How Retailers Can Personalize Emails With Local Weather Data

Weather is a lot more than what’s happening outside your window. It can impact your life, moods, and, yes, even your buying decisions. 

There have been a few studies over the last decade or so that have dug into weather, and its impact on consumer behavior. 

As retailers, that means you have a unique ability to harness the power of the weather (insert evil laugh here) and drive more traffic to your online shops. 

One way to do that is by using weather in your email marketing campaigns. 

In this post, we’re going to tap into a few of the ways retailers can use weather to personalize email marketing. 

Ready to dig into it?

Improved personalization

Consumers today don’t just want more personalized content; they demand it. The world is now full of niches, channels, and subscriptions that play to a tiny fraction of society, and consumers pick and choose what products they buy based on their personal needs and interests.

So it shouldn’t come as a big shock that retailers can make some moves that improve personalization — especially when it comes to emails. You can start by tapping into the data that’s already at your fingertips, namely geolocation.

Knowing where your customers are is a great way to start segmenting your list. You can drop it down even beyond the region of the country or state to zip code and get hyper-localized. 

That’s going to enable you to send out specific personalized emails to segments of your list that can line up with the weather they are currently experiencing. 

Here are a few ways to do it.

Use fear of missing out

Fear of missing out, also known as FOMO is a term used to describe when people feel actual anxiety because they might be missing out on something fun or exciting. 

It’s a powerful psychological trigger and motivator to get people to take action. Brands have been using this tactic for a while, especially in reveal marketing circles. 

Retailers can use FOMO too with local weather. 

One example for retailers is around a special event. Let’s say you have a beer garden pop-up you’re trialing for only one week. Use weather, especially a great forecast, in the area to tell your customers that if they skip out, they might be missing on an awesome happy hour. 

Even something tiny like that can be enough motivation for an email subscriber to pop into their group chat and suggest your beer garden as the place to meet that week.

Highlight a sale

When do a lot of people think about those summer outdoor activities that they love?

During the cold winter or rainy spring when they are trapped inside because of bad weather. So use that longing that your customers might have to be outside and build a weather-based email campaign around it.

Let’s say you’re a sporting goods retailer. During the dour winter months, why not launch a sale campaign that highlights a bunch of your summer sporting equipment and camping gear? 

Here’s where you can bring in some of your past customer data too. Targeting the customers who have already purchased some summer sport and camping (or related) supplies means they’re already primed for interest. 

So use bad weather to your advantage and create an email that sparks longing for the warm and sunny summer months and encourages these customers to grab a great deal and buy now.

Forecast based notifications

Here’s another way to tap into the weather. When you know what the forecast is likely to be seven or ten days out, thanks technology, you can send out helpful emails that serve as reminders to your customers too.

Here’s an example.

It’s late October in New England, which means snow is likely just around the corner. For a local or regional tire store, the first indication of snow arriving in the forecast is the perfect time to send out an email to the customers in these locations that it’s winter tire season. 

For current customers, an email that reminds them to book an appointment to get their snow tires put on serves as a friendly reminder that you care.

And for potential customers, an email like this is a great way to drive traffic and purchases from those who don’t want to get stuck, literally, in the first snow of the season.

Embrace the weather

As a retailer, you can really dive into personalization and use the weather to your advantage. The key is to be strategic about your approach.

Liz Froment

Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.

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Where Is My Order Calls Are Killing Your Business… Here’s How To Stop Them

How often have you been sitting around thinking about something when suddenly a thought pops into your head.

“Hey, where’s that thing I ordered last week?”

Depending on the company you ordered from, this thought manifested in one of two ways.

It was either a pretty straightforward exercise where you opened an email and saw where your stuff was. Or it became an odyssey. You had to go to three or four different sites and fill in a ton of info like order numbers and all that.

In other words, a headache. 

Now, imagine you’re on the other side of the equation, the business. A lot of people aren’t satisfied trying to go to a bunch of different sites and try to get this information. So, they call. 

No company wants its customer service lines swamped with people calling wondering where their packages are, otherwise known as where is my order (WISMO) calls. And yet, it happens all the time. 

So how can you fix it?

Let’s take a look. 

Understanding the challenge

Customer experience is such a huge part of buying and selling today, especially online. If you fail at that, it’s really easy for your customers to move on to some other brand. That makes it difficult to build up loyalty.

One way to help create more loyal customers is through great customer service and meeting their needs and wants. With ecommerce, shipping is a huge part of that. 

Check out this graphic:

The stat that should catch your eye is the last one. Nearly 95% of customers expect to get an update on their shipment. 

Yet, when they don’t get that, the first thing they do is pick up the phone and call. That leaves your customer service team wasting their time on information that could be solved with an email instead of digging deep on bigger issues. 

So where you can focus on solving this problem, or at the very least, putting a dent into it, is through email.

Using real-time order tracking emails

Imagine you automated your order tracking emails to get sent out to every customer, and whenever they opened that email, they got updated information in real-time.

Pretty cool, right?

Well, it’s possible.

With moment of open emails, every time your customer opens their email — be it right away or two days later — the email is updated with real-time tracking information.

The image above is just one example of what this type of email can look like for your customers. Every time they go back to this email and opens it, the information displayed will be the most accurate real-time data. It allows your customers to always know where their package is, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that with an email like this, you can expect those where is my order calls to pretty much vanish overnight. Your customers don’t need to waste their time trying to figure out where their purchases are; they can follow along right from their email.

That saves them time and aggravation (while giving them a case of the warm and fuzzies), and it keeps your customer service department from having to field a lot of angry calls.

Personalize order tracking emails

Plus, there’s another cool feature that comes with these moment of open tracking emails — it’s yet another way to include personalization in your email marketing. 

We know how important personalization is when it comes to getting readers to turn into customers. But it’s also really critical after your readers become customers too. You can tap into your order tracking emails to offer yet another way to provide personalized information to your customers. 

You can further personalize the example email above a couple of ways. Add images of the products your customers have bought as well as images of related and featured products you might want to upsell. Another option is to showcase VIP or loyalty data and toss in a few related product reviews too. 

As you can see, there’s a ton of potential.

Ready to take back your customer service calls?

You can do it! 

One way is through real-time order tracking emails. If you do this, you can start improving your overall customer experience and let your service team focus on tackling the more significant issues.

Liz Froment

Liz Froment is a content writer at Zembula. A graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Liz is a travel aficionado, Boston sports fan, and maple syrup connoisseur.

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