4 Characteristics of Contextually Aware Emails

“Email is the most contextual medium—much more than the web,” Kevin Mandeville, Litmus’ content designer, said during a targeting and hacks workshop at The Email Design Conference in Boston last week. “We know much more about our users.”

Kevin was speaking mostly about marketers’ ability to target email clients like Outlook and Yahoo with various coding hacks, but when you think about email marketing on a program level, what he said is even truer.

Contextually aware systems are ones that can sense their environment and adapt their behavior accordingly. Email does this extremely well.

In my latest Marketing Land column, I discuss the four characteristics of a contextually aware system…

1. Identity & Activity
2. Time
3. Location
4. Device and Email Client

…and explain how email marketers can take advantage of each characteristic to create more relevant emails. I also include several examples of brands that have used contextual awareness in their email programs.

>> Read the entire column on MarketingLand.com