Gartner defines email marketing as the use of the email channel to deliver and optimize marketing messages — such as brand newsletters or contextually relevant, real-time and personalized communications — in support of engagement across the customer journey. Email service providers often bolster their technology platforms with supplementary managed services to improve the value and scalability of the email channel. Email marketing helps marketers deliver information to their audiences after obtaining an email address. This can take the form of product or service updates, new promotions, transaction updates and more. As a relatively inexpensive method for communicating at scale with contacts, email provides value for different use cases across the full customer-engagement life span. Email is the most effective channel for several marketing objectives, including demand generation, conversion to sales, and customer loyalty and advocacy.
Gartner defines personalization engines as technology that enables marketing professionals to identify, set up, conduct and measure the optimum experience for an individual based on knowledge about them, their intent and context. Personalization engines apply context about individual users and their circumstances to select, tailor and deliver messaging such as content, offers and other interactions through various digital channels in support of three use cases: Marketing: Delivering the right message to the right audience and in the right context (i.e., tone, timing and channel) to maximize marketing and advertising performance. It involves behavioral inference, segmentation, testing, targeting and optimization of marketing campaign content, messaging and engagements across marketing and communication channels. Digital commerce: Tailoring content, offers, recommendations and experiences across digital sales channels. It includes personalized site search and navigation and customized content across homepages, category landing pages and product detail pages, with the goal of increasing conversion and delivering online revenue growth. Service and support: Using customer insight, journey context and user feedback (i.e., surveys and stated intent) to customize online and offline experiences across business functions to reduce customer effort or increase customer satisfaction and advocacy.