscribe / complaint rates low. SamplMatch ensures that samples are sent only to the best audiences. This means that first party data generated through the campaign will be of high quality, rich in opportunity for personalisation, and ultimately more likely to deliver great engagement.

Educating consumers to support ROI

Most brands will have an onboarding or welcome journey as part of their programme. The great thing about new contacts generated via sampling is that these consumers will already have tried the product. This means they’ll require less education as part of their path to purchase (if they haven’t already), ultimately reducing their time in the “consideration” stage of the purchase funnel. A shorter path to purchase will result in a greater conversion rate and ROI for your CRM channels. Win:win! You could even consider incorporating sampling into your existing welcome programme for new sign ups from other channels to enable these consumers to try the product ahead of purchase too.

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