Countless studies have shown that consumers prefer personalization when it comes to marketing communications. And in the age of Amazon and Netflix, they’ve come to expect personalized recommendations. However, in order to deliver those personalized shopping experiences, you have to know more than just their first name.

First name, email addresses and location — those are the basics. Our User Profiles take that to the next level, encompassing nearly all the data Sailthru retains about a user, and their interests and behaviors. They’re a living, breathing record of the way customers engage with brands and how we help our customers get the most out of them.

Our User Profiles have always been market-leading and we’ve recently redesigned them to make them more user-friendly. Now, User Profiles are more visual and consumable, and even better positioned to help us redefine personalization and help you better understand how customers think.

Here are five particularly strong benefits of the product:

1. User Profiles Help You Understand Customers Across Channels

Siloes are a common marketing misstep, with email marketing living in one place, while CRM data is someplace else, for example. But since consumers seamlessly switch between their email, smartphone and web browsing, your data should reflect that. When all your data is in one place, you have a more complete view of your customers, making it that much easier to automate personalized messaging in real time.

2. User Profiles Help You Move Beyond Demographics

Our single view of the customer also makes it easier to separate someone’s behaviors from their demographics. Which sounds like a surer bet: recommending a product because many other 30-something college-educated white women from California bought it… or because this particular customer has looked at it multiple times? You can also look at someone’s entire purchase history to see if they strictly buy on promotions, say, allowing you to adjust your user profile marketing accordingly.

3. User Profiles Help You Learn Customer Interests for Stronger Personalization

Which products has someone browsed and bought? What do they read? How do they interact with your emails? All of these behaviors provide invaluable insights into customers’ interests. Marigold Engage by Sailthru creates and manages custom fields pertaining to those interests, tracking which items from your Content Library inspire action. This ultimately helps the algorithms power future personalization.

4. User Profiles Help You Know When People Engage and Open Email

One particularly important behavioral data set: email open rate. You can blindly email everyone at 8:00. But wouldn’t you rather email your customers when they’re more likely to engage? User Profiles notes when someone typically opens and interacts with emails, helping you determine when to use personalized send time.

5. User Profiles Help You Predict a Customer’s Next Move and Personalize Accordingly

Personalized marketing is often based on what people have done — abandoned cart emails and retargeted ads, for example. For our customers who use Prediction Manager, User Profiles also include each customer’s prediction values, enabling you to personalized based on the (likely) future, not just the past.

If you’re a Sailthru customer and interested in learning more about User Profiles, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager. If you’re not working with us, but want to see them in action, please get in touch.