ANAdvice on building a recommendation engine using email?
Hi all,
I'm building an opportuntiy recomendation engine and wondering if I can hack an MVP using email. Here are my main questions about email functionilty:
-emails need to have 'survey functionality' - is this possible? For example, end user needs to be able to select 'yes' or 'no' to an opportuntiy.
-if yes, would this need to tie to my website or is there a third party site that would hold this data for me.
-if yes, could you have multiple opportunties stacked in the same email?
-can you build 'sharing' buttons into email templates that allow the user to post select content directly to social channels?
Essentailly I'm just wondering how robust email can be in terms of gathering feedback from users and allowing them to push content to their channels. Any information is helpful. If I didn't supply enough information please let me know.
Cheers,
Ace
First, I assume you mean ‘hack together’ versus ‘hack into’. The golden rule of email is that it must be explicit opt in.
There are several methods to survey and/or progressively profile a user from an email. Depending on your ESP or marketing platform, they may offer survey tool components.
This again depends on your site, ESP or marketing platform, but yes, the data needs to reside somewhere that can post to and update your list.
Yes, there are a few methods to drive a user through a series of questions (binary is easiest) to a final click that captures each selection. Litmus just ran a contest as a 5 question quiz that is a really good example of this.
Yes, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ each provide direct endpoint methods or ‘intents’. This allows you to control the title, description, url, etc of the post from content defined in the email. Twitter example: https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=hello+world&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.domain.com&via=handle
Charles, thanks so much for the detailed response. This is incredibly helpful. If I have additional questions, may I reach out?
I try to visit the Litmus Community regularly. Replying to any discussion I am in is a good way to get my attention. But the entire community has great insight.
There are several marketing automation platforms that can provide smart segmentation based on user actions. It isn’t as sophisticated as prediction APIs like IBM Watson, but for email list programs, they are very effective. Take a look at Smart Lists from Marketo for an idea of what’s out there.