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Recency of purchase

I will be talking a lot about email in the coming posts but wanted to share a thought on the recency of purchase when segmenting email data.

I have had a couple of instances recently where the marketing team really need to look at how long ago I purchased a product when deciding whether to email me about a particular product or not. These are both major brands who should really know better.

Take the first, Volvo. I bought a brand new XC90 4×4 a few months ago then within a couple of weeks got an email saying as a loyal XC90 customer I might be interested in a deal for a new one. The deal was a better one than I had just signed up for, insensitive yes, I would suggest it was poor segmentation of the available data .

The second is Curry’s the clicks and mortar electrical retailer. I bought a new 40? TV a couple of weeks ago and since then have had three emails about the sale, one even had the model I had just bought in, the last was just a generic email about how much you can save on a 40? TV.

Both of these purchases are large one off products that I probably won’t replace for a few years, so it does bring in to question how long ago did the original purchase take place before sending any form of communication suggesting you purchase a new one.

Segmentation of data is one of the most powerful tools available to the email marketeer and I will be writing about it later, but without taking into account the type of products and the propensity to purchase in the future, the message and communication strategy will be flawed.

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